© J.K. Rowling. All Rights Reserved.
Showing 1 results
Career of Evil
13
Having read several scientific papers online, Robin now knew that sufferers of BIID were rare and that the precise cause of their condition was unknown. Visits to support sites had already shown her how much people seemed to dislike sufferers of the condition. Angry comments peppered the message boards, accusing BIID sufferers of coveting a status that others had had thrust upon them by bad luck and illness, of wanting to court attention in a grotesque and offensive manner. Equally angry retorts followed the attacks: did the writer really think the sufferer wanted to have BIID? Did they not understand how difficult it was to be transabled—wanting, needing, to be paralyzed or amputated? Robin wondered what Strike would think of the BIID sufferers’ stories, were he to read them. She suspected that his reaction would not be sympathetic.
Downstairs, the sitting room door opened and she heard a brief snatch of a commentator’s voice, her father telling their old chocolate Labrador to get out because it had farted and Martin’s laughter.
To her own frustration, the exhausted Robin could not remember the name of the young girl who had written to Strike, asking for advice on cutting off her leg, but she thought it had been Kylie or something similar. Scrolling slowly down the most densely populated support site she had found, she kept an eye out for usernames that might in any way connect to her, because where else would a teenager with an unusual fixation go to share her fantasy, if not cyberspace?