Love Is a Thief (17 page)

‘Any man would be lucky to be with Jane Brockley-formerly-Robinson.’ He shoved another hundred
Haribo
in his mouth, powering up and down the boardroom on his severely injured knee.

‘James, firstly, Julio is gay, so that should put your mind at ease regarding his apparent sexual pursuit of your wife. Secondly I
am
your friend, and Jane’s friend. We’ve all been on holiday together; you stayed with me and Gabriel in France; we’ve been skiing together, been for hikes, we’ve even got drunk together quite a few times.’ He was nodding his head in agreement. ‘All in all we’ve spent quite a bit of time together, over the years, which is why I know your knee is just fine.’ At the suggestion of a lie James huff-puffed himself out like a red-breasted robin. ‘And I’ve even seen you dance a couple of times, James; at your wedding, and on a few nights out. You even danced in a cage that night in Brixton. Do you remember? You took off your top and the bouncer threw you out.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘So why do you tell Jane that your fully functioning, tennis-playing, skiing, drunk-dancing knee is not working?’

‘Solo dancing, Katie, I can do solo dancing, and the Macarena, but that’s more of a modern disco take on a line dance than a traditional two-person dance. But couple dancing, well, it’s like my brain has an implosion. I just can’t do it!’ He sat down heavily in Chad’s heart-shaped chair. ‘I had dance lessons for six and a half months to prepare for my first dance with Jane at our wedding. Six and a half months, to learn a three-minute routine!’

I actually thought Jane and James did a regular ‘old school’ slow dance at their wedding, when you loop your arms around each other’s waist then rock from side to side like a giant human metronome …

‘It’s just the thought of her doing something with another man that I’m not able to. It makes me feel so inadequate. I can’t be a bloody dancer. I can’t go by the name of Julio and do the ruddy splits, OK? And if that’s what Jane needs I’m going to end up divorced. What have you done to me? What have you done? I am happy for men to flirt with her. I want her to feel good about herself. But this, this bloody idea of yours, it makes me feel so, so, lacking, like I am not enough for her, like I am fundamentally, biologically, genetically lacking something that would make Jane happy.’ Bollocks. That was never the plan. Chad was right. I was pissing everyone off.

‘James, I know,’ I said, grabbing him by his shoulders, ‘I
know
that she would much rather be dancing with you. So, I have an idea, why don’t we go to dance classes? We could practise in secret and then one day, when you feel ready, we could surprise her. I’ve been recommended a dance guru—his name is Mustafa. Apparently if we can’t learn to dance with him, then—’ I gulped ‘—no one will be able to help us.’ James looked up at me, astonished.

‘Kate … are you also …?’

‘Yes.’ I nodded. ‘I have also been afflicted, but together we will succeed.’ We high-fived, then immediately felt a bit embarrassed. Brits just can’t seem to pull that off. James’ face fell.

‘Jane would hate it if she thought I was suddenly trying
to be a dancer like her. She’d think I was bloody stalking her, or copying her, or that I didn’t trust her and was trying to get better so that I could step in and stop her seeing Julio, which isn’t what I want! I just don’t want to feel so bloody inadequate.’

‘James, how would you feel if one day Jane turned up at your tennis club, put on a pair of Green Flash and started knocking the ball around?’

‘I would bloody love it!’ he exclaimed. ‘I have no idea why she’s so anti-tennis. I’ve always wanted us to play together.’

‘What if she was rubbish, which, by the way, she
really
is?’

‘Why would I care about that? I’d just love to share it with her.’

‘She doesn’t come because she thinks if you see her play tennis it will be a massive turn-off for you. You’d be embarrassed by her, especially as you are always playing with that Cat Henderson. She’s a tennis pro! How can Jane compete with that?’

‘Cat Henderson is chronically dull, Kate, and, between you and me, is a ruddy great lesbian. No one says it out loud, mind you—the club’s very traditional.’

‘James, you know I think it’s important couples do things separately, but in this instance I think you should come to at least one dance class. Get over yourself, James. Be brave. Be a man!’

Well, at the mere suggestion that James might not be a man he agreed, and I made a mental note to always challenge a man’s gender when wanting him to do something.

‘Katie.’ James said, spinning himself on the chair like a little boy, ‘I don’t know what love means to you, or feels like for you, but … I just wondered—’ He came to a stop. ‘Have you ever loved someone so much that you just want them to have everything, everything in the world?’

‘Yes, I remember what that feels like.’

‘And wouldn’t you want to be the person who could give them everything?’

‘Yes, I probably would.’

‘I’m sure it’s my ego at work. I’ve read Freud, and Jung, and I did a semester in existentialism at Cambridge. I know that if you love someone you have to be brave enough to let them go. It’s such a total cliché and it sounds so simple and easy until you’ve been in love, until you’ve woken up every morning next to this
being
who you treasure above all other things, above your own life. Then the thought of not being able to complete them, well, it’s terrifying, Katie, totally bloody terrifying. And I know I sound like a ridiculous old fart, but I am in love! I have been in love with Jane from the first moment I saw her. My life is in colour with her, without her it would be in black and white, so I want to be able to provide everything for her. I want to be her Julio. And the fact that I can’t is … well, it’s bloody painful.’ He started spinning again, spinning in the giant heart-shaped chair. ‘I just wanted to make my pumpkin happy, that’s all. I wanted to be the one who brings her the most joy.’

I watched him spin for a few minutes, playing around with the idea before I committed to saying it out loud.

‘James … there is probably something you could do for
Jane that Julio definitely can’t. And I suspect it would make her a whole lot happier than Spanish dancing ever could …’

James came to a violent stop and stared up at me from the chair. He was all ears, and eyes, and podgy tennis legs.

mechanics r u!

M
ary the cleaner, after much persuasion and a certain amount of emotional blackmail, had finally agreed to go on a basic mechanics course. I had attended the first few classes with her and they had been a pink-jumpsuit-wearing revelation. The mechanic school was on an industrial estate in South East London in a warehouse that had been painted bright pink. On arriving for the first class we’d been ushered into a locker room and instructed to change into their uniform. Before you could say ‘brake fluid’ we were all wearing bright pink overalls with
Mechanics is Me
written on the back in gold italic writing. It felt very Pink Ladies from
Grease
.

We were then asked to stand in a semi-circle in the middle of the large garage. There were five other ladies there (1 x widow, 3 x divorcees, 1 x stage 4 singleton
⁷
); three
old cars (not a metaphor); a huge tool area (ditto); a small kitchen area and even a laundry where you could wash and dry your dirty overalls. Our teacher that night was a man called Jefferson who ran like a fairy around the periphery of the room before coming to a stop in front of us.

‘I’m an actor slash voice-over artiste slash mechanic,’ he said as he pirouetted on the spot. ‘Welcome to the school. Welcome to
Mechanics R U
—’ he took a bow ‘—and I know, we’ve stolen our name a bit from
Toys R Us
, in that it’s a play on words, or rather a play on their words, but the emphasis is on you, as opposed to us, because we are already mechanics and we are empowering you, so
Mechanics R U
is like a subliminal non-subliminal message reinforcing who you are
becoming
, not who you were. Consider me your conduit to the mechanical world.’

Yes, I had managed to take Mary to a class run by a spiritual, pink-overall-wearing out-of-work actor. I turned to Mary to apologise only to find her nodding along, ferociously agreeing with every single word Jefferson spoke. It was like bearing witness to Moses speaking to the people before parting the Red Sea, or Antony Robbins
⁸
during one of his
‘Unleash the POWER’
lectures. Everyone in that room was in rapture.

‘You,’ Jefferson said, pointing at Mary. ‘You are a mechanic.’

Mary then burst into actual tears and everyone started clapping.

‘You,’ Jefferson said, pointing at a different woman. ‘You are a mechanic.’

This woman also burst into tears. It was like being in an episode of
X Factor
with everyone wanting everything a great deal and it all being terribly important.

‘So,’ Jefferson said, clapping his hands and bouncing into the centre of the workshop. ‘Let’s accelerate to success.’ Then he ran past everyone making us all high-five him.

By this point Mary was flushed bright red. She beamed at the other women in the group. They all beamed back, all of them red in the face. Everyone in that room was blushing, including Jefferson, excluding me. But then I was embarrassed because I wasn’t blushing, so I blushed. It was confusing. Then Jefferson showed us how to open the bonnet of a car and encouraged us to touch and feel the engine as much as possible.

‘The engine is the heart of the car. Bond with your machine,’ he’d said as he furiously jabbed the oil stick in and out of the engine. Mary had looked like she was going to pass out.

And since that day Mary had been attending religiously, secretly practising in the garage at the bottom of her garden, honing her skills, becoming the mechanic she’s always wanted to be. I only got as far as week three and was asked to leave after an incident involving a Skoda and a blow torch. Then one morning, quite out of the blue, Mary had called sounding guilty and vague. In a hushed whisper she’d insisted I come straight to her house. She told me to
wear old clothes and to bring the emotionally unpredictable Peter Parker, which is what I then tried to do.

goldman apartments | london

When I arrived at Peter’s apartment, in a private development that overlooked the River Thames, a stone-faced concierge let me into the building. I took the lift up to the top floor and found apartment 41. I knocked on the door and I waited. Eventually, after several long minutes, Peter Parker opened the front door. But he did not resemble the Peter Parker that I knew.

To say that he looked ruffled would be a Shard-sized
⁹
understatement. He looked as though he’d been tickled nonstop by a gang of parentally unsupervised children. He was bright pink in the face, sweating, and his hair was shooting off in every direction the poor hair follicles would allow. He was also still in his pyjamas.

‘Kate?’ he said, stepping out into the hallway, pulling the door part-closed behind him. ‘What are you doing here?’ he said, trying to pat down his hair.

‘I need you to come to Mary’s with me. I think it’s some kind of emergency. She’s been fixing cars and I—’ I tried to walk past him into his apartment but he sidestepped and blocked me. So I tried to peer past him. But he towered above me ensuring I couldn’t see in.

‘Peter, what’s going on?’

‘Nothing’s going on, Kate. Why would you think something’s going on?’ He glanced back at his front door to make
sure it was pulled to. Then he put his hands on his hips and tried to look super casual. ‘I’ve been working out, doing exercise.’ He shrugged before jogging on the spot, then stretching. He was so red and so sweaty and so out of breath. He hadn’t once looked like that at Boot Camp.

‘Peter, is this about the park? Because I wanted to speak to you about that. I wanted to apologise for the misunderstanding, because it was a misunderstanding. I was actually trying to talk to you about Jenny Sullivan—she works in my office. It wasn’t about you, or a critique of your life choices, of which I know nothing because you haven’t been in my life for over—’

‘Jenny Sullivan? The celebrity?’

Unbelievable. The woman could scene steal from a mile away.

‘Peter, I’ve missed you over these last few weeks, which has come as a bit of a surprise if I’m honest, and I think it’s unacceptable for you to just disappear all over again, and I really do think Mary needs our help so it would be great if we could go together and …’

I petered out. Peter wasn’t listening to a word I was saying. He was compulsively checking his watch, then wiping his sweaty brow. I tried again to look into the hallway of his apartment but again he blocked my view, fully closing the door.

‘Peter, why are you so sweaty? You look like you’ve been doing Hot Bikram in your flat. And why can’t I come in?’

‘It’s been proven, Kate, that even 30 minutes of moderate exercise every day can create a level of endorphins in the brain equal to that of—’

‘Is there someone in your flat with you?’

‘There’s no one in my flat. Why would you think someone’s in the flat?’

‘Well, look at you. You look like … Well, you’ve obviously been
physically exerting
yourself.’ Physically exerting in this context meant something naked and breathy that culminated in a whole lot more than a release of endorphins. ‘It’s OK if you have someone in there and you don’t want me to meet her.’ I had
no
idea Peter Parker had a girlfriend. In fact I had no idea what Peter did outside the time he spent with me. Maybe he was seeing that young heavy-chested woman from
Fat Camp?
God, I wish I had boobs …

‘I’m not with a girl. Why would you think there’s a girl? There’s no girl.’

‘Peter, no one else in the world is still in their pyjamas at this time of day, flustered, sweating and red-faced unless they are …
entertaining.’