After it happened I rang the bank. I suppose I wanted them to tell me that they dealt with this sort of incident all the time. That I wasn't the only fool who did this kind of thing. It was the end of the month. I was overdrawn and needed to pay a bill. So naturally, being broke, I took my bank card and walked away from the €150 I'd just requested from the ATM. It's not that common, they told me. Quite rare, actually.
I'm a loser. There is a good reason why I always identified with that particular Beatles song. And it's not just money I tend to lose, although the week before the ATM incident I did mislay my purse, which also contained €150 and a €50 gift voucher I'd been given for my birthday. I know, tune up your violins.
I've been thinking about where it all ended up. Was it spent wisely? Were all the objects I left behind me given good homes? The debris of my life, the stuff I've managed through carelessness not to accumulate, is out there somewhere in the universal Lost and Found. I'm only going to ask this once. Can I have it back, please?
If it did come back to me, a pre-Christmas miracle stored in a fleet of articulated trucks, I'd set up a second-hand shop. My stock would be plentiful and include several almost-new mobile phones. Quirky handbags. Leather wallets. There'd be a very large, if slightly tacky, jewellery section. I could supply passports for cash. The cosmetics stand would be impressive. Ditto the gloves 'n' hats department.
Some of these items would still be in their wrappers. I can still see those heart-shaped earrings now, glistening in their cellophane, never to be seen again after I left my shopping bag in a restaurant. When my head gets cold I think of my velvet green cap with the sparkly brooch, nestling in a dusty corner of a pub somewhere. And my favourite shoes left in a bag in a nightclub and sent on to a charity shop after I'd been too slow to ask if they'd been found. I hope somebody is enjoying those flat black leather shoes with applique flower detail as much as I used to.
I've lost myself in relationships. Lost my head in an argument. Temporarily lost my mind, lost my heart, lost my reason. I don't watch Lost, but years ago I got lost with a friend in Sandy Row, in Belfast, the warning "don't get lost up the Sandy Row" still echoing in our ears. I lost the keys of a house in Birmingham where I had a babysitting job. The neighbours had to break in through a window so that my charge and I could get in that freezing winter night. I've lost a few jobs along the way.
I turned happily away from the ATM that day unaware of my most recent loss. Within 20 seconds I realised what I had done. I ran back to the machine, and there was my €150, gone. I had walked away without my money from a cash machine before, but in the past I'd always realised my mistake before the cash disappeared. I heard somewhere that the money gets sucked back in if it isn't taken out. I thought maybe I had a chance.
I ran into the bank. Asked about the transaction. The man said he'd know the next day whether my money had been sucked back in. If the money is left for more than 60 seconds the machine grabs it back, and it can be traced to the person's account. The next morning he told me it looked hopeful. Several hundred euro was unaccounted for, and my €150 might be among the stash. A phone call cleared it up. My money was not in the stash.
They'd had a look at the footage from the CCTV camera at the ATM. They saw me rummaging in my satchel for my card, they saw me make a transaction, they saw me walk away. About 10 seconds later they saw a man in a red jacket approach the machine. They saw him take the money. They saw him go into the bank. They saw him stand in the queue.
I like to think he was going to hand it in. Or maybe he was going to lodge it in his own account. But a few seconds later he turned around and walked out of the bank, probably passing me on the way. If you found €150 at a cash machine what would you do? Most people I asked weren't able to answer straight away.
My boyfriend says the losses are like a pay-off for the way I live my life. Careless, he says. Carefree, I like to think. I don't tend to check my pockets for keys, check whether I have the same number of bags leaving as I did coming in or check if I got the money from the bank or whether my mobile phone is on me or sitting in the back of another taxi.
Friends laughed when I strung a purple ribbon through my phone and wore it around my neck, but it's the longest I've had a phone without losing it. The thing is, I lost the ribbon a while back. The phone is living on borrowed time.
