Chapter one

Hello I’m Cindy Smith and I’m going to tell you my story. But before you start reading this book I must tell that this is not a pleasant story and so I strongly advise you not to read this book, for it describes one of the most gruesome stories in the entire universe.

And now time to go over to my story. It was late summer 1989 and my parents and I were on a hiking trip in Southern France.

The fourth day we arrived at a campsite in a small village called Bize. The people there were friendly, but there was one man who kept looking at me with strange beady eyes, like he wanted something from me. I decided to set my mind of it.

I went to bed early that evening with. As I fell asleep I took a strange feeling with me.

I woke up at six that morning only to find that our neighbours had left the campsite. This was quite strange, but on the other hand anything could have happened. So I decided to put it aside and have breakfast.

That day we stayed at the same campsite and didn’t go hiking. My father said to see it as a rest day and he thought we all deserved one.

In the afternoon I went in to the small village to buy some milk and bread. As I walked through the town looking for a baker it felt like I was being watched. And when I finally found a baker I saw a familiar face that I couldn’t quite place. It was a face with strong staring eyes that glinted in the sun and a rough skin surrounding it like it had been worn for many centuries, but the most eye catching thing was the scar running all the way down the left side of the face.

Then suddenly on my way back to the campsite over the dry dirt path, I recognized the man he was the man how kept looking at me.

And suddenly out of the blue, I felt a surge of fear overcome me. I felt that I was in danger. And started fantasizing strange things about the man that maybe he was a rapist or maybe a child trafficker.

I was still thinking about it when I reached the campsite, where I made myself a cup of tea and a cheese croissant.

I calmed down a bit and came to my senses. The man probably didn’t like strangers coming to the village. And the scar could have been from a car accident or maybe a bomb raid in the Second World War. Grandpa also has a scar because of a bomb raid.

So once again I put it aside and decided that some good literature would take my mind of things. And so the rest of the afternoon I read in my copy of ”The number one detective agency”