Love Is a Thief (38 page)

karma

the basic theory that the universe runs according to certain laws of cause and effect; your actions create your Karma; whatever you do comes back to you; what goes around comes around … and there is no earthly way of changing this
.

heathrow terminal five

I
t had arrived. The day I finally returned to Heathrow Terminal Five, hopefully with less luggage (metaphorical and literal) and a lot less tears. As I crept across Departures like a cartoon mouse trying to avoid a cartoon cat I was certain every security guard in the building was watching me, which made the familiar face of the check-in girl even more disconcerting.

Tabitha Jones had been at playschool with me and Peter Parker. She had one green eye and one brown eye, which was, let’s be honest, going to single her out for mild teasing and alienation at preschool. She’d fallen in love with
Peter when she was 4 years old and hated me from age 4¼. That was around the time I’d discovered a drawing she’d made of her and Peter kissing under a rainbow. She called it
‘Peter & Me forever’
. She’d even made a feature of her odd-coloured eyes. I’d never thought to make Peter a picture and was jealous of her original creative thought. So I decided to stick the picture high up on the blackboard for everyone to see, just out of Tabitha Jones’ reach. She cried and she wailed as she jumped up and down trying to grab it before Peter Parker caught a glimpse. The other children laughed. She lashed out at me with a green crayon and threw her Mr Men lunchbox at my head. Eventually Peter did see the drawing and, the good-natured boy that he was, took the drawing down and gave it back to her. He then gave her a big hug and told her it was a beautiful picture, which riled me even further. And I’m sure everyone else moved on after the hug, emotionally speaking, but I never did. To this day I still feel ashamed and it’s the only time I have ever done anything that could be considered bullying. The memory of it is stuck on my heart like crude oil on a small seabird. But I thought feeling bad about something
forever
would be enough of a punishment. I mean, what were the chances that the woman who was quite literally checking me in for the next stage of my life would be Tabitha Jones? It was karma, proving to me that it existed, waiting for this poignant moment, then sucker-punching me in the face. Not that I’d ever doubted the power of karma, just that I’d been more interested in what it might do to Gabriel.

‘You are
so
familiar to me,’ she said as I passed her my ticket and passport. She smiled genuinely as she picked up my documents and typed my details into her computer. ‘Do
you fly with us regularly?’ She stopped typing to look at me, open-faced, interested. I shook my head.

‘No, I don’t normally fly to Canada.’

‘Oh, my God! It’s you! It’s you!’ she said, pointing at me then ducking down under the desk. She came back up with a copy of
True Love
in her hand. ‘You’re her! You’re the girl, the LSD girl!’ The airport police glanced over. ‘Oh, I
love
you! I’ve been following you in the magazine and I love the
Fat Camp
video diaries on the website. They even have uploads on
YouTube
now! You are doing such a great thing,’ she said, handing back my passport. But just before she’d finally released it from her green-crayon-yielding fingers I felt a pair of heavy male hands on my shoulders. The hands squeezed my shoulders gently before the arms slid around my waist and I could feel the warm breath of Peter Parker on my neck as he whispered quietly in my ear.

‘I’m so sorry, Kate.’ He wrapped his arms all around me. ‘I’m so
so
sorry.’ I extracted myself from his embrace and turned to face him. He took my hand and pulled me closer to him. I stared at him. He stared at me. ‘It doesn’t feel nice when people leave, Kate.’

‘I know that, Peter. It doesn’t feel nice when friends lie about things that happened to them and ask you to leave their apartments.’

‘I’m sorry. But I didn’t want you to go away without saying goodbye.’ He gently kissed me on the cheek, leaving his face against mine, then he scooped me up in his arms, holding me so tightly I could feel his heart beating in his chest. I hoped he couldn’t feel the speed of mine. My bodily functions were always giving me away.

‘What I want to say,’ he said, releasing me only slightly,
‘is that it doesn’t feel nice when
you
leave. Kate, the night I stayed in your apartment, I told you that I didn’t know how to be with you, and, well, I don’t. I don’t think I am naturally very good at being with another person. I didn’t do well when I was married, but, what I’d like to do, what I really want to try is, oh, my God, Tabitha? Tabitha Jones?’ Oh, no. ‘Tabitha Jones, is that really you?’ Karma. ‘I’d know your eyes anywhere in the world, Tabitha Jones. It’s me,’ he said, touching his chest. ‘It’s me, Peter Parker.’

She looked at Peter as if she were going to combust with longing.

‘I know who you are, Peter Parker,’ she said with a twinkle in her eye and the beginnings of a smile. Then her eyes flashed to me. ‘You!’ she said, pointing a scary crayon-yielding finger in my face, snatching back my passport to look inside. ‘You are Pirate Kate? You! The child torturer! The school bully! The picture stealer!’ It seemed as if she had a fairly good idea who I was. ‘What are you doing here? Why are you going to Canada?’

‘Kate is going for work, which I am very supportive of, which is something else I wanted to talk to you about,’ he said, turning to me, ‘because—’

‘They are sending you to Canada?’ she screeched. ‘For work! Is there no God? Is there no karma?’ I wanted to tell her that there absolutely definitely was. ‘Just typical of British society that bullies are rewarded with good jobs and free holidays. They said as much in the
Daily Mail
. And Peter Parker as your boyfriend! Is there no bloody justice?’

‘Oh, Kate isn’t my girlfriend. She’s my …’ He stopped and looked at me.

‘She’s your what?’ Tabitha demanded.

‘I’m your what?’

‘Your wife! I knew it! I knew you two would get married!’

‘We’re not married!’ we said in unison.

‘Oh,’ Tabitha said quietly, looking between the two of us, her odd-coloured eyes trying to work out the dynamic, something I’d given up trying to do.

‘Karma,’ I muttered under my breath, wishing she had never drawn that stupid picture.

‘Karma,’ Tabitha said as she stared at me, her spiteful eyes plotting, hatching a plan. Whatever it was I was doomed. Tabitha now had the power over my future life because I had messed with her past.

‘Tabitha, I was just wondering,’ I asked as casually as I could manage, ‘am I properly checked in because I don’t think you gave me a boarding pass and you, er, you still have my passport.’ She looked down at her hand; her knuckles had turned white where she was clenching the passport so hard. I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. Chad was going to go ballistic when he found out I’d missed my flight on account of some primary-school indiscretion. Tabitha composed herself and looked up.

‘Peter, are you going to Canada to work?’

‘No,’ he said, tucking some of my hair behind my ear. ‘I am not going to Canada to work.’

‘How long are you going for?’ she barked at me. ‘How long, Kate?’ Her supervisor looked alarmed and smiled reassuringly at the long queue of passengers behind us.

‘I’ll be gone for about six months.’

‘She will
definitely
be gone for six months,’ Peter said proudly, squeezing my shoulders, completely misjudging
the tone of the situation. ‘She has lots of important work to do. She’s on her own Love-Stolen Dreams mission and—’

‘Canada is horrible, Peter. You’d do well to stay in London. I live in London. Perhaps I could take you out?’ She gave me back my passport and signalled for me to step away from the check-in desk with dismissive hand-flicking gestures reminiscent of my duplicitous mother. ‘You are checked in, Kate,’ she said menacingly. ‘You are very very checked in. Make your way to the plane.’

As we walked away from the desk she yelled out, ‘Message me on Facebook, Peter!’ but he didn’t seem to notice as he had slung his arm over my shoulder and was once again doing something that could be called ‘affectionate’ with my hair.

‘Do you have time for coffee before you fly?’ he whispered quietly in my ear. His warm breath on my neck made my whole body tingle. I didn’t know if I had time or not. I wasn’t aware of anything other than Peter and his strong arm pulling me close against him as we walked. ‘And not a coffee like the other day, a proper coffee. We really need to talk.’

He walked me all the way to the departure gates still with an arm around me, but I wasn’t sure how we were going to have this mythical coffee as all the cafés were now a long way behind us. The only thing that constituted a refreshment stand was the tray of bottles that had been forcefully removed from poorly prepared infrequent-flyers; the ones that apparently had the ability to make a bomb from 101ml of Fanta and a tub of Boots Anti-ageing face cream. Perhaps Peter had brought a flask and we were going to picnic by the gates? Or perhaps there would be no coffee, just a hug
and a back pat before he shoved me through the gate yelling,
‘See you some time next year, Kate
,’ then messaging Tabitha bloody Jones. But Peter Parker kept walking, all the way up to Passport Control, reaching into his pocket, taking out a passport, then walking straight through to the gate. Frozen to the spot, I watched him as he finally turned and reached out a hand for me to follow him.

‘Are you coming with me or not?’ he said, walking off towards the mini shopping mall that was Departures Heathrow Terminal Five.

gate 11

We had been sitting next to each other for what felt like a decade, on a row of plastic seats, in a deserted area close to the gate. My flight had started slowly boarding. Peter had bought me a coffee but still hadn’t said anything. Neither had I. As the last remaining passengers got up to board he finally turned to face me.

‘Kate, I don’t have an abundance of role models in my life showing me how to be in a relationship. In fact I don’t have any. I had my mum, and your mum, and you, at least you before me, you with Gabriel. And none of it seems all that positive. So when you tell me you need me, well, it makes me want to run away, and I’m sorry, but I really
don’t
need you. I will never need anyone.’

I couldn’t believe Peter Parker had come all the way to Heathrow Airport to reiterate that one point. It was the one point I had zero chance of ever forgetting.

‘I get it, Peter. I got it that day. You really didn’t need to come down here to say it all over again.’

‘Kate, I keep telling you that I don’t know how to do this and yet you keep getting annoyed when I say the wrong thing!’ He cleared his throat and started again. ‘Kate, I don’t need you.’

‘Peter, you are like a broken record! They were thinking of you when they invented it!’

‘
But
given the choice, I’d
choose
to spend my time with you. I’d choose you. I choose you.’ He took my hands and squeezed them gently, shuffling in his seat. ‘What I am
trying
to say is that I am happy with you. I am happier with you than without. It feels normal and it feels right and it feels complete. And what I realised is, that’s different from need, it’s choice, it’s personal preference. So I came here today to give you a choice. I am giving you the choice, to.’ The words seemed to get stuck in his throat.

‘To what?’

‘To do all this with me.’ He edged closer to me. ‘Kate, I have arranged everything. And I mean
everything
.
Everything is taken care of. It’s totally possible. So I am free for you, if you want me to be. It’s your choice. The question is, do you want me to come with you? Do you want me to come to Canada with you?’

He looked me deep in the eyes and time stood still.

I am not sure how long we stared at each other. I didn’t want to break his gaze. And when I spoke the sound of my voice surprised me, as if I had been in my own head for a very
very
long time. But what surprised me even more was my answer. It was clear. Short. Without explanation.

‘No.’ I took a sharp intake of breath after I said it. Peter stared at me, impossible to read.

‘No, I don’t want you to come with me.’ I said it again, more to confirm it to myself than to him. Why couldn’t I just say
yes
like any normal girl? Why was I so complicated and inconsistent? I realised my hands were shaking from the adrenaline and hid them in my pockets. Peter still didn’t speak. His blue eyes just gazing at me.

‘Last call for Flight 7098 to Calgary, Canada.’ I recognised Tabitha’s voice on the loud intrusive tannoy. ‘That’s last call for any remaining passengers for Calgary, Canada.’

‘Peter, I need to feel
The Thing
, that Mary’s felt, and Leah and Annie. Because otherwise I think you will become
my thing
, like you said in your apartment, you were right, and while I really like the sound of that, I can’t. I can’t do that knowing all I know, having learnt all the things that women have bothered to share with me. So I need, no, I
want
to do this next stage alone. I’m sorry.’

‘This is the last and very final call for any remaining passengers travelling to Calgary, Canada.’ Tabitha’s voice was as strained as my own. I could see her in my peripheral vision, pacing up and down at the gate, eager to get me on the plane and away from Peter Parker, whose use of words now rivalled his use of smiles.

‘Peter, please say something.’

He didn’t. He just stared. I felt very aware of my constricted throat and tear ducts that were on red alert.

‘Peter, six months doesn’t seem like a long time to be apart in the grand scheme of things. Surely we could have other shared experiences in the future? And if your interest in me is so fragile that a six-month work project could ruin it then it probably wasn’t an enduring interest anyway. This
isn’t a test. I promise you. It’s just … six months; six months doesn’t seem that long.’