Page 4 of August's Thief
Dawson’s lips pursed. “They skipped that episode ofThe Crown, didn’t they?”
I looked back to find his extraordinary eyes examining my burn. His frank gaze travelled from my left temple, where my thick black hair refused to grow over shiny, tight skin, across to my ragged stump of an ear and then down along the line of my cheek and jaw. Except it wasn’t a line, more of a purple treacly slide, disappearing below my collar.
“It makes you look pissed off all the time, where it pulls your mouth down.” He indicated to his own beautifully shaped lower lip, coated with a light sheen of gloss matching his nails.
I am pissed off all the time. “Yes, it does.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Sometimes. In cold weather. Why were you arrested?”
“Shoplifting,” he answered, taking a huge bite of scone. He spoke as he chewed. “From the supermarket. I don’t nick much, just a bit of stuff here and there that takes my fancy.”
Oh joy, I was consuming stolen goods.
“Not Tesco,” he added reassuringly. “Nor Sainsbury’s—I’m banned from Sainsbury’s, actually. Today I was caught in the big Lidl down the road from here. God knows how; they’ve got shite security cameras.”
I frowned. “Don’t the police normally just take a statement after an arrest for petty shoplifting, then send a fine through the post? I thought they were too under-resourced for much more these days?”
“Not when they’ve caught you eight times this year already,” he answered, cheerfully dabbing at crumbs on his plate. His hands were smaller than mine, I noticed, and elegant. “And I might have offered the copper who arrested me a blow job. He didn’t take me up on it,” he asserted as my eyes widened. “His loss.”
Unable to come up with an adequate response, I sipped at my coffee. Not as bad as I’d expected. Dawson eyed my dry-looking scone hungrily. His scrawny frame needed it more than mine, and I indicated he could have it. He watched as I spread jam for him. “You don’t sound like you’re… um… very good at shoplifting,” I ventured.
“I’m amazing at it!” Dawson shook his blond head vigorously. “I nick stuff all the time—not always from Lidl; you have to spread the love around a bit, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
Anxiety flashed across his face. “The copper warned me I might get a custodial sentence this time. Like, two or three weeks or something. Said they’ve brought in a new law to teach repeat offenders a lesson.” He licked jam off the knife. “That would be a fucking disaster. Hopefully, I’ll get away with it.”
In three noisy gulps, he chugged back most of his coffee, his good humour returned. “So, August Angel. Why’s a rich, posh bloke like you on a dating app?”
I spluttered with laughter. “Isn’t it evident? More to the point, why areyouon a dating app?”
He grinned at me then, wide and impish. A grin of pure mischief and, for a fleeting second, if my brain could recall the necessary muscle groups, I’d have grinned back. “Saw some bloke logging into it next to me on the Tube. For a laugh, I pinched his access details. I don’t get out much and thought I might score a free dinner or something. Changed his name to mine, blagged the online interview, then had an appointmentwith that weird bot and everything. Simples. I nearly pissed myself laughing when they said they had the perfect match for me.” Those beguiling eyes latched on to mine; tearing my gaze away was hard.
“You, it turns out.” Pushing his food aside, his expression turned serious again. He leaned across the table and whispered, “So I’m guessing you must be dodgy too. What have you been done for?”
He raised a smile from me after all. It didn’t happen often; smiling contorted my mouth into an ugly snarl. Dawson didn’t seem fazed, though. “I haven’t been done for anything! I… I—” I trailed off.What did I do?What defined me? Moping? Aimlessly meandering around art galleries, alone? Buying paintings very few could afford? Wandering the estate like the ghost of Christmas past? Or hurtling down country lanes in the Porsche late at night, at crazy speeds, half hoping I’d hit a tree like my father before me?
“I manage the family estate,” I said at last, sounding awfully prim. “I inherited it when I turned twenty-one. It has a couple of farms, land, some houses, and… and antiques and things.”
Dawson threw me a wry look. “Cool story, bro, but it needs more dragons. What do you really do?”
Oftenwish I’d died in the crash too.“Exactly as I said. I… Not much, I’m afraid.”
For once, Dawson was lost for words. Slipping a couple of sugar and ketchup sachets into his pocket, he stood. “I’ll nip around the supermarket for a few things, then meet you back at the car. You can give me a lift home.”
He didn’t take long. The sky had darkened, and rain drizzled down the windscreen by the time Dawson tapped on it. He stashed a couple of bags in the tiny space behind our seats, keeping hold of one. “Bloody hell, it’s cold,” he commented as he climbed into the passenger seat. With a flash of white teeth,he shook his head like a dog, sprinkling droplets of rain over my pristine interior. His thin little T-shirt was wet through.
I reached into the narrow space behind his seat. “Here, I have an old sweater you can borrow.”
“Ta.”
We shared an awkward moment as he inclined his head towards me, indicating I should drop the opening of the sweater over him. “My hands are full,” he explained, rustling the bag. “You need a bigger car, Gussie.”
In the way one would dress a child, I found myself easing the garment over his head, and he stroked the soft wool admiringly. Knitted from light-grey Italian cashmere, the sweater was not old at all. It suited him, although it was way too big. “You can keep it if you like. It doesn’t fit me anymore,” I lied.
As he began issuing directions, he delved into his shopping and retrieved a bag of boiled sweets. Humbugs, by the colour of them, like stripey black-and-white pebbles; I hadn’t tasted a humbug in years. With hardly a pause in his commentary, he popped one into his own mouth, then unwrapped a second and leaned over to me. “Open wide.”
