We all have our reasons for stealing. Terry is in a hurry to grow up, Peter spends too much time attached to a machine for his lungs, Steve just likes a giggle and I’m bored shitless of being skint. Peter has stuff, Steve and Terry too, if a little less; none of them has to choose between sweets or school dinner. All each of us needs is a little courage for every Saturday to be like Christmas.
Shoplifting is one of three things we fill our time with: we lose days messing around on our bikes, and an hour here and there looking at girly magazines. Smoking and drinking are ships on the horizon.
Magazines are kept in a carrier bag in the brambles near Peter’s house. We don’t admit it but we are all just trying to work out what it is we are looking at. No-one really says much, we stand in a circle swapping magazines, with the occasional “Look at the size of those” to break the silence. When we are bored of that and have enough of wheelies in the road, we head into town. From Peter’s, it’s all downhill: we freewheel the whole way, head close to the handlebars, adrenaline pumping. Idea to arrival is so quick it feels like time travel.
We have a system. In every shop, whatever the line up, we get the same results. Today, Steve looks after the bikes around the corner; Terry goes in first, and stands by the magazines near the door. Peter follows a minute later, walking straight past him to the counter; soon after, I enter, queuing behind Peter, blocking the owner’s view of Terry. A quarter of sherbet lemons, a half of strawberry bonbons, a few humbugs, each decanted onto the scales, a sweet or two added or lifted until the arm of the scales points right at the number, and then into paper bags. As the shopkeeper turns to reach the highest jar, Peter coughs, and Terry knows to slip out of the shop, and away down a side street on his bike, pockets - inside and out - laden. Peter pays and leaves. I buy a Star Bar and follow. We meet up in a back alley, feeling like bandits, like men. We stand in a circle as we had by the brambles, this time not short of conversation.
“Steve, here’s your sweets, choose a can…Peter wants the Lilt...here, Peter, Monster Munch, and Penthouse, YES!…Mark, a Nutty, the footie stickers, your sweets and a can of Cresta.”
Whenever anyone said ‘Cresta’ we chorus “IT’S FROTHY MAN” from the advert. Terry has a Pepsi, I suspect just so he can hold up the can, cheek-boney smile alight, and recite the entire advert.
“Go on Terry, do it, do the advert!”
Steve loves it even more than the rest of us.
Terry jumps into side-on, extending a horizontal arm and a single finger, drawing an arc across the front of us like Elvis as he recites it, perfectly as ever.
“Lipsmacking, thirst quenching, ace tasting, motivating, cool buzzing, high talking, fast living, ever giving, cool fizzing...Pepsi!”
We all cheer. However often he does it, we are impressed.
I’ve got quite good in the sweet buying role, taking the right amount of time choosing, asking if the new toffee bonbons were as good as the chocolate ones, and having the shopkeeper fill a few small bags with different sweets. I know how to keep him busy and chatting.
Terry has stepped up to solo raids. He walks into Smiths, looks at records or whatever, before picking something off the shelf and walking out calmly, just like that. Terry has Elvis’ cheekbones, he boxes, girls love him. We love him. When he said he liked my new school trousers - a charcoal/slate blue that was on the border of what was allowed - it made my year. If Terry likes them, likes me, then they, I, must be alright.
Maybe our routine has become too familiar or too easy, but today something takes me over. I don’t even consider it, I just stand up from the bench we are all chatting on and walk into the newsagent/bookshop. It is busy. I pick up the new Smash Hits. Bowie is on the cover. The words to Boys Keep Swinging are inside. My heart is firing hard. It feels like I’m in my own film. Everyone is milling around, their words muddled and distant. I am invisible. Bowie tells me that nothing stands in your way, when you’re a boy: I believe him. Terry would slide this inside his coat, cool as you like, pick up another magazine for 20 seconds before putting that back on the shelf and walking out.
I slide the Smash Hits inside my coat, pick up Shoot! and after a few seconds flicking through, I place it back on the shelf. There is no way back. I imagine myself as one of the Tomorrow People that used to fill my Monday after-school telly, ready to jaunt - to vanish from this place and appear in another. I turn to the door but move as if in one of those dreams where everything softens and my eyes won’t stay open. Thick invisible elastic draws me towards my bike, ordinarily only seconds away, through the treacly, tarmacky ground. My head jerks back. My coat is caught on something. I pull but it doesn’t release.
“Easy tiger, you’re coming with me.”
The owner has me by the hood. People are watching. I walk alongside him for the few paces to his office, like nothing is happening.
His voice fades out, like Dad’s when he tells me off. I get the idea that he might call the police, tell my parents, let the school know but while the owner says what he needs to say my brain is full of Bowie telling me how heaven loves me and how the clouds part for me.
I am still emotionally scarred from my one foray into shoplifting aged 12. I'd become friends with someone who turned out to be consumate at it which meant that I got caught and she did not. I was in Colchester and after being stopped by the store detective, taken to the office and the police called, was then frogmarched through the street to the nearby police station by the coppers. We bumped into my grandparents on the way which was devastating as I adored them. I was roundly told off at the station and when my grandparents told my parents my mother went mental and nearly shook the teeth from my head. My father's response was to drive me back to the store in Colchester so I could apologise to every member of staff there. I still hold my hands in the air above my waist whenever I am at a consmetics counter for fear of anyone thnking I am on the pinch.
I always favoured sliding Marvel or DC comics into a bigger mag at WH Smith and then paying. Most of the staff couldn’t give a toss and if the comic was found I’d have plausible deniability.