He looked me deep in the eyes and time stood still.
I am not sure how long we stared at each other. I didn’t want to break his gaze. And when I spoke the sound of my voice surprised me, as if I had been in my own head for a very very long time. But what surprised me even more was my answer. It was clear. Short. Without explanation.
‘No.’ I took a sharp intake of breath after I said it. Peter stared at me, impossible to read.
‘No, I don’t want you to come with me.’ I said it again, more to confirm it to myself than to him. Why couldn’t I just say yes like any normal girl? Why was I so complicated and inconsistent? I realised my hands were shaking from the adrenaline and hid them in my pockets. Peter still didn’t speak. His blue eyes just gazing at me.
‘Last call for Flight 7098 to Calgary, Canada.’ I recognised Tabitha’s voice on the loud intrusive tannoy. ‘That’s last call for any remaining passengers for Calgary, Canada.’
‘Peter, I need to feel The Thing, that Mary’s felt, and Leah and Annie. Because otherwise I think you will become my thing, like you said in your apartment, you were right, and while I really like the sound of that, I can’t. I can’t do that knowing all I know, having learnt all the things that women have bothered to share with me. So I need, no, I want to do this next stage alone. I’m sorry.’
‘This is the last and very final call for any remaining passengers travelling to Calgary, Canada.’ Tabitha’s voice was as strained as my own. I could see her in my peripheral vision, pacing up and down at the gate, eager to get me on the plane and away from Peter Parker, whose use of words now rivalled his use of smiles.
‘Peter, please say something.’
He didn’t. He just stared. I felt very aware of my constricted throat and tear ducts that were on red alert.
‘Peter, six months doesn’t seem like a long time to be apart in the grand scheme of things. Surely we could have other shared experiences in the future? And if your interest in me is so fragile that a six-month work project could ruin it then it probably wasn’t an enduring interest anyway. This isn’t a test. I promise you. It’s just … six months; six months doesn’t seem that long.’
Peter still didn’t speak, and there wasn’t really anything else I could say. Of course I could ramble on and on for ten to fifteen minutes, share all kinds of peculiar things, but I didn’t feel I had any more to comment on the current subject. I would have to walk away, and live with the consequences of my decision, a decision made from somewhere so deep inside me that it was stronger, more powerful, had more clarity than the woman I knew myself to be. I stood up and picked up my hand luggage but he stopped me, taking the bag and putting it back down on the floor.
‘Six months isn’t a long time,’ he said taking my hands.
‘It’s not!’ I squeaked. ‘It’s not a long time, Peter! There are series of X Factor that run for longer than six months, and that’s an annual returning TV show!’ He was frowning slightly so I was fairly sure he didn’t know what the X Factor was. ‘I’m sorry, Peter. It was an amazing gesture, although quite out there, quite extreme—you haven’t quite got the hang of the pendulum concept.’
‘Kate, I keep telling you that I don’t know what I’m doing. And please don’t say sorry—you don’t need to be sorry. It was win-win for me. If you said yes then I could spend six months with you on a mountain and if you decided to go alone then I would be, I am, incredibly proud of you. Although the no part was slightly more painful than I’d expected but that’s a feeling which is a good thing in itself,’ he said gently squeezing my hands. ‘Kate, for as long as you know me you will never ever have to compromise any part of any dream for me. I promise you that. And I promise to always be argumentative if you try.’
‘Wonderful. The promise of an argumentative Peter.’
‘And I think it’s reassuring to know that we’re not like our parents.’
‘You mean it’s nice to know I’m not exactly like your mum, or my Regina.’
‘That’s mostly what I mean,’ he said as he pulled me by my hand closer to him. I caught my breath as our bodies touched, Peter gently tucking some of my hair behind my ear. He had a look of concentration as he studied my face, gently running his thumb along my cheek bone, down my neck. As he tilted his head ever so slightly I found myself mirroring him, breathing at the same rhythm, at the same rate. He was a breath away from me, from my lips, from kissing me; a millimetre away from crossing the line, a heartbeat, then finally, after 29 years of knowing each other, Peter finally took the last step, moved the last millimetre and bridged the final gap, and he leant down and he kissed me, Peter Parker kissed me, in the most perfect, gentle, dizzying way.
‘This is absolutely the last and final last call for passenger Kate Winters flying to Calgary!’ a hysterical Tabitha Jones squealed into the tannoy. ‘If passenger Kate Winters is listening she should know that it’s very selfish to keep everyone else on the plane waiting. Just because she writes for a magazine does not give her the right to treat other people like crap. Not now, not ever!’
‘I know you want to say it, Kate,’ Peter whispered, pulling away from me slightly, ‘and it’s OK.’
‘I don’t know what you are talking about, Peter.’
‘You want to say it, just once, I know you. We’re at the airport. You’re going away for a long time. You want to say it. You need to say it.’
Peter was right. I did need to say it. And Madame Butterfly told me to always connect with my desires. So I took a deep breath and prepared myself. I closed my eyes and as authentically as I could I said,
‘I ain’t getting on no plane, you fool.’
‘My God, it’s like you are actually channelling Mr T,’ Peter said, mesmerised. ‘It’s like I am in an episode of The A-Team.’
‘I know. It’s a gift.’
‘I mean you sound exactly like him. And you are a small white female. Do it again.’
‘You ain’t getting on no plane, you fool,’ I said, grinning.
‘Astonishing. Does he actually live in you?’
‘You ain’t getting on no plane, you fool.’
‘OK, that’s probably enough, Kate,’ he said, cupping my face in his hands and kissing every inch of it before pulling me into a hug.
‘It’s never too late to be who you were supposed to be, Kate Winters,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘I am so so proud of you.’
As he leant down to kiss me again, and I prepared to tumble into a world of Peter-Parker-filled kisses, one karmic-filled Tabitha Jones marched up behind me and pulled me, by my arm, through the departure gate to the plane.
‘I’ll come and visit you, Mr T,’ Peter yelled just as the doors of the gate were locked behind me. And I wasn’t positive but for a second I thought I saw him smile as he waved goodbye.
flight 7098 to Calgary, canada
As I sat on the plane in the smallest and most uncomfortable seat Tabitha Jones could find, the one that won’t recline even though the passenger in front can, I took the brochure for my new ski school out of my bag. This ski school was my choice. My decision. My reason to say no to Peter Parker. It was the hundredth time I had looked at it. And every time I felt The Thing. I hugged the brochure to my chest and closed my eyes. I was about to realise a long-cherished dream. Finally this was my moment. Then I noticed something glistening in the bottom of my bag, something unfamiliar, something I definitely hadn’t packed. I pulled out all my clothes, my magazines, my books and toiletries, trying to get to this mysterious addition, a present wrapped in gold paper. I unwrapped it like a child, and found a family-size pack of KitKats and a small white envelope. I opened the envelope. Inside there was a Polaroid photo and a small card. On the card were written the words:
‘It’s never too late to be who you were supposed to be.’
And when I looked at the photo it was of the one thing I had waited most of my life to see again. It was a photo of a smiling, no, a positively beaming Peter Parker.
Epilogue
>
chad decided to take a back seat at True Love and concentrate on his new career as a relationship expert—he has his own show on a central London talk radio station. After the success of Fat Camp he set up Fit Camp, Date Camp, Dress Camp and Camp Camp. He also funded the opening of the first LSD Drop-in Centre. Its alumni already include several famous singers, an Olympic athlete and numerous female mechanics.
federico finally ended his relationship with Chad after a dramatic and very public argument in the True Love office. He started dating an air steward called Brian. Chad had what could only be described as a full-blown emotional breakdown, gave Federico the Editor job at True Love and asked Federico if he wanted to get the twat engaged. Their civil ceremony is next month. Federico is now running the 5th session of Fat Camp and they have a series on Channel 7. One of the previous Fat Campers is now an inspirational speaker having lost 8½ stone on the programme.
mary & len got the lease on the arches and have a second garage up at Pepperpots. Both have given up their day jobs to concentrate solely on their mechanical careers. Both are still under the mentorship of Mechanics R U. Mary also set up and still runs basic mechanics courses at the LSD Drop-in Centre.
jenny wrote a book called ‘Go on admit it, you married an idiot’ and is currently touring America publicising it. HBO are thinking of making it into a film for TV. She was recently nominated for the Woman of the Year award and is a regular on Oprah.
jane & james bought a second home in Moscow and are currently on a two-week holiday discovering the former communist state. Jane won the Pro-Am dance competition with Julio and they have been asked to perform at the Royal Albert Hall. James continues to dance with Mustafa at a specialist dance academy (I was refused admission). Both have lost an incredible amount of weight.
delaware decided that if you can’t act, teach, and if you can’t have children, mentor some. The childless Hollywood actress now teaches acting classes at the LSD Drop-in Centre. Her lessons are fully subscribed for the next 24 months.
beatrice started to play piano recitals at Pepperpots and Delaware sometimes duets with her. A YouTube video of them went viral and Simon Cowell has asked them to perform at Elton John’s next charity event. Beatrice recently had her application accepted to study piano at the Juilliard School of Music and she starts there in a few weeks.
leah set up her alternative therapies practice and is well on her way to becoming a doctor (in the non-traditional sense). I have finally agreed to have past life regression and we are due to travel to Sicily next year. Apparently we are going in search of evidence of our former selves. But that’s an entirely different story for an entirely different book.
peter parker still has two dogs, and a stray cat called Cat. He swapped his penthouse apartment for a house with a garden and swapped his high-powered job for a freelance consultancy role. He works between London and a chalet in the mountains. He’s unlikely to win any Biggest Smiler awards but they are definitely getting more frequent, especially when he runs with his dogs.
and me, well, I completed the skiing and snowboarding instructor course in Canada. I was bottom of my class, in everything, and 12 years older than almost every other student, but I passed all my exams and it was the best experience of my entire life—I start a 5-month teaching placement in Switzerland next winter. I still write for True Love as a freelancer and I’m allowed to print articles under my own name. In fact next week I am being sent to China with a love-lost reader who wants to run along the Great Wall. Peter Parker knows an awful lot about running, and about China, where he was instrumental in the success of a recent proposal to develop solar energy along its northernmost border, so he is going to come with me. And then we will probably go home, together, and share a KitKat and a lovely cup of tea.
the relationship that broke me, didn’t
the love of my life, wasn’t
my life now, wonderful.
love is a thief
for before love
for during love
for after love
this is the end
and this is your beginning
it’s never too late to become
who you were supposed to be
About the Author
CLAIRE GARBER was born in Southampton, in 1978, the same year Olivia Newton-John told John Travolta he was the one that she wanted and Space Invaders were launched.
Claire did nothing remotely of interest until aged twenty-six, when she visited the French Alps and fell in love with every single French man she met. That year she started writing obsessively about her thoughts and feelings, all of which seemed to revolve around love and French boys and heartbreak. Aged twenty-six-and-three-quarters, her friends urged her to do something more ‘constructive’ with her scribbles, which gave birth to the beginnings of several novels about boys, culminating in Love is a Thief—a book she started writing aged thirty-one after her biggest heartbreak of all.
Claire has worked as a freelance winter-sports travel writer, a copywriter and in property, all as a means to fund her writing. More recently she planted some magic beans. She now lives between London and the French Alps.
In loving memory of my mum, Theresa Garber, who died on 11th October 2000—the day my heart was truly broken for the first time
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Every good story begins with a broken heart and ends with a group of wonderful friends and family, inspirational women and men, who share their own experiences and their own pain, who offer a shoulder and who lead by example and show you the way to put yourself back together again. I was Humpty Dumpty and you were the king’s men. I love you all.
Thank you to Aikten Alexander and in particular my agent Charlotte Robertson, who took a chance on me and my embryonic manuscript and who has the uncanny ability to make perfect creative sense to my muddled creative brain, and to my publisher, Harlequin MIRA—you are both the key to a giant impenetrable door I have spent many, many years trying to open. Thank you. You made all my dreams come true.
AUTHOR Q&A
Who are your three favourite characters in the book? Why? What inspired you to write them?
Federico, Kate and Peter Parker. Federico because I think he is a manifestation of the internal monologue in my own head. There’s no filter to the things he says, it’s like he’s constantly playing a strange word association and I love that. I love the realness and rawness of Kate’s feelings. What’s not to love about someone who feels with that level of depth and who, out of her own sadness, seeks only to help others? And Peter Parker because I know him to be ridiculously handsome, and tall, and fantastic smelling; and because once upon a time I fell in love with a boy who never smiled (although he was slightly shorter).
Do you think Love is a Thief?
I love love. I’m a love lover. But I do think love’s arrival can create a shift in the balance of a person’s life, mine included, and sometimes that shift can lead to a loss of certain things or a disconnection from one’s sense of self. Or maybe it’s simply a time management issue? If we choose to spend several hours a day snogging the face off someone handsome, we probably can’t fit in our Tuesday-night yoga class.
If there’s one thing you’d like readers to take away from Love is a Thief, what is it?
I think my overriding obsession is with people reaching their full potential. People so often write things off, or decide to just make do, and life doesn’t have to be like that. It’s not about shooting for the stars or doing something ground-breaking. It’s just about people taking time to think about the simple things in life that make them happy, in the absence of love, and making a little time for those things. I’d also like to make people laugh a little bit.
Where do you find your inspiration?
As a general rule, through spirit-crushing heartbreak. Every book I’ve written started with me weeping about some guy. The questions I ask in this book are the questions I asked my broken self aged thirty; questions about love, about kissing, about the ca
lorie content of Quality Street Strawberry Creams and about why handsome men can be so goddamn distracting.
What do you love most about being a writer?
Sitting and writing is the only time I feel a hundred per cent like myself, like the person I was born to be. I don’t feel like my brain was wired to do anything else. My mum always said there is nothing better than being the person who loves what they do and I have spent the last ten years slowly working towards that goal and I hope I am starting to make steps towards that. I also like the fact that as a writer I can legitimately work anywhere in the world, including on a sun lounger by a pool; that it’s ‘important’ for me to spend hours and hours lying around daydreaming; and I like that I have a whole other bunch of other friends and handsome men living in my head.
Where do you write? Are you a paper/pen girl or a laptop in a coffee shop?
I don’t like white paper at all, so I always write on yellow. Paper is for planning and brainstorming. The rest of the work is done on laptop. I write anywhere and have always had a full-time job while writing, so I work on train journeys, in coffee shops before work, in the tiny spare room at my dad’s house at weekends. In fact my parents held an intervention because they didn’t think it was normal the amount of time I spent by myself typing. They didn’t know about all my imaginary friends and boyfriends in my head.
How often do you write?
After my first novel was rejected I didn’t write much at all for nearly two years. But slowly I started again. I used to spend my annual leave sitting on mountains developing different ideas, but was never totally convinced any of the stories were quite right. Love is a Thief gave me a better work ethic, because I felt like the universe had dropped something in my lap. I felt passionate about it in a way I never had before. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I didn’t write it. So I reorganised my life to make it happen and lived for two years on blind (borderline crazy) faith that if I sacrificed to make it happen everything would work out OK.
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