Love Is a Thief (28 page)

a fact
- the most beautiful colour in the world is the flush of pink on Beatrice Van de Broeck’s cheeks the night she performed at the Juilliard School.

After the recital Beatrice and I waited for the hall to empty then sat together on the beautiful stage taking in the space, the room, the smell, giving Beatrice’s senses a moment to absorb everything she didn’t get to digest all those years ago. We sat silently looking out onto the low-lit auditorium, hundreds of empty seats staring back at us. It was
a comfortable silence, where no one is compelled to speak, except me, after a few short minutes …

‘Beatrice, how do you think your life would have been different if you had attended Juilliard?’

She took a moment. Took a deep breath. Mulled it over.

‘That is impossible to imagine, Kate. And I am starting to suspect it was not my destiny.’

‘What do you mean? You were amazing tonight.’

‘Had it been my destiny to be a performer, surely my life would still have contained music, even after I chose not to come here? Or at least it should have had more of a musical emphasis. But it didn’t. I gave up almost immediately; as soon as the decision was made I turned my back on music. I am sure I could have found some way to study to the same level in England. But I didn’t. And the choice to go without was very much mine. I was self-saboteur, active in the end of my music. It’s funny but in over 60 years I have never once looked at it like that. But now I see clearly. The kids are here because they wanted it more than me. They are braver than me. What a silly woman I am to have spent my whole life thinking I was something I’m not.’ Her voice started to break. ‘What a silly silly woman I am.’ She took a small embroidered hanky from her handbag and dabbed her eyes. We sat there, without words, without music. ‘But I played here in the end though, didn’t I?’

‘Yes, you did, Beatrice. And you played magnificently.’

‘It’s time to go home, I think, Kate,’ she said, tapping me affectionately on the knee before standing up and slowly walking off.

I couldn’t bring myself to say much to Beatrice on the flight home, which was convenient, as she slept the whole way. So I watched her sleep, for hours, in a way that definitely resembled a stalker. What had I just done to this poor old lady? And could Beatrice’s revelation of self-saboteur be applied to us all? Even when we found ourselves in circumstances we hated, had we on some level had a choice, either to accept these circumstances or a choice
not
to bring about change? Were we frightened of being more powerful? Frightened of the control we had over our own lives? Frightened of taking more responsibility? Or is it that, if we took responsibility, we would only have ourselves to blame if things went wrong?

As soon as we landed I did something I had never done before and I put in a call to Chad. I wasn’t sure how to write up Beatrice’s visit to New York because what if
self-sabotage
was the real cause of all this loss?

‘We speak about this now, we speak about this for 30 seconds, then we never twatting speak about this again, understood?’ I could imagine him pacing up and down as he spoke. ‘If I am sleeping with someone I already know it’s not going anywhere, right? But I don’t actually want to be the one who ends the relationship. I want them to do it. Responsibility Avoidance, get it?’

‘No.’

‘Look, if someone dumps me then I can be the Passive Recipient, which is a great place to be. I can be like, “What could I do? They ended it. It was their choice.” But if I dump them and then I realise I’ve made a mistake, I’d be
like, “Fuck, Chad, you can’t trust your own judgement, you fucked up.” I’d start to doubt myself. I don’t want to doubt myself, Kate. It makes my life more twatting complicated. I’d need a shrink. So, I avoid certain types of responsibility.’

‘What if you end up with someone who doesn’t take responsibility either? What if they never end the relationship?’ I was thinking specifically about Federico and his ability to hang on like a barnacle. ‘Do you end up staying together forever?’

‘Eventually they all walk away, Kate. It’s a constant of life. No one will
ever
stay forever.’ He cleared his throat. ‘So let’s get back to this old piano lady.’

‘Beatrice.’

‘Whatever. What if Beatrice didn’t get married but then didn’t make it as a pianist either? What if she married him and carried on piano in some form or other and realised after a couple of years she really wasn’t that good anyway? She’d have misjudged herself, her talent, she’d have to admit that she was fooling herself about being a concert pianist. And as a result her life might start to feel a bit twatting meaningless. She’d be all like, “Who the fuck am I? Why the fuck am I here? I’m not good at anything. What does it all fucking mean?” You see? We all need to look for meaning, Kate. We all need to define ourselves by something else. Just like you currently define yourself by being all heartbroken and Love-Stolen Dreams. That is your choice. So if you don’t take responsibility in a way you are taking responsibility by pretending not to have much control. Get it?’

I wasn’t sure.

‘No one wants to take responsibility, Kate. We do, up to
a point, up to deciding what job to have, who to shag, how much debt to put on our credit cards, visiting your nan once a year to make sure she keeps you on her will. But anything outside that, no thanks, missus. Only the Martin Luther Kings of this world want to test themselves and the might of their own power. No one else would want to come up with a revolutionary idea, promise change, promise a better something for fear of not delivering, for fear of it not turning out OK. Millions follow Gandhi, right? No one wants to actually be twatting Gandhi. D’ya get me?’

‘Er …’

‘Kate, Beatrice isn’t the only one. You are also in control of all the shit that is currently out of control in your life, including the fact that I have a certain amount of control over your career development, speaking of which, I expect the copy for this article on my desk by noon tomorrow, and by
my desk
I mean
inbox
and
copy
I mean
digital format.’
He hung up.

Was Chad right? Was Beatrice really responsible for her own undoing? If so, then love hadn’t taken anything from her at all. There were no missed boats or love-stolen dreams. There was just a lack of determination or perhaps a lack of genuine and enduring interest.

I once read a book called
The Artist’s Way
. It was a 12-week recovery programme for writers who were struggling to create. In fact the book was designed for anyone whose life suddenly felt a little less shiny. It had lots of simple and quick exercises for people to do to help them feel better. My personal favourite was always the
Morning Pages
. The
Morning Pages
are three pages of writing that people do as soon as they wake up in the morning; three pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness writing. There is no wrong way of doing the
Morning Pages
. You wake up, you grab a pencil, you write three pages. That’s it. You write about anything and everything. They rarely make sense. They are not supposed to be reread. More often than not they are negative, fragmented and repetitive: worries about your job; the way your boyfriend talked over you the night before at dinner; longings; anxieties. Sometimes I have written
‘what am I going to write’
for an entire sheet of A4 before the rest comes out. And it always does. The little bits and pieces that run around your head unmonitored. Writing
Morning Pages
is like taking a morning shower for your brain, leaving it clean, fresh and ready for the day; a little lighter, brighter and open to all that the universe has to offer.

The front section of
The Artist’s Way
deals with how people can self-sabotage. How they can block themselves and prevent themselves from doing the things they love. Apparently one of the main blocks is,

‘If I really was a
[insert]
I would have
[insert].’

So for me we could say,

‘If I really was supposed to
teach people to ski
I would have pursued a career in
skiing
from an early age. I have not done that. Therefore it can’t be my thing. I should give up.’

And I’ve blocked myself before I’ve even begun, before I’ve even tried. The book helps you recognise this incorrect and self-sabotaging way of thinking so that you don’t
become a slave to it, so you don’t give up on your dreams. Had love and its absence become my block? Was I incorrectly telling people that love had stopped them doing things too? Was I liberating women or disempowering them? I was starting to become confused.

Regardless of Chad’s theory and my own inner turmoil I did not want Beatrice to spend a single second thinking she was not a musician.
‘If I was a musician I would have gone to the school or chosen to carry on studying in the UK.’
That’s what she’d implied, just as
The Artist’s Way
had described. She’d blamed herself, devalued herself, devalued her talent. She had given herself a hard time unnecessarily, incorrectly. So, with a spin in my head and confusion in my heart, I ordered Beatrice Van de Broeck a copy of
The Artist’s Way
. Maybe if she read it she’d be able to see that her choice not to study piano was simply a block. She could see how perfectly normal it was. Perhaps it could even show her how to remove the block altogether?

the calm before the storm

fortnum & mason tea shop

‘P
lease don’t feel obliged to wait,’ I said to Jenny Sullivan, wishing to God she’d just bloody well leave. ‘I have to wait because I promised my grandma and my best friend I’d meet them for coffee, so I can just see you back at the office, later on …’

She huffed moodily and continued to stare out of the window. And just for the record she had totally invited herself along. I’d told her I had to meet friends and she’d just silently glared at me until the words ‘Would you like to join us?’ popped out. Then she’d grumpily agreed to come as if I had just insisted she join us, opposed to her forcing me to invite her through the power of silence, the mentalist.

We were together because we’d just presented the idea for LSD Drop-In Centres to Downing Street (although the first thing they told us was to change the name). Jenny had been smug as the kitty cat in
Alice in Wonderland
(the one with the big gob) as soon as she found out that I needed her.

‘You are both twatting going,’ was Chad’s response to my protests.
‘True Love
at Westminster,’ he’d cooed.
‘True Love
hobnobbing, no,
advising
the men who run this country.’ He started to well up. ‘My mum would ‘ave been so twatting proud.’ He pronounced the word
proud
with an A,
praade
, as if being all East End and earthy would distract us from the fact his eyes were weeping like a Virgin Mary figurine from Lourdes.

‘Don’t fuck it up,’ were his parting words as we left the office.

Peter had spent weeks emailing me notes for my presentation. We had created a 50-page proposal outlining the reasons why a nationwide initiative to help young women reach their potential would become the foundations upon which the success of the UK would be built (Peter’s words). But when I’d given it to Jenny she’d flicked through it like a cartoon flipbook, preferring to use it as a makeshift fan on the overheated London Underground. And that was probably the most use it saw all day. Because when we arrived at Downing Street the man we were supposed to be seeing, Michael Bates, the
actual
Education Secretary, had been called into an emergency meeting on the salt content in primary school lunches. So Jenny and I met with a different man called Richard Ballentyne, who was
The Shadow
of the Shadow who shadowed the Shadow Education Secretary—which made me think we were in a Batman film. And this Richard Ballentyne didn’t give a crap about my presentation. He spoke only to Jenny Sullivan, which was convenient, because when I tried to stand up and start talking
she snatched the proposal from my hand and presented it herself—the thunder-stealing idea-sabotaging cowbag that she is.
Even worse
she presented it verbatim. Yes, that’s right. She had memorised the whole bloody thing—every single word of it—which meant I had to add
photographic memory
to the never-ending list of her gifts and qualities. And Richard Ballentyne spent the entire presentation staring at Jenny’s legs. He used the Q&A to ask her about her contract with L’Oreal, then quizzed her on her recent photo shoot for M&S underwear.

‘But what are your thoughts on my idea?’ I’d asked the Jenny-obsessed politician.

‘It’s
cute
, Katherine,’ he’d said. ‘Cute and rather utopian, because if everyone is constantly checking in with themselves at these centres who, my dear girl, is going to be doing all the work?’ Then he’d laughed before shoving a Hobnob in his gob and trying to touch Jenny’s left hand.

‘Surely,’ I’d argued, ‘if the government helped people understand the things in life that made them happy and ensured they did these things either outside work or for their work there would be a reduction in stress-related illnesses; in the depression brought about by feeling alienated and unfulfilled; a reduction in the sense of hopelessness so many people feel. Which I thought would be a good thing for the country, economically, and certainly for NHS resources.’ Which Federico was
still
concerned about after I accidentally reignited his obsession with MRSA the day I discovered Jenny’s husband was a big fat whore. ‘Plus if kids actually understood the kind of work they wanted to do, and got into that field, there would be fewer people leaving
jobs, a reduction in Jobseeker’s Allowance, in recruitment costs, in the cost of temps needed to cover absences from work, a reduction in the amount of sick pay given to people signed off through stress. Economically it makes perfect sense, doesn’t it, Mr Ballentyne?’ He was staring at Jenny’s breasts. ‘But it’s not a six-foot blonde who models underwear for M&S,’ I said, lobbing a Hobnob at his head. ‘So how f*****g interesting could it be?’