We were eating our chips with a tub of garlic sauce in the taxi, and then when we got back, all the lights were on. So we were like, ‘Oh, Zoe and Jess are already in.’ We knocked on the door and tried to open it, but the latch was on. We were like, ‘Let us in, it’s freezing!’ but no one answered.
I rang Zoe and could still hear the music in the background. At that moment, my heart dropped. We peered through the window and Zoe’s bedroom was upside down. All the drawers were pulled out. So I rang my friend Oliver, who was a rugby player and lived at the end of the road. I was like, ‘You need to help us get in.’
He banged open the door, but what had happened was that the burglars had got a paving slab and thrown it through the back window. The neighbour was like, ‘Oh yeah, I thought you just had your telly on loud.’ What would we be watching that sounds like a paving slab going through a window?
The thieves had literally stolen everything. They’d even taken Jess’s suitcase to put our things in. But obviously when the police turned up and we were all dressed as burglars, they thought we were taking the piss. They were like, ‘Just so you know, this is wasting police time. You will be given a caution.’
‘But we’ve really been burgled!’ I cried, swag bag in hand. They genuinely thought we were taking the mick until they went in the house.
Sarah’s mam Wendy came for us the next day. I just wanted to go home and burn my swag bag. When Wendy arrived she gave us all a huge hug. She made her way through the house. ‘Oh God, look at the state of it,’ she said. She was in my bedroom. ‘I can’t believe it, Scarlett, I am so sorry this has happened. They’ve trashed the place.’
‘No, Wendy. They just took the laptop from my bed.’ My room was a tip from getting ready. That’s probably why they only took my laptop; they must have thought they had already done that room.
I was gutted they had took me laptop. Not because it was expensive because it wasn’t, and it was like lobbing a sack of bricks around it was that heavy. But they’d also stolen the dongle that was in the laptop with all my work on. So then I had to go to uni and give them the crime number because obviously I bet they heard that story all the time. ‘Well, actually that work was stolen from me.’ But it really was.
I had to just do the work again in two days. I think it was my worst mark ever. I got like 40 per cent, so I just passed. But it was too much to do in two days. I’d been doing it for like a month and a half. I sort of still remembered the books that I’d used so it wasn’t as difficult. But still, trying to do six weeks’ work in two days was almost impossible.
I thought that the lecturers would have given us a bit of leeway or given us a bit longer. But they didn’t. They were like, ‘It’s still due in then.’
‘But I’ve just been through the traumatic event of being burgled while dressed as a burglar and now you’re telling me I’ve got to do all my work in two days!’
We can giggle about it now because we were dressed like that. I think if we’d just been in normal attire it would have been more of a traumatic event. They actually found some of our stuff – they were selling it in Leeds Market. One of the criminals was actually ‘friends’ with a couple of us on Facebook, and he’d seen that we were all on a night out. He was just a randomer that had seen our posts on Facebook. Firstly the picture that showed where we lived because we had stupidly put a photo of us outside the house, like, ‘Yay, new house!’ And the next post was us all dressed up, ‘Yay, we’re going for a big night out!’
I think what they had done is they’d just added loads of people who were friends on Facebook with the university. They knew freshers were going to have new laptops and stuff. It has taught me to be a lot more careful on social media.
So much that sometimes I even block my own mam off Facebook. Now this sounds harsh but she would call up and be like, ‘You cannot go out dressed like that,’ so I would just block her for a few nights so she couldn’t stalk me, and then add her back again. Or she would say, ‘I thought you had an essay to finish so why are you going on another night out?’ To which I always replied, ‘Mam, would I even be a student if I didn’t do all-nighters and finish my essays at the last minute in the library?’
I decided to get a job to pay for my new laptop. I remember sitting in a little office in the Topshop in York about to have an interview for what would be the first in a long line of student jobs. It was quite easy to get part-time jobs in a busy student city. I had only been to uni for three weeks and I was already running out of new clothes. ‘I’ll apply for Topshop,’ I thought. ‘You get 60 per cent off; I’ll have a new wardrobe before long.’
That job lasted three months. I take my hat off to Topshop girls; they make such an effort for work and that just isn’t me. They would come in looking like they’d just walked off set from a Black Eyed Peas music video, wearing black lipstick matched with super-skinny jeans with some sort of
