Love Is a Thief

by Claire Garber

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It gets better, with time. It is better. The more I am with you, the less there seems to be any connection between the two of you, any similarity, except when you were wandering around kissing everyone. That wasn’t a happy place for me.’

  I rolled my eyes, although no one saw. He always had to bring up the kissing.

  ‘Peter, how did you plan to continue spending time with me without sharing any of this? I specifically asked you in New York if you had any other secrets.’

  ‘And I told you that your well-being was my priority.’

  ‘But you stayed at my house last night!’ I squeaked. I wasn’t really sure why I needed to bring that up. It’s not like we’d had sex. We’d lain platonically next to each other, two puppies between us, me acting like a giant Stare Bear. Oh, God, the nausea was coming back.

  ‘So,’ Grandma said, marching into the room carrying two clear plastic bags and an envelope. She did a double take as she saw Peter and me standing back to back, then she handed me one of the bags, which contained what I recognised as my hairbrush.

  ‘I thought I’d lost that, Grandma!’

  ‘You didn’t lose it, darling, but you could afford to use it a little more often,’ she said, passing the other bag back to Peter.

  ‘You’re a tealeaf, Josephine,’ he said as he retrieved a hat I recognised as his.

  ‘Well, thank goodness I am. Now I say once again that I just don’t in my heart of hearts think this is possible. But when Regina turned up last week and found out you were in contact she decided to share her hideous news with me. So I just wanted to make sure. Now, the results came back today. I haven’t opened them because I didn’t know whether to tell you first or just find out the result myself.’ She held the envelope out towards us. Peter snatched it off her, then perched on the edge of the sofa, staring at the envelope, jaw clenched. Grandma came and held my hand. Then Peter tore open the envelope. I could see his eyes scanning through all the words on the page, desperately seeking the results. He found them. Taking them all in. Processing them. Then he placed the letter on the coffee table in front of him and sat back in the sofa. He put both his hands to his mouth, then slowly looked up to meet my panic-filled eyes.

  Peter got his wish that night, about the sickness thing, because I did eventually throw up, and I did it right in front of him. It reminded me of a time when, 17 years of age, I projectile vomited across the lounge of my then boyfriend’s parents’ house. I’d had way too much cider and, if I’m honest, a little spliff. But this was more controlled vomiting. I managed to do it straight into the bin. But Peter was in the room. He saw it. He heard it. It was a joint experience, excuse the pun. It happened right after he’d read the results of the paternity test. Right after he’d read the letter but before he exhaled heavily and said, ‘Thank God.’ The vomit started as he began to exhale, because I thought that was a sign of bad news. He should have just said, ‘We’re not related!’ straight away. But he paused. He stared. He inhaled. Then he exhaled. By which point I had totally freaked out. I bent down. Threw up. Stood up. Got light-headed. Passed out. It was like a strange dynamic yoga move. I came to to find Peter cradling me in his arms, his hand stroking my face, him all around me, holding me, rocking me. It was like Romeo and Juliet on their deathbed, but with vomit, paternity tests and duplicitous parents.

  And he didn’t let me go from that moment on. In the taxi I slipped in and out of heavy sleep, exhaustion sweeping over me like a storm cloud, Peter’s arms around me at all times, the beat of his steady heart almost hypnotic. He carried me into my apartment and laid me down on my bed, but still he didn’t let me go, holding me all night, close to him. He held me so close it was as if he thought I might disappear. But when I woke the next morning he was gone.

  big fat presents for big slim fat camp

  the boardroom | true love

  ‘Well, it looks like only half of you bothered to turn up today,’ was Chad’s opener to the last meeting of Fat Camp. ‘Only half of you … half of you … because you have all lost so much weight … What the twat does a man have to do to get a laugh around here?’

  The room was silent. There were furniture-creaking noises and tumbleweed rolled across the heart-shaped table. Federico broke the silence by clapping loudly and nodded for everyone to follow suit.

  ‘Look, girls, I have never had a problem with my weight,’ Chad continued. ‘I’m not an athlete, or a body builder. I don’t even know if I have any distinguishable muscle tone on my body. But the point is, I’ve never been a fat twat. I have never questioned my desirability. I have never given up on my self. I’ve never felt desperate or alone or overlooked. I can’t imagine feeling like that and if I did I don’t think I’d twatting tell anyone. But you lot, you were really fat, weren’t you? Do you remember the first day you all arrived here and we had to take you up in small groups in the lift? Oh, that tickled me—’ He spun one circle in his chair and slapped his thigh. ‘Happy times.’ He grabbed a red apple from a fruit bowl. ‘But now—’ he looked around the room at all the women sitting around the table ‘—now we get the lift together …’ He took a moment to let his words sink in. Federico started clapping again but the applause petered out pretty quickly. ‘Look, you all know that if I keep speaking I will fuck up. I will say something to make one of you cry, or offend someone, or hurt someone’s feelings. I am in a fucking tank of oestrogen right now, you included, Federico, and I am fucking drowning. So let’s make this quick. You all look fucking terrible—’ Federico coughed loudly. ‘Sorry. Let me start again. You do look terrible—’ The room groaned. ‘But!’ He tried to talk over them. ‘But looking great can be expensive. Once you get started it’s easier to maintain but initially, well, I bet none of you have a single thing in your wardrobe that actually fits you.’ I looked around the room. They did look like the dreary cast of Les Misérables. ‘I think you’ve all been twatting marvellous throughout this whole process. You turn up every day. You push yourselves. You don’t complain. So I wanted to do something for you. To say thank you.’ He rocked back and forward on his heels, rubbing his hands together, waiting for the right moment. ‘I have asked one of my friends to come in. He’s pretty good with fashion and all that twatting jazz. He’s been given £5,000 to spend on each of you. The only condition is that you have to agree to be in his show, which has a few quite specific conditions of its own, but I will let him tell you about that.’ Everyone looked at each other, confused. ‘Fat Camp, I think you are twatting brilliant. Thank you.’

  Chad opened the door of the boardroom and at that exact moment the elevator doors pinged open. Out of them stepped Gok Wan12 followed by yet another camera crew filming us as we filmed them.

  Then Gok Wan yelled from the top of his voice, ‘Are we ready to look good naked?’ as the Fat Campers sprinted across the office to engulf him in a pile-up of oestrogen, happiness and healthy BMIs. Most of the screaming I heard was from the mouth of Federico.

  ‘Winters!’ Chad growled as I tried to run after Federico. ‘I think you and I need to have a little chat, don’t you?’ He opened the door to his office where a guilty-looking Bob was sitting waiting for us. ‘So Bob tells me that you are thinking of twatting leaving?’

  ‘ChatterBob! I thought your sessions were supposed to be confidential?’ I barked at ChatterBob. He beamed at me and shook his head from side to side.

  ‘Apparently,’ Chad continued, ‘you are thinking of quitting and pissing off around the world, learning the abomination that is the French language and doing some kind of skiing course.’ Bob excitedly wiggled in his seat. ‘Six months of self-indulgent nonsense is apparently what you’re after.’

  ‘Nothing at all has been organised. I planted a seed. Or Bob planted a seed. Something was sown.’

  ‘Well, it’s just gone into bloody bloom, then, hasn’t it, like ivy and now it’s all over the front of the twatting house. Kate, you can go on your own LSD, you can fuck off for six months but I don’t see any
reason why you can’t continue to investigate Love-Stolen Dreams while you’re away. It could add a different angle. We could break into the North American market,’ he said, looking off into the middle distance, ‘and Canadians are very responsive to print advertising. This could totally twatting work. At least that way I can justify spending thousands of pounds of True Love’s money sending you to a bloody ski school.’ ChatterBob was excitedly patting Chad’s back. ‘Bob, I keep telling you. I am not a twatting people person. Stop with the touching. So, Kate, I still expect an article a week on our LSD website. I want a feature each month for our print edition and I want you to thank me personally in everything you write from this moment onwards, something along the lines of, “Thanks to Chad, the owner of True Love” or, “My mentor, Chad” or even, “Relationship expert Chad”. You get the twatting idea. No, don’t, no, don’t come over here, I don’t want a hug, I don’t, oh, for twat’s sake.’ I gave Chad the biggest, hardest bear hug I could manage. ChatterBob had a go too. ‘Oh, and I forgot to mention, you leave next week. You start at the Canadian ski school, then to a French language school, and while you are based on continental Europe you will go wherever the twat else I ask you for any LSD features we are writing. And I expect a two-year commitment to the London office afterwards. Well? What the twat are you waiting for? Pack up your stuff, get yourself organised and get Loosie to book you a flight out of Heathrow. Go!’ he yelled, before shoving me out of his office.

  I turned, beaming from ear to ear, to find Peter Parker standing outside Chad’s office. He was carrying a huge bunch of flowers and had two puppies sitting obediently at his feet.

  ‘I thought you might want to have lunch with us,’ he said quietly. ‘But I can see you are very busy with your work, as you should be.’ He looked at the floor. ‘So six months of travelling?’ he said, nodding his head. ‘That’s, well, that’s really … well done, Kate. It’s a great achievement.’ He carried on looking at his feet. ‘Well, I should—’ He gestured towards the exit. ‘We need to—’ He pointed to the puppies. ‘Well done.’ He turned and walked off. The puppies kept turning back to look at me as he led them towards the door. He chucked the flowers in the bin as he left Reception.

  12Gok Wan – British Fashion Stylist with his own TV show, books and fashion line. Women fell in love with him because he wanted us to fall in love with ourselves. Each episode of his TV show is an emotional roller coaster ending with the happiest of all endings—a podgy woman exposing her totally naked body to millions of viewers.

  the last supper

  ‘Well, Len keeps coming to my mechanics classes with me,’ Mary said, passing me a Strawberry Cream from a Tupperware container filled with arse-enlarging Quality Street. We were sitting having tea on the decked terrace of the floating restaurant, waiting for Grandma to allow us inside for my hastily arranged leaving party. ‘At first Len said it was because he wanted to make sure I wasn’t being ripped off, but now he’s enrolled himself as a student and he’s there three times a week.’

  ‘How does he get on with Jefferson?’

  ‘Well, it was like peacocks at dawn! All chests out, spanners in hand, who knows the most about spark plugs and chassis. Then Jefferson asked Len if he wanted to go and look at the Formula 2 cars he works on. He runs the pit lane on race days. Well, my Len nearly collapsed with excitement. Now they are best friends. Len is going to spend the day in the pits with Jefferson this Sunday making tea for the engineers and watching how everything works. And when he talks about Jefferson he gets a little flushed in the face. I have no idea why he’s blushing—it’s quite ridiculous.’

  I smiled to myself. Mary’s face was practically volcanic the first few lessons we had with Jefferson.

  ‘Don’t you want to go with them, Mary, to this pits lane thing?’

  ‘All that noise, and chaos, and those skinny girls wandering around with petroleum company logos on their boobs. No, thank you. I am quite happy with my regular car mechanics, thank you very much. I’ve actually got quite a bit of work here at Pepperpots,’ she said, waving to some of the elderly residents on the shore of the lake. Personally I’ve never been terribly comfortable with the unsteady, and occasionally unsober, Pepperpots residents whizzing about the private roads in their expensive and generally over-sized cars. It’s like bumper cars when you get a few of them driving at the same time. Once Mr Bordel drove head first into the lake after mistakenly putting his automatic in reverse. The lake is only two-foot deep but I read somewhere that it’s possible to drown in less than three millimetres of water—that’s the liquid equivalent of a spill of tea. I admit I don’t fully understand the physics of that but let it be a warning to us all. The dangers of caffeine are far-reaching and absurd.

  ‘Actually Len and I have been looking to rent a garage, you know the ones, under the arches?’

  ‘I remember them, Mary, from our Power Mary chat.’

  ‘Well, one came up for rent—what are the chances? There’s not been one of them on the market for at least 10 years, but I passed a man in the shop and I overheard him saying he wanted to get rid of his, so we are probably going to take on the lease.’ She was struggling to suppress a smile. I watched her pick up her cup of tea, take a sip, then place it back on the table. Mary was warming her own breastbone these days. ‘Well, you must come straight round to see me as soon as you get back from your travels, little Kate. We’ll all miss you, especially poor Peter Parker. He always has a twinkle in his eye when he talks about you.’

  ‘He doesn’t twinkle, Mary. He squints and frowns, mostly in confusion at the nonsense I tell him.’

  ‘Well, he’ll be quite lost without you. I don’t like my Len going away for one weekend, let alone six months of travels.’

  ‘Peter’s not exactly my old Len!’ I guffawed, shoving another Strawberry Cream in my mouth. ‘He’s just a friend, Mary. But if I didn’t know any better I’d think you were meddling, and we both know meddling never ends well.’ I wanted to think of an example when meddling didn’t end well, but couldn’t, so hoped the silence would do the talking.

  ‘Enough said,’ she said, pulling me in for a big cuddle, planting a kiss firmly on my cheek. ‘Well, good luck on your travels. We are all very proud of you. And remember, come straight round to see me when you get back. I am sure we will have so much to tell each other!’ She patted me on the knee and got up to get another cup of non-breastbone-warming tea. I watched her walk off, one half of a pair, Len the other piece of her puzzle. Would I feel like a complete puzzle after six months devoted to the pursuit of my own happiness, or would a piece of my puzzle still be missing? And why did that piece feel more and more as if it belonged to Peter Parker?

  Since that day in my office and the revelation of my impromptu plan to disappear for six months Peter had made himself incredibly busy, with puppy day care, reinstating his penthouse to pristine condition, building a new water conservation plant in West Africa, which seemed plain old selfish seeing as I was going away for six months. And his preoccupation with his own life left me to deal with my own, which consisted of overwhelming anxieties about not seeing him. Did I like Peter too much to go away even though we weren’t a couple? Should I tell him? Should I seek out the advice of my friends and run the risk of them publicly shaming me like a fraudulent expense-claiming politician? I could already see Chad’s gleeful face. ‘Fall of the already fallen angel,’ he’d yell. ‘How to make the same twatting mistake time and time again to the financial gain of your magnificent twatting boss.’

  Personal choice, honouring one’s own dreams and ambitions, choosing to do things that bring you joy in the absence of everything else; true, sustainable, healthy, freestanding happiness. I wanted to feel the contentment of reaching my true potential. These were some of the most basic lessons I’d learnt on my Love-Stolen Dreams journey yet they were proving to be the hardest to apply. I was choosing to take myself far away in order to fulfil personal ambitions. It should be easy. I knew it made sense. The maths added
up. But the voice in my head kept saying over and over and over again, ‘If you go away Peter Parker will meet someone else.’ And by this point I didn’t want Peter Parker to meet anyone at all. I wanted him to be a piece in my puzzle.

  ‘What on earth are you doing out here?’ Grandma demanded, having burst out of the double doors of the floating restaurant. ‘Absolutely everyone is waiting for you inside!’ She tutted, then stomped off. I had no idea how everyone had managed to get inside without me noticing any of them walk past, or how my grandma could be annoyed at me for following her instructions to the letter and waiting exactly where I’d been told, which made it official. I was unable to interpret people or situations. When Peter Parker turned up I would definitely not tell him about my all-consuming thoughts about him, or about my inability to stop eating Quality Street Strawberry Creams, because it was very possible I had misinterpreted and misunderstood both.

  inside the floating restaurant

  ‘Is there a second bridge?’ I asked Federico after walking into the floating restaurant to find over 200 people waiting inside; 200 people who had miraculously managed to walk past me without me noticing a single one. How deep in thought had I been on the terrace? Had I gone into a Peter-Parker-induced thought coma? Federico looked confused.

  ‘Federico,’ I whispered again. ‘Is there another bridge, here? Is there another way?’

  ‘Is this a test?’ he whispered excitedly. ‘Is there another bridge?’ He opened his eyes so wide I thought they might pop out.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘What?’ he said back. ‘You know, Kat-kins, I’ve always thought there were lots of ways and lots of bridges,’ he said, frantically nodding his head. ‘You are like a poet, Kat-kins,’ he said, kissing me on the cheek then wandering off, muttering to himself, ‘There is always another bridge, Federico Cagassi, you just remember that.’