On Saturday I leave my boyfriend's house and start walking to the station, doubling back within a few seconds to retrieve my new iPhone from his bedside table and then, a few minutes later, to collect my wallet from his desk. (I am pretty good at forgetting things I need to take with me when I go shopping.)
As I'm walking past the Hoover Building (former Art Deco factory, now massive Tesco) I decide the facade would make a great addition to my budding instagram album-come-diary.
At this point, over my shoulder reaches a hand.
Firstly, knowing my boyfriend planned to follow me into town a little later, I assumed he changed his mind and headed out behind me. But there's a logistical problem with this explanation. My boyfriend is black, and therefore has two black hands (and no white ones), and this is a white hand, so that's out.
Secondly I assume it must be someone else, messing with me, making fun of me for taking a picture of a Tesco. But, again, flawed reasoning - no-one I know lives out in this banal and obscure warehouse-dominated pocket of West London (perhaps for obvious reasons).
Third, I reason this must be someone I don't know grabbing my phone.
Fourth I realise someone I don't know is grabbing my phone.
Now, the whole process from thoughts one-through-four took only a matter of seconds, if that, but by then the villain of this piece had a definite advantage. His hands gripped around my phone, and my attempts to grasp firmly at the device were by that time, futile.
It turned out this man was riding a bike, which he inconveniently decided to accelerate on, and the few seconds for which I instinctually gave chase were an additional useless contribution on my behalf to retaining my phone.
Luckily, still being near my boyfriend's house, I headed back - a journey of barely two minutes in which I repeatedly became worked up, reached into my pocket to call someone and let them know how I was feeling only to remember the whole phoneless aspect of having my phone stolen.
The police managed to track the phone to a house in Acton, but were unable to make an arrest as I had no description, and, realising the phone had lead the police there, it had been switched off, or wiped. My parents discovered I could claim for the phone on their home insurance.
I felt 'shaken-but-fine' as you do after these events. Outwardly, I lamented certain details: forgetting my wallet; taking that picture; telling my boyfriend to follow later; anything that would have put me in a slightly different situation at the time of the event. Inwardly, when I was in silence, that hand just crept over my should again and again like an annoying gif, and I felt betrayed. Betrayed by my own brief expectations of friendly mockery, of flirtatiousness even, which turned out to be so inaccurate. These assumptions seemed to have been my downfall. Besides the obvious things, like not going out late at night to somewhere desolate, you can't predict when these things will happen, you can only react. And my reaction had been inadequate.
Having spent Saturday night in London and Sunday indoors cooking and watching football, Monday found me out on my own for the first time since the incident. At lunchtime I went to the local Pret, which was typically bustling, complete with predictable shoving and bashing. As a London, hell, even a Pret veteran (a Preteran?) I'm more than used to that scramble for an egg bloomer, but something about it was making me jumpy. Were all of these people trying to take something from me? How did I know that they were what they seemed most likely to be - regular business types buying lunch? Should I forever question my assumptions? A woman, perhaps a distant colleague, waved some popcorn under my nose as I queued and asked me to pay for her so she didn't have to join the back of the line, and it terrified me. I hastily made my excuses, thrust my card in the reader and grabbed my bag. I could feel it coming - a crying and shaking that's normally reserved for, well, I don't know what really. I sobbed a little, and then headed back to the office. I just wanted to be somewhere where I felt secure.
If I'd reacted faster, if I'd assumed the worst, if I had been a little less naive about the situation maybe I would still have an iPhone. Maybe. It wouldn't change the fact that someone had attempted to steal it I don't imagine, or the fact that there are people out there who steal things. Maybe I would even have been accosted by the thief, knocked over or punched if his first attempt had failed. Maybe it would have turned out better, maybe it would have turned out worse.
But it happened how it happened, and I'm actually glad. To react faster I would have to inhabit the world that I walked through Pret's swing-doors and into on Monday at lunchtime - where everything is not quite as it seems, where I see the possibility for secret danger. And that's not the world I choose to live in.
I will keep using my phone (once it's been replaced). I will keep shopping in busy eateries. I will keep assuming the best of a situation... And I will take out some proper insurance.
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