a messy bag. You should have a stylish bag. Don’t you have anyone to look after you?’
‘Shut up!’
‘Nice girl like you. Should have a nice man to look after you. Buy you nice bags.’
He looked regretful. ‘Well. Thanks. Have a safe trip home. Have you got a travel card?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. OK. Be safe. Bye!’
Katie turned around to stare at him as he dived off, quick as a cat. Her heart couldn’t quite take in what had happened and kept whumping away, and she suddenly found it difficult to get her breath. She leaned against the wall.
‘Fuck,’ she heaved.
The drunk man wobbled over.
‘Hello darlin’!’
‘Where the fuck were you?’ she shrieked at him. ‘I could have been killed!’
He straightened up and managed to focus for a second.
‘Sorry love,’ he slurred. ‘I’ve already got a girlfriend.’
And he wobbled off.
‘Don’t worry love,’ said the policeman.
Louise, who she’d called in from home, was hanging about worriedly.
‘I mean, he didn’t, like, touch you up or nothing, did he?’
Katie looked at him hard. Was this the new, softer, intouch policing she kept hearing so much about?
‘No,’ she said calmly. She was feeling a lot less shaken up now than when she’d stumbled into the police station at Covent Garden. In fact, after a couple of cups of tea, she was actually feeling strangely embarrassed about the whole thing, as if she shouldn’t have bothered troubling anyone for something as clearly unimportant as a non-rape/murder-related mugging. Outside a car alarm was blaring away, but nobody was paying it the least attention.
‘He just jumped me, took all my stuff and scared me half to death.’
‘Yeah,’ said the policeman, as if he’d just been told one of his shoelaces was untied. ‘That happens.’
‘Go find him and put him in prison,’ said Katie. ‘Now, please.’
The policeman looked down at the blank sheet of paper on his desk. ‘It’s just, we’re not doing too well with the witness description.’
‘Black hat pulled down over his face. Foreign accent.’
‘Oh, him,’ said the policeman. ‘He shouldn’t be any trouble at all.’
‘Do you work late?’ said Louise, batting her eyelashes.
‘Louise, would you kindly shut it?’ said Katie.
Louise shrugged. ‘Sure, sure, just…’
‘I work shifts,’ said the policeman, bluntly appraising her. ‘Often up late, know what I mean?’
Katie quickly spotted the wedding ring and raised her eyebrows.
‘Do you…come and go in the night?’ said Louise lasciviously.
‘Actually, now I come to think about it, I hit my head on the pavement and now have concussion,’ said Katie crossly.
‘Depends if it’s an emergency,’ said the policeman over her head. ‘You know…if you really really need me.’
Katie stood up from the dingy grey plastic chair. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance of getting a lift home in a police car while it’s going “nee naw nee naw” is there?’
‘Maybe,’ said the policeman, still looking at Louise. Louise coloured.
‘I’ll just take the form for my insurance, thanks.’ Katie snatched the banda sheet away from him.
‘There’s no need to be like that,’ he said. ‘You’ve just described something that happens a thousand times a day in the West End and you’ve given us nothing to go on. We’re really sorry.’
Katie harrumphed. ‘Well, it shouldn’t happen at all. Anything could have happened.’
‘Yes, trust me, you’re not the type. Can I offer you some victim support?’
‘I’m not the type???’
‘Shh,’ said Louise. ‘He probably just meant you don’t look like a soft target. That’s good, you know. You look like a proper Londoner, not a rube.’ Louise brushed down her micromini thoughtfully.
Katie grimaced. ‘I don’t think that at all. I think I’m…I think I’m getting tired of this stupid city, you know.’
‘Shh,’ said Louise again. ‘You don’t mean that. You love London.’
‘I thought I did,’ said Katie. There was a car alarm going off here too, but she didn’t think it was the same one. She wandered over to where Louise was making instant coffee from a tiny fun-sized jar. That was one of the disadvantages of her new flatmate; she wasn’t quite the coffee purist Katie had learned to be – another important London skill. She picked up the jar.
‘How on earth could this jar of coffee cost £2.39? It’s scaled for a family of mice.’
‘It was late,’ said Louise. ‘It was all I could get from the corner shop.’
Katie looked at the massive patch of damp over the kitchen wall. ‘You know, I can’t fix that patch of damp because every ten minutes someone new moves in next door and they won’t share the cost so nobody knows what to do.’
‘And you’re lazy and disorganised,’ said Louise. ‘What’s your point?’
‘I don’t know…I think maybe London is driving me nuts.’
‘Just because of one lousy mugger? And one crappy date? What about all the fantastic museums and parks we never go to?’
‘OK, but that was just tonight. But London…it’s so full of show-offs and loudmouths.’
‘But we like those kinds of people.’
‘I know – maybe that’s the problem,’ said Katie. She stared at the damp patch and tried again. ‘It’s just…everyone always wants to know what your job is. Why is that?’
‘Because when you meet a lot of new people, you have to ask them something?’ said Louise. ‘If you live in a small village you don’t need to say anything at all. Everybody already knows how overdue your library books are and how much money you make and whether or not your husband’s having an affair with the goat from the next village. And whether so and so’s daughter cheeked Mr Beadle at the bus stop. And who threw away the advertising leaflets in the big hedge.’
‘You
