My Dangerous Relative

Well I've just had a massive shock in my life, and before I reveal what this is, time for a bit of background, so everybody in the UK is currently aware of the headline news regarding the murder of Ann Maguire. For those outside the UK, a 15 year old has been charged with the murder of a school teacher after she was stabbed to death, needless to say, it has shocked the country, but literally days after this incident, local newspapers in my area were reporting that two schoolgirls have been arrested at a school local to me for conspiracy to murder.

The girls were not named, but all reports stated that they were 14 & 15 and were overheard plotting to murder one of their teachers, after concerns were raised, the police were called to the school, and a search revealed that one of the girls had a knife in her rucksack.

Both have been released on bail pending a further enquiry and have been permanently excluded from the school.

This event has been the talk of the town, and me and my colleagues were discussing it in work the other day, one of the girls names were confirmed and it was that of the 15 year old, it was a name that wasn't familiar to me, so I thought nothing of it but I basically said that it was good that the police stopped anything before it could happen. At the time, the identity of the 14 year old was yet to be confirmed.

Well I've just come home from uni, and my mum says she has something she needs to tell me, I said, yeah go on, having no idea what on earth she could possibly have to say, she then confirmed that the 14 year old was in fact, one of my own relatives...

I'm not sure what relation she is to me, but the best way I can describe it, is that she is one of my cousins daughters.

I barely see her, when she was a really young child, I used to see her all the time, but a long string of family politics which I don't know the full extent of means that the last time I ever saw her, she was about 5 years old.

The a few weeks ago, at one of my other cousins weddings, I recognised her and her sisters, despite the fact that the last time I saw her sisters, they were just toddlers. Surprisingly the 14 year old actually recognised me (I'm not naming her for obvious reasons) and we had a good catch up and I really thought nothing of her unusual except that she was just a regular teenage girl and upon chatting to her mother she also said that this girl is well behaved and has never been in serious trouble.

It hasn't been disclosed exactly how long this murder plot had been going on, but it frightens me to think that I was sat there at a wedding reception talking to what soon could have been somebody who would commit murder.

So how did my mum find this out? Well she was talking to her friends daughter who attends the same school, my mum asked her what she thought about the girls being arrested and asked if she knew them, this person then named both girls, one of those names of course, being my relative.

This will be the only place that I will be sharing this, even though I'm sure all of my friends and my work colleagues are probably desperate to know who the other girl is, I will not be telling them, simply because I do not want to be harassed, and given the fact that she has a different surname, it would be pretty impossible for people to determine that we are connected.

But I just felt like I needed to get this off my chest, and thought of no place better but to do it here.