I passed it on the first lap of my nightly walk route.
On the second lap, it’s still there.
Conspicuously still there.
The reusable shopping bag sits in the middle of the footpath, its handle flapping in the breeze, something in it with enough heft to anchor it to the ground.
I look around the place a bit but don’t see anyone.
No one walking behind me, or hanging about on the far side of the street. I take my AirPods out and listen. No footsteps, no one walking, jogging away or towards me for that matter. No voices, no one having a joke at my expense.
I remember this TV show a few years back. One of those social experiment-type jobs where they left a wad of cash on the ground in the middle of a busy high street with a circle chalked around it, and hundreds of people just passed it by. A couple of them slowed and gave it a second glance, but it was hours before anyone pocketed it. And when they did, they didn’t hang about, just melted back into the crowd.
There are no crowds here though, no one being tempted by this plastic bag seemingly placed, so purposefully, dead centre in the middle of the concrete.
Curiosity and imagination combine as I recall the wad of cash and wonder what might be in the bag. Actual stacks of cash are heavy, enough to keep the bag in place the way it is here.
But what if it’s not cash?
It could be shit, actual shit, and there is some actual kid or group of actual kids watching, waiting for me to put my hand inside and jump out laughing with their smartphones held aloft ready to plaster me across TikTok.
Or it could be something much worse altogether. A dead animal. A discarded puppy. Or an unwanted pet thrown from a car. Even more unthinkable than that, an unwanted baby, newborn to some teenage mother who has been hiding her pregnancy for months and sneaked out of the house to get rid of it tonight, returning home right now to a loving family none the wiser.
One of the reasons I like walking this route is the location. It’s a busy, industrial area by day, but a badly lit, near-deserted shadow world of box-shaped warehouses and data centres by night, the only living souls the uninterested security guards who walk the perimeters every once in a while on autopilot, with their faces buried in YouTube.
It’s also the perfect location for shady characters in souped-up German cars to meet, idling in the dark corners of empty car parks in twos or threes behind tinted windows. The kind of characters that make suspicious minds question, that make police cars slow down and take an interest. Which makes me wonder if it’s a kilo of something with an estimated street value inside that bag. Or a weapon that could be linked to the recent offing of some gangland figure who drives a souped-up German car.
I have to know. I stoop, loop my fingers through the handles, and pick the bag up. I test its weight. Same kind of mass as a bag of sugar. Feels solid. I’d love to peek inside, but not here. I’ll take it somewhere a bit more well-lit.
I walk right past the petrol station at the end of the block, which would have been perfect. And the five-a-side pitches near where I live, with their floodlights. And end up taking the thing into the house. I place it carefully on the kitchen table and make a cup of tea. I sit down and stare at the bag, willing it to reveal its treasures. I spend so much time imagining all the problems in my life that could be solved by my selling whatever is in the bag to people who would know what to do with it, that I know will be unable to deal with the disappointment if it just turns out to be someone’s half-eaten lunch.
So I decide that is exactly what is. And put it in the bin.