Love Is A Thief

‘Well, I’m not sure I’m saving anyone just yet, except myself, from being thrown from a top-floor window.’ I chuckled, but Peter didn’t laugh. He just watched me, like a statue, or an overly judgemental Greek god. ‘Thank you for doing this,’ I said, nodding my head like a talk-show host. ‘Grandma said you’d be the right person to talk to. “Peter knows sport,” she said to me.’ I said that last bit in a strange high-pitched imitation of Grandma. ‘And she said you were married. “Peter got married,” she said.’ Same strange voice. ‘Although actually she said, “his divorce,” then I said, “Peter got married?” and then—’

‘I was there, Kate.’

‘Yes, you were,’ I said with yet more head-nodding. ‘You were totally there, for that, for that moment …’ I sighed. He watched me. The silence between us was long and heavy and made me want to tear out my own eyes. Peter knew damn well I’d eventually have to fill it. I counted as far as fourteen pink elephants before.

‘I didn’t get married!’ was volunteered into the dead, noiseless space that was eating me from the inside. ‘I thought I was going to—there were plans for that,’ I said, stretching myself out as if I thought I was at the bloody gym. ‘Yep. It was a serious relationship,’ I said, doing a lunge. ‘It was a serious marriage plan.’ I moved on to a triceps stretch. ‘But here I am anyway, not married but writing about love every single day, which I definitely prefer.’ Three short boxing jabs. ‘But you, Peter, you must be an expert in loving—I mean in the emotion, not the sexual act. I don’t know how you are with the sex. I’ve always assumed probably great on the odd occasion that I’ve thought about it, which is certainly not all the time, maybe once in my teenage years, and then last week when I was watching Twilight—’ Oh, my God. ‘What I meant to say is that you must be an expert in relationships, having been married. I’m sure that you were lovely both as a husband and as a love-maker. Well done you,’ I said, shaking my fist in the air, then sighing heavily and looking at my shoes. Why, oh, why was I so excruciatingly odd?

Peter walked across the room until he was in front of me. I was expecting him to perform a quick sidestep and make a dash for the nearest exit but he didn’t. He just leant down and gave me a little kiss on my right cheek.

‘It’s nice to see you again, Kate,’ he said, studying my face for a few moments. He was about to speak again when Federico snapped his phone shut and spun on the spot, espresso in hand.

‘Well, look at you two! Childhood friends back together again, in London, big grown-up adults in the city. Who’d have thought it?’ He took a little sip from his tiny espresso cup.

‘Well, certainly not me,’ Peter said to Federico. ‘The last time I saw Kate she was obsessed with living somewhere in the Amazon and teaching pygmies to Moonwalk.’

Federico clasped his hands together in delight.

‘Well, last time I saw Peter he was 15 years old and suffering a bout of embarrassing and uncontrollable erections in Geography lessons.’ I chuckled. ‘People change.’ Federico spat his coffee across the glass heart. Peter looked horrified.

‘I told you that in confidence, Kate, as you well know, but you are obviously in one of your argumentative moods and trying to evoke some kind of emotional response, which won’t work.’

‘So back to Fat Camp’, Federico said, studying the potential candidates’ headshots that were stuck all over the walls of the heart-shaped room.

‘And every adolescent boy suffers from ill-timed erections,’ Peter continued. ‘It’s a normal and healthy part of growing up.’

‘Like abandoning your best friend?’

‘OK, this really doesn’t feel like it’s about Fat Camp.’ Federico giggled nervously.

‘I went to school somewhere else, Kate. That’s all. Can you honestly say you are still in touch with every single person we knew as kids?’ I was still in touch with exactly none of them.

‘I wasn’t just someone from school, Peter!’ Or perhaps I was, because Peter had gone horribly silent and glaring at me, jaw clenched.

‘Well, this feels lovely and awkward, doesn’t it? Like tattoo removal, and those days when we all pretend we didn’t just hear Chad fart in the middle of one of his focus meeting speeches. Although I would just like to say,’ Federico continued in a whisper, ‘the erection thing, well, I concur. Mine was up and down like a car-park barrier for the best part of three years. I’m sure there are parts of my body that were oxygen starved as a result. I still can’t feel my little toe,’ he said, looking at his feet.

‘Kate, I am here because your grandma asked me to help you. Not to justify educational choices made as a teenager.’

‘It happened again when I was living in Miami,’ Federico continued. ‘Well, honestly, no one wears a stitch of clothing over there and there are some exquisitely attractive Mexicans flaunting themselves on the beach.’

‘Kate, I had actually been looking forward to seeing you today. But I had completely forgotten your inability to let things go. And you always have to have the last word.’

Federico clamped his hand over my mouth.

‘Kat-kins, we have asked Peter here because we want his help with Fat Camp, which is something you care about, is it not? Peter very kindly agreed to help. Which is a nice starting point for this, and a preferable one to Peter’s penile function, which, while I admit I am interested, probably not in this current context. So, Kat-kins, do you want Peter’s help or not?’

Peter and I stared at each other.

‘Kate, would you like my help or not?’

Out of the corner of my eye I could see the first of the Fat Camp auditionees nervously waiting in our reception.

‘Yes … please.’

‘Then I’ll help.’

‘Well, isn’t that nice? Kat-kins asked Peter nicely; Peter said yes. It’s like an adult game of Simon Says but with obesity problems and two adults with mild to severe anger issues.’

I turned away from both of them and pretended to type something on my phone. If we were playing an adult game of Simon Says then a small part of my brain I had absolutely no control over had gone back to thinking about Peter Parker’s penis, and I hated that part.

‘I have to go,’ Peter said, heading for the door, ‘but I have a good idea of what you need. Everything will be here by tomorrow.’ He marched off through Reception, the entire office watching with inappropriate levels of lust, everyone except Mark from Marketing who shot an imaginary web at him as he passed the photocopier.

The very next day two men from FedEx arrived at the office. They had hundreds of parcels from Peter Parker. He’d sent fitness packs for our Fat Campers, motivational books, motivational CDs, handwritten lists of personal trainers, therapists, Women Only gyms, central London park runs, and suggested a fitness timetable. He sent over pedometers, booked sessions at running centres for the women to be fitted with proper running shoes and booked a session at Rigby & Peller for the women to be fitted with proper sports bras. From that moment on until the end of universal time Federico Cagassi was in actual love with Peter Parker—the boy who never smiles.

the story of assumption

A boy met a girl and a girl met a boy, they looked into each other’s eyes and they fell in love.

But the girl was from a different land, across a great sea, a land where people loved teapots, umbrellas and rain.

The heart of the boy and the heart of the girl ached when they were apart.

So the girl packed her bags and crossed the great sea, travelling high up into the mountains where the boy lived with many frogs and a selection of friendly snails.

She knocked on his door. He asked her inside. They looked into each other’s eyes and they knew they were in love.

Over time the girl became lonely. All her friends and family—the teapots and umbrellas—were all far away. The boy grew sad. He blamed himself for taking the girl away from her beloved afternoon tea paraphernalia. The feelings of blame became feelings of guilt. The boy withdrew from the girl, assuming she regretted her choice.

The girl didn’t understand why he no longer held her gaze, assuming he’d stopped loving her.

Their seeds of assumption grew like ivy; every day they assumed a little more based on the assumptions of the previous day.

One day the girl found herself packing to leave, packing to return to the land of rain and crumpets. Her eyes filled with tears, not love, her heart in pieces on the floor of lost dreams. She did not know what was left in the boy’s eyes because he no longer came home, too fearful was he of what he would see if he looked at her.

The boy lives in the mountains. The girl lives in the rain.

He assumes she’s happy now. She assumes the same.

money & the dream crusher—leah—31 years old

OK, so I am probably not the best person to ask because I hate my ex-husband, he is the devil incarnate, but if you want to know what I gave up for love I would say Every Single Part of My Very Self. For example, my ex’s bog-standard response if I wanted to pursue any of my own personal interests, ambitions or dreams was, and I quote,

‘How dare you spend that money on yourself? You are so selfish. We are supposed to be a family.’

He could never see that my happiness and contentment might benefit us as a couple; that an extra qualification might further my career, increasing the amount of money I could earn for us as a family; or that me feeling more complete as a person would have a knock-on positive effect on our marriage. In fact sometimes I think my possible self-development threatened him. At the mere suggestion of me spending money, on anything, he would say,

‘Well, if you’ve got enough money to do that we could spend it on—’

And then there would always be a ‘something’ for thehouse, the car, his hobbies. Once I gave up a place on a Reiki course so he could buy a pet snake and a games console, both apparently for our son, neither of which our son has ever played with; the Reiki course would have qualified me to teach, providing a valuable second income for our family.