The Thief by Ruth Rendell Page B

it up, ran down the stairs with it and out into the street. The place they lived in was at a crossroads with traffic lights. It was early morning and the traffic was heavy with big lorries waiting at the red light before taking the M1 up to the north. Polly was excited and breathing heavily. When the traffic light turned green, she threw the Walkman into the road, in front of a big truck. She heard the crunching cracking sound when the huge wheels went over it.
    Tom knew he had left it somewhere in the room and he hunted everywhere for it. Of course he asked Polly if she had seen it. She looked him in the eye and told him she hadn’t.
    ‘I don’t believe you.’
    ‘Believe what you like,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen your stupid old Walkman. You must have left it somewhere.’
    What could he do about it? He walked out on her the next day but not before he told her he had seen the broken blue and silver pieces in the road.
    Polly wasn’t alone for long. She started seeing Alex Swain and she fell in love with him. He fell in love with her too and they moved in together. Alex was different from any boyfriend she had had before. He was five years older with a house of his own and a car and a good job. Apart from that, he was a grown-up person who made rules for life and kept them. As well as being very good-looking, Alex was kind and loving and, above all, an honest man who valued truth-telling. He often said how much he hated lying, even the kind of lies people tell to get out of going somewhere they don’t want to go. Even the lies they tell to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. If you spoke firmly and with kindness, he said, you need not lie.
    Being with him changed Polly’s life. Or she thought it had changed her life. She found that Alex trusted her. He took it for granted what she said to him was the truth. He believed everything she said. And because she loved him she mostly told him the truth. It wasn’t hard to be truthful with him.
    He is making me a better person, she said to herself. I am young enough to change. It’s lucky for me I met him while I was still young. Another thing he did for her was that he taught her not to hate people. It wasn’t worth it, he said. And now she was with him no one seemed to hurt or upset her or if they did she had learned to forget it. She no longer took other people’s things and broke them. If they were unkind to her or let her down in some way, she didn’t hate them as she once would have done. All that was in the past. She was different.
    ‘I’ve never known you so happy, Polly,’ her mother said. ‘Being with Alex must be doing you good.’
    And her friend Louise said, ‘I thought he was a bit too much of a do-gooder but I’ve changed my mind now I see he’s making you happy.’

CHAPTER TWO
    A LEX SAW THE SUITCASE before Polly did. It was quite a small suitcase, orange with a black trim and a black and orange strap, surely the only one like it in the airport.
    ‘He won’t lose it,’ he said. ‘No one will pick that up by mistake.’
    Polly laughed. ‘I’d get tired of it if it was mine.’
    The man with the suitcase wore a black suit and a bright yellow shirt. He was ahead of them in the queue at the check-in and there were three people between them and him. The queue moved very slowly.
    ‘You may as well go,’ said Polly. ‘There’s no point in you waiting. I’ll be back on Friday.’
    ‘I just thought I’d like to see you safely through the fast-track but if you’re really sure. I do have things to do.’
    Alex kissed her and she watched him go back the way they had come. He looked back twice, waving. The man in black and yellow had reached the check-in desk and put his orange case on the conveyor. His name in large black letters on an orange label was easy to read: Trevor Lant . One thing to be said for a bag that colour, thought Polly, was that you’d see it the moment it bowled out on to the belt. There wouldn’t be any puzzling over