We have a shoe thief. She is shameless and
persistent.
We used to leave our shoes on a sheltered verandah,
far away from the street. We preferred quiet entries and wanted to postpone the
wear and tear on timber floors. It worked for 10 years, living this way.
It takes a brave person to open the rickety gate,
walk down a floodlit path and repeatedly steal every pair of size eight women's
shoes lying on that verandah. Given three people in the house share a shoe
size, our thief was spoilt for choice during 2010.
Her sporadic spree lasted more than a year. At
first, we wasted time rummaging through each other's wardrobes, looking for the
favourite boots or flats, accusing each other and arguing among ourselves. One
night, the uni student returned late and left her boots at the door. She was
due at work early the next morning. The boots disappeared overnight.
When the cold snap arrived, we decorated our
verandah with pots of cyclamens and winter bulbs. The verandah faces south and
in the winter gloom, the pretty blossoms cheered our days and made us smile.
But the shoe thief extended her repertoire and stole them. The flowers
disappeared but the pots remained. Over the winter, I replaced the flowers.
They vanished, over and over again.
There were nights when the outside light flicked on
unexpectedly and 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, we opened the front door earlier than
usual and there she was. Tiny, ancient, dressed in black and wearing a pair of
our shoes. She was carrying 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 a life under siege.
She wailed, babbled and denied everything. The
police were too busy fighting serious crime to bother with a trespasser.
Two years later, she surprised us. We had reverted
to habits of old, and six pairs of shoes have disappeared over the Easter
break, along with several single shoes. The shoe thief is either vindictive or,
on dark autumn mornings when she is scurrying, her eyesight isn't what it used
to be.
We are fuming but ready. She has been seen wandering
the streets in the chilly early morning gloom. We are plotting an ambush, our
phone cameras at the ready. Let's hope she doesn't read this story as she sips
a cuppa before her day's work begins.
And I thought citizens arrests were only in the
movies.
No comments:
Post a Comment