Not everyone gets to meet their burglar but if they did...

Twenty years ago I was living in a basement flat off Upper Street in north London. It was a crappy flat, with patched-up doors and the cheapest carpet money could buy – but I had great times there. My upscale cousin once came to a party and was visibly shocked that he had brought his girlfriend to such a place, which gave me a bohemian thrill.

There was a six-foot-square lightwell at the front on to which the living room looked out through a full-length glass door. I toyed with trying to think of this outside space as a yard and even put a lawn chair in it once – but there was no pleasure there, only London air, avian poop and direct sunlight for four minutes around high noon. Only on summer evenings would I open the door and let jazz waft up to mate with the traffic noise, as was right.

Through this door people passing on the pavement could also see clearly into the flat. Sometimes I would make eye contact with them and they would look at me curiously as if I were a museum exhibit: Homo Troglodytes. From that vantage it was also an easy joint for opportunists to case.

The kitchen too ran alongside the lightwell, with a small casement window that you could prop open to ventilate pasta steam. My new flatmate left it open and went away for the weekend and a small thief must have been able to climb though it, then opened the door to admit others. When I came home the glass door was swinging open and, inside, bedlam met my eyes.

You could see the thieves’ adrenaline in the way all the drawers had been tipped out, contents scattered violently. I had little of market value so not much was taken, just my telly and stereo, including my Cambridge Audio tape deck, which was a beautiful thing, technological overkill for its daily use, playing jazz albums recorded from vinyl on my family hi-fi. But the intrusion felt awful.

When the boundaries of a home are violated it shakes your confidence in things previously given and you don’t sleep well for a while. The theft is an injury and the callous disregard is an insult. I got burgled again years later and went through the steps much faster – anger, pity, acceptance, pointlessly backup new hard drive, upgrade window security. There’s a learning curve. But this was my first time.

The police were sympathetic but realistic, forensics found nothing, I tidied up. Vengeful anger consumed me for two weeks. I fantasised about tracking the thieves down and getting my stuff back with a satisfying combination of kung fu and moral lecture. But normal life resumed – until an amazing thing happened.

I was driving home. Residents’ parking had eaten up all the spaces and I often had to spiral outwards from my flat until I found a place to park some streets away. By one of these distant roads a teenaged boy stood. I turned my engine off and our eyes met. He suddenly snatched his baseball cap off and held it in front of his face.

I stared at him. There could be only one possible reason for his bizarre action: that he recognised me from photos in my flat, irrationally feared that if he knew me then I would know him. Regressing under stress, he sought to vanish like a small child playing hide and seek. That is a specific reason but it was the only possible reason.

Realising that he was not now invisible and had only incriminated himself he sheepishly lowered his cap. He could see my shock – that I knew, that I hadn’t known but now knew – and he was rooted to the spot. If he ran he would incriminate himself further.

I could walk up to him, grab his arm, frogmarch him to the police station and – what? Announce that he had taken his hat off. Well that didn’t sound right, plus he was just a kid, led astray by some grizzled Fagin. I had no desire to kung fu him and I had no desire to get him in trouble with his dark masters.

Plus, if it happened now I could call the cops or even just video the kid but there were no mobile phones then, I would have had to commit to entering a police station in the act of abducting a child. It’s not obvious. Is there such a thing as Citizen’s Kidnap?

We held each other’s eyes for many seconds and I don’t know that I’ve ever shared that frank a gaze before or since. His hat impulse had shocked us both out of our shells and we were two naked turtles under the stars. He is still one of the people closest to me. I don’t quite remember how we broke the spell. I think I gestured permission and he walked away. I let him go and I let my stuff go. What an idiot. Shit. ​Fuck it, my fucking tape deck.

Not everyone gets to meet their burglar. If that kid is reading this, I know you remember our unlikely encounter. Get in touch and let me know how your life turned out. Then you’ll see some kung fu.