Phone sense

It’s strange what stays with you. Not the noise but the faces – the way the air felt afterwards, brittle and off key.

‘They have taken my phone!’ she gasped. And sure enough two youngsters scampered off, booty in hand, leaping from the bus and into the crowd. For a moment I sat there wondering if I should offer her a banana – the only thing I had to hand – before realising it had gone soft and slightly rotten in the day’s heat. It was an absurd, although somehow easier to manage than the look on her face.

She had two children with her, both wide-eyed and yet she was the first to recover ‘It’s alright,’ she said briskly ‘It was my work phone – I have another.’ The words were too tidy somehow, rehearsed even. For a moment I wondered if the whole thing was real, or some small performance staged for the inevitable audience – the kind of trick that only makes sense to an insurance firm.

There was a touch of theatre about it all – as if she had played the scene before. Somewhere out in gangland, there was her partner in crime waiting for the next mobile to tumble into his lap. The children knew their marks too, silent, watchful, almost professional.

The scene was somehow artificial – but the accomplice rang true to me; out in the hood waiting. It was a scam made flesh: phones easy losses, returns siphoned away into a quiet organised racket.

I felt foolish for wanting to feed her a banana and a small shock at the quickness of my perception – that I could spot the possibility of a set-up in seconds. Is it experience, maturity or just a sharpened instinct? Either way it was unsettling, just how easily the ordinary can mask something much darker.

I rolled my eyes at the bus driver, who returned the gesture with a knowing tilt of his head. The rest of the passengers remained quiet, a low hum of murmurs and shuffling feet. Some pretended not to notice, others watched with mild curiosity, each absorbed in the familiar rhythm of a city bus. 

It was as if life refused to pause for anything unusual leaving the small drama to unfold then disappear into the ether, firmly lodged in my imagination.

There was nothing more that happened, even telling it back feels bizarre; it was too contrived, too tidy to be a random phone snatch. Every detail from the timing to the reactions suggested something rehearsed, a convenient performance acceptable to peoples’ prejudices but very far from the whole picture. I’ve practically convinced myself at this point – and yet still it lingers – impossible to shake from the mind.