Breaking Out

by Janice Nix

  ‘You going to be a cover all your life, Lamp-post?’

  Of all Lucy’s squad, I liked Pepper the best. I loved her fiery streak of independence. She didn’t like to answer to anyone.

  ‘You should start dipping for yourself,’ she said to me. ‘I mean it. I could teach you.’

  ‘Okay,’ I muttered. Secretly, the thought made me nervous.

  ‘Do your thing!’ she told me. ‘Be your own boss. Don’t be depending on Lucy so much.’

  ‘Don’t you trust her? I thought you were friends.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Pepper lightly, ‘we’re friends for sure. But sometimes you’ll find Lucy … plays games.’

  ‘What kind of games?’

  ‘Look – it’s nothing. She’s cool.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound cool to me.’

  Pepper frowned. ‘Look – just be warned – that’s all I’m saying. Think about working for yourself. Get ready for the day you have to tell her you won’t take it anymore.’

  ‘Aye aye, dick eye.’ But this time, Suzi Q didn’t look so sure.

  Carnaby Street was packed with Christmas shoppers. Night was falling and the festive lights were sparkling overhead. On the corner of Ganton Street, a knot of people crowded round a glass-blowing display, ooh-ing and aah-ing at the dazzling torch and the craftsman’s skill and thinking about Christmas presents. And while they were doing all of that, they weren’t paying attention to their valuables. I felt a stir of excitement in my belly.

  Half an hour before, we’d finished work and gone strolling, admiring the West End’s festive decorations. The crowds made lifting easier than usual, and my find of the day had been a pair of beautiful Bruno Magli shoes, in my size as well – nines, a rarity. I was tired and my feet hurt – but I still wanted one more take for the road.

  I spotted a Chinese man watching the display, arm in arm with his wife. From his free hand swung a bulging leather pouch. I caught Q’s eye, then nodded very slowly towards him.

  Pepper had been teaching me to dip just liked she’d promised, and here was a chance for me to test out my new skill. Dipping felt intimate – edging in so close that I could hear a person breathe and almost touch them skin-to-skin, judging the moment to distract their attention just before the strike. If my heart was racing, I’d noticed that the mark could sense an agitation in the air. So I’d learned to slow my breathing to their rhythm – in and out, in and out, slow and easy, making my presence calm, staying in control. Sometimes the rise and fall of terror then relief made me dizzy. But the rush of excitement was still the feeling I loved best.

  ‘You check?’ I murmured softly.

  She gave the Chinese man a swift glance. Q could assess a strike in seconds.

  ‘Yeah, he’s nice. But it’s late now. Let’s just leave it.’

  I could see why she was worried. There were many eyes out here. How would I know if I was being spotted? But then I looked again at the man. The pouch swung temptingly. He and his wife were pushing forward, enthralled by the glass blowing. I couldn’t bear to let this one go.

  ‘Nah, I like him,’ I told Q. ‘I’ll do it.’ She pulled a face, but we were a team. She moved in to cover me.

  I edged into the crowd and eased myself close up behind my victim, keeping my eyes fixed on the glow of the glassblower’s torch. I knew I’d have to work by touch alone, and make sure that I never once glanced down. My reaching fingers quickly made contact with the strap of the pouch. I knew better than to take its weight – even though its owner was distracted, he’d notice any change in the pressure on his arm. I eased my fingers carefully just inside the flap – and there was a bulging roll of banknotes. I felt a surge of triumph – I’d known I was right! I gently stretched further. Right next to it – a second roll was nestling. But still – to rush the lift now could be fatal. I carefully pulled back.

  ‘I’m going to make the take,’ I told Q softly.

  She still looked uneasy.

  ‘We’re in the open! Anyone could see.’

  ‘Don’t worry! I just need a big distraction.’

  She pulled a face.

  ‘Okay then.’

  Q went into action like the pro she was. She eased her way right to the front of the crowd. Then she leaned forward and asked the salesman just how much his goods cost. ‘Is that for just one goblet? Is there a discount if I want to buy a set? Do they come in a box?’

  Controlling my breathing, I lifted up the flap of the Chinese man’s pouch. Very slowly, I closed my hand around the first bundle of money. I eased it out, and pushed it deep into the pocket of my coat. One down and one to go. The glass-blower’s torch gave a flare and a hiss. The crowd swayed around me. ‘Don’t you have a bigger box?’ Q was loudly demanding. I inched my fingers back inside the pouch.

  Suddenly the Chinese man jerked his head around. He looked straight up at me and roughly grabbed my arm.

  ‘You!’ he shouted.

  I froze. My heart jumped into my throat.

  ‘Pah!’ I said scornfully. I pushed past him through the crowd. ‘What? What you mean?’

  ‘You!’ he bellowed at me. ‘You!’

  He said something to his wife in a different language. She widened her eyes and started pointing at me. They don’t speak English, I realised. They know what’s going on, but they can’t tell anyone. Still, now that both of them were shouting, the crowd was going to catch on pretty fast.

  I backed hastily away, then turned and started striding – not fast in case I drew too much attention. Ganton Street was narrow and cobbled. From the corner of my eye, I saw Suzi Q following me and the Chinese man behind her in pursuit. He was pulling his wife by the arm and still shouting, ‘You!’ He prodded other shoppers, pointing at me, trying to draw everyone’s attention.

  ‘Money!’ he cried. ‘Money!’ I took a lightning glance behind. I saw a sea of puzzled faces. More and more people were starting to look where he was pointing and trying to explain.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘What’s he saying?’

  It was too late now to worry about not being conspicuous – I needed to run. I shot down Ganton Street as fast as I could go on the damp, slippery stones. Soho was dark between the pools of light that spilled out from doorways. The streets were crammed and I kept colliding with shoppers and people walking in the opposite direction. My bag with the Bruno Magli shoes in their gorgeous box was banging against my legs. Q had vanished – she must have slipped away up a side street.

  Swinging wildly from my hand, my sharp-edged shoebox hit a very small dog on a lead. The dog let out a yelp and its owner bellowed furiously. Close to panic, I tried to push around them. But my shoe bag was slowing me down – it was going to have to go. With a pang of regret, I shoved my beautiful size nine Bruno Maglis underneath a parked car.

  I zigzagged down a narrow red-light alley, where men loitered outside strip joints, dashing past the Soho punters with a confused straggle of pursuers on my tail. Lucy had friends in a cab office in Rupert Street. They knew our game, and if we turned up wanting a car right away, they’d oblige. Just opposite their office was a door where a fellow would charge £100 to anyone who wanted to wait until the high-class hooker upstairs was ready to see her next customer. Men eagerly paid and stood there waiting, but they waited a long time because the whole thing was a scam. When I went to get a cab I used to see them loitering, excited at first, then disappointed and furious.

  When I reached the cab office door, the pavement was so packed that no one saw me darting inside. I hurtled through the front office and dashed into the back where I was instantly hidden from view. My gang of angry pursuers must have wondered how I’d vanished.

  As I leaned against the wall and gasped for breath, I realised that understanding my limits was a skill I badly needed to learn. Q had been switched on – she’d warned me to leave the job alone. This was a reality check – and a lesson I knew I must remember.

  Our first mark of the afternoon in Evans was young with
long blonde hair and an expensive-looking blue patterned jacket. Her air of assurance told me straight away that she had money.

  I moved up on the woman’s left-hand side, then created a distraction by picking up a coat from the railing and peering at the pockets. I bumped the woman slightly as I did so, then gave her a quick apologetic smile. Her attention was now fully to her left. To her right, Lucy swooped. Down went her hand. It was a smooth and easy take. She turned away.

  But as I stepped back, the blonde woman grabbed me.

  ‘You’ve got my purse!’ she said accusingly.

  ‘No I don’t!’ I said indignantly. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You took it!’ she said firmly. She was very upper class and sounded confident – a person who knew that whatever she said would be treated as important. ‘It was you – you were standing right next to me.’

  Indignantly, I opened my bag wide.

  ‘Call somebody!’ I told her. ‘You can search me.’

  She flushed dark red with anger.

  ‘Security!’

  ‘This woman has accused me of stealing her purse,’ I told the security guard. ‘But I’ve no idea at all what she means.’

  As I held out my bag to be searched, she was growing less certain. ‘I was robbed just now,’ she muttered. ‘I know it was you.’

  Store security summoned the police. Lucy was long gone by now. A policeman searched my bag and found nothing. I stayed calm, knowing that my smart, well-dressed appearance was helping me. I could tell that the policeman had noticed it. My height and lovely clothes could often make a positive impression. Meanwhile, the woman whose purse had been stolen grew more and more frustrated and angry.

  ‘Will this take long?’ I asked the officer. ‘My husband is waiting to meet me. He works at the Trinidad High Commission.’

  The policeman looked up sharply. ‘High Commission?’

  ‘Yes.’ I’d thought they might treat me differently if I had a husband whose job sounded important. But just the words ‘High Commission’ were like a magic spell. I quickly followed up.

  ‘Er – would it be possible for me to make a phone call to the High Commission? I’m sure my husband will ring his office if I don’t turn up. He’ll be terribly worried.’

  ‘Like an embassy. Diplomatic rules,’ the policeman muttered to the guard. ‘Immunity. We have to let her go.’

  ‘Madam,’ said the security guard to the long-haired woman. ‘I’m afraid there is no evidence at all that this lady took anything from you.’

  She looked furious.

  ‘But I’ve been robbed in broad daylight! Is there nothing at all that you can do?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the policeman said, to me and not to her. ‘There must have been some mistake.’

  I smiled graciously and accepted his apology. But I was sweating and shaking inside. It seemed to take forever before I was safely outside the store. Now I knew what it would really feel like to be caught.

  Lucy and I had a meeting place – the Shakespeare pub in Victoria station. But by the time I got there, she was gone. I sat on the bar stool and ordered a straight brandy. I closed my eyes and downed it in one. Gradually, the tremors in my body began to die away. I’d got away with it – this time. But it had been a very close call.

  When I got home, I still felt shaky. I tried to busy myself cleaning and tidying the house, hoping that ordinary jobs might help me calm my mind. But the jitters wouldn’t leave me. Eventually, I made my way upstairs. I pulled the secret shoebox out of the bottom of the wardrobe. This money was worth it, I reminded myself. This money kept me safe. Slowly and dreamily, I started to count.

  One hundred pounds … two hundred pounds … three hundred … four …

  Even as a little girl, I’d drawn attention – never just been able to fade into the background. But it wasn’t attention in a good way. I remembered the school playground and three girls dancing round me, singing and giggling. One started pulling at my skirt. I slapped her hand away furiously.

  ‘Janice has a ta-ail! Janice has a ta-ail!’

  ‘No, I don’t!’ I shouted. ‘Don’t be so stupid!’

  ‘Yeah, you do! My mum said!’

  ‘Then your mum’s a big idiot!’

  ‘Mum said you’re like a monkey with a tail!’

  I was angry, but my eyes had started filling up with tears. How could I make them stop?

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘so she’s stupid too!’

  ‘You got to show us! Show us!’

  ‘Show you what?’

  ‘Your tail!’

  ‘I haven’t got a tail!’

  ‘Bet you do really!’ And they ran away laughing.

  Five hundred pounds … six hundred … seven hundred … eight …

  Daddy always worked long hours. But recently, he’d started to go missing more and more, even when he wasn’t working. Mummy asked him where he’d been, but he would never answer. Lying awake in bed at night, I heard their raised voices through the wall.

  ‘Where I bin? I don’ know, Rita! Out!’

  ‘Wha’ you mean – you bin out?’

  ‘I jus’ bin out! Maybe walkin!’

  Mummy sounded angry and suspicious.

  ‘Mi know what you doin’!’ she would say. ‘You gettin’ Westernised! Sittin’ in pub! You followin’ de white people dem!’

  ‘Ri-ta! Leave mi alone!’

  After that, Mummy always cried.

  Nine hundred pounds … a thousand pounds … one thousand one …

  Miss Crosby was a teacher at my infant school in Southall. She had gold-framed spectacles, and pointy black shoes just like a witch might wear. All the children were scared of Miss Crosby.

  ‘The boys and girls whose names I call out will come to the front of the class!’ she shouted. ‘Janice, Jaswinder, Lynne and Paul!’

  Jaswinder was Asian. Lynne was Nigerian. Paul’s parents had come over from Ireland. We did as we were told and stood all in a line. She walked very slowly past us, and walked back again. She peered down into our faces.

  ‘I don’t know which one of you it is,’ said Miss Crosby to the class, ‘but one of you children smells.’

  The English girls and boys burst into giggles. The four of us looked at each other. My face grew hot with shame. Was something wrong with me? Was I the one who smelled? Humiliated, not quite knowing why our teacher was doing this, none of us could think of what to say.

  One thousand two hundred pounds, one thousand three … one thousand four …

  I remembered the day I went out stealing sweets with my schoolfriends. Susan and Jill distracted Tom, who owned the local newsagents, while I shovelled as many sherbets and pink shrimps as I could into my satchel. Tom gave no sign that he’d seen what I was doing. Walking down the road with my bag of stolen sweets, my stomach churned with angry satisfaction.

  When I got home that afternoon, Mummy was upstairs. As I shut the front door behind me, she shouted out my name. I could hear the menace in her voice.

  ‘Janice!’

  ‘Yes, Mummy?’

  She came down into the hall and stood in front of me.

  ‘Do you stop anywhere this morning?’

  ‘No, Mummy, I just went to school.’

  From the expression on her face, already I knew that she knew. I felt an awful surge of shame, mixed up with disappointment. I hadn’t got away with it after all.

  ‘Janice – where did you stop?’

  ‘Oh – we went into Tom’s shop.’

  ‘Come with me,’ she said – and took me straight back there.

  She asked him straightaway: ‘Tom – what happen this morning?’

  When he’d finished speaking, Mummy looked at me.

  ‘So, Janice – Tom is lying?’ was all she said.

  I whispered: ‘No, Mummy.’

  She made me apologise to Tom. She was very, very angry. But she never once asked me why I stole. Even if she had, I couldn’t find the words for my anger and conf
usion.

  I don’t think I could ever have explained.

  One thousand five hundred pounds, one thousand six, one thousand seven ….

  Daddy worked at the Nestlé factory in west London. Every year, the workers and their families were all invited to the big staff Christmas party. The year that I was ten and Terry almost eight, we went to the party just with Daddy, because Mummy was at work.

  He stayed for a while to watch us play party games with the others. But a few minutes later, when I looked around, he was gone. I told Terry I would find out where he was. I wandered to the far end of the ballroom, and there I saw a door with two round glass panes in it, like portholes. Curiously, I pressed my nose right up against the glass – and to my surprise I saw Daddy straight away. He was standing in a gloomy, half-lit hallway, close to a white lady in a short sleeveless dress. The portholes let two long bars of daylight fall across the floor. In the bright stripes, the lady’s pale arms gleamed. I saw that she was kissing Daddy.

  I stood and stared. I couldn’t keep this secret on my own. I ran to find Terry.

  ‘Terry – Daddy has a girlfriend!’

  He wanted to see, so I quickly led him back to the porthole door and lifted him up. He stared for a moment, then said that he was going to tell.

  ‘Tell who?’ I demanded.

  ‘Mummy, of course!’

  ‘You can’t!’

  He stuck out his lower lip determinedly.

  ‘But Terry,’ I told him, ‘you mustn’t! They’ll have another argument!’

  But it wasn’t Terry who told Mummy – it was me. For days the awful secret squirmed inside me until I couldn’t hold it in any longer. Why does Daddy like white girls better than Mummy?

  It burst out of me one evening in the kitchen. She was cooking at the stove. It seemed easier to tell her when her back was turned.

  ‘Mummy,’ I said, ‘at the Christmas party I saw Daddy kiss a lady. She was white!’