Sex Crimes by Nikki McWatters Page A

and listened. I rubbed a hand through his chestnut curls. I loved his hair. It was the first thing that attracted me to him way back in high-school. He played and sang in the school band and he was so shy it was painful but when he was on stage, his voice soared and he lit up like a Christmas tree. He had star quality even back then.
    We’d gone to university together, me to do a Bachelor of Arts with an English Literature Major and Chris to do music but I’d fallen pregnant with Olive halfway through my degree and so  after she was born we quit and Chris started playing piano bars and did session work until Olive started school in Newtown and then he started up the Drop Dead Gorgeous band and the rest, as they say, is history. Three years later they’d been on the David Letterman Show, supported U2 and stayed chart-toppers for months on end. Shy little Chris became one of the biggest rock names in the world.
    ‘I think I heard him hiccup,’ Chris smiled back up at me and I patted his warm, hairy cheek. He’d let his beard grow in after going off tour. If he left it much longer he’d be looking like a Wookie.
    ‘You’re going to shave that face before you meet your son, you know?’ I grinned. ‘You’ll scare him and make him feel inadequate because chances are he’ll be pretty hairless.’
    ‘I will. I’m going to the shed to pot those winter herbs and then let out the chickens.’
    ‘Let Olive collect the eggs,’ I reminded him.
    She always got mighty shitty if someone did it before her. Those chickens were like her little babies. She loved them almost as much as she loved Ollie, our old dog. Ollie is a sheepdog with a flatulence problem.
    I heard the front door close and went back to my computer distractions. Facebook. I had a friend request. It was Sarah from school. She hadn’t changed. A couple of notifications that I couldn’t be bothered with. No messages. I scrolled through looking at everyone’s updates. I really hate the schmaltzy kitten pictures and bird shots. They’re stupid. .
    I stopped at one photo and reached for my glasses. It was a little blurry. It was a link that had been posted on my timeline the night before. Chris’s song ‘Leaving’ and someone had messed with the album cover photo. It was posted by someone called Leisel Franks. Did I know her? I vaguely recalled that we had some mutual friends and that she’d said she knew me from a book launch. I’d accepted her friend request a few weeks earlier. I looked closer and realised what was wrong. It was a picture of Chris, just like on the latest cover, but the other band members had been replaced by terribly cut-out pictures of little girls. Little pageant sort of girls like in redneck America. They looked like dolls and underneath the title of the song had been replaced with the word Paedophile. Shit. That was sick.
    Someone had commented on it saying that Chris likes to ….well you know…with little girls. Not funny. So not funny. I instantly defriended that weird Leisel woman, thinking she was clearly a deranged fan. And I looked up the person who commented, who was clearly another troll because ‘Dolly Parton’ was obviously not her real name and she had no friends. I hated this nonsense. It happened every couple of years. Most of the fans are nice but once in a while you find a fruit-loop who can mess with your sanity and topple the equilibrium of your home life. I decided that I wasn’t even going to bother Chris with this. He was fragile and I knew he would be so hurt by it. He doesn’t understand when fans turn psycho.
    I heard the door.  A knock. He’s locked himself out, I thought. Dufus. He could always come around the back but no, I remembered it was early and the back door would still be locked. Damn.
    I rolled out of the warmth and comfort of my bed and waddled to my dressing gown hanging over the door, slipped my ugh boots on and shuffled down the stairs to the front door.
    ‘You have to press the little