I looked briefly at the cowering woman in the background, with a fresh black eye and a small baby clutched in her arms, and I made a decision.
In situations like these, where the man's infraction was easily reported and proven, given the necessary resources, and which was punished by the laws of the country, I usually simply contacted the police and gave them the information needed anonymously, and made sure that they followed it up. But in cases where the law did not recognise the crimes being committed, I intervened. Wife beating was not usually considered a crime until the woman broke out of her prison of abuse and fear and reported it. I disagreed. I glanced again at the small vulnerable frightened mouse of a woman and her helpless baby, and I knew that this teenage thug needed a bit of corrective manipulation. It would give me something to do to pass the time.
I picked him up the next day.
Rebecca
Sunday was a strange day all round. Big brother Joe was away someplace, so it was just me and Mark and Mum, who always cooked a vegetarian roast dinner for us on Sundays. She was rubbish at it, and usually turned out yellowed vegetables, crunchy roast potatoes and lumpy gravy, but we never complained. I cooked weekdays, or the boys would heat up some microwave meal and present it with a flourish, but Sunday was Mum's day, and she took it seriously. Taste buds adapt, eventually.
Our street was not a bad one for the area. The occasional gang of feral teenagers would come wandering down the road, hurl a few stones and be obnoxious to any passersby, but they would soon get bored and amble off again. So when the commotion kicked off across the road, everyone came out into their front gardens to see what was happening.
The house that appeared to be at the centre of all the attention was more or less diagonally across the road from our place. It was occupied by a middle aged woman and her thirty-something son. They were a creepy pair. She had bright yellow hair and the deep wrinkles that you get from smoking too much, and a mouth like an upside down 'u'. He always looked like he needed a bath, with his lank greasy hair and stained clothes. I never got close enough to him to find out, but he looked like he would smell funny, kind of musty and stale. They were both outside in their rubble-strewn front garden. She was yelling at a man carrying a settee into the removals van that was parked half-on-half-off the pavement. I was impressed. I had never seen anyone make so much noise with a lit cigarette dangling out the corner of their mouth.