I was too busy being kissed as I fished for the keys in my bag to notice that the front door to the flat was ajar. It wasn’t until I went to put the key in the lock that my blood ran cold.
“Come on, what’s taking you so long?” said Thomas as he nuzzled my neck, seemingly oblivious to Tyson’s frantic barking.
“Look,” I blurted out, not even thinking that I might alert whoever was in there. “It’s open.”
Thomas looked up and instinctively walked around me, so he was between me and the door. “Call the police,” he said authoritatively, holding an arm out to stop me moving forward.
“Don’t,” I said, my breath catching in my throat as he pushed the door slowly open. “Someone might be in there.”
In a split-second panic, I ran through the items that a burglar might take that could never be replaced; the necklace from my dad, his wedding ring, framed photographs of us on the mantelpiece. I could see them all so clearly, being carelessly shoved into a holdall, their value so paltry to anyone but me. The very thought was enough to cause a ripple of pain through my chest and my bottom lip to wobble.
“Just call the police,” Thomas repeated, and I nodded, adrenaline rushing through me, making my hands shake. I could barely hold the phone in my hand, let alone make a call.
“Please be careful,” I begged as he stepped into the darkness, while I waited on the front step, holding back tears.
The seconds turned into minutes as I watched lights going on one-by-one. When Tyson’s barking and whining eventually subsided, I knew Thomas must have reached him. I allowed myself to believe that if they were okay, it was okay. That maybe I’d just left the door open. Again.
I realized I’d been holding my breath when Thomas came back with a worrying grimace on his face.
“I’m really sorry,” he said, as my heart sank. “You’ve been burgled and it’s a bit of a mess. Tyson’s okay, a bit shaken up. Looks like he was shut in the kitchen—he’s nearly scratched the door to ribbons.”
Sobriety hit me like a sledgehammer.
He pulled me into him and kissed the top of my head. “I’m so sorry.”
“I haven’t called the police yet,” I said. “I was hoping it might be a false alarm.”
“I’m afraid not,” he said. “Tyson’s barking might have scared them off eventually. But I doubt they’d make such a mess and not take anything.”
“Is it definitely safe?”
He nodded. “It looks like they came and went through the front door.” He ran a finger down the door frame and I could see that it was splintered a little.
“Bastards,” I spat, before cautiously following him inside.
Nothing can prepare you for how it feels to have your home violated. To see all your personal possessions, things you’ve worked hard for, strewn across the floor. Every drawer was pulled out and upturned and every cupboard emptied in an attempt to find … what? It was a normal two-bedroom ground-floor flat, pretty basic, nothing special. But it was mine, and to know that someone had been in there, rifling through my letters, trawling through my underwear drawer and helping themselves to whatever took their fancy, made me feel sick to the pit of my stomach.
I fell to my knees on the floor where my jewelry box had been upended, too frightened to turn it over, in case I couldn’t see what I so desperately wanted to see. I forced myself to take a deep breath.
“I’ve popped Tyson back in the kitchen until the rest of the flat is straightened out a bit,” Thomas said as he entered the bedroom. “Are you okay?”
I nodded and counted to three in my head, psyching myself up. Please don’t do this to me, I prayed silently to whichever God was listening. If you’ll just make this okay, I promise I’ll come to church more.
“Can you see if anything’s been taken?” he asked gently as I turned over the box.
“Yes,” I sobbed, my heart breaking. “The necklace my dad gave me, his wedding ring, some earrings.” I ran a hand over the carpet, willing my fingertips to feel the sentimental items I treasured. “The other stuff doesn’t matter, but my dad’s…” I couldn’t hold back anymore.
“Ssh, it’s okay,” said Thomas as he knelt down on the floor and rocked me in his arms. “We’ll call the police, they might be able to get it back.”
“No, no they won’t—they never do.”
“They’ll try. Is there anything else?”
I stood up and rubbed at my head, trying to work the fury and frustration out. I couldn’t even remember what used to be there just a few hours before. Did I still have that fancy camera I treated myself to a couple of years ago? Or had I lent it to Maria? Was my laptop at home or at school? I couldn’t think straight.
The living room was even more of a mess; every piece of paper had seemingly been pulled out of the dresser, where I had developed my own haphazard filing system, and thrown onto the floor.
I looked around the sea of invoices, bills, and payslips that lay at my feet. My mother’s will, which she had given me under the strict understanding I wasn’t to open it until she passed away, lay next to its ripped envelope. After twenty years of it being in my safekeeping, I’d allowed a stranger to come along and destroy that trust.
Even seeing the cards that the children from my class had made for me, lying forlornly on the floor, made me cry. Their bright colors and kind words so at odds with the sickening scenario they were now a part of.
“It’s difficult to tell,” I sniffed.
Thomas nodded and punched digits into his phone. “Hello, I’d like to report a burglary,” he said, before giving my address. “They could be here in five minutes or five days,” he said as he hung up. “There’s not much manpower left in the burglary squad these days.”
“Can you stay?” I asked.
“Of course.”
It wasn’t until I really looked at the chaos surrounding me that I realized how many secrets my home held. I considered myself to be a private person, only letting those closest to me in, yet in just a few minutes, a criminal had found out so much about me. He knew that I was a primary school teacher at St. Mary’s in Guildford and how much I earned. He now had all my bank account details and my current balance. Even the seemingly innocuous details about me, such as my eclectic fashion sense, my love of yellow, the book I was reading, and my fondness for the Brontë sisters were all laid bare, making me feel overtly vulnerable. It was only as my eyes caught sight of the solicitor’s headed paper, which my mother’s will was attached to, that I realized that the son of a bitch also knew things that I didn’t even know myself.
I worked my way through the wreckage fastidiously, refusing to allow my emotions to overwhelm the job in hand. But no matter how hard I tried, everything felt contaminated, sullied by a stranger’s touch.
“Do you want to carry on doing this now?” Thomas asked as he was putting all my books back in the bookcase. “We can do the rest in the morning.”
I looked at him and wanted to cry again.
“Do you want a cup of tea?” he asked.
“Thank you.”
“What for?”
“For just being so kind.”
He looked away, as if embarrassed.
I went into the kitchen and opened the fridge, lifting a bottle of white wine out of the door. “I’d rather this.”
“Yep, great,” he said, following me in, watching as my shaking hands fumbled with the seal covering the cork.
“Here, let me,” he said, and I watched as his strong tattooed arm took the weight of the bottle away from me. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so safe, which was ironic seeing as I was stood in the middle of a crime scene.