Love Is a Thief (11 page)

‘Jane, maybe dancing could be your thing? You don’t dance since falling in love so maybe you could steal the dance back?’

‘Isn’t that a Michael Flatley show?’ Federico asked.

‘And I could come with you. I’d be more than happy to take a few dance lessons.’

‘Oh, you would, would you?’ Leah was off. ‘You’ll dance for Jane but you won’t step through the portals of time with me?’

Federico coughed the word ‘hide’ followed by the words ‘she’s crazy’ and joined Jane studying the ceiling of the room.

quest | steal back the dance with Jane

advice | kiss lots of different men, with a focus on those of Spanish descent

advice | be generous with the giving of blow jobs

emotional chess

P
eter Parker looks good in the morning. I know this because we used to have sleepovers when we were kids, and because I bumped into him at 06:30 one Tuesday morning in a coffee shop near Covent Garden. I was trying to wake myself up with an especially strong espresso and a
KitKat
. As I perched on a stool staring out of the window, metaphorical matchsticks propping open sleep-heavy eyelids, Peter Parker jogged past wearing serious-looking running clothes and bright orange running trainers. He glanced in the window as he sped past, did a double take, then stopped. I stared out. He stared in. Neither of us displayed signs of surprise, shock or astonishment. We displayed no facial expressions whatsoever. It was as if we were exhibits in Madame Tussauds, or mannequins in the 1987 hit romcom
Mannequin
, before they came alive and danced excitedly to complicated set pieces, running all over the department store before making love to each other in a window display covered in fur. Eventually Peter committed to movement, walking back towards the coffee shop, coming in and sitting
himself disconcertingly close to me on a stool. Then we both stared out of the window, together, in silence. He took a sip from his bottle of water. I took a sip from my coffee. He wiped his brow with his forearm. His running vest was sleeveless and I was once again exposed to his muscular arms. He looked so stern I nearly reverted to my childhood self, wanting to tickle his armpits or perform a short comedy sketch in order to extract even the tiniest hint of a smile. Who was this fully grown smile-less man? Was he happy? Was he content? Had his smile muscles permanently wasted away as my triceps muscles appear to have done in recent years? I decided I wanted to know more, so I shifted my stool to a more comfortable distance and began.

‘Peter Parker …’

‘Yes, Kate …’

‘I have questions.’

‘I thought you would.’

‘I have
a lot
of questions.’

‘I’d appreciate if you ask them one at a time.’ He turned to face me and took another sip from his water bottle.

‘When did you move back to London?’

‘If I tell you are you going to sit there and try to calculate exactly how annoyed you should be that I haven’t been in touch?’

‘I can ask Grandma.’

‘I’ve been here for four months.’

‘And you’ve known I was in London for?’

‘I’ve known you live in London for those four months, yes.’

If I’d moved to Switzerland I would have hired Colombo and a pack of bloody hungry tracker dogs to find him.

‘And you’ve been divorced for four months?’ A pale band of skin on his ring finger gave away a recent end.

‘Marriages don’t end on the signing of divorce papers,’ he said, absent-mindedly touching his ringless finger. ‘They end some way before, or after, some never end, and I suspect some never really even start.’ Unhelpfully vague.

‘Why did you get divorced?’

‘Why didn’t you get married?’ Deflection, classic Peter.

‘Gabriel didn’t turn out to be who I thought he was going to be.’

‘Well, I don’t think I turned out to be who she thought I was going to be—’ sharing by copying, clever ‘—and statistically speaking half of all marriages end in divorce so really we shouldn’t be surprised when they fail.’ Resorting to the proliferation of facts when asked to comment on something of an emotional nature—smokescreen. ‘In fact when marriages fail they are more like a mathematical equation that’s been added up correctly, not something that is shocking or wrong—’ I was lost and found myself staring at his muscular upper thighs ‘—and with the advent of television and mass media the spread of false notions of love became pandemic. Did you know that the BBC Television Service was the world’s first regular television service? Britain used to be such an industrious country. We invented the steam engine, the sewing machine, penicillin, corkscrews and cats-eyes, the ones on the road, not the ones in the actual animal. We really don’t make anything any more.’ See, random facts, factual offerings in exchange for emotional thought. He thinks he can distract me with the demise of the British
manufacturing industry. But what
has
happened to our glorious country? And what
were
we talking about?

I looked back out of the window. We both sipped from our drinks.

‘Peter …’

‘Yes, Kate …’

‘Were you sad when your marriage ended?’

‘If I think about the reasons why we are not together, then I know we made a good decision. She is very happy and is with a really great man. It was the best decision for both of us.’ A well-rounded response; informative, in a way that reveals nothing at all.

We continued to stare out of the window. We both sipped from our drinks.

‘But did you feel sad?’

‘Kate …’

‘Yes, Peter.’

‘Why are you in this coffee shop at 06:30 on a Tuesday morning?’

‘I have a dance class at 07:15. It’s the Love-Stolen Dream of one of my friends, Jane, and—’

‘Really? You have a dance class?’

‘Yes, Peter, I have a dance class and the dance teacher said that if you start your day with a cha cha cha then the whole day dances for you. She said it in a way that made me think it would be a positive thing, to have a dancing day.’ Peter frowned and stared at my feet. For a second I wondered if I’d accidentally put on odd shoes. He turned to look back out of the window. We continued to sip from our drinks.

‘Kate, when we were at Pepperpots you said to Delaware that you plan to spend the rest of your life alone. Is that true?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I totally understand that. I am much happier when I’m alone.’

‘Peter Parker, you couldn’t bear to be alone when you were little. You practically lived with me and Grandma. In fact the only reason we stopped sharing a bed was because the neighbour told Grandma it was inappropriate.’

‘It was inappropriate. Teenage boys and girls should not be sleeping in the same bed. A couple more months and you’d probably have woken to find me trying to have sex with you.’

I sprayed my coffee all over the window and started choking.

‘God, sorry,’ he said, patting me on the back. ‘I didn’t mean
literally
. I meant, during one’s teenage years hormone levels peak to such high levels that it’s been argued by some more controversial biologists and anthropologists that one cannot be held responsible for one’s actions during those months and years as we operate under the influence of a potent mix of chemicals and hormones. But there were other ways for me to get my point across, sorry.’

‘That’s no problem,’ I said, dabbing coffee spray from my face. ‘It was just
such
a silly thought.’ That was now permanently burnt onto my brain
forever
.

‘Kate, I am not the boy you knew back then. I am an adult male and I am perfectly content alone. In fact my ex-wife said exactly that—she said it felt like I didn’t need her,
that I never really opened up to her, or to our relationship. She described it as being like my
Insignificant Significant Other
—’ that didn’t sound very nice ‘—but the thing is, Kate, I really didn’t need her, at all. My life is much less complicated when I am alone. It’s more constant. It makes sense.’

‘Like a reliable mathematical equation.’ I chuckled as I thought about the symbol for pi. I mean, why does p represent a long maths equation? It’s so silly. Or is it brilliant?

‘Kate, do you remember my dog, Jake?’ Peter’s eyes sparkled at the mention of his beloved dog. ‘Well, having a dog is probably the only thing that would make me happier than being alone. My ex-wife never wanted one. She said they were needy and unstable but they’re not. Dogs are loyal and consistent. Providing you walk it once a day, twice dependent on size and breed, and give it the occasional treat biscuit, two simple things and it will love you with all its heart.’

‘This is my treat biscuit,’ I said, trying to make light of the fact that Peter had just spotted my breakfast, a
giant KitKat
bar that probably wasn’t meant for one. ‘I find
KitKats
comforting,’ I qualified, hastily wrapping it back up. Peter stopped me, opened up the foil and handed me an extra-large piece.

‘Tell me why you like
KitKats
,’ he said, pulling me on my stool so I was once again sitting closer to him. He reached across me for a piece of chocolate; his forearm brushed against mine. He felt warm.

‘Well,’ I began, trying not to think about his half-naked body or the teenage sex we never had, ‘when I was little I used to watch Grandma doing her work. Do you remember
how she would spend hours toiling over a new article or piece of research?’ Peter nodded before reaching for yet another bit of my
KitKat
. ‘Well, I always knew when she’d finally finished her work because she would make herself a cup of tea, take out a
KitKat—’

‘From that big tin where you kept all the sweets?’

‘Exactly, and she would sit at the kitchen table, slowly peel back the wrapper of a
KitKat
and savour every single chocolatey mouthful while she gave her work a final, satisfying, read through.’

‘So
KitKat
s take you to your safe place?’

‘Yes, I think
KitKats
take me to my
safe place
, although my consumption of them is not dependent on any challenging intellectual endeavour having been completed, just a general sense of neediness. Just yesterday, for example, I was feeling a bit needy because I’d seen a particularly distressed tramp near Trafalgar Square, and I’d thought to myself, “Lucky me, all I have to worry about is unpicking the mystery of love, its absence and effects, across generations and cultures; that tramp doesn’t even know where he’s going to sleep tonight, poor bastard.” So, as an emotional crutch, if you will, I went straight to
WHSmith’s
to buy myself a
KitKat
, and not a regular
KitKat
, the big-bar version. I’d gone heavy duty.’

‘Like the one you have in front of you now.’

‘It was an emotional time, Peter! Which is why I also bought a notebook because that tramp made me realise I need to be more grateful. So I bought a notebook and every single day I am going to write a list of all the things I am thankful for. It’s going to be like a daily emotional
Thanks-giving
until my neural pathways have re-established themselves as grateful ones.’

It had happened again. The Peter-Parker-induced verbal diarrhoea where I go on and on and on discovering nothing new about Peter, just unearthing strange pockets of my own deranged mind, then showing them to him like a mental health ‘Show and Tell’. ‘So I bought a notebook, and a
KitKat
, and today I started to make my list, but if I’m honest one of the things I’m grateful for is the
KitKat
, and the notebook, and that I know where I’ll be sleeping tonight. Which definitely won’t be next to a teenage version of you, you giant sex pest,’ I chortled, then snorted, then went very quiet before muttering, ‘I probably should have just given the tramp some money, or a sandwich. That probably would have been more useful to a poor homeless man than me gorging myself on another bar of confectionery and writing down my thoughts and—’ Peter gently placed his hand over my mouth and held it there until he was sure I had stopped talking.

‘That was a lovely speech, Kate.’

‘I thought so. I’d practised it.’

‘Especially the sex-pest part.’

‘That was more of an ad lib. I was in the moment.’ I gulped down more coffee. Peter went back to looking out of the window.

‘Kate.’

‘Yes, Peter.’

‘I don’t want to bamboozle you with technical terminology or self-fulfilling labels, and I’m not judging you, but I think you should know, your
KitKat
eating, they’ve found
a name for it. It’s called
comfort eating
.’ He handed me the last piece of the very food that was filling my void. ‘Hit the gym, Winters.’ He patted me on the head. ‘Enjoy the natural high of exercise. Run yourself to happiness, Kitkat, I mean Kate.’

‘You’re very annoying.’

‘But slightly more succinct than you. Now I’m afraid I have to go. My office prefers I shower and change before turning up.’ He gestured to his sweaty sports clothes and I tried not to stare at his partially naked body. I cursed
Nike
for their sparing use of fabric. ‘So enjoy your dance class and thanks for the
KitKat.’
He was already halfway out of the door when he stopped and turned back. ‘You know, it really is good to see you again, Kate.’ He stared at me for a few seconds as if he was about to say something else, changed his mind, then, like a
KitKat
wrapper in the wind, or a tramp discovering a dry and unoccupied shelter, a half-naked Peter Parker ran off to start his smile-free day.

magdalena—43 years old—owner & dance instructor at The Studio dance school

W
hat did I give up for love? Well, I definitely can’t be as much of a free spirit. That kind of living-in-the-moment attitude doesn’t sit comfortably in a relationship. In fact being changeable at all becomes more difficult when someone else’s feelings are involved. And we share our income and assets, which was not something I was previously used to doing. But the biggest thing I gave up for love is my country. I originally left Spain because I wanted to learn English. The opportunities for dancers were all in London so I came here. I planned to work for a couple of years then move home. But after 18 months I met Paul and we fell in love. I wanted to be around him so my move back to Spain got delayed, and delayed, and delayed. And Paul doesn’t speak Spanish, he’s practically allergic to the sunshine and he would struggle to find a job in Spain
.