I’m haunted still by my cowardice, my silence 
that long-lost morning when my fellow student, 
flaunting a newspaper,
said loudly, in her clipped white-South African accent, 
‘I think that girl should be shot through the head’.

I should have snapped back, ‘Helen, that’s disgusting!’ 
and, when she expressed incredulity, should have said, 
‘I don’t want to listen to your sadistic fantasies.
I’m not shocked by that poor girl, I’m shocked by you’.

Would we have actually fought each other? Two 
young women scuffling in that respectable common room?
I edged away from her, and no one was shot.