When the Shoe Thief Calls

Did I tell you about our shoe thief?

I’d always wanted a verandah, shielded from the street behind a hedge. So we built one.

Most days we'd leave our shoes there, preferring quiet entries and hoping to postpone wear and tear on timber floors. A family lives here and until recently, a very cute but yappy dog. That's another story, tinged with sadness.

When visitors come and go, a sensor light helps them up the stairs in the dark.

It takes a brave person to open the rickety gate, walk down a floodlit path, up the stairs and steal every pair of size eight women’s shoes om that verandah. Given three people share a shoe size, there was always plenty to choice during a spree which lasted over fourteen months.

At first we spent lots of time with our heads in each other’s wardrobes looking for the runners or the flats. We blamed each other. We argued amongst ourselves. One night the uni student returned late and left the birthday boots at the door. She was due at work very early the next morning. She didn't think she could be that unlucky. When she opened the front door, the boots were gone.

Then there was the time I demanded the return of my turquoise loafers.

Raised eyebrows from the teenagers. Perhaps the shoe thief did the household a favour that time. Our thief traversed the seasons, visiting often, stealing everything from rubber flip flops to stilettos.

When the cold snap arrived, I decorated the verandah with pots of cyclamens and winter bulbs. The verandah faces south and in the winter gloom, the pretty colours cheered our days and made us smile. Those flowers disappeared but the heavy planters remained. I replaced the flowers and moved the pots out the back. The plants vanished again.

There were nights when the outside light flicked on unexpectedly or the dog barked and scratched the door. We raced out, tore down the path and searched the street. We were jumpy and irritable, living on constant alert.

One morning, the hubby went out for the paper and there she was, escaping down our path: a tiny, wrinkled old woman, dressed in black and wearing a pair of our shoes. She carried a pile of empty shopping bags in anticipation of a haul. But she was unlucky that day. The verandah had been stripped bare as we became depressingly accustomed to our life under siege.

When she heard his roar, she took off and was chased by a man twice her size, his confused wife, a barking dog and the half dressed teenager who wasn't going to miss the drama.

On the footpath outside, she panted and wailed but denied everything.

We demanded proof of identity and dared to grab a wallet from her gaping handbag.

She went unpunished because her Medicare card was a fake and the police are too busy fighting serious crime to bother with trivial misdemeanours.

She may have come out of retirement during the past few weeks, because a friend in a nearby suburb has just lost two pairs of size eight runners from beside her front door.