Henry
It was the young woman from the kiosk.
I had only glanced back at her briefly while walking away, but I recognised her instantly. A face like hers was hard to forget. She was incredibly pretty in a raw, natural way. She wore no makeup, but her eyes were framed by thick lashes. Her dark-brown, almost-black chin-length hair was cut wonkily, but the haircut didn’t diminish her beauty. She’d probably still be stunning if she were bald. She wore a tatty leather jacket, and the only jewellery I could see were several silver rings and studs in her ears.
Her shoulders tensed as soon as our eyes met, and her legs twitched as if she wanted to stand. She was sitting on the grass, hidden between several bushes that had already started losing their leaves. Next to her lay a rucksack, and behind her was a heap of unidentifiable rubbish, probably left behind by teens. It was a strange place for her to decide to sit.
The wet grass made squelching sounds as I approached her to ask about my phone. The location app wasn’t that precise, and I’d already been searching the area for fifteen minutes. I couldn’t rule out that someone had taken it in the last few minutes, although the park was surprisingly empty given the time. A handful of people wandered around the lake, but the forecast of rain seemed to have scared most of them off.
“Excuse me...” I started but stopped when I saw that the woman was holding my iPhone. Relief replaced my confusion. “I was about to ask you about my phone, but I see you’ve already found it.”
I stopped in front of the woman, and she tilted her head back to look at me. I smiled at her gratefully, but she didn’t smile back or give me my phone. Instead, she shoved it into the pocket of her tattered jacket. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice was soft. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her answer rekindled my confusion. “My phone. You have it.”
“No, I don’t. It’s mine.”
I faltered. It was possible that she had the same model, of course, but given the tatty rucksack and her threadbare jacket, it didn’t look like she could afford it. Besides, it was the same colour and didn’t have a case, like mine, which seemed like too big a coincidence. I had just opened my mouth to say so when I registered that what I’d taken for a pile of rubbish behind her was actually blankets. Why hadn’t I noticed it before? She wasn’t merely spending an afternoon off in the park. She was homeless, and she lived here. And she hadn’t found my phone. She’d stolen it. She’d somehow managed to take it without me noticing. If I weren’t so furious, I’d be impressed.
My smile disappeared. “Give me my phone back.”
The woman remained silent and examined me, her gaze sliding from my polished shoes made of imitation leather and my tailored coat up to my face, where her eyes lingered for a moment. And then she looked away indifferently. “Like I said, it’s not...”
“You stole it,” I interrupted.
“I didn’t!”
My jaw tensed. “Yes, you did.”
She jutted out her chin petulantly. “I didn’t.”
“It’s my phone. Just give it back,” I demanded. But she didn’t move. I sighed, irritated, and massaged my temples. The conversation was going round in circles, and I’d already lost too much of my precious time to drag the situation out any longer. I took a deep breath. “What do you want?”
“I want you to leave me alone.” Her voice was firm as she fixed me with an astonishingly piercing gaze. The brown of her irises was so dark that the pupils almost got lost in them. I felt an unexpected tugging in my stomach. It didn’t feel like anger at all. Strange.
“I mean for the phone. What do you want for it?” I couldn’t believe that I was offering her money for something that was already mine. She was probably planning to sell it to some shady dealer who’d restore it to factory settings and then sell it on, but the risk of someone getting hold of my data and messages was too great.
The woman looked at me thoughtfully. Up close, she was even prettier. Freckles dotted the bridge of her nose, and she had the kind of voluminous lips that many women I knew suffered painful procedures for. But beautiful or not, she was still a thief.
“Let’s say I take you up on your offer and I give you this phone,” she said, slapping the pocket of her leather jacket. “Would youcall the police if it turns out to be yours after all? Hypothetically speaking.”
My mouth twitched, despite the situation not being funny at all. The audacity of her question was a little, though. “No. No police. We’ll settle it between us. So, what do you want?”
“Money.”
A gust of wind swept over us, whirling up leaves. “How much?”
“Four thousand pounds,” she said without hesitating. “And you’ll take me out to a restaurant of my choice.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Four thousand pounds? Are you out of your mind? I can buy myself two new phones for that amount and still have some to spare.”
She shrugged. “That’s my price.”
“Formyphone,” I snarled.
“You don’t know that.”
My eyes drifted from her to the mound of blankets behind her. I couldn’t help but wonder what her life must have been like so far for her to end up here. She had to be the same age as Ethan. I suppressed my rage. I wasn’t really angry at this woman. I was stressed and irritated after the meeting with my dad.
