Love Is a Thief (6 page)

So ‘conventional’ sports, involving gyms, training sessions, boot camps and clothes, were as unfamiliar to me as German men; in that they were both a bit foreign and both seemed unnecessarily formal. Someone who did know an awful lot about gyms, training sessions and being painfully over-formal was Peter smile-free Parker, the boy who never dialled. Grandma had called to inform me that Peter was an expert on
everything
to do with fitness; was a triathlete;
an occasional marathon runner and, rather bizarrely, a dab hand on a trampoline. Grandma knew I needed help formulating fitness plans for
True Love’s
proposed
Fat Camp
and said Peter Parker was the only man who’d know how. With less than a week before
Fat Camp
was due to start and with no budget to hire a professional adviser, I had reluctantly called Peter Parker, at Grandma’s request, to ask for his sport-related assistance.

I had tried not to bother myself with thoughts about Peter after bumping into him that day at Pepperpots. Actually, we hadn’t so much bumped into each other as I had bumped into a chair, tripping backwards at the sound of his voice, landing on my arse and righting myself by completing a slow and wobbly backwards roll. It was an odd and impromptu display of adult amateur gymnastics, finished up with some stuttering nonsense that my mouth wanted to contribute. Something along the lines of,

‘Hi, Peter, it’s been a long … you just … where did you … why … you didn’t ever …’ Then I fiddled with my hair before muttering, ‘You could have called.’

‘What did you say, darling?’ my grandma had bellowed as she absolutely can’t bear mumbling. Personally I think she’s going a bit deaf but she won’t hear of it, excuse the pun. She even accused Michael Parkinson of being a mumbler the other day, at his book launch, and they don’t come more eloquent and enunciated than Parky.

‘I said he could have called, Grandma!’ I yelled back. Then, because I’d raised my voice for her benefit, I continued at that level for Peter. ‘It’s been fifteen years, Peter!
Fifteen years! You didn’t call! You didn’t write—you didn’t even tell me where I could find you.’

Peter had looked at me blankly as if what I’d actually been doing was pointing at his foot and saying, ‘That’s a shoe, Peter! That’s a shoe, that’s a shoe, that’s a shoe!’ rather than having formed a coherent question about the premature and rather dramatic end to our intense childhood friendship. Although in his defence I had just done a backwards roll.

‘Well, I’ve always considered Switzerland to be very insular,’ Grandma had continued, nodding her head reassuringly at Peter. ‘I can’t imagine that I’d keep in touch with anyone if I moved there.’ She smiled affectionately, gently squeezing his arm.

‘It is very secluded,’ Peter confirmed, eyes fixed to the floor.

‘Oh, of course!’ I’d said, slapping my own forehead. ‘Silly me! That’s why it’s a tax haven! Because there are no phones, or computers, or pens to write letters, or even post offices to buy stamps. Rich people literally disappear there like dropping into a landlocked Bermuda Triangle, and they
never
resurface. I admit I tried the same thing with the Inland Revenue but the bastards just turned up at my office anyway. “I’m Swiss,” I told them. “I don’t do contact. I’m a landlocked island of secrets,” but they made me pay my taxes and they made me do it by handwritten bloody post!’ What on earth was I talking about?

‘Goodness, Kate, you are getting very shouty. Not all of us can be Anne bloody Frank.’

‘I’m not asking him to get under the floorboards and write me a diary, Grandma! Peter, you totally disappeared!

‘He was in Switzerland, darling. You knew he was in Switzerland. Isn’t the boy allowed to educate himself? And I don’t know why everyone is obsessed with communication these days,’ Grandma had said wearily, sitting herself down. ‘Social media, they call it. I don’t think it’s social at all. I think it’s nice to be quiet and peaceful and left alone to do one’s studies. I imagine that’s what Switzerland must be like.’

‘I’m not on Facebook,’ Peter offered, quite randomly, before reaching over and gently taking his jacket from my hands.

‘Well, of course you’re not on Facebook, Peter, or I would have found yo …’ My voice petered out as I revealed myself to be a bit of a creepy Internet stalker. Peter had stared at me blankly. I’d stared back. He’d practically trebled in attractiveness since the last time I’d seen him. I was fifty shades of grey in comparison to him and I’m not referring to the literary equivalent of soft porn. I’m referring to the drab colourless mist that doesn’t even feature on a rainbow. Peter Parker was a bloody great rainbow and I was the grimacing, unwelcome rain cloud in the distance. Switzerland must be the aesthetic equivalent of Lourdes.

‘Would anyone like a herbal tea?’ Grandma had asked. ‘I’ve got some lovely fresh mint we could use.’

‘Grandma!’ I yelled, for the second time that evening, before storming off towards the front door with such force I looked as if I were wading through imaginary syrup or performing dramatic high-elbowed mime.

‘I’d love a mint tea,’ Peter had said as I yanked open the front door. ‘I can’t remember the last time I had fresh mint,’
he said with flat-toned enthusiasm as the door had slammed shut behind me, narrowly missing Federico, who’d pelted after me like an abandoned child.

I’d stood on the doorstep for several minutes, shaking from a mixture of shock and anger, while Peter, my oldest, bestest, long-time, disappeared-off-the-face-of-the-earth friend, and Grandma, my primary carer in the world, sipped on fresh mint tea inside, both of them acting as if it were perfectly normal for him to have reappeared after all these years, which would be fine and excusable if they were script writing for
Dallas
. And why would Grandma allow me to bump into Peter Parker for the first time in 15 years wearing Primark? Why? Why!

Anyway I am completely unbothered by the whole thing. If they don’t think I deserve a proper explanation for the disappearance-reappearance I will never again ask for one. I will surreptitiously gather clues, draw wild conclusions, make generalisations then spring them on them at a later stage, probably while pissed. But I will never ask for the facts. Facts are dull. And on the plus side, as I have decided to look for the silver lining of every cloud (or at least my own grimacing, unwelcome rain cloud) I did get to test out my backwards roll, which I’ve been meaning to do for ages. Traditionally it has always been my weakest basic gym move and Mrs Franklin, my seventh-grade teacher, once said to me,

‘Kate Winters! You get back down on that gym mat and you practise that backwards roll. You never know when you
are going to have to backwards roll yourself out of a dangerous situation!’

And I think that day in Pepperpots proved to us
all
that Mrs Franklin was bloody well right.

the sport-related meeting with peter parker

I
walked into the boardroom to find Federico standing on top of the heart-shaped table in a ninja position doing wrist-flicking impersonations of Spiderman.

‘So there’s no connection at all?’ Federico asked before making a whoosh noise and shooting another invisible web across the room towards Peter Parker. Peter didn’t respond. He just stood behind Chad’s special heart-shaped chair, cross-armed, stern-faced, handsome. ‘Because you really do have the same highly burdened energy, yes you do, a man with a past, a man with a hidden secret, a man who can scale walls and—’

‘Please don’t do this,’ Peter said, without moving a single muscle on his face.

‘Well, who needs to be a superhero when you already look like a ruddy great Gucci model is what I say!’ Federico said, jumping off the table doing one last mid-air wrist flick that made Peter flinch. ‘So, Kat-kins, do you have your notes ready, because our
Fat Camp
auditionees are due any second. Not that they are auditioning to be fat,’ he said to
Peter. ‘Not at all—they
are
fat, Peter. We are working with genuinely miserable members of the public who are overweight. Although aren’t we all these days? What with all those hidden calories. You need a PhD in label-reading to get through life a size zero. It’s like playing hide-and-seek every time so much as a morsel passes my lips. “Is there a calorie?” I say to myself. And then normally I eat it anyway.’ His phone started ringing. ‘I have to take this. Hello? Hello? Yes, this is Federico.’ He shoved me out of the way only to stand three feet away and shout loudly into his teeny-tiny phone. I looked from Federico to Peter, who seemed to be standing at the furthest point away from me on the other side of the room.

‘So this is where you work?’ he said, looking around the room. ‘A writer at
True Love
magazine; saving us from the destructive influences of love …’ His jaw flexed. ‘How ironic.’

I didn’t think it was particularly ironic, but perhaps the lack of irony was in fact the ironic part?

‘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.