Victim Report

After a rather wonderful trip through eastern France, a few sun soaked weeks in our village in Spain, a fascinating return through western France including a visit to the Bayeaux Tapestry and finally a few days in Dublin babysitting our latest grandson, we caught the ferry from Dublin to Liverpool. We zoomed down the M6 through darkness, rain and road works to take a few delicious couple of pints real ale in a Cotswold pub and then home to Stow on the Wold. Then, disaster! This is the report I wrote at the request of the local police:

On Tuesday 25/10/2017 we returned to England after a six week absence. I unlocked the door to our home and moved a few letters to the side. I then looked up and saw an unbelievable mess in the corridor leading to the office: papers everywhere and my briefcase open on the floor. I cautiously advanced towards the office passing the under stairs cupboard where we keep our booze – all gone, or so I thought, the office in a terrible mess and the fireproof safe open, documents scattered every which way. Margaret thought at first that I was joking when I told her, then she saw the carnage.

Upstairs our bedroom was a tip. All of the many drawers open or thrown onto the floor; the bed was covered in my wife’s jewellery containers, all open and mostly empty; clothing lay scattered all over the floor – what a mess. The rest of the house had been similarly frisked, though the office and our bedroom suffered the most, the kitchen and dining room the least.

It took me quite a while to determine how the bastards had got it. Both locks to the patio doors in  the lounge had been wrenched off from the outside, difficult to detect at first because the caring burglar(s) had closed the sliding glass door on exit.

How did we feel? Depressed more than anything else, but also shocked and despoiled. Money had been stolen, but the overbearing feeling is the intrusion by a stranger into one’s life and the removal of things that are dear to the heart. Margaret’s jewellery was of no great resale value but of immense emotional worth – the most poignant thing things that were taken were the items of jewellery that our daughter, Sheena, was wearing when she died.