Love Is a Thief (4 page)

‘Oh, for twat’s sake, Jenny, would you please just shut the fuck up?’ Chad said, coming to a sudden stop. ‘It would be less twatting offensive if you just put all your awards, and your accolades, and your precious photos of you and your perfect Ken Doll husband, and printed them
directly
onto your twatting clothes, let the fabric speak for you, then my ears wouldn’t feel like they were haemorrhaging every time you start twatting talking.’

Federico clamped his hand over his own mouth, his bulbous eyes whizzing between the two of them.

‘I get it, Jenny,’ Chad continued. ‘I get it. You are twatting f-ing great.’

Jenny looked for a second as if she was about to cry. Her bottom lip was a tremble away from a tear. Federico turned away and shielded his eyes. He says that seeing an incredibly
beautiful person cry is like seeing a big shit in the middle of freshly laundered sheets. It just shouldn’t be allowed.

‘Look at the letters, Jenny,’ Chad said, pointing to the corner of the room. ‘Look at the twatting letters!’

There was a tap on the side of my wee pod. It was Chad’s assistant, Loosie. She climbed in, notebook attached to her hand, blocking my view of the boardroom. She harrumphed before speaking just to let me know how tiresome she found me, and everything to do with
everything
to do with me.

‘Kate Winters,’ she began, ‘on the assumption that you are responsible for the advert that ran unauthorised in the last edition of
True Love
, and Lord knows the way you have been pining after your ex-boyfriend we all assume that it’s you, that and the fact that no one else would be stupid enough to a) actually pitch the idea to Chad, be rejected, then pursue it anyway and b) publish what is for all intents and purposes an advert actually encouraging our readers to, Lord forbid, get in touch, you have another 29 postal sacks of letters addressed to
Pirate Kate
. They were by your wee pod but Chad, and by Chad I mean me, dragged them into the boardroom. You also have a gift box from a motivational speaker called Bob. He wants to take a meeting with you. And by you I of course mean
“Pirate Kate”
.’ She made inverted commas with her fingers. ‘And you have phone messages: your grandmother called three times wanting to speak to you about someone called Mary, someone called Delaware and someone called Beatrice. She spoke as if I should know who these people are. She also wanted to know why you didn’t start work at 9 a.m. Personally I would like to know the same thing. Your friend Leah called,
twice, wanting to talk to you about her love-stolen dreams, and a man called Peter Parker called—’

I knocked over my coffee at the sound of his name. Loosie watched me, as if I were poo on a sheet, as I tried to mop it up.

‘Peter Parker—’ she paused, waiting to see if she could make me spill it again ‘—spelt his name out for me, twice, very slowly. Please tell … Peter Parker … I am not a retard. And does he know he’s got the same name as Spiderman? Don’t answer that. Federico asked to see you when you get in, Jenny Sullivan’s on the warpath for you, and Chad said to say, and I quote, “Don’t even think about starting your twatting day sitting your skinny little arse down or sniffing at a cup of morning twatting coffee before seeing me,” and by me I mean Chad—it was a quote. BTW there is a stain on your top that looks like tomato juice, but it could be ketchup. Either way we both know that it’s not from any kind of vitamin drink. Kate? Kate, where do you think you are going?’

‘I am going to get fresh coffee,’ I said, clambering out of Big Red.

‘Didn’t you hear me, Kate? You need to go to the boardroom. We are having an
Early Morning Focused Focus Meeting
. Go! Now!’

the boardroom | true love

As I nervously slipped into the back of the boardroom Chad was a partial blur, silently spinning himself in fast circles on his special velvet heart-shaped chair. Federico was attached to the
Nespresso
machine and frantically waved as I walked
in. Jenny Sullivan was sitting straight-backed and straight-faced at the blood-drawing tip of the glass heart. It looked as if the heart were literally growing out from between her perfect breasts. The rest of the office were skim-reading a
Time Magazine
article that Loosie was silently handing out but with a noisy sense of self-importance.

The 2009 article claimed there was a link between obesity and love. It stated that within a few years of getting married women were twice as likely to become obese compared to women who were merely dating. The research had monitored over 7,000 women and found that unmarried women living with partners for up to five years had a 63% increased risk of obesity. One of the researchers wrote that, ‘The longer a woman lives with a romantic partner, the more likely she is to keep putting on weight.’ This was by no means the first piece of research to highlight this link, or the more general negative effects relationships can have on women, but it was the only piece of research Chad could get his hands on before our ironically named
Early Morning Focused Focus Meeting
—a meeting that has never once been focused, never once (before today) been held early in the morning and has occasionally involved several members of staff crying.
Afternoon Mothers Meeting
would have been a more appropriate name, or
Let’s all listen to one of Chad’s never-ending monologues and try to guess how many expletives he will use
.

‘I’ve decided I want to take
True Love
in a new direction,’ Chad said, mid spin, the words flying from his mouth as if from a spinning top; the sounds of the beginning and end of his sentence whizzing off in different directions.
‘Now, I know I didn’t run it past you lot first, but why the fuck would I? So keep up. I’m introducing a new section to the magazine and I’m calling it Love-Stolen Dreams.’ He locked eyes with me for a split second of every spin. ‘LSD for short.’ He grabbed the edge of the glass heart and came to a violent stop. ‘I want
True Love
to start having a more balanced view of love and I’ve decided to start with the twatting fat people.’ He got up to start pacing around the boardroom, but his legs buckled under him like a puppet with no master—too many spins—so from the boardroom floor he began his focus meeting speech. ‘Now, before any of you get all squeaky and high-pitched I’m not judging the fat, OK, so let’s just get that out there for any of you liberalists who are pro the obese and all that. My mum had a lifelong battle with the bulge so I know first-hand how a larger lady can feel. But our readers fessed up, OK. They put it out there. They wrote in, in twatting sackfuls, to say they blamed men for getting fat. Obviously it’s not true. I have about as much effect on a woman’s weight as a plastic satsuma but we are going to write about it anyway because apparently they give a crap. Marketing guy, put up advertising rates by 15% and call out all the diet-pill companies. In fact call anything weight-loss related: step machines, personal trainers, Paul-twatting-McKenna and his I Can Make You a Skinny Fuck book. We want it all. Yellow WEE Pod, I want a selection of short articles about celebrities whose weight has been affected by love, maybe something about the amount of calories sex burns, but how they got fat afterwards, otherwise we’ll lose the fat readers. Blue, black and silver WEES, I want to know about readers who lost
material possessions because of love: houses, iPads, cars and so on. Pink WEE, I want you to write about people who cancelled travel plans for love. And I want something about how love killed someone, preferably through starvation, or through having an actual broken heart. We want the readers to go on a roller coaster of twatting emotions. Jenny, read up on queens or princesses, find one who gave up something for love, the right to the throne or something.’ Jenny rolled her eyes and huffed so heavily she could have blown herself, on her chair, across the room. ‘And, Kate—’ I went cold as he said my name ‘—let’s not forget little Kate Winters.’ I could feel everyone in the room bristling with delight at the prospect of seeing me publicly fired. ‘Kate, you have illegally published something in my magazine. You are therefore responsible for all these twatting letters.’ He pointed to the far corner of the room and I turned to look. ‘It was the ultimate breach of trust, not only that you found a way to access my copy, ergo millions of our readers, but that you then used that open channel to involve them in your own quest. Give me one magnificent twatting reason why I shouldn’t fire you then call the police and have you arrested?’

I didn’t know what to say. All I could see were the letters: thousands upon thousands of them on tables in the corner, towers of letters bigger than any paper forest Peter and I had ran around as kids. And each one was a woman, a living breathing woman wanting to share, wanting to speak, wanting to reach out and connect; every letter a different voice, a different soul. Women
did
want to take back their love-stolen dreams. They were like paper towers of hope.
I felt my eyes twinkle at the prospect. This would keep me busy forever.

‘Oi! Pirate Kate! Give me one twatting reason why I shouldn’t fire you!’

Everyone in the room expected me to crumble, or beg or just pack up my desk and leave. But not now, not with all these love-stolen dreams laid out in front of me. Chad would have to drag me from the building by my ankles if he thought I was going to give up that easily.

‘I can give you two,’ I said dramatically, turning to face the room, who gasped. ‘Actually I can only give you one, but it consists of two words—’

‘This isn’t twatting charades!’

‘How about an interview with the media-shy Delaware O’Hunt?’ The room gasped again.

‘Actually that’s quite a lot more than two words …’ Federico muttered. ‘Even Delaware O’Hunt is three words, if you think about it, and then there was the rest of the sentence, which takes us closer to ten, although I don’t actually know if the O apostrophe gets counted with the Hunt. Does anyone know that?’ He looked around the room. ‘Anyone?’

‘I twatting love Delaware O’Hunt and you know it,’ Chad barked, sitting heavily in his heart-shaped chair. ‘Kate Winters, I swear to you now, if that interview doesn’t materialise, or you piss her off like you’ve pissed me off, then you will be thrown from the building.’ And he meant from the roof. ‘You are officially on probation. If you submit anything else to my magazine unauthorised you will be fired. If you come into the office late you will be fired. If you wear a pair of shoes I find offensive you will be fired.’ I looked
down at my shoes to find they already offended me. ‘You are here because of the promise of Delaware and because a certain someone believes you are talented.’ Federico pointed at his own head. ‘I’m not so sure, so let’s see how your Love-Stolen Dreams idea pans out. But you will no longer write anything under your own name.’ I didn’t anyway. ‘You will go nowhere near the copy for next month’s edition, and as a special treat you can read
every single one
of the letters you helped generate. I am going to work you so twatting hard you won’t know what’s hit you. So dive in, go wild, pick your favourites then rewrite them for the magazine, in first person, obviously. And when the Delaware copy is ready email it to Jenny. Obviously it will run under her name. We can’t have a nobody writing our main twatting feature, otherwise what do I need Jenny for?’ Jenny went a bit pale and locked eyes with Chad, just for a second, before they both smiled sycophantically at each other. ‘So!’ Chad said, clapping his hands together. ‘I will be checking the copy for this edition and I read slow so everyone’s deadline is two days early.’ There was a communal groan. ‘Button it, you lot, and let’s take a moment. Close your eyes, take a breath and let’s say it together. “Thank twat for the twatting fat people.”’ He threw his unfinished apple over his shoulder and marched out of the room, Loosie in tow. Then everyone turned to glare at me. I say everyone turned; Federico didn’t. He sat in the corner giving me a mini round of applause before getting distracted by something invisible on his sleeve.

‘Well, look at you,’ he said as everyone left the boardroom.
‘True Love
magazine chasing down Love-Stolen
Dreams; a new direction; a new era; an extra-heavy workload for the rest of the office as a result. Well done you!’ He squeaked the word
‘Yeah!’
and shook his fist in the air.

Federico was right. It was worth a fist shake and a silent
Yeah
. I had a virtual conveyor belt of love-stolen dreams to busy myself with, taking back what love had stolen; helping women reconnect with themselves; spreading happiness and joy and hoping it was contagious like an extra-virulent strain of Pig Flu. And after a few of the postal sacks had been sorted through and skim-read we found Chad had most definitely been right. There did seem to be an awful lot of women who felt their bodies had changed since they’d fallen in love. So Federico and I decided to invite 20 of them to join a
Fat Camp
. We wanted to get back their pre-love bodies. We wanted to make them feel pre-love happy and light. Maybe we could learn why they gained the weight in the first place, because everyone wants to feel beautiful and, excuse the pun, worth it, so why did so many of us feel the exact opposite, and why was love bringing about this change?

As I packed up my belongings that morning, on the first official day of Love-Stolen Dreams, I felt a glimmer of excitement, a spark of hope, a hint of happiness, which were all feelings that had been absent in my life for some time. But they were quickly replaced by fear and apprehension as Jenny Sullivan breezed past me in a gust of perfection and skinny hatred, and although I never saw her lips move I swear blind I heard her whisper, ‘You’ll pay for this, Winters,’ as she marched into Chad’s office, slamming the glass door behind her.

the story of peter parker—the boy who never smiles

I
grew up living next door to a boy named Peter Parker. Not the emotionally burdened alter ego of Spiderman, but the emotionally burdened son of parents unfamiliar with the world of Marvel. Peter is my oldest friend. He was my best friend. And between you and me he was probably my first crush.