‘A yummy mummy.’
‘Exactly.’
They took the bus. Natasha graciously accepted the seat she was offered and stared through the window as they wound their way through the traffic towards Brixton. The bus stopped by the tube station, opposite the department store.
‘Tell you what, I’ll cross over and have a snoop around Morley’s. That way I’ll do my steps and buy myself a treat at the same time.’ Luke made a face. ‘You don’t need to come.’
‘Why d’you want to go traipsing round a busy shop? Don’t you want to get home?’
‘Stop fussing. A spot of retail therapy is exactly what I need. I’ll look at baby stuff. You can pick up something at Sainsbury’s and make us a delicious dinner.’
He looked unhappy. But she knew he wouldn’t follow her. Luke hated shopping for anything but food.
‘What do you fancy?’
‘Whatever you like. Everything you cook is brilliant.’
He’d said nothing about Jacob. Though she was sure he had recognised him. He kissed her and held her a little too tight. Something was digging into her lungs. She heard herself squeal. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Overenthusiastic. You OK?’
‘Fine.’ She pecked him on the cheek, ‘I’ll be back in half an hour or so.’
They separated. It was a relief to be away from him. He was a good man and she needed him, but he was beginning to crowd her. She entered Morley’s. Babywear was on the first floor but there was no pull in that direction, and she drifted towards the cosmetics counters where she was drawn to a sign announcing: Pregnancy Body Care.
‘May I help?’ asked a willowy young woman, dressed like a doctor in a neat white jacket. Her face was a pale mask, the heavily made-up eyes shadowed in dusty pink and grey.
‘Just browsing, thanks,’ said Natasha.
Pregnancy was supposed to be good for the complexion. Her adoptive sister Eleanor had told her she was ‘blooming’. But Natasha hated the flushed look and there were some unattractive red splotches on her cheeks. What she needed was a decent concealer. She noted a line of testers at the front of the counter, tried out three and made a mental note to pick up the expensive one if she had an opportunity. Now was not the moment. The assistant was watching, and she would need to be careful.
She approached the perfume counter. The air was rich with scents, the shelves a picture gallery of crisp packaging and jewel-coloured liquids.
It had been weeks since she had lifted anything. Since the beginning of her pupillage she had resolved to stop, but the urge to appropriate was powerful. The symptoms were familiar, the lightly fluttering heart, the rapid breathing, the restlessness, like unslaked thirst. Voices competed inside her, one, the clearer, telling her to walk out of the shop, the other, low and insistent, telling her she was good at this, she could do it. Pregnancy had given her an advantage. She was more conspicuous but less likely to arouse suspicion. And she wanted the best.
Customers took their time. It was essential to test before you decided. Under the white and gold logo a young woman with black-fringed green eyes, scarlet lips and a blonde bob, and wearing a badge marked ‘Chloe’, was occupied with two middle-aged Indian women in bulky red and green saris. Both had grey hair twisted into buns at the back of their heads. One was overweight, the other skinny and neither of them looked the type to sport expensive French perfume. Perhaps they were buying for a daughter or niece. Chloe was giving them her full attention, setting out the products on the glass counter, letting them use the testers, explaining the relative merits of Eau de Toilette and Eau de Parfum.
Natasha hovered behind them, waiting to try the tester. If nothing else, she would leave the shop in a cloud of seductive Chanel. But the women were taking their time and she drifted to the next counter, sweeter modern fragrances, which were much less appealing.
After about five minutes the Indian women thanked Chloe and ambled away, chattering in their own language. Chloe started to replace the packages she had so carefully laid out on the counter. Natasha glanced at a clock on the wall. It was just after five. The shop would be open for another three hours. Luke would wait. There was no need to rush.
A woman wearing the standard Morley black, with an ID card dangling round her neck, walked over and led Chloe away to the back of the shop where Natasha noted a gathering crowd. Much later she learnt that a customer had collapsed with a heart attack. The perfume department was empty, apart from the two Indian women dithering over another display about five yards away. Natasha turned back to the Chanel counter, brushed her bulk against its glass edge and slipped the Eau de Parfum in its white and gold cellophane wrapper into her open bag.
There was a rush inside her body as if something had caught fire. She managed to tamp the flames, walking more slowly than she would have liked towards the exit, aware of the heart thumping below the cool exterior, adopting a calm, neutral gaze. As a child she had played at being invisible and some tiny part of her still believed that if she concentrated hard, avoided anyone’s eye, looked straight ahead, though not too fixedly, she could disappear. Her reactions were so finely attuned that, without looking about her, she could sense if she was being watched, even from behind. All was clear. She continued to walk slowly. It had happened more suddenly than she would have liked, and she had omitted to make the single legitimate purchase which would have provided her with a store bag. She needed to get out.
The front of the shop was quiet. The consternation around the collapsed customer at the back had deflected interest away from the entrance and there was no security guard by the exit doors.
As she approached the automatic glass door, it slid open. She stepped out onto the pavement and was thrust into the thunder of rush-hour traffic and fume-filled air. Two buses had stopped outside the shop. She was about to run between them, to zigzag through the stationary cars and disappear into the evening throng. But some sense of self-preservation stopped her, and she waited as a woman with a toddler in a pushchair strolled past. Clutching her bag tightly against her chest, Natasha swung left towards the pedestrian crossing when she felt a hand on her shoulder, a tight grasp. It was the fat woman in the green and red sari. Her eyes were bulging and excited and Natasha’s first thought was that the woman was mad, about to ask for money or talk gibberish. She struggled to release herself. But then she felt another hand on her opposite arm and she realised this was not madness but intentional restraint and the two women in saris were preventing her from walking away.
‘Madam,’ said the fat one, ‘I’d like to look in your bag.’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand.’
‘I have reason to believe you have store merchandise in your bag.’
‘You must be mistaken. Now if you will let me leave. Please. I have an appointment.’
A man appeared from the heart of the shop. He was tall, broad, unmistakably security. She had not noticed him before. The woman produced a card. It showed her name and then in clear dark letters: Store Detective.
In a gentler voice the thin woman said, ‘We’ll go somewhere private.’ They began to lead her away, a woman on each side, the security man in front. Where a moment before there had been empty space, a crowd had gathered.
Thoughts whirled through her mind, explanations, excuses: confusion, exhaustion, the trial, pregnancy, exhaustion, diabetes. She would hand back the Chanel and talk her way out of this. There came a stirring inside her. He, for she was sure it would be a ‘he’, no longer kicked; he was too close pressed for that. Instead he shifted and squirmed and pushed and she sensed that any moment he would try to break out. Why not now? They would all forget about the Eau de Parfum if she was hurled into labour on the shop floor. But the squirming stopped, and the two women were still holding her, one on each arm.