My brush with a serial killer

It was a dark afternoon in 1985 with rain lashing down in torrents. Here I was, 15 years old standing in the shop doorway of what used to be Plastic Wax Records in Old Market Street Bristol. The shop closed sometime after and moved to another location in the street and the old shop became The Sofa Project furniture warehouse as it is today. I pushed myself further back into the door way umbrella in hand, checking the time and looking out to see where my consistently late boyfriend was. He lived above one of the shops opposite and did not have a doorbell and this was long before mobile phones. He was already half an hour late.

There was a bus stop where I was standing and a woman in her twenties stopped to check the bus times then squeezed into the doorway beside me. Just then a car pulled up and to my surprise a woman opened the window and called me over.

"Do you need a lift,love?" She asked smiling as though she had known me for years. Someone else was driving but I could not see them at all. I refused at first thinking she was talking to the older woman but when I turned to look she was not taking any notice.

"No thanks, its ok Im waiting for someone,"I replied. She had a round plain looking face, short dark hair and huge glasses. I thought she could be a middle aged school teacher.

"Its ok come on where do you want to go?"

I shook my head. Perhaps the woman in the doorway needed a life? It seemed she was not being offered.

The car sped off to join the traffic. I stood there a bit puzzled and it was well into the 1990s that I saw that face again. This time it was the lunchtime news.

 I remembered the plain looking woman with big glasses and short brown hair from back then in '85 and realised I,d had a close shave with Rosemary and Fred West, probably out and about the streets of Bristol looking for a victim as I found out they were apt to do.

 I still get the shivers now, and think about those poor victims and how it could have been my bones being carried away from Cromwell Street Gloucester in a black box.