Each step echoed quietly off of the walls of the airy room. Her eye travelled hungrily across various elaborate paintings, mentally counting their value within their polished copper frames, but she forced herself to resist- they weren’t what she had come for.

Besides, there was no way that they would fit inside her nan’s old knitting bag, which she carried draped over one arm.

She caught sight of her reflection in a far window, beyond which benign stars twinkled happily over the chaos of cars and people that was Piccadilly Circus. She saw herself- a young woman, lithe and lean as a tiger, auburn hair unbrushed and tangled over her black turtleneck, with navy skin-tight jeans. Her dark luscious eyes glittered with the adrenaline of yet another robbery.

People called her the cat burglar (a title she quite enjoyed) because she always managed to pull off her heists with next to no visible evidence, very often in rooms that were locked from the inside. Police were baffled. She almost snorted to herself as she thought about it. Only unexperienced idiots used doors.

She passed through into the next room, footsteps soft and slow, gazing open-mouthed at the sheer grandeur of the roof, gilded with gold leaf and carved into gorgeous designs. Then she came to her senses and cursed herself. Time-wasting, she chided silently.

But on the far wall, was the painting she had come for, smaller than the rest but worth so much more. She hurried over, pulling brown gloves over her hands to avoid fingerprints in case it was recovered.

Then it was wrapped in paper (her alibi if found carrying it on the street that it was a birthday present) and slipped into her trusty bag. She rushed, thrilled, back to the window which she’d opened yesterday when she came, hidden among tourists, to merely ‘look around’, and took a flying leap. She didn’t need ropes- she was tiger, after all.

By day, she was a university student. By night, though, she was the cat burglar.