Lifted

by Hilary Freeman

  She nodded and smiled, expectantly. ‘Not for you, obviously. I mean, even if you had your ear pierced, which you don’t, they’re not really your style. I thought maybe one of your sisters would like them? Or even your mum? As a present. You could say you’d bought them.’ She held the earrings out to him again and he studied them.

  ‘They look really expensive,’ he said.

  ‘They are,’ she said, with perhaps a little too much pride in her voice. ‘About a hundred and fifty quid. They’ve got real stones in them and they’re gold plated. I’d give them to my mum but she’d wonder where I got the money from to buy them, and if she told my dad he might put two and two together.’

  ‘Right, I see.’

  ‘So will you take them?’

  ‘I … don’t … know.’ Ruby’s face fell and it tugged at his heart. He couldn’t bear to disappoint her. ‘I mean, I want to help, but I can’t give them to my sisters for the same reason,’ he said. ‘They’d know something was up. I’ve never bought jewellery for anyone in my life, let alone expensive stuff. It’s not even like it’s anyone’s birthday coming up.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. She looked unhappy.

  ‘And I’d be, like, an accessory,’ he said. ‘To the crime. For receiving stolen property.’ God, now he sounded like he’d watched too many episodes of The Bill. ‘Can’t you just throw them away?’

  ‘I guess I could. And I thought about it. It just doesn’t feel right. Someone took hours making these. They’re so pretty, someone deserving should have them.’

  He didn’t really understand but he thought he should try. ‘OK, then. But what about putting them away somewhere for now, until you find a good use for them?’

  She shrugged. ‘I know it’s stupid but I don’t want them around. I can’t explain, but just having them in my room, even hidden away, makes me feel a bit sick.’

  ‘Like the tights?’ he said. ‘Like what you said in your blog?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Just like that.’

  He shrugged. ‘Look, if it makes you happy, I’ll take them. I can hide them away and if they’re at my place you won’t have to worry about them.’

  ‘Really?’ she said, in what sounded like mock surprise, as if she’d always known he’d agree in the end. ‘That would be brilliant. I mean it. Thank you.’ She handed over the earrings and he slipped them into the back pocket of his jeans. He could feel the metal hooks digging into his bottom through the fabric, an uncomfortable reminder of his collusion. Was he her accomplice now? Were they like that couple in the film, Bonnie and Clyde? Except they weren’t a couple, were they?

  ‘Hey, look, I’d better go back inside,’ said Ruby, jumping down from the bin. ‘Sorry, but my mum will be wondering where I am.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Noah, disappointed. He didn’t need to jump off the bin because his feet were already touching the floor. He stood up. ‘Me too.’

  Ruby came towards him, as if she was going to give him a hug, but then appeared to change her mind. She touched him on the arm. ‘Thanks so much again. I mean it, thank you!’

  Noah patted his back pocket. ‘No worries,’ he said. Anxiety gnawed at his gut. He had a nagging feeling that no good was going to come from this. No good at all.

  Robyn Hood’s Blog

  I steal from expensive stores and give to charity shops

  March 08

  The first thing I ever stole was a bar of chocolate, from the newsagent down the road. I was nine years old. I suppose I might have taken something more impressive, like the Crown Jewels, but the security was fairly tight (at the Tower of London – they didn’t keep them at my local newsagent) and I didn’t want to end up with my head on a spike, or worse. I took the chocolate bar because I could – because it was there – and because I’d never stolen anything before, and I wanted to try it, just to see what it felt like. It was a Wispa bar, the one with holes running through it, and technically, I suppose, half of what I stole was air, which is free anyway, so you could say it was only half a crime.

  I might have been just nine, but I knew it was wrong to steal and that there was a chance a great big flash of lightning would appear from the heavens and strike me down dead. That was part of the thrill, I guess, seeing if I could dodge the lightning, finding out whether what my gran, and my mum and dad, and my teachers had all told me was true. I already had an inkling they were lying, just like they’d lied about the tooth fairy and about Father Christmas. Still, I took comfort from the fact that it was a sunny day and I was wearing trainers with rubber soles.

  It was a Sunday morning and I’d only recently been allowed to go to the local shop on my own. I revelled in the sense of freedom I felt, just to be able to walk a few metres from home with all that air around me – only me – and the sun on my face. I felt so grown up, fearless, as if I could do anything I wanted. I had a pound coin in my pocket, my weekly sweets allowance, which was generally enough to buy me a chocolate bar, a packet of crisps and some penny chews. I walked into the shop, swinging my arms happily – buying sweets is quite exciting when you’re nine – and Mr Shah said, ‘Hello, my little friend,’ like he always did. I grinned at him, picked some salt and vinegar crisps out of the box by the door, and skipped over to the chocolate counter to make my selection. In those days, I used to run my fingers across all the bars, one by one, as if I was playing an arpeggio on the piano. I liked the smoothness of them, the grooves where the segments were welded together, the slip of the shiny wrappings. It took me ages to choose, even though I nearly always picked the same thing, a milk chocolate bar filled with liquid caramel, which balled up at the corners of my mouth and made my teeth stick together.

  The Wispas were right next to the caramel bars, piled high in a neat rectangle, with one extra bar balanced on the top. It seemed lonely, out of place. I picked it up, fully intending to try to squeeze it into the display with the other bars, when instead, I had an instinct to take it for myself. I looked around me. There was no one else in sight, and Mr Shah was behind his counter right round the other side of the display. Could I do it? Should I do it? What might happen to me if I did? The more I considered taking it, the more I wanted to. Don’t ask me what I was thinking; I was nine for God’s sake, I didn’t analyse things, I just followed my gut. And my gut whispered to me, ‘Take it, take it.’ So I took it. I stuffed it into my pocket and, as calmly as I could, I walked up to the counter to pay for my other goodies.

  There was no lightning strike. Just a firm hand on my shoulder. ‘What is that in your pocket?’ asked Mr Shah.

  My heart rate tripled, I could hear it pulsing in my ears. ‘Nothing,’ I said, smiling bashfully like children do when they’re hiding something. Most kids are terrible liars; only grown-ups know how to do it properly.

  ‘Show me,’ he said, holding out his hand to me.

  ‘Nothing, I swear.’ I covered my pockets with my palms, protectively. Pathetic, I know. Anyone who looked could have seen that the outline of a chocolate bar bulged through the thin cotton of my jacket.

  ‘Don’t you lie to me. I know you took some chocolate. I saw it in the mirror.’ He pointed up at the convex mirror above the counter, through which he could view the whole shop. I hadn’t noticed it before. It made the room look like it was floating inside a bubble, and when I stepped closer to it, my face grew larger. That, and my nerves, made me want to giggle. I smirked, inappropriately.

  ‘It is not funny,’ said Mr Shah, sternly. ‘Stealing is a very serious matter.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I mumbled. Now I felt like I was going to cry. Defeated, my eyes downcast, I took the Wispa out of my pocket and handed it to him.

  He placed it on the counter and shook his head at me. I remember that he looked sad, not angry. ‘Why did you steal from me, my friend?’

  I shrugged. I couldn’t answer.

  Mr Shah made me stand behind the counter with him while he called my parents. I gazed down at the floor, my chin resting on my chest, hoping it would make me invisibl
e.

  Mum and Dad arrived within minutes. I remember that they couldn’t look me in the eye and I recall hearing profuse apologies – ‘So sorry, Mr Shah, it will never happen again, we’ll make sure of it, we’re so terribly sorry …’ – before I was made to stutter ‘Sorry’ too, and then Dad grasped my hand and marched me home. I sobbed all the way. I wasn’t allowed any sweets for a month and my independent outings were curtailed for several more. But the look of disappointment on my parents’ faces, the sense that I’d failed them, that was worse than any punishment.

  I didn’t set off that day intending to shoplift. It wasn’t something I’d even imagined doing before. I thought people stole because they needed to, or because they were bad people, not because they felt like it. I would have perfectly happy with the amount of sweets I could afford, just as I had been every other Sunday. And there was no reason why I couldn’t have chosen the Wispa bar, instead of the caramel bar or the other items I selected and paid for. Thinking about it now, if I’d really wanted that Wispa bar as well, and didn’t have the money for it, Mr Shah would probably have let me have it. I could have dropped the money in another day.

  So why did I do it? Good question. And why was it another six years before I did it again?

  Posted by Robyn Hood at 3:05 PM

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  Chapter 10

  ‘Excuse me, miss …’

  It was almost bound to happen sooner or later, and Ruby knew that, but she’d never truly believed it would happen to her. She had taken the shoplifting statistics she’d read somewhere on the web too literally, because they made her feel more secure. Some boffin had sat down with a calculator and worked out that a shoplifter only gets caught once in forty-eight trips. But that didn’t mean that Ruby could go out shoplifting forty-seven times and get away scot-free. She might have got caught the very first time she did it, or it could have happened on the seventh, tenth or one-hundredth trip. Then again, if she’d been really, really lucky, it might never have happened to her at all.

  There had been a few near-misses, notably the time Noah had rescued her in Kelly’s, and as a result she had become overconfident, too reliant on the belief that fate would always step in and pull her out of trouble at the last moment. The truth was, the nearer Ruby came to getting caught, the greater the thrill of her shoplifting expeditions. The more she shoplifted, the easier it seemed to her and the feeling that she’d got away with it yet again gave the experience an extra frisson of excitement, making the high she craved that little bit more intense. Half-consciously, she had started to take greater risks, choosing shops where the security was tighter, or where she looked conspicuous. And that was her downfall on the day she did get caught, at Zenda, an upmarket shop that sold designer labels and own brand clothes to young businesswomen who wanted to look both smart and fashionable.

  The instant she walked into the store, the security guard clocked her. She was very obviously too young and too fresh-faced to be a businesswoman with a platinum credit card and a taste for well-cut suits. And she was either extremely stupid, or careless, or reckless – he couldn’t decide which – because her coat was undone, revealing the local school’s uniform. He recognised it because his elder daughter had gone there, a few years ago. Years of experience had taught him there were only two reasons why girls in school uniform came into Zenda. Either they were dragged there by their mothers, or they were there to shoplift. This girl was alone.

  He decided to follow her around the store and watched as she flitted from aisle to aisle, sizing up the clothes, picking some of them up by their hangers and, it appeared at first glance, examining the fabric. He knew exactly what she was really doing; she was looking at the security tags, working out what type they were, and how easily they would come away. He sighed, sorry to be proved right. Then, with the absolute cynicism of someone who has seen it all a thousand times before, he bided his time, certain that a crime was about to be committed. He radioed his colleague and asked him to go to the exit doors, so they could block the teenage shoplifter’s escape.

  Across the aisle, he watched as the girl took a silky green blouse off its hanger and placed it on top of another identical blouse, doing it up so you could only see one garment. She repeated this process a few minutes later, covering a red, floral blouse with its identical twin. Then he tracked her as she walked around the shop, picking up jackets and trousers, as though she was trying to put an outfit together. He lost sight of her when she went into the changing room, but he knew exactly what would be happening behind the curtains of her cubicle. She would be removing the doubled-up blouses from their partners, pulling off their tags and hiding them in her bag, or wearing them under her own clothes. When she left the changing room it would appear that she had brought out the same number of garments as she had taken in; only she – and now he – would know any different.

  She wasn’t in the changing room for long, certainly not long enough to try on all the clothes she’d taken in with her. As she left, he radioed his colleague again, and he followed close behind her. He could tell she wasn’t aware of him; she was probably focusing on making it out on to the street as fast as she could. ‘Suspect approaching exit,’ he radioed. ‘Young girl, long hair, navy school uniform, over.’

  ‘I see her,’ came the reply. ‘Over.’

  He kept his distance as the electric doors parted for the girl and she stepped on to the pavement outside. He watched as she paused for a moment, possibly deciding whether to go left or right, and took his opportunity. ‘Gotcha!’ he said to himself. He made eye contact with his colleague and they surrounded Ruby, making it impossible for her to go anywhere but back into the shop.

  ‘Excuse me, miss,’ he said. ‘We have reason to believe you have some items on your person that haven’t been paid for.’ He gently placed his hand on her shoulder, so there was no way he could later be accused of assault. You could never be too careful. ‘Would you please open your bag?’

  The look she gave him, her eyes wide with shock and fear, made him think momentarily of his daughter. But it wouldn’t do to feel sorry for her. She was just another shoplifter, and he’d done his job.

  Chapter 11

  Ruby froze. She felt as if her legs were made out of lead and her insides were plummeting towards the floor. When she tried to speak, nothing came out. She let the security guard unzip her bag and rummage around inside, while she stood absolutely still. It didn’t take him long to find and pull out the two blouses she had stolen. She watched as he held them up in the air like trophies, a smug look on his face. And then the plummeting sensation was gone, and it all came pouring out of her: streams of tears and snot, and loud, uncontrollable sobs. She could barely breathe. She was shocked at how upset she felt, and how scared, glad that no one she knew was around to witness what a crybaby she was. She really couldn’t help herself. The guard handed her a tissue, without saying anything. He now looked as though he felt sorry for her; when he wasn’t at work he was probably just someone’s dad.

  When Ruby had stopped crying quite so violently, the guard led her through a door at the back of the store, down a long corridor, past rooms that she had no idea existed. Some of them were full of clothes and boxes, others looked like offices. There was even a little kitchen area and a toilet. A few metres along, he stopped and knocked on a door, and then someone came out of one of the offices to meet them. She was a tall woman, with blond, curly hair and thin lips, and she was wearing one of the outfits Ruby had seen in the shop window. It didn’t look as good on her as on the mannequin.

  ‘I’m Lisa Farnworth, the manager,’ she said, coldly. She looked Ruby up and down, taking in her school uniform and her bag and the streaks of mascara on her cheeks. ‘Follow me.’ She led Ruby, with the security guard walking behind, into another office at the end of the corridor, and shut the door behind them.

  The office was dark and cold and it had no window
s on to the street. There was nothing but a desk, two chairs and a filing cabinet. It felt like a prison cell, or, at least, what Ruby assumed a prison cell would be like; she’d never seen one except on TV. Maybe that was the point, maybe it was meant to scare her – a taste of things to come if she didn’t reform. Ruby sat as she was instructed to do, sobbing quietly to herself, while the shop manager talked to the security guard, once breaking off to make a phone call. The discussion seemed to go on for hours. As hard as she strained her ears, Ruby couldn’t make out what they were saying about her. Certain words rang out: ‘young’, ‘amateur’, ‘attention’, but without the other words in between they were meaningless. Ruby felt sick, as though she was waiting to be executed. She wondered if this was how Anne Boleyn had felt before she had her head chopped off. She’d always liked Anne best out of Henry VIII’s wives; she sounded like she’d have been a good laugh, before she lost her head, that is.

  The discussion was over, at last. ‘We’ve decided we’re not going to call the police this time,’ said the manager. ‘But we would like to speak to one of your parents.’

  Ruby let out another sob. That was almost worse than facing the police. For a split second, she was nine years old again, standing in the newsagent’s, her whole being crushed under the weight of her parents’ disapproval. She bowed her head. Through strands of hair she could see a long scratch on the desk in front of her. She guessed it had probably been made by some other poor shoplifter, someone else whose parents had been called to share in their humiliation.

  ‘So could we have your parents’ number, please?’

  ‘They’re divorced,’ said Ruby, still staring at the desk. ‘They don’t live together.’

  ‘Well, would you prefer us to call your mum or your dad?’

  ‘Um … I don’t know …’ Mum would be devastated, Ruby thought. First she would apologise to the store in such a heartfelt fashion anyone would think she was the one who’d stolen from them. Then she would take Ruby home and they would sit in the car in stony silence all the way. At home, the tension would be unbearable. For days, Mum would appear to be on the verge of tears and she would find it impossible to relax and talk to Ruby, so they’d just have clipped conversations about putting out the rubbish and making sure the heating was turned off. Worse, there would be long, whispered phonecalls, in which Mum and Dad would blame each other for Ruby’s problem and discuss what they should do about her. There would be more arguments, and they might even decide to take her out of school and send her to the private school Dad preferred, after all. Without any notice. Right now, in the middle of her GCSEs. It didn’t bear thinking about.