Page 2 of Love at First Sight

He holds out his hand, two pounds in the palm.

‘Couldn’t surrender my emergency coin,’ he says, pulling anuh-ohface. I sigh and shake my head, both impressed and shocked.

‘Middle-class shopliftingison the up, I’ve heard,’ I reply, coolly, watching as the fire safety marshal looks panicked, listening to something on a walkie-talkie. Perhaps it’s the romance police, issuing a report for my arrest because my flirtation skills are seriously lacking.

‘It’s one of the few highs we’ve got left,’ the man says. ‘Everyone is meat-free, dairy-free, booze-free, drugs-free …’

‘So we’re nicking stuff, just to feel something?’ I supply.

I wonder what he tastes like.

‘It’s that or skydiving,’ he laughs, and it makes me laugh, too.

Love me. Choose me. Pick me.

‘Does that taste better because you didn’t pay for it?’ I ask, as he reaches the core. He looks shiftily from side to side.

‘Shhhh!’ he implores. ‘What are you, a cop?’

‘A concerned citizen of the world,’ I reply. ‘And also genuinely curious. You’ve made me a criminal accessory. Before today I hadn’t stolen anything since I was six.’

‘Oooooh, now we’re getting to the good stuff,’ he says, awkwardly rubbing his hands together – the apple core is cramping his style – with glee. ‘What was it?’

‘A Mother’s Day card,’ I say, pathetically. ‘That somebody else had made. But hers was prettier than mine and so, shamefully … I took it.’

‘Did you get caught?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is that why you’ve never stolen again?’

‘Yes.’

‘If you hadn’t got caught, do you think you’d be a criminal on the run by now?’

‘No,’ I say, and the man tips his head like,Oh? You’re not playing our game?‘I’d hide in plain sight,’ I continue. ‘A criminal on the run suggests having been caught, but if I’d never been discovered, I wouldn’t have anything to runfrom.So if stealing Gemma Jenkins’s card and hiding it in my bag had worked … I mean, I could be stood here talking to you whilst also emptying your wallet.’

He pats down his thighs, like I really could be helping myself to his money. He sees me notice and then does a comic frown.

‘I don’t even have a wallet.’ He shakes his head self-deprecatingly.

The noise of a fire engine blares, and a hush falls over the crowd. You can tell everyone is put out at having their shop interrupted, but also varying degrees of curious at what the heck is happening. If there is a fire truck, I was wrong about it not being a big deal. But then, who cares what’s happening in there, when out here is this man, tall and dark and handsome, a dizzy whirlwind of a cliché.

‘Do you think there’s really a fire?’ I ask.

‘Maybe,’ my soulmate says. ‘Or maybe it’s all just a precaution. Makes sense that they’d have us all stay here in one place, though, if the fire is real. Don’t want anybody dashing back inside for more apples, say.’

‘No,’ I agree, and for the second time since we’ve been talking, this stranger and I lock eyes and my insidesexplode. This has never happened to me before in my life, this …feeling. It wasn’t like this with Craig, my ex, or any of the guys at uni. I’ve never had it on a night out or when I was a teen. If this man I have known for all of eight minutes took my hand again and led me away, to his house, to his life, to our life together for the rest of all time, I would go in a heartbeat. I’ve half a mind to lean in for a kiss, to get irrefutable proof that this isn’t all a sad-girl hallucination and I’m really sat on the top deck of the 149 with a bucket of chicken from KFC and tears in my eyes at how lonely I am.

‘This might be forward of me,’ the man says. ‘But bloody hell – you’re beautiful.’

Thank god. It’s really there, then, this connection. This instant connection.

Dare I say it?

I think this might even be love at first sight.

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