Love Is a Thief (19 page)

‘Well, that would be really nice because sometimes I don’t feel like my boyfriend really
sees
me, you know, he doesn’t always notice I am there, even though I’m there, the whole time …’

‘Annie-pants, don’t even start with semi-invisibility. There is a certain someone who may or may not work in this office who has the ability to see right through me. And not
in a spiritually connected way, no, in an “I’m totally oblivious to your existence” kind of way. So Thursday nights works for you? Loosie!!’ he screamed out of the boardroom door. ‘Loosie, find a Thursday night course close to where Annie lives or works. Annie, please send us an update in five weeks’ time, less than 2,000 words, more than 500 and understand that it will be rewritten by one of the writers here but will of course remain in first person so that all our readers think you’ve written it. Next!!!!!!’ he yelled as a confused-looking Annie was escorted out by Loosie.

‘That’s quite a system you’ve got going on,’ I said, sitting myself next to him.

‘Kat-kins, Chad told me to find LSDs to write about and that is what I am doing. I am uncovering their ambitions and putting them on the road to happiness, which is what you wanted, is it not?’

‘But don’t you ever wonder why they are not on the road to happiness in the first place? Aren’t you getting tired of discovering woman after woman after woman making the same mistakes? And some of them aren’t even grateful.’ I was thinking specifically about Jenny. ‘Some of them don’t even want to change their lives for the better. And if someone already knows what makes them happy why are they sitting at home watching TV?’

‘Kat-kins, I’m not sure what’s going on with you and your angsty, angry energy right now. I’m not sure I care. And I don’t know what’s going on with women in general. I’m not sure I care about that either. In answer to the last of your gazillion questions I suspect the women think they have a lack of time, like Annie, or a lack of money, like Leah, or maybe there is lack of inspiration, like me? Or
maybe, just maybe, the road to ultimate happiness is actually the TV? Seriously, Kate, what’s with the unending list of questions? You spurt questions like a first-year medical student who has just been asked to perform her first appendectomy. Do I look like an
Attending
on
Grey’s Anatomy?
Do I look like a handsome, highly trained medical professional with a complicated and intriguing personal life?’ He wanted me to say yes and deliberately put his glasses back on. ‘I am on a quest, Kate, your bloody love quest, to take back what love stole, not to find out why love nicked it all in the first place, or, more to the point, why we all ruddy well gave it up.’

Loosie marched into the boardroom with my mobile in her hand.

‘Sorry to interrupt what I can only assume is another one of your dreary love-related conversations but your phone has been ringing off the hook. There’s someone called Mary on the line. And FYI, she sounds ODD.’ Lucy thrust the phone in my hand and marched out. I could hear deep breathing on the line.

‘Mary? Is that you?’

‘Oh, good Lord, oh, good Lord and little baby Jesus.’ More heavy breathing.

‘Mary, what’s wrong? Where are you? Is Len with you?’

‘Kate, you need to come to the house. And you need to come now. Meet me in the garage.’ She hung up.

Well, this time I definitely wasn’t going alone.

mary’s house

‘It was in the
Daily Mail
, Kat-kins, last weekend, last frickin weekend. “Wife Murders” it was called. I swear to God,
Kat-kins, if you are taking me to the scene of a crime I will kill you, actually kill you. I learnt a very dangerous life-preserving move from my colonic therapist and I didn’t plan to use it but by God I will, you be sure of that.’ The front door slammed shut behind us. ‘Oh, my God!’ Federico squealed before grabbing hold of me in a bear hug. His head was darting from left to right.

‘It was just the wind, Federico. Please, calm down and let me go.’

‘Over seventy per cent of murders are committed by an acquaintance, Kat-kins,’ he whispered in my ear as we walked down the hallway. ‘Over seventy per cent! And almost
all
of those are by angry spouses. It was in the
Daily Mail
, Kat-kins. Last weekend!’

‘I heard you, Federico,’ I said, slowly pushing the lounge door open. I could see cushions all over the floor but still no sign of Mary. ‘Federico, it looks like there has been some sort of kerfuffle in here.’ Kerfuffle is a word I rarely use, but it had been applicable twice today. Everyone seemed to have strange kerfuffle-esque activities going on in their houses. Well, everyone being Mary and sex-crazed Peter Parker.

‘We could very easily fall into that seventy per cent,’ he said, following me into the lounge, then becoming immediately distracted by a selection of family photos on the walls. ‘Just by being here we are at risk,’ he said, rummaging through Mary’s ornaments. ‘Ooh, look! She’s got a Charles and Diana dinner set! I’d cut off both of my big toes for a Charles and Diana dinner set. And the big toes are the important ones, yes, they are. The other ones are practically redundant, like our appendix, and pubic hair. In a few years
we won’t have the other four toes, or the appendix, or pubes. It’s an evolutionary fact. Ooooh, Quality Street. Do you think Mary would mind if I pinched a Strawberry Cream?’

I left him talking to himself in the lounge and walked through the kitchen and down the garden to the garage. There I found Mary. She was sitting on an old wooden chair sipping from a mug. She had an old oily dust sheet wrapped around her and very little else on. There was no sign of Len.

‘Mary?’ I said tentatively, stepping inside. ‘Mary, what’s going on?’

All the doors of the Ford Capri were open and the engine was running. I walked over to the car and switched it off.

‘For the rest of my life I will never forget the sound of that car engine,’ Mary said, looking at me for the first time since I walked in.

‘Mary. Where is Len? What’s going on?’

‘Well, he knows. Len knows. He knows I have been lying to him, he knows I have been secretly training as a mechanic and he knows that I fixed the car.’ She walked over to me and gave me the mug, which was actually filled with some kind of alcohol. She then sat herself in the driver’s seat of the now silent car. I sat beside her. She seemed to be in some sort of dream state.

‘Kate, I never knew it could be like that, you know.’ I didn’t but the passenger seat felt damp and sticky. ‘I never knew that … I didn’t realise that … Kate, people can be so different to how you thought!’

‘That’s very true,’ I said, thinking about Gabriel, and Peter Parker.

‘Oh, my goodness, that is true,’ Federico said, mouth full
of Quality Street. Somehow he had managed to get into the back seat of the car.

‘And then you wonder,’ she said, turning to face us, ‘how it was that you went so long without seeing it.’

‘I agree, Mary, I do, I do, they just reveal themselves from nowhere,’ Federico said, gently squeezing Mary’s shoulder. ‘Chad does it all the time, yes, he does, and mostly it makes me weep. Did Len reveal something to you, Mary?’

‘He revealed his whole self!’ she squeaked, turning round even further so that she could speak directly to Federico. I was pretty sure I could see what looked like a giant love bite on her neck. ‘He couldn’t stop himself!’ she said, wide-eyed, to a wide-eyed Federico. ‘He just went, sort of wild.’ She was gently touching the love bite on her neck. ‘At first he was angry. He said he couldn’t believe I would keep secrets from him. He said I had betrayed him by going behind his back—’

‘Which is sort of true, isn’t it?’ muttered Federico before I could smack him over the head.

‘Len said that he didn’t know me. I wasn’t the woman he’d married. But then, then his curiosity got the better of him, and he wanted to know how I’d fixed it. So I started to explain. And the more I talked, about oil and nuts and bolts and screwdrivers, the more, well,
excited
he became.’

Oh, God. Mary was about to share a sex story with us. I started humming and stared at a fixed point ahead.

‘The next thing I know I am bent over the bonnet and Len, oh, my Len, he was magnificent.’ Federico was clapping his hands and jumping up and down in his seat. ‘We have never ever had sex like it!’

I hummed louder but the nausea was taking hold. I couldn’t listen to stories of Len bending Mary over a Ford Capri in their twilight years.

‘We’ve done it everywhere,’ she continued. ‘Everywhere,’ she confirmed. ‘I feel like Kim Basinger in
9½
Weeks
’.
And now I had visual images of Mary and Len watching
9½ Weeks
.

‘He was just so masterful.’

‘He looks like he could be masterful,’ encouraged Federico.

‘And every time I mentioned part of a petrol engine—’

‘I can imagine, Mary, yes I can, yes I can, you magical queen of the mechanical world.’

‘Oh, goodness, Kate,’ Mary said, putting her hand on my forehead. ‘You don’t look at all well. You are very pale, my dear, and very clammy. Are you going to be sick, my love?’

‘Don’t do it near me! Don’t do it near ME!’ Federico screamed, covering his eyes and holding his nose.

‘I just need a bit of fresh air,’ I said, running from the garage and promptly throwing up in the neighbour’s hedgerow. It was over before it had started, like my dance career, but I stayed sitting in the cool night air, breathing it in, trying to calm myself down, because something had just malfunctioned in my brain. Mary’s sex story had made me think about something else, something that caused a shortness of breath followed by a panic-filled urge to get outside, launch myself into a hedgerow and vomit. It was the thought that Peter Parker had, that very same day, had a similar wanton sexual experience with some woman in his flat: passionate, sweat-producing, hair-ruffling sex. There
was a woman somewhere in London who got to be that intimately close with my Peter Parker. And that thought, that made my stomach hurt in a painful, vomit-producing way. But what I didn’t understand is why I even cared.

Had I accidentally got emotionally attached to Peter Parker since his reappearance in my life? Was he filling a void that I should be filling myself? Had he become some kind of great-smelling, man-sized-handsome-well-groomed comfort blanket? And if so I needed to work out how to break these invisible bonds. I needed to once again stand on my own two feet. I needed to search
Google
for ‘invisible bonds’ and find out exactly how it was I could break them, so I could get back to my pirate quest and stop chucking up in people’s begonias. Actually it wasn’t a begonia. It was just a hedge. I’ve just never used that word in a sentence before. Begonia.

an interval

a short message from my beloved bikini waxer

I
am Hindu OK. I am from India. Yes, London is my home. Yes, I love it here. Yes, I will never leave. But India is my home. My husband is Indian. I am Indian. My children are Indian. And when we marry. We marry! I will be with my husband until my dying day. He is going to be there whether I like it or not. And he is my best friend. But, Kate, do you think for a second that I am wanting sex with him after 18 years of marriage? I am not. He is. I am not
.

And I tell you this, Kate. I speak to a lot of women. My clients here, they are my friends. Like you are now my friend, they have also become my friends. We have a special bond. It’s true eh? How can we not have a special bond? And I ask my clients, I say to them, ‘Am I normal? Do you feel like this too?’ and they say the same. They want to have sex with their tennis coach, or their yoga teacher or the man who delivers their groceries, but they are not lying at home thinking about having sex with their husbands. Kate, we’ve
been with them for more than a decade. I am telling you, as a woman, as your friend, for other women, go out there and enjoy your life now
.

Love is so wonderful. My husband is so wonderful. But if I could go in a dark alley and have a fondle of the man who teaches my Pilates class, Kate, I really would. Go enjoy yourself, Kate. Touch everyone! No man is worth how sad you are currently feeling. Get back out there!

frog princes and frog princesses

I
t had been over a week since Mary and Len’s; a week since Peter’s apartment; a week since the discovery of certain invisible bonds; but nothing had been severed and
Google
had provided zero results. So I decided to head to Grandma’s to ask her advice. She’d been pestering me all week to visit. She had a new idea for LSD and had called my office every day telling me how, done right, it would dramatically improve my quality of life. Whatever it was I was going to embrace it and participate in her new obsession in the hope she could release me from my own.

grandma’s villa | pepperpots

I arrived at Grandma’s villa to find Grandma, Delaware and Beatrice all rather pissed.

‘Darling, we are bored,’ Grandma began from the head of the large wooden dining table. They had been on the Margaritas all day and looked unusually dishevelled.

‘That’s what you’ve been calling me about every day this week? You want to tell me you are bored?’

‘In a way, yes.’ She poured me a drink and dragged me onto the seat next to her; a glassy-eyed Delaware sat on my other side. ‘Kate, darling, when you get ….
older
—’ Grandma hated the word ‘—some things in life become less frequent. You are less noticed by the opposite sex. The hours spent with girlfriends giggling about your latest love interest, a first kiss, what he meant when he said he thought you were different, those hours no longer exist. Those experiences no longer exist.’ I couldn’t imagine Grandma ever giggling over a man and the meaning of a sentence he uttered other than to critique its grammatical content. ‘The excitement of first love or first lust is gone for us.’ They all over-zealously nodded along. ‘Obviously on a practical level there are ways of ensuring one is still sexually satisfied—’ There was a smash of glasses from the kitchen and Pepperpots’ Vietnamese pool boy—who my grandma had an unusually close relationship with—popped his head around the corner.