My sister has just moved to a new estate with her two daughters – one 10 the other 13. It is a new estate, onto which developers have squeezed a lot of houses and flats. She therefore has many new neighbours. Quite a number are single men, many of them middle-aged or older. Some, I guess, are divorced or gay, others unmarried. Naturally, as a single mother of two young girls, she's wary.
Now, before I get flamed, I know that not every single, childless man over 40 is a creep. That goes without saying. My brother is over 40 and unmarried, and so is a cousin. Both are thoroughly decent men.
That said, I do understand her concerns. Last summer, during a heatwave, I took her eldest girl (then 12) into town for the day. She wore quite skimpy, revealing clothes, but even so I was shocked by some of the looks we got. I don't have a daughter myself, and was quite chubby as a girl, so I'm probably naive. We wandered round town and then went and ate some lunch in the park. Jesus, the number of drooling, lingering looks really upset me. Time and again I'd catch men looking at her out the corner of their eye. And these were often men in their 50s and 60s, out shopping with their wives. Has anyone else had this experience? By the time we got back to the car I was raging.
I told my sister that if she feels an instant revulsion, trust that response. It's usually correct. There used to be a guy in my local Tesco who I couldn't bear. He made my skin crawl. There was absolutely no reason for this (I'd never even heard him speak), but something about him set my alarm bells ringing. I later found out he was on the sex offender's register. What is it that sets those alarm bells off? It's so strange. I sometimes wonder if we have a sixth sense for this kind of thing. It isn't eccentricity. I have had male colleagues and neighbours over the years who were eccentric or unconventional, yet in many cases I liked and trusted them. If you were my sister, what red flags would you be looking for?