It was as if Becca had wandered into the midst of some mini-apocalypse.
It was a warm August night in 2011. Less than ten minutes ago, she had been enjoying a coffee and a chat with friends. They’d parted as twilight descended, and she’d been strolling across town to catch the bus home. Nothing had prepared her for this.
A police car and two other vehicles lay on their sides, all three on fire. Flames shot into the darkening sky, smoke billowing across the road and making her cough. Hooded youths - many with scarves or other makeshift masks pulled across their faces - were everywhere, totally out of control.
Some were picking up anything they could lay their hands on and throwing it at a pathetically inadequate group of policemen, who were powerless to make any meaningful intervention. Others were kicking in shop doors and windows. Some were coming out with loot clutched to their chests like treasure. The air was filled with emergency vehicle sirens, but they sounded a long way away.
For long moments, she stood rooted to the spot, uncomprehending. Then she realised that people who wanted no part of this collective insanity - people like her - were running, some screaming, desperate to get as far away as possible.
And she was running too.
She found herself at the top of the High Street. There had clearly been mayhem here too, but the mob had moved on.
As if her feet had carried her of their own volition, Becca realised she was standing in front of the shattered window of Brooks’ Ladieswear, and there was The Jacket.
Becca had first seen it at the bus stop. A woman, probably a few years older than herself, came along and waited beside her, poised and confident. Becca thought she might be able to do the same in a summer jacket like that.
It looked like some sort of linen and was a tad short of three-quarter length. It was cut generously, and looked tailored. But it was the awesome shade of fuchsia that really caught Becca’s eye. In a jacket like that, you could really feel like somebody.
Whenever she had heard the word envy before, the colour associated with it was green. But Becca was literally pink with it.
“Love the jacket,” she said impulsively.
The woman smiled at the compliment. “Thank you.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Brooks, in the High Street.”
Brooks. Becca might have known. The woman may as well have said she’d flown to the moon to get it. That’d be the day, when Becca could afford anything from Brooks.
Still, she found herself dreaming about that jacket as she went through her dreary day. Visiting the job centre. Sitting on a park bench, eating a crappy cheese sandwich her mum had made. Haunting the shops to see if there were vacancy cards in the windows.
As always, there were none. Times were hard everywhere. No one was hiring. The recession had claimed her last two jobs, and she hadn’t worked for three months now. For a girl whose family values were all about a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay, it hurt.
Her round had taken her by the High Street, and she had gone as far as to have a nose at Brooks. The jacket she so coveted was in the window, managing to make a mannequin look like a million dollars. That wasn’t the price, but it might as well have been.
Over the next few weeks, whenever she was in town her feet seemed to take her to Brooks, where she would drool over the jacket and do pointless mental calculations about how she could raise enough cash to buy it.
Now, in the midst of all this insanity, here it was, hers for the taking. With all the looting that was going on, it was incredible that it was still there.
Becca hesitated. She was not a thief, had never been seriously dishonest in her life. Yet the world had gone mad tonight, she reasoned. Everyone was nicking stuff, so what was one jacket more or less? A fancy shop like Brooks could afford it. They were bound to be well insured, and besides, with the damage to the store itself, one jacket was the least of their worries.
As she removed it from the mannequin, it was like watching somebody else.
Becca stepped away from the window with her prize, and that was when the woman with blood on her face and hands staggered out of the doorway. She was smartly dressed, if dishevelled, and her eyes looked half-glazed. In a moment of complete clarity, Becca saw that her Brooks staff badge read ‘Pam’. Then the woman was clutching at her. She panicked, thrusting her away and breaking into a run.
She thought she heard the woman hit the pavement with a sickening thud, but she never looked back.
Back home, she managed to sneak the jacket into her room and stuff it in the bottom of her wardrobe. Her parents were watching the riots on TV, relieved that their daughter was home safe. There had been trouble in London the night before, and it had spread - but no one had expected it here.
She watched the news in apprehension, but there was nothing about ‘Pam’ and, for all Becca knew, she was shaken but fine. She said she was going to bed and, in her room, she finally tried on the jacket.
It was all she had imagined, the size, cut and style ideal for her figure, that shade perfect for her own colouring. She hung it carefully in her wardrobe.
In bed, in the dark, she kept hearing the sound the woman had made when she fell.
At three in the morning, she knocked on her parents’ door. They looked at her in surprise, half asleep.
“Dad,” she said in a small voice, “I’ve done something really bad. Will you come to the police with me?”
