INSIDE THE SHOPPING CENTER IT was hot, stifling, even, compared to the February chill outside, and I instantly began sweating in my jacket and cap. But I couldn’t afford to take either off, so wiping the perspiration off my nose, I pushed through the crowd of people, trying not to glance too obviously behind me.
It was highly unlikely I’d been followed. The police had no way of knowing where I was, or that I was heading here. Hel was the surveillance risk, and she wasn’t due here for another… I felt automatically for my phone before remembering that I had dumped it in a bin a couple of miles from Salisbury Lane. Instead, I glanced up at the big clock that dominated the atrium. Another fifteen minutes. I had plenty of time.
Even so, I weaved my way deliberately through the thickest part of the crowd, up an escalator, and then through the cinema foyer before going into the upper floor of Urban Outfitters, and down the steps inside the shop.
I had exited the shop and was looking around for the toilets Hel had mentioned when I realized something. The pain in my ribs, the pain where I’d bruised myself landing on the chunk of clematis, it had dulled to an ache as I walked, but now it was hurting in a different way. It was… stinging. And there was an ominous tickling sensation that wasn’t just the sweat prickling on my skin.
Pausing in an inconspicuous corner by a rack of plastic plants, I slipped my hand up under my jacket. When I brought it out, my fingertips were red. And not just tinged with blood, but slick with it. Somehow when I’d thumped down on that wall I had cut myself badly.
I swore quietly, wiped my fingers on my jeans, praying the blood wouldn’t show up against the dark denim, and tried to think what to do. I had to stop the bleeding before it soaked through my clothes and made me even more conspicuous than I was already. It was too late to phone Hel; she would be on her way, probably with the girls in tow. I would have to buy first aid supplies. There was a big pharmacy across the way, a Boots, that would probably have everything I needed and more. The problem was that the cap covering my hair had taken almost every last penny I had.
I stood for a moment, sizing up the shop opposite, considering my options.
I had shoplifted before. I wasn’t proud of it—but Hel and I had dealt with our parents’ deaths in very different ways. She had put her head down, gone to journalism school and made top grades. I had… not. I had spiraled, acted out, dropped out of school. And, somewhere along the line, I had started shoplifting. Not because I needed to; our parents hadn’t been rich, but they’d had a modest life insurance policy that meant Hel and I had enough money to live on, if we were careful. But because it made me feel… alive. In control. Predator, not prey.
I had turned out to be good at it. Very good. And for someone flailing in school and bombing her exams, there was something exhilarating in finding an area I could excel in. Even then, without any training, I had understood how security systems worked—how to figure out the camera blind spots, how to exploit the changes in shifts, how to disable the various types of security tags the different shops used. I had never told anyone—not Hel, not my friends. I had never even used the stuff I’d stolen—I couldn’t, not without Hel asking where I’d got the money for a designer handbag or how I’d afforded those jeans. Half the time I went back the next day and dropped whatever I’d taken discreetly in the changing room, ready for the assistant to hang it back on the rack. The rest of the time I donated my haul to a charity shop.
I’d been caught eventually, of course. I’d gone back to the same shop too many times, and there was one security guard who was better at his job than the rest, better than me. But it was that kindly security guard who had told me I was wasting my talents, that there were legitimate jobs for people like me, people who liked figuring out how security systems worked and finding the weaknesses. The idea that I could get paid for this… paid for running rings around systems and breaking into buildings… that was a revelation.
I hadn’t stolen since. I had promised the guard I wouldn’t, if he let me go. Now, looking at the brightly lit store opposite, I realized that I was about to break that promise.
* * *
THERE WERE NO TAGS ON the dressings. That was something. But a box of ten cost nearly ten pounds, which was nine pounds more than I had, and although I hadn’t had a chance to look at the puncture wound under my clothes, the amount of blood on my fingers suggested that a 50p pack of economy plasters wasn’t going to cut it. Looking up and down the racks of first aid supplies, I considered my options. I was still wearing the rucksack and cap—which wasn’t ideal. I couldn’t afford to take the cap off in case someone recognized my hair. But with it on, with the bulky bag on my back and my coat buttoned up to hide the bloodstains, I looked like a shoplifter—the worst, most amateur kind. Back in my heyday I could have lifted half the contents of this store and walked out with my head held high. But right now I looked shady, and if I was pulled over for a bag search with a rucksack full of housebreaking tools, there was no way I would be able to talk my way out of the situation. Which meant I had to be careful. A security guard strolled along the end of the aisle, glancing at me without comment, and I made up my mind: One item only. And don’t leave without paying.
Picking up the dressings and holding them out in front of me, well in sight, I headed purposefully to the self-service checkouts, not breaking my stride as I passed the display of chewing gums and breath mints and palmed a cheap pack of Wrigley’s Extra.
At the till I shifted the box of dressings into the hand holding the gum, ensuring in the process that the gum was underneath, and then swiped. The barcode reader beeped, and Chewing Gum, ?0.70 flashed up on-screen.
I put the gum down in the weighted bagging area, hovering the box above it with my free hand, and quickly tapped Payment on the screen in case anyone was reading over my shoulder. I needn’t have bothered. The staff member manning the tills wasn’t a security guard, just a regular checkout person. She was examining her nails over by the far side of the queue and wasn’t even looking in my direction. I dropped the pound coin in the change slot, praying it wouldn’t get spat out—and when Payment Accepted showed on the screen I closed my eyes, not trying to hide my relief.
The receipt came out along with the change and I grabbed both, then walked purposefully towards the entrance, keeping my head high and my back to the security camera. As I exited the store, I let out a shuddering breath. I had done it. For the first time in almost ten years, I had stolen something—and I had got away with it. It was a weird, not entirely good feeling.
* * *
THE BATHROOM WAS EMPTY, ALL five stalls gaping wide, and I wasted no time in washing my hands and getting the Out of Order sign out from under my jacket. I stuck it to the door of the middle stall. The tape was reluctant to unpeel from itself, but at last I got it fixed, slightly lopsidedly, and slipped into the cubicle. I locked the door behind me, put down the toilet seat, and then sat, lifting up my feet to sit cross-legged so that my presence was invisible from the outside.
Then I shrugged off the jacket, pulled up my top, and examined what on earth I’d done to myself in my neighbor’s garden.
The first thing I thought was that there was a lot of blood. More than I had expected, and enough to make my stomach churn unsettlingly with memories of Gabe. It had trickled down my stomach and soaked into my jeans, and my stomach and ribs were smeared so thick it was hard to see what was actually wrong. My T-shirt was black, thank God, but when I touched it the fabric was stiff and wet.
By the time I’d cleaned the cut with spit and toilet paper, the wound itself didn’t look quite so bad—but it didn’t look great. As I stared down at the small, ragged puncture oozing dark blood, I wished I knew more about first aid. This was no scrape from a clematis. There must have been something sticking out of the top of the wall—a metal spike, or a shard of glass maybe. Whatever it was, I had flung myself down on it with enough force that it had gone clean through my jacket and my top and into my stomach, just below my right lower rib.
It hurt, but not as much as I would have expected, more a kind of low throb. Mostly I was just furious at my own stupidity for not running a hand along the top of the wall before I threw myself onto it.