Love Is a Thief (18 page)

A drop of sweat dripped off the nose of Peter Parker. He ignored it. I looked at the small patch of moisture it had made on the hallway carpet. The woman in his flat must be some kind of insatiable sex princess to have created this flustered, hair-ruffled, fib-telling version of Peter. This must be what Peter looked like during sex. This was
Sex Pete
, a person I have no experience being in the presence of. In fact the only time I’ve been in close proximity to Peter and another girl was when we were five years old and he kissed strawberry-smelling Annabel at that pool party. She had buck teeth. The old memories came flooding back. Why, oh, why did he kiss strawberry-smelling Annabel????

‘Kate, can we do this another time? It’s really not a good
moment for me.’ He leant down and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, then slammed the door shut in my face.

I stood there for several minutes just staring at that door; wondering if he would come back; wondering if I should put my ear to the door to try and identify any noises or voices inside; hoping that he wasn’t watching me through the peephole. Eventually I walked back to the lift, occasionally looking back down the hall, expecting him to run out and invite me in. But he never reappeared. I took the lift back down to the luxurious marble-floored reception, walked back past the stone-faced concierge, back down the busy street, back to the dirty smoggy tube and finally I arrived at scary Mary’s, alone.

OK, I admit it!!! I may have asked the stone-faced concierge, ‘Is there a girl in Peter Parker’s apartment?’ to which the stone-faced man raised his right eyebrow very high. He had obviously been sworn to secrecy, part of his job description I suspect, or some misplaced male allegiance with the highly sexed Peter Parker, so I left none the wiser, certainly none the happier and still unclear about the events in Hyde Park.

⁷
Stage 4 Singleton
- Diagnosis: Terminal. Treatment is possible with mild interim improvement but long-term prognosis will remain unchanged. The pack animal has gone lone wolf and it’s unlikely that any attempts at re-entry into pack life will be successful.

⁸
Tony Robbins
(Antony to his friends) - millionaire inspirational life coach guru person. He can release the power within you, for a small sum of money, and an annual subscription.

⁹
Shard
- tallest building in London.

scary mary’s and the mess of the mechanics

W
hen I arrived at Mary’s the house appeared deserted. There were no lights on. The curtains were all drawn, and Len’s car wasn’t there. The front door was on the latch so I let myself in and called out for Mary.

No response.

I wandered down the garden to the garage where Len kept his old cars and found Mary head first in the engine of an old white Ford Capri.

‘I couldn’t help myself, Kate,’ she said, peering out over the bonnet. ‘It’s been sat in here for weeks, sat in this garage, him tinkering away every night, never fixing the bloody thing. And I thought,
I can do that. I know what’s wrong with it
. So when he went to do his post round yesterday I came down and I had a go. Thirty minutes later the car started, for the first time in seven months. But I couldn’t stop there, I started tuning and fine-tuning and then I started changing the oil, the air filter, looking at how the carburettor turned over. Before I knew it, it was as good as new.’

There had been a transformation in Mary. While she still
snacked on Quality Street and occasionally warmed her breastbone with mugs of tea she also moved expertly from one side of a car engine to the other. She was focused. She was capable. She was a mechanic.

‘Mary, that’s really great. Congratulations. I bet Jefferson would be impressed. You should call him and tell him.’ Mary looked up from the engine.

‘You are a genius, Kate. Jefferson could put the car back to how it was. I’m going to call him right away.’

‘Mary, wait! What’s going on? Why would you want Jefferson to break the fixed car?’

‘Kate, if my Len came back and the car suddenly started working it would be a bit of a mystery, but knowing Len he’d accept the car fixed itself. But if he comes back to find new spark plugs, clean oil, all the pistons replaced, how could I explain it? So I wanted you to put it back to how it was. If you could do whatever it was you did to that Skoda it would keep my Len busy for the next six months.’

‘I did exactly what the instructions told me!’ I said defensively. ‘It’s not my fault the car was misdiagnosed before the lesson.’ Mechanics can be a cliquey judgemental bunch.

‘Kate, my love, just get some overalls on and get under the car, please. And why isn’t Peter Parker here?’

But before I could put my engine-destroying hands on the poor car and open up about the strange events at Hyde Park and at Peter’s apartment I spotted a smiling Len tottering down the garden towards the garage.

‘Er … Mary … we might have a small problem …’

‘Oh, goodness me, Len’s home—’ Mary shoved a toffee Quality Street in her mouth and started manically chewing.
She crossed her chest then looked skyward. ‘Dear Lord, this really is your moment to shine, your moment to prove to me without a doubt that you exist because we are still on very shaky ground after the lack of a lottery jackpot win and my second cousin Janet’s breast cancer.’

Len opened the garage door and stepped inside.

‘Well, hello, love! Hello, little Kate! What are you two doing out here? You been showing Kate my handiwork? Kate, you can’t imagine how hard this one’s been. I’ve been working on it for months and the old girl still won’t come back to life. I keep saying to Mary it’s like the Tin Man in
The Wizard of Oz
. I just need to find out where its heart is.’ He beamed at me and wandered over to his wooden workbench, hung up his jacket and started picking up some tools. ‘Now where are my overalls?’ he muttered to himself, patting his pockets absent-mindedly as he scanned the garage, his eyes stopping on Mary. ‘Mary, love, why have you got those on? You’re not going to get your good clothes dirty just by being in here.’ He chuckled and rolled his eyes at me. Then he saw Mary’s hands; dirty, oil-covered. ‘Mary? What have you been doing, love? Did you accidentally drop something in the car?’ He walked towards the car and peered into the engine. ‘Whatever it is I am sure we can find—’ The new parts she’d fitted sparkled like Christmas lights against the ancient dirt on the old engine.

‘Mary, what is this? What’s going on?’

‘Kate,’ Mary said very quietly, ‘I think you should leave.’

Len looked from me in my clean and normal clothes to oil-covered Mary, confusion engulfing his smiling face like fast-moving storm clouds covering the sun. I back-stepped
my way out of the garage and pulled the door closed behind me. Then I ran back up the garden to the house as fast as my little legs would carry me. Just as I reached the back door I heard the engine of the car roar into life.

‘Mary!!!’ was the last thing I heard as I sprinted away. I prayed to God (the lottery-withholding one) that Mary’s imagination was as capable and fast-thinking as her mechanical mind.

the objectionables

I
arrived back in the office to find Federico in the boardroom interviewing yet more Love-Stolen Dreams candidates. Jenny had rather obstructively arranged this particular meeting with a group of women we liked to call ‘The Objectionables’. Because while these women would go as far as admitting they had unfulfilled dreams and ambitions, they resolutely refused to connect them to love. One such woman was Annie.

‘Look, I work hard,’ Annie asserted from the tip of the vicious heart. ‘I am in an office all day with people, but I am away from the people I love. So after work I’m not going to choose to do something alone. I want to spend time with my friends and my boyfriend. Any dreams I’m not currently pursuing are just down to a lack of time.’

‘You see …?’ Jenny Sullivan said smugly. ‘There is no story. Love isn’t taking anything from anyone and I don’t know what the bloody hell Chad is going to say when you two try and make this into an engaging and entertaining feature. Fire you both, I think, and about time.’

I couldn’t believe that trying to help Jenny Sullivan was the tiny gust of wind that had sent the house of cards that is my friendship with Peter Parker tumbling to the ground.

‘Because the fact is,’ Annie continued, ‘I don’t know anyone interested in clothes design. None of my friends want to learn to knit, or pattern cut, and my boyfriend would actually weep if I made him come to the cobbler course I saw advertised last week. These are things I’d have to do alone, so I
choose
to put them on the back burner.’ She crossed her arms and beamed at Jenny, who beamed back.

‘You are very smart, Annie.’ Federico nodded. ‘Very smart. I hope that boyfriend of yours can see the catch he has in you, the big fish on his hook, the 200lb salmon gasping for air as it’s taken out of the pool of life and left to die. So when will you put them on the front burner?’ He put his spectacles on (heavy dark frame, obviously no lenses in them) and blinked his eyes several times as if refocusing. Refocusing on what I didn’t know. There was only pure air between him and Annie, the 200lb dying salmon fish.

‘Well—’ Annie looked anxiously over to Jenny ‘—I don’t have an official plan. But maybe when I have kids? I’ll be at home for at least the first 6–12 months so I’ll probably take some courses then. Or maybe when I retire? When I retire I will do more.’ Annie had just turned thirty.

‘When you have kids or when you retire …’ Federico was frowning and scribbling furiously in a notebook. ‘And what if your husband doesn’t want to do these things, Annie-pants—may I call you Annie-pants? What if you don’t have time when you have kids, which, sorry to burst air bubbles, Annie-pants, you won’t. What if you reach retirement age
and your husband says, “No, Annie. No! I don’t want to learn how to hand-knit jumpers and double-stitch curtain hems. I want to sit around and fart and touch myself and play golf.” What if you don’t reach retirement age? What about that? You never know, Annie-pants. You just never know. And then of course you might get divorced. What is the statistic? Is it one in three marriages that end in divorce?’

‘It’s one in two,’ I corrected him.

‘One in two, Annie-pants! One in two! That’s a coin flip, Annie-pants. That’s a freakin coin flip! Although this is all a moot point because your form here says that you are not yet married, which means we are talking theoretically about the man you live with out of wedlock. Which brings us back to you being alone, doesn’t it, yes it does, and you having to get over the fact that you need to start doing some of these things now even if it means occasionally being alone. Otherwise you may never do any of these things at all.’

‘I guess … I just …’ Her bottom lip was trembling. Federico continued regardless.

‘And you say that you don’t want to be alone after working all day, isn’t that right, Annie-pants? But what exactly are you doing post 6 p.m.? Are you and your boyfriend at home doing hobbies together? Are you constructing great structures from clay or perfecting the art of Kama Sutra? Are you engaging in stimulating conversation? What happens at your house of joy from 6 p.m. onwards? Because whatever it is, Annie-pants, I want a part of that action, yes, I frickin do!’

‘I, er … well, I am at home. We are at home. Mostly watching TV. It relaxes me.’

‘You are watching
TV?’
He squeaked the word
TV
in such a way it set my teeth on edge.

‘Yes.’ Her response was more of a whisper.

‘Five nights a week?’

‘Yes. Although Tuesdays I sometimes do Pilates.’

‘So, to sum up, you do less because you have a boyfriend and you want to devote time to him. But you will do more apart from him, as and when you become more committed to him?’

‘Yes, it’s a choice, to delay things—my choice.’

‘So would you do more if you were single?’

‘I’d have more time,’ she said, looking at me, as if I were the Goddess of Time, as if I had a ruddy great clock around my neck and a sign on my head that said
Single and Time Rich
.

‘Annie-pants, I want to play a game with you, can I? I want you to imagine that you are going to spend the rest of your life totally alone. Are you imagining this lonely existence?’

‘Yes,’ she breathed, dabbing her eyes.

‘Is there anything at all that might take your mind off the horrific endlessly black loneliness? What could you do with your day? What consumes you and engages you so much that you could forget for a few seconds about your lonely life of solitude? Is there anything, anything at all?’

‘Well … I really like clothes, and shopping. So spending every day designing and making clothes, or shopping for
them, that would probably stop me thinking about my boyfriend. Stop me thinking about anything actually.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Jenny snapped before storming out of the boardroom.

‘Maybe I could open a shop selling clothes?’ Annie-pants said excitedly. ‘Then I’d have to buy the clothes for the shop and make clothes for the shop and people would come to the shop and we’d talk about clothes. So that would be great, really great, if I was going to be alone for the rest of my life.’

‘Annie-pants, I am so happy I am literally about to pee my pants. That is your Love-Stolen Dream. You are going to be the next Alexander McQueen. No sudden depression-induced suicide though, Annie-pants. Long live you and your suicideless life. Sooooo, would you consider spending one evening a week taking a short course in clothes design, or pattern cutting, or fashion buying? You’d still be home before 10 p.m. to watch TV with your dreary boyfriend who, FYI, you should not have moved in with before he proposed. You can Skyplus any TV shows you don’t want to miss and I promise absence makes the heart grow fonder. Your boyfriend will find you more interesting if you have eyes for something other than him, even if it is buttons and haberdashery.’