The burglary.

"But stealing is wrong,” his young sister says. Her face is serious. Her tone is lecturing. “Mum wouldn’t like it – if she knew...”

“Who gives a fuck if it’s wrong, Anya?” It takes all his self control not to react the way he did this morning, and he keeps his fists bunched in his pocket. She is useful to him. Being small, she can slip by unnoticed. Who would suspect such an angelic child, with her engaging smile and her blonde curls, of being a common criminal?

The look he’s given her is enough. “I know,” she says, hanging her head. She resists the urge to suck her thumb. As he keeps reminding her, she is a big girl now. “I’m sorry.”

He looks at the house again, at the expensive black cars parked outside with tinted windows. At the elaborately sculptured garden. In the town somewhere, there’s a siren. He listens nonchalantly. It’s far away and it’s not like they care, is it. You don’t get things like sirens here. That’s what makes it so easy, the stupid fools.

“Think about all the gold,” he says. “It’ll fetch a good price. Just imagine it, Anya. Imagine what we could buy with it. I could buy you a necklace like the one you lost.” Actually, she didn’t lose it – he sold it, but she doesn’t need to know about that. Ah, fuck it. She probably knows anyway.

“Yep, it’s easy with these fools,” he says under his breath, climbing up the steps to the open double doors. His sister follows him tentatively. “They get careless.” He presses his hand against his coat to make sure that the knife is still there. Anya doesn’t need to know about that, either.

He walks painstakingly on the soft carpet, Anya having little choice but to follow him. At one point he turns around sharply as he can almost hear voices coming from the garden. These paintings on the wall must be valuable, though he doesn’t know the first thing about art. But those things can go for thousands. Millions even. Thinking about it fills him with an almost sexual excitement. Things would go nicely for him then. He pictures himself walking down the street in designer clothes worth thousands, a stylish hat, a pretty girl on his arm, to a house not unlike this one, a garden, kitchen staff. You can get rich this way, really rich. He half admires one elaborately-carved door frame as Anya disappears into the kitchen to look through the cutlery drawers.

These people probably got their mansion like this. Them, or one of their ancestors. That’s usually how it worked. You were more likely to make it like this than those poor fools working all hours of the day for peanuts. Idiots like his mother, scrubbing floors for twelve hours a day.

He barely hears Anya, which is a good sign. She is learning. Maybe she’ll to do things by herself soon, although the thought doesn’t fill him with confidence. He calmly walks upstairs into the master bedroom and his eyes fall on a small, locked box on the bedside table. His eyes catch sight of a portrait opposite the bed. And suddenly his fantasy is destroyed by utter revulsion and loathing. You greedy fucker, you dirty bastard. Why do you want to live like them?

“I’ve got them,” Anya says, afraid to look at him. She passes him the boxes of crystalware and silver cutlery in her small hands. He simply takes them from her, and walks over to the box. She looks around the room, at the king-sized bed. And he hears her intake of breath. His eye wanders to a newspaper on the bed and his anger returns. He clenches the knife in his pocket.

“I don’t like it here.” Anya opens the commode and out of the corner of his eye he catches the glittering dresses as she pulls them off their hangers one by one, folds them up neatly. He ignores her, as he feels up and down the mattress. Is there anything stashed here? No. He takes the knife from his pocket and slashes the sheet covering the mattress. They’ll know he was here. He kicks the table hard, so that the expensive light smashes on the floor.

He slashes the bed again with his knife, as the newspaper falls to the floor. He imagines some spoiled, jumped up tart pouting her lips and looking over her husband’s shoulder as he reads it. He stuffs it into his bag. They can use it for firewood tonight. Pity they can’t use the whole fucking house.

He’s not sure why he hates these people so much, so ferociously it surprises even him. For what they have, or what they are.

He picks at the thread on his coat, the only remaining sign that a yellow star was once there. Sown on by his mother, because she didn’t want anyone “in trouble”, as if they weren’t in trouble already by being alive, by simply living and breathing. Never getting in trouble didn’t do her any good, did it. The Fuhrer’s portrait stares at them from the other side of the room.

“We’ve got what we need,” he says. “We’ll go.”

Anya nods at him, and he lifts the heavy sack onto his back. Silently they walk down the marble steps, not speaking. He feels as though they understand each other.