I’m smiling; I can’t help it. I wish I’d been the one who’d dressed her all up in black and white with those bright red lips.
As she gets closer she, in turn, is studying my outfit with equally blatant curiosity, from my shoes to my confidence-boosting slightly masculine Prince of Wales check jacket with shoulder pads and the nipped-in waist.
I lower my white sunglasses and my eyes meet hers.
She briefly raises one fine eyebrow and smiles at me approvingly.
I love that smile. It makes my day.
‘Darling, you startled me, you know!’ she says warmly. Dahlink, you stertled me! … Her accent is German or Austrian, strong and precise. ‘That suit! So chic! Suddenly, it’s 1949 again – I thought I was dead all of a sudden, bof! God knows, I’ve practised, but here?’ A train thunders over the bridge and she looks around, then winces and covers her ears at the trailing noise until it fades.
She folds her arms and looks at me again intently from head to foot, then works her way up once more – shoes, knees, skirt, jacket – and she nods her approval. ‘Perfect.’ She adds in a whisper from behind her slender hand, ‘Except for that suitcase, of course.’
This time around, she’s not looking at me with gentle compassion but with humour.
I look at my scruffy case and laugh. ‘Grim, isn’t it? But it’s practical.’
‘Oh, prektikel! Well then!’
Does she remember me? If she doesn’t, I’ll take that as a compliment because it’s a sign of how much I’ve changed.
Suddenly, her expression changes to one of alarm.
‘Oh! My bus is coming!’ she says. ‘Excuse me! Goodbye!’
The number twenty-four is coming up under the bridge and she spins around and hurries in her heels towards the bus stop, pearls jingling, her handbag swinging from the crook of her elbow. Waving at the driver, she reaches in her bag for her travel card. In her rush, she’s dropping her money. Coins are rolling over the pavement, spinning in all directions.
I crouch to gather them up for her. The number twenty-four bus comes alongside us, gusting warm fumes, and she hurries onto it.
‘Wait!’ I call, picking up as much of her cash as I can, but she doesn’t hear me, so I grab my case and step onto the bus just as the doors are closing. I’ve forgotten just how heavy my wheelie bag is. Before I can hoist it on board, the doors momentarily close on my arm.
As I yelp and let go, the driver opens the door again and a dark-haired, broad-shouldered guy in a pink floral shirt and jeans grabs the case by the handle before it falls to the ground. ‘It’s okay! I’ve got it!’ he says.
I sum him up at a glance. Not the fact that he’s good-looking and his eyes are deep blue; that’s just a quirk of nature and not a good indicator of character. What I notice is that his pink shirt is crisply ironed and he’s wearing tan leather shoes polished to a shine. For that reason, I immediately trust him.
‘Thank you!’ I say gratefully, then I hurry up the aisle to the woman in the Chanel suit and hand back her money.
She looks from me to her empty bag with great astonishment – what? Her cash has been trickling out of it? And I’ve been picking it up as it rolled away? ‘Ach, you are kindness itself!’ she says, kissing her fingers and scattering goodwill my way.
Good deed done, I go to get off the bus, when I suddenly realise that the man in the pink shirt hasn’t got on behind me. I wonder where he is and what he’s done with my suitcase.
And then I realise he’s taken it.
Not straight away – I’m a trusting sort of person and I have to double-check before it sinks in. First of all, I think wryly, ha ha, wouldn’t it be ironic if he’s run off with it when I’m here doing a good turn? And then I turn to the driver: ‘That man who had my bag, what did he do with it?’
The driver shrugs and puffs out his cheeks sympathetically then closes the doors.
‘Stop, I’m getting off,’ I say in a panic.
He opens the doors again, so I jump off the bus and look up and down the road with insane optimism as the bus pulls away.
The opportunistic thief has gone and stolen my case.
I lean against the high stone wall of Stables Market, taking deep breaths and pressing my heart back under my ribs.
This great, indescribable sense of loss comes over me, closing my throat with grief.
Gone. Stolen – my beautiful clothes; the clothes that are my livelihood and my dreams.
A Paul Smith gentleman’s pink slim-fit floral shirt, size medium.
Once the initial wave of shock passes, I straighten up and force myself to think about things rationally. I mean, that suitcase is so hideously noisy that no thief in his right mind would want to drag it for any distance. And who wants a load of old clothes, anyway? (Apart from me, obviously.)
First, because of the noise of my rickety case, I’m guessing the man wouldn’t have gone far. He’d probably nip down one of the residential side streets, out of sight, and find a quiet place to rummage through the contents of the bag, to see if there was anything in there worth keeping. And when he found that there wasn’t, I reassure myself, he’d dump it and walk away.
Guided by instinct and a bit of local knowledge, I head to Castlehaven Road, where there’s a large triangle of overgrown grass surrounded by wooden benches, known optimistically as The Gardens, which is usually deserted.
Today it’s busy. Circling each other on skateboards are three boys – for a hopeful but disappointing moment it sounds just like the wheels on my case. On one of the benches, two tanned and amiable drunks are making philosophical conversation through the medium of Carlsberg Special Brew lager.
The kids watch me suspiciously as I walk around the perimeter of the garden, eyes alert, holding firmly on to my handbag and visualising my scattered clothing fluttering in the long grass like injured birds (this is how sure I am I’ll find them).
But I don’t find them. On the path, the boys circle like sharks. I leave the gardens and walk slowly back to Chalk Farm Road, knowing I should keep on looking but also knowing in my heart how pointless it could be. The guy with my case could have headed straight for the towpath, or for the car park in the superstore, or down any of the other side streets, or he could have gone straight home. I think about my pathetic gratitude as he’d held my case for me while I triumphantly dashed onto the bus to hand the old lady her money back. That’s what you get for helping someone out, I reflect bitterly.
Back on Chalk Farm Road I look across towards the market. Miraculously, I suddenly see that pink shirt as he reappears right at the entrance to the Stables with my suitcase. ‘Hey!’ I yell. ‘Excuse me!’
‘Hey!’
We’re shouting across the traffic and waving our arms at each other.
‘Wait there!’ I’m dashing across in my pencil skirt, dodging cars – this is the way to cross a road in London: assertively. ‘My bag!’ I say warmly and with happy relief until I see he’s holding a small shaggy brown dog on a lead. I feel a familiar rush of fear and I keep a distance between us. I’ve got a thing about dogs.
‘Sorry,’ he explains. ‘I let go of the lead when I saw you struggling