LONDON LETTER/FRANK MILLAR: The knife clinched it. As she assessed her assailant, Sinéad figured she and her friend Clare could easily overwhelm him. "He was a wee runt really. If it hadn't been for the big knife I'd have kicked his ass." But the knife, like the man wielding it, was shaking madly. They took the wise course and offered no resistance.
The standoff lasted just a few minutes as Sinéad turned-out her pockets to show she wasn't carrying any money. But it felt like an eternity, during which people saw what was happening and moved quickly on. Only one brave man came to their aide, and as he did so the attacker made off with Clare's wallet and Sinéad's keys. The loss of assorted paperwork and keys spelt obvious trouble. There was consequent panic at the thought that the runt might be making his way to the flat they had recently left before the comforting assurance that - with an address for one and keys for the other - any thoughts of burglary would be quickly thwarted. As victims of London street crime, they might be considered among the lucky. But it didn't feel that way in the early hours of that January morning in Clapham.
Nor does it feel that way now, as both women continue counselling and attempt to come to terms with a traumatic change in their previously untroubled lives. Sure they suffered no significant material loss. But on the debit side they can count critical things: like the loss of that wonderful sense of invulnerability which should belong to any 22-year-old, the sudden glimpse of this world class city also as an ugly place, and the unwanted question of whether they really should now make this city home.
Wise parents dread to think of their offspring on the streets at such an hour. They know better, don't they? And there, of course, is the point. Teenagers and twenty-somethings are not their parents. They're cool and in control. Bad things are what happen to other people. And it wasn't as if this was a drunken crawl from some club - just a short walk from Sinéad's flat because Clare had to catch the late night bus. A real sense of loss, then, with the realisation that this thing had happened to them, and, moreover, appeared to be happening all around them.
When the police took them on a tour of the immediate vicinity they failed to find the perpetrator but instead happened upon three separate post-robbery scenes of crime within a two-mile radius.
Coming to terms with a suddenly more-scary city, Sinéad and Clare will also register the daily evidence that the cover of daylight offers no greater assurance.
At 3 p.m. on Monday a 17-year-old girl was dragged off the street and raped at knife-point in Holland Park. The girl was walking home in an area of west London which would have been busy with people walking their dogs when she was grabbed by the throat and forced into undergrowth.
On Tuesday night a 15-year-old boy bled to death after being stabbed in the chest on the Church End estate in North London at around 6 p.m.
Much media focus recently has been on "black on black" gun crime. However, rising street crime is also reflecting an increased use of knives - with 7,883 offences involving knives in London between April 2001 and January of this year as against 2,873 during the same period of 2000. With gun crime reaching unprecedented levels, a growing sense of crisis has suddenly pushed the issue up there with Health and Transport at the top of the government's agenda.
Experts say there is some evidence that the government is actually beginning to make inroads, with overall crime down. In the age of "spin", however, people trust less to statistics than their own experience and perception. And as he joins battle with the police over his reform plans, the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, knows only too well that the perception - that New Labour has not been so "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" - is now threatening to be a major issue in this year's London elections.