The Thief Read Online Free PDF

got this crazy idea that she would know it was his house when she saw it? Did she think he would have painted it orange?
    Of course she couldn’t go there. He would recognise her. Not if she wore a long dark coat. Not if she tied her head up in a scarf like the Moslem women wore and put on dark glasses. Was she just going there to look? To make sure the Trevor Lant whose money she had, lived there? And how would she do that?
    It was only four-thirty in the afternoon but dark by now. She should go soon if she meant to be back when Alex came home. If she was going to return Trevor Lant’s money she should also return his clothes. Keeping them was stealing too. Outside it was icy in the bitter wind. Her hands shaking again, she took the plastic bag out of the wastebin and for the first time looked at what was inside. Two T-shirts, two pairs of underpants, two pairs of socks, the yellow shirt he had worn on the flight out and a red shirt. She wrote a note for Alex in case she wasn’t home in time: Gone to Louise’s. Back soon. He had never liked Louise. He wouldn’t phone her.
    Alex had the car. She could get to Bristol Road by bus and on foot. Suddenly she was aware of how tired she was. Of course she had hardly slept at all last night and she hadn’t been able to sleep when she got home. A drink would help. He had called her an alcoholic and maybe he was right. Who cared? When all this was over and the money and the clothes were back with him, she’d give up drinking. Alex would like that. No more gin, though. Not at this hour, as her mother might say. She opened a bottle of red wine and poured herself a big glass.
    When she had drunk half the wine she put on her long black coat, wrapped a grey and black scarf round her head and put on dark sunglasses. This get-up made her look strange but round here a great many people looked strange. Should she take the money and the clothes with her? And then what? Leave them on his doorstep? No, find some other way of returning them. She put the envelope in the drawer of her desk, the clothes inside the washing machine, and drank the rest of the wine.
    She had to wait a long time for the bus. About twenty people were waiting, mostly in silence, tired people who had been at work all day. It was very cold and a few thin flakes of snow were falling. She was glad of the scarf she had wrapped round her head. A woman stared at her as if she’d never seen dark glasses before but Polly kept them on even when the bus came. Most people inside the bus sat silent, looking gloomy, but some chattered and laughed, drank from fizzy drink bottles, ate crisps, sandwiches, chocolate. Babies cried, children climbed over people and over seats. One of the little girls was the age Polly had been when she cut up the library book. She got off a long way from Bristol Road and began to walk.
    A lot of women were dressed like her, without the glasses. No one took any notice of her. Once she had turned down a side street there were no more people. Cars were parked nose to tail all along both sides. Lights shone dimly behind coloured curtains. A long-dead Christmas tree had been thrown out on the pavement with rubbish bags. She had looked up Bristol Road in the street atlas and was sure she knew the way but it seemed a very long way. She kept thinking she would meet him coming along. Or the footsteps following her would be his. She turned round once and then again but no one was there. When she reached the corner and saw the street name, Bristol Road, she felt too afraid to go on. Her watch told her it was nearly six. Alex would be home in ten minutes.
    She clenched her icy hands, wishing she had brought gloves. She forced herself to walk, to push one foot in front of the other. Bristol Road seemed darker than the streets she had come along. The street lamps had long spaces between them. There were more trees and in front gardens there were evergreens, the kind you see in graveyards, the kind that never lose