A Sea Change
into at the coffee shop. She was sitting at the bottom of the bank outside his beach hut. She looked as if she’d stepped out of a 1950s film set, with her curves and her high ponytail and her retro dress. She really was very pretty, and he wondered why she was here on her own. Maybe she was waiting for her mates, or her boyfriend? Maybe that was why she hadn’t let him buy her a drink, because there was another bloke in the picture.
    Craig told himself to stop staring but he wasn’t sure what else to do. There was certainly no point in trying to surf while the beach was this busy. Even though there were supposed to be separate areas for surfers and swimmers, Craig could see it was chaos in the water. He wasn’t a good enough surfer to avoid hitting someone if they got in his way. He’d wait until later this evening, when the crowds had gone. The waves would still be good. In the meantime,he put up his striped deckchair in front of the hut and sat watching all the people on the beach. He wondered who they were and where they had come from as little dramas unfolded. A teenage boy fussed over his gran, making sure she was comfortable. Two small toddlers fought over a spade until their mother intervened. A young couple stretched out on a rug together, sharing the headphones on an iPod.
    His eyes kept straying back to the girl with the ponytail. She was still on her own. Maybe he should go and talk to her, or offer her another drink? If his friends were here, he knew they would be encouraging him, but without them he felt shy. Maybe she wanted to be on her own and didn’t want company? Craig decided in the end he would leave her alone. He picked up his book instead and started to read.
    Jenna spread her things out around her, then rubbed some suncream on her arms and the back of her neck. She didn’t want to burn in the heat of the sun. From behind her sunglasses, she examined all the groups of people around her. She made sure she knew exactly who was in each group, and how the dynamics worked. Small families with toddlers would be the besttarget. The parents of small children were always distracted.
    Jenna had never stolen anything in her life before, but she knew plenty of people who had. Members of her family were always coming home with knocked-off gear or things that had ‘fallen off the back of a lorry’. Her mum was always sticking stuff in her pocket when she was out shopping. It was a way of life for them, but Jenna hadn’t had to stoop that low before.
    She felt sick that it had come to this, but she was desperate. Her mum’s words came back to her time and again. ‘You’re no better than the rest of us.’ Well, maybe not, but at least she’d had a go at getting out there and trying to make a better life for herself. Anyway, she reminded herself, this was a one-off. She told herself she was only getting back what had been stolen from her a couple of weeks ago. She knew deep down that was no excuse, of course, but she didn’t know what else to do. It was either this or be thrown out of her room by The Prof on Monday.
    Jenna looked around the beach again. She knew all the rules of pickpocketing. When you came from the kind of family she did, you picked up these things along the way. She knew how to identify an easy victim, a ‘mark’, andthe best conditions to steal from them. You had to wait until they were off their guard and weren’t paying attention. The beach was perfect for that, because people were concentrating so hard on having a good time that they forgot to look after their valuables. Of course, it was better to have an accomplice, a partner in crime, but that was out of the question. Jenna could hardly have asked one of her mates to come and help her.
    She decided to try the ice-cream queue first. There were three vans parked along the beach, and the searing heat meant that the lines outside them were already long. She waited nearby until she saw a harassed-looking father join the queue with
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