Lost or Stolen?

I looked up at the storm clouds. I looked down at my sandaled feet. I hoped my lovely shoes weren’t going to get wet. And there on the ground before me lay a green Lloyds TSB credit card.

I wasn’t going to walk past it, so I stooped low and looked about. Out of one of the many fried chicken eateries on our High Street stepped a young man in a black suit, with a zip-up portfolio tucked under his arm. He looked like a door-to-door sales man. His shoes were polished, but his tie was too thin.

“That’s my friend’s. I saw him drop it.” He held out his hand, but I wasn't just going to pass it over to him. On asking where his friend was, he pointed inside Chef’s Delight to another man in a black suit with a zip-up portfolio. He was buying some chips. I stepped into the takeaway. I thought to myself that the smell would get into my hair and clothes.

“Your friend says he saw you drop this credit card.” Both young men looked at one another, said nothing, but were exchanging some kind of unspoken brainwaves which I didn’t trust. I looked from one man to the other. The Chef stopped bagging up chips and watched too. “So...” I continued, “what is your name? I guess it should correspond with the one on the card.” More glances exchanged. And, after some moments, he ventured “Alan?” as though he were questioning his own name and just hoping and praying that he’d given the right answer.

And, trying to emulate the best quizmasters out there, I asked him to have a go at the surname instead. He got that wrong too. Zero points out of two. At this precise moment, the whole merry little web of dishonesty started to unravel and I felt really cross and incensed by their lying.

“So neither name corresponds. Why did you tell me you had seen your friend drop it then? If he did drop it, that means he would have been in possession of somebody else’s credit card, wouldn’t it?” And my rant went on for quite a while. It felt good. Just before I walked out of the fried hell-hole, I congratulated them both for being such a couple of dishonest buggers and even managing to present themselves as such on the CCTV up in the corner of the café. Maybe they'd think twice about it next time.

I stepped back out onto the High Street and spent the next twenty minutes walking in the wrong direction, peeping out from behind corners and then doubling back when I knew neither of them was following me. I learnt how to do that from my brother's Usborne Spy's Guidebook from when we were little.

My sandals stayed dry.