AllFreeNovel
Share Us
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.
What I really wanted—what I should have stolen—was some kind of antiseptic. But I couldn’t face shoplifting a second time, and besides, the possibility of missing Hel was unthinkable. Instead, I unpeeled a dressing from its plastic backing, pressed it over the wound, and fished a clean top out of my rucksack. Then I waited.
The next few minutes ticked past very slowly indeed. Without even a borrowed phone, I had no way of knowing what time it was, but even so, from counting the seconds in my head and listening to people come and go, I was sure that I had been here for more than ten minutes. A lot more.
“Always out of bloody order!” I heard one girl say, apparently looking at my sign. “Fucking ridiculous.”
“It’s people putting baby wipes down the loo, innit,” her friend said. It sounded like they were applying makeup in the mirror; her voice had that slightly distorted sound of someone making a lipstick mouth. “Pipes aren’t meant for it.”
“Are you done? The film started at half past.”
“Oh, relax, there’s always loads of ads. It’s only—” There was a pause. “Only twenty to.”
“Yeah, but I like the trailers. And besides, I want to get a Coke.”
“Keep your knickers on,” the other girl grumbled, but I heard the click as she capped her lipstick. “There. Happy? Come on, then.”
I heard the sound of music as the cinema door swung open, muffled again as it closed behind them, and I suppressed a groan. Twenty to. What had happened? Had Hel realized she’d been followed? How long should I give it before I gave up and left? Another ten minutes? Another twenty?
The minutes continued to tick past, and I was just making up my mind to cut my losses and give up before the cleaners came and investigated the Out of Order sign when the shopping center door swung open, and I heard a familiar little piping voice.
“But Mummy, why can’t we have a Krispy Kreme?”
“Because I said so,” Hel snapped. She sounded worried, and close to the end of her tether. “And because they’re full of sugar, and you already had an after-school snack. Now, into the toilet, the pair of you.”
