Ever since the night she met her secret boyfriend in the park, she made sure it was kept safe.
Although she wasn’t completely sure why she found it necessary to hold on to it, she knew that it represented something special. Meanwhile, life, for her, went on without boyfriends; she had no need for them. Her initial experience concerning their duplicity was enough. Put simply, she just didn’t trust men. She had a few select friends and that suited her social needs. Besides, her study was far more important, and having completed her course and qualifying with honours, she could only move forward. She very soon landed a well-paid position with a reputable company, enabling her to leave home and move into her own apartment.
Along with her regular belongings, she carefully transferred it from the far corner of her highest robe shelf, still sealed and taped in a plastic bag, then into her main case. It then went into a similar hard-to-reach spot at the top of a cupboard in her new place.
She quickly settled into her new life. However, as strange as it may seem, it took less than a year for her to meet and become fond of, a young up-and-coming professional, who worked in the same building. It came about that within a few months he moved in. All her ideas about how untrustworthy men were, seemed to fade away.
This was the case until the night she came home late from working overtime; something that rarely happened. For some reason her new boyfriend had decided to forage through her belongs. He said he only wanted to know her better, but had stopped looking when he found the heavily taped bag. He had opened it up and examined the contents. He was sitting on their couch holding it when she came in.
Saying that she was happy to explain why she had it, if he was prepared to listen to her, he agreed with growing interest. Sitting beside him, she took it and held it up…
So much happened after this. The police, the trial, the verdict and the cell.
As for it, it resides in an even more secure and tagged bag, in a large cardboard box in a basement evidence room.
Of course, it offered up two different traces of DNA.