I popped out with K for a pint tonight, starting at The Belvedere off Falkner Street. As we were leaving and walking back towards Hope Street, there was the sound of an argument being rapidly concluded through the open window of one of the first floor flats along this beautiful Georgian avenue and then a light going off to leave the room in darkness.
As we walked past the house, I looked up to see a young woman, in her twenties, sat in the open window crying. We walked on a few paces because when you live in a city these things are pretty meat and potatoes, but there was something not quite right about the situation so I turned back and asked her if she was alright? She was sobbing and didn’t respond to my questions, but when I asked for the third time if she was okay she blubbed ‘No’. I asked if there was anything I could do or anyone I could call but she shook her head, sobbing more deeply, and deciding that it was really none of my business I walked on. But as we got to the end of the street I changed my mind and went back to the house. When I arrived below the window the woman was still crying but this time a small girl, aged about three, had appeared next to her and stared out at me without emotion, but looking a little confused. She was a lovely little thing with curly blond hair and I asked her directly if she was alright. But the little girl just stared at me whilst her Mum (presumably) continued to sob in the recently dark room.
I thought that the fact Mum didn’t ask me to mind my own business when I addressed her daughter was telling, and besides all that, why should be three year old girl be standing around in a dark room for no reason? This made me conclude whilst things were clearly not as they should be, I did have a responsibility to intervene. I was quite wary that it was possible a man could come bursting out of the front door asking me forcibly to mind my own business, in which case I would probably have to stand up for myself and end up brawling in the street, and so I walked away from the house and called 999 as I did so.
There should be more adverts encouraging you to call 999, because whilst time wasters are always correctly get chastised, I’m sure just as many people are worried about being accused of time wasting. Isn’t there a non-emergency number like 998 or something now as well? The trouble with calling that is you KNOW it’s going to be the whole cat-up-a-tree sort of emergency and it’s difficult to categorise the situation you’ve just witnessed unless a jumbo jet has just flown into a petrol station or someone has been decapitated by a ninja. What I’m saying is, in a sort of worrying non-event like tonight, I’m sure lots of people opt out of calling the police because of the possible accusation of time wasting (especially on a Saturday night perhaps?) when really you’ve got two options; ignore it or act on the understanding that someone just might need help.
I think that regardless of whether the young woman needed help tonight, the fact there was a young girl in the flat made calling the police to be the correct thing to do and the operator on the phone seemed to agree, saying that because of the girl it was being treated as a top priority and a car would be there within minutes. We weren’t around to see the car arrive, and perhaps it was really a fuss about nothing, but maybe something awful had happened and the Police were required?
I doubt it, or surely they would have called me back and I would be required as a witness, but I have no regrets about interrupting this families private life with a visit from the cops. Without sounding dramatic, you don’t want to pick up the paper the next day and hear something dreadful later happened at that address. But it’s odd how the moral debate in my mind about the plausibility of calling the law was there at all… I think we are too reserved about the 999 number.
The operator was very nice, but as we have already established in these pages, she was probably just counting herself lucky to not be working in a call centre for lift/elevator emergencies.
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