You don’t want to hear about my day at school, about the girls fussing around me and asking what happened on Saturday night. I made light of it and didn’t bother to comment that one of them should have rung me yesterday if they were that worried. You also don’t want to hear about my Monday timetable, how I overheard one of the deputies mentioning to the Head of Year that she’d noticed Craig Ritchie hadn’t turned up and ought they to check. You might want to know that the Nokia was in the internal zipped-up compartment of my school bag, and that I kept my bag close to me all day.

After school I went to the shopping precinct near school and stood by Music Zone.

They call that precinct The Broadway – I suppose to make it sound like something cool, some place you would find in the US of A. But really it was just like every other shopping precinct in the country. It had: New Look, Top Shop, Marks and Spencer, Greggs Bakers, Woolworths, Martins Newsagents, Dorothy Perkins, Etam and so on and so on. In the centre was a square, with one side giving on to a covered market, which was open three or four days a week. In the centre of the square was a statue of an old bloke pointing towards Music Zone. There was a low wall around the statue with quite a few people sitting on it. There was one dreadful moment when I thought Ritchie might not be one of them, but thankfully that moment was short-lived, because there he was. The waiting was over and my life was beginning again.

He smiled when he saw me and moved along so I could sit by him. The stone was cold and my feet didn’t quite touch the ground. It was weird: even though I’d been thinking of little else but Ritchie and stuff all day, now I was with him my tongue was tied. I couldn’t decide what to say to kick the afternoon off.

So it was Ritchie who spoke first. “I’ve got something for you,” he said, reaching in his jacket pocket. He brought out a handful of money, a couple of fivers, some pound coins – I didn’t see how much and didn’t bother to count it. It embarrassed me, receiving money from him.

“I’m only taking this from you,” I said, “because I borrowed it off my mum. Anyway, where did you get it from?”

Ritchie’s lips curled into a smile and I knew there was a story attached.

“Last night I went to this pub I know – I don’t have trouble getting in because I can look eighteen all right. I waited till closing time and there was this bloke pissed out of his head. So I told the bloke behind the bar I’d help the drunk off the premises. He was stinking with booze. He asked me to get him a cab and I did.”

“So he paid you for that?”

“No. I went through his pockets.”

For a moment I was shocked. A beat later, I felt an illicit thrill. Anyway, I was just as bad, and was about to prove it.

“I’ve got something for you,” I told Ritchie. I delved into my bag, got out the phone and presented it to him. He looked puzzled at first and asked me if it was mine.

“No,” I said. “I nicked it.”

I loved the look on Ritchie’s face then – incredulity, admiration, appreciation. He held the phone in his hand and considered it while I gave a brief account of what happened with Julia.

“She rang my mum when she got home,” I ended, “to ask if she’d left her other phone at our house. Me and Mum had a good look for it. Julia said it must either be in the car or else – because she’d left her bag open – it must have dropped out and she hadn’t noticed. Either way, she told my mum, it was only a material possession. It was replaceable and she wasn’t going to let its loss activate her non-specific anxiety disorder. She’d just ask Geoff to buy her a new one.”

“Cool!” Ritchie said.

“We just need to check if it’s unlocked and if it is, we can get a new SIM card for you.”

“SIM cards cost about fifteen quid,” he commented.

This was true and I was silent. I knew Ritchie had just given me twenty pounds, but it was my mum’s money. She still expected me to buy shoes with it, and I told Ritchie that.

We sat quietly for a while, watching the shoppers walk by us. Then Ritchie commented, out of the blue, “I never expected you to do this. I don’t want you to get into trouble.”

“Oh, I won’t,” I said teasingly. “I’m a good girl – no one will suspect a thing. I’ve never been in trouble in my life.”

“Yeah, but stay that way, Anna. You don’t want to end up like me if you can help it.”

I wanted to say, “I do!” But that would have sounded so childish. And I didn’t like the way Ritchie was drawing a line in the sand, so to speak, between me and him. I’d come over to his side now, and I wanted to explain that to him.

“No, listen. I was thinking about a lot of the stuff you said yesterday, and I reckon, you’re right. This isn’t a fair world we’re living in. Loads of people with money don’t deserve it, and people who do deserve it, don’t have any. Taking Julia’s phone was only like redistributing wealth. Like taxing. And you – nicking money off that drunk bloke – well, he shouldn’t be drinking so much in the first place. You’ve taught him a lesson. If he was sober, he would have kept his cash. Maybe when he woke up this morning and realised what happened, he decided never to drink again. And you changed his life for the better. I know it sounds crazy, but it might be true!”

I could tell Ritchie was accepting what I was saying. I was pleased. But the truth was, I was kind of making it up as I went along. I was desperate to keep Ritchie, to align myself with him and no one else. Then I began to think that maybe what I was saying was true after all. Stealing wasn’t always a crime, depending on who you stole from and what you did with the things you stole. It stood to reason. And coming up with this justification felt good. I could see it made Ritchie feel good too. I was excited now, and carried on.

“It’s like Robin Hood – taking from the rich to give to the poor. And he was a hero, wasn’t he?”

“But you’re not poor,” Ritchie said.

“Yes, but I can still be on the side of the poor,” I argued. “And because I don’t look like a thief, I’m more likely to get away with it, you see. I think I’d make a brilliant Robin Hood.” I was half messing, half serious.

“No,” he said. “I’m Robin Hood. You’re Maid Marian.”

“Whatever,” I said. “But I don’t see why I can’t be Robin Hood too.” It was like we were kids, squabbling over who was going to be who in a make-believe game. Because that was exactly what it felt like to me at that point – a make-believe game teetering on the edge of reality.

“Because I’ve had more experience than you, Maid Marian.”

That riled me. It sounded kind of sexist, if you can see what I mean. I knew I had to prove myself. I had an idea.

“I know how we can get the money for your SIM card.”

“How?” Ritchie challenged.

“The money you gave me – it was for shoes. So I need to go home with a pair of shoes – then we can keep the money. I’m going to go into Shoe World opposite and nick a pair. Then we’ll get the SIM card for the phone.”

“You’re joking.”

Good! I’d succeeded in surprising him. “I’m not joking. It’ll be a cinch.”

I could feel the same terror and excitement coursing through me as I did when I nicked Julia’s phone. It was hard to breathe. I tried to steady my breathing and clear my head so I could think how I was going to do it. Then Ritchie spoke. “It’ll be easier if we do it together. And plan it out beforehand.”

“But Ritchie, if you come in with me, people will suspect us at once. I don’t want to be mean or anything, but …”

The fact was, he looked like a criminal. With his hoodie and trackie bottoms and shaved head, the security guards would be on him as soon as he walked in the shop.

“That’s my point. I’ll be the decoy. While everyone’s watching me, you can do the business,” he said.

He was right. And I liked the fact there was some moral justice in that. If all Ritchie had to do was walk into a shop and people were going to suspect him just because of the way he looked, then they deserved to be hoodwinked. The nice girl examining the black trainers would really be the thief, and they wouldn’t even notice. Serve them right. And Shoe World could stand the money. They were a chain that had outlets in all the shopping centres round here. And their shoes were pretty rubbishy anyway. Poor shoes for poor people.

We sat watching Shoe World for a while, casing the joint, and making some plans. Ritchie said it was important to be observant and not to rush it. Timing was everything. He said there were some shops that were walkovers, others that were harder to tackle. He didn’t know about Shoe World, but it was worth taking the risk.

The longer we sat there, the more sick I felt. But talking through our plans helped. Once you visualise it all happening, all you have to do is walk through it. Ritchie said that most people are pretty stupid when it comes to preventing theft. People who worked in shops were most often not the owners but poorly paid part-time sales assistants, and it was no skin off their noses if the stock was depleted. I told him about a lesson we’d had at school last year about where trainers were made – nearly all of them, both branded trainers and cheap ones, came from the Third World, and the kids who put them together were paid the barest minimum, and worked fourteen hours a day sometimes.

Ritchie said, “We’d better get on with it. If we leave it much later, the shop will be empty.”

First I tidied myself up. I put my school blazer back on, took my hair out of its ponytail, brushed it, and tied it neatly back. I checked my prefect’s badge was straight. I looked every bit the product of St Thomas’s R.C. school, a pillar of the community. Meanwhile Ritchie threw his hood over his head.

I left the statue first. I spent a little time looking in the window of Shoe World, then I entered. Shoe World was one of those discount-type shoe stores. It consisted of rows and rows of shoes sorted into men’s, women’s and children’s, then into smart and casual, and then size order. It was like a library of shoes. There were about nine or ten people milling around, looking at the shoes. There was one girl at the till and two male assistants keeping an eye on things, though they couldn’t see everywhere because the racks of shoes were so high. There was that rubbery smell you associate with shoe shops.

I made my way over to the trainers and began to scrutinise them. I decided it would be best to pick a pair around the twenty quid mark so my mum wouldn’t suspect anything. In a normal shoe shop, you only get one shoe of the pair out on display to deter thieves. But that requires more staff to go and hunt out the other shoe, so shops like Shoe World took the risk of having both shoes in the pair on display so they could cut staff costs.

Now when I smell shoes, I always think of that Monday afternoon in Shoe World. I selected a pair of slip-on black trainers with a small loop on the back. I held the shoes in my hand and looked at them. Then slowly and deliberately I made my way to a stool where I could sit down to try them on. I checked that my school bag was unzipped. It was. I left my old shoes by my school bag, walked over to a mirror propped on the floor against the wall, and examined the look of the new shoes on my feet. Actually the trainers weren’t all that bad. They were neutral, nothingy. They would do for my new life.

I knew as soon as Ritchie walked into the store. The sales assistant nearest me had been staring aimlessly, but now focused his gaze on the new arrival. I looked up briefly to check it was Ritchie, then carried on inspecting the trainers I was wearing. I even smiled at a woman nearby me, to establish my right to be there. Luckily she moved off shortly afterwards. That was a risky thing to have done. I saw the sales assistant moving closer to Ritchie and making eye contact with his colleague, as if suggesting he should also be keeping an eye on the villain who’d just walked into the shop. Ritchie walked over to the men’s trainers, keeping his face well hidden in his hood. I wouldn’t have trusted him either, looking like that. The two sales assistants closed in on him.

Then, all of a sudden, Ritchie shouted, “What are you staring at me for?”

Everyone in the shop turned to look at him.

“What am I doing wrong, eh? Ever since I come in here, you’ve been giving me the eye. You got it in for me, haven’t you?” And there was more. His voice got louder. He swore a bit. One of the sales assistants tried to get him out of the shop.

Then, in a deliberate movement, I put my old shoes in my school bag and strolled out of the shop in the new ones. I even stopped outside the shop to watch the disturbance with Ritchie, saw one of the sales assistants arm-lock him and pull him towards the door while the other one attempted rather pathetically to frisk him. What did they think he could have stolen in that time? Were they complete airheads, or what?

I walked off in the direction of McDonalds and stood outside. Time was suspended for me. I couldn’t say we’d been successful until Ritchie escaped. Each second dragged interminably. My mind was blank. Then Ritchie arrived beside me.

“Like your shoes,” he said.

In reply, I kicked him in the shin.