Love Is a Thief

by Claire Garber

  ‘I told you, Kate, it’s not a convenient time for me right now.’ He stared me dead in the eyes and I noticed how completely exhausted he looked.

  ‘Peter, is any of this, any of what’s going on, to do with what’s going on in your apartment, I mean, the woman in your apartment? Because you don’t need to keep things from me. I’m a big girl. I can take it. And I need you to explain about these letters.’

  ‘There’s not a woman in my apartment, Kate! Why do you always think I am talking about women?’ He was getting snappish. ‘As if that was the only option!’ He was glaring at me. ‘Go home, Kate. Let this go. Let me go.’ He marched off down the corridor. ‘It’s better this way, Kate. Trust me. Just go home.’

  The doors of the lift closed. My brain was still trying to piece it all together. Why was it better if I left? What did he mean when he said having a woman in his apartment wasn’t the only option? What was the other option? That he had a ruddy great man in there and was training for a world championship wrestling match?

  Oh.

  Ohhhh. OHHH!

  Shit the bed. Was Peter Parker gay? Let’s look at the evidence. Smart, self-sufficient, intellectually brilliant man; immaculately dressed, great skin, dry sense of humour, failed marriage; I hate to admit it but he’s a superb dancer; has an apartment that I would literally kill another human being to live in (goodness, this list is getting long); fantastic in the kitchen; endlessly patient with me and all my girl stories, troubles, problems and issues—well, at least until very recently; always, always smells great. Peter Parker was gay. My Peter Parker was most definitely gay. And he was in his apartment quite literally testing it all out; working out which bits go where; getting hot under the collar; making himself bright pink in the face.

  And then they were off; my wholly independent tear ducts were sending large and frequent tears down my flushed cheeks. I wanted to be happy for him. I wanted to be happy that he was finding himself; that he was on the road to ultimate happiness, civil ceremonies and adopting an Ethiopian baby, but I felt desperately, inexplicably sad. And I still knew nothing about the sodding letters, or why I should leave things alone, or why being gay meant we could no longer hang out, or what on earth boys did together that made them go so red …

  My phone rang. It was Leah.

  ‘Hey, Kate, I have booked us onto a karmic self-awareness course. It was number 17 on my list, remember? And I still haven’t forgotten about the past life regression. Oh, and I’ve decided to set up my own alternative therapy practice. Obviously I’ve got years of training ahead of me but I am going to become Dr Leah one day. Maybe they will give me my own TV show? Anyway I just wanted to say thank you for setting me off on this path. I don’t know what I am doing, how it’s all going to work, but I really want to do this, you know, and that is the point. So thank you! Thank you for starting me on this journey, opening me up to this new side of myself. God, I feel free! And scared, really really scared. And I can see you. Henry. I can see you. Put that down right now or Mummy will go to her angry place. Kate? Kate, are you there? Are you crying? Kate? Hello? Hello?’

  The line went dead. I’d lost my signal. I was going down, way down, to Ground Zero.

  i’ve got sno balls—sue—60 years old

  My boyfriend is good at everything. And I mean everything! And so sometimes when he tells me about things he likes doing I agree, which I think constitutes lying, but the lie is always based on a modicum of truth so it doesn’t really feel like a lie. Take a few months ago. He was going on and on about how much he loves skiing, really loves it, like if he had to make a list of the three things that made him happiest in the world skiing would make the top two. Now I took my kids skiing once when they were young so I said, ‘Me too, I LOVE skiing! It’s so much fun,’ which again is sort of true. It was fun, for the kids, and my ex-husband. And I loved watching them all speed down the mountain. But my personal experience on the piste was terrifying and ended 37 minutes after it began involving several falls and a life-and-death situation on a chairlift and I have not set foot on the snow since. In fact I have done everything possible to avoid setting food on snow, until now …

  So my boyfriend exclaims, ‘You know what would be fun? If we go skiing together. I’d love to go skiing with you. It would make me so happy,’ to which I squeaked, ‘Me too!’ Houston, we have a problem.

  Obviously problem number 1 is the impending skiing holiday itself where my wonderful boyfriend realises I have fibbed, not only about my skiing ability, but also about my enthusiasm for his beloved sport. He will realise I was trying to either impress him or please him, the result being he will feel neither impressed nor pleased and he will think I am needy and insecure.

  Problem number 2 is me because what I didn’t realise until reading Love-Stolen Dreams is that during my first marriage, I played a certain role. My ex-husband was good at all sport. In fact he was also good at everything, and I loved that about him. Show him a new sport or a physical challenge or ask him to master anything and within 30 minutes he could do it. So when we went on holidays involving sports, skiing, for example, I would always hold everyone up. I was never as good as my ex-husband and the kids and I didn’t want everyone waiting for me while I snowploughed my way down the baby slope screaming. So I ended up sitting everything out. I became really good at watching from the sidelines. I got good at saying, ‘I’d rather read my book ‘; ‘I’m happy just watching’; ‘It’s not really my thing.’ I got so good that I started to believe my own bullshit. I forgot I used to be a different way.

  So I confessed to my current boyfriend about my moderate fib, which he thought was hysterical. But I didn’t book a ski holiday for the two of us. I booked a ski holiday just for me. I want to spend some time overcoming my fears and getting back the part of me I lost during the marriage. I don’t want to read a book. I am not happy sitting on the sidelines. I might not be good at skiing, or even learn fast, but I am going to go and learn how to do it properly, at my own speed, just for me. And I’d like Pirate Kate to join me. So, fancy some skiing in the French Alps?

  1813 meters above sea level | french alps

  The ridiculously fit ski instructor waved at me then sauntered across the mountain-top bar. He was dressed head-to-foot in red, still covered in snow, and walked with a swagger that ski boots cause and ski instructors perfect. He was yet to remove his goggles and hat but looked so much like Gabriel I found myself tearing away at the collar of my ski jacket, trying to make my throat feel less constricted and starved of air.

  ‘Here he is!’ Sue said excitedly, four days into her Love-Stolen Dreams skiing holiday. ‘My star! My teacher! The man who has taken away all of my fears! Kate, I would like to introduce you to Julien.’ The ski instructor arrived at our table just as I had a few minutes earlier.

  ‘Hello, Sooo,’ he said, kissing her politely on both cheeks. ‘And you must be Kate?’ He took a ski glove off to shake my hand; his melodic French accent making me feel warm in my body, like muscles relaxing at the hands of a masseuse.

  ‘May I sit next to you, Kate?’ he said, pulling out a chair. ‘And please excuse me because I am still in my work clothes.’ He took off his other glove, then his goggles and finally his hat; thick dark hair tumbling out. He ran his fingers through it and tried to pat it down. ‘Hat hair!’ he said, looking at me with dark chocolate eyes hidden under a canopy of a thousand thick lashes. I patted my own messy hair as if to empathise but Julien was already busying himself removing his outer layers of clothing, loosening his ski boots, laying things out to dry. I watched enviously. There was something about a ski-instructor outfit that appealed to my sensibilities. And I don’t just mean in a sexual way. Eventually Julien sat himself on the chair next to mine, shifting to face me, our knees ever so slightly touching.

  ‘It’s so nice to meet you, Kate,’ he said, staring me straight in the eyes. He didn’t look anywhere else for an impossibly long time. I on the other hand was trying to look everywhere else. ‘I am very ex
cited that you are here,’ he said, gently touching my right knee. I nearly leapt five feet up in the air and grabbed the table to keep me steady. Because ski instructors are my kryptonite, I have zero immunity, attract them like flies but don’t have a gang of disaster-preventing busybody friends to bail me out when under attack.

  ‘Julien, I was just explaining to Kate, as I said to you, that my ex-husband was good at everything, and I mean everything. And I loved that about him—that’s why I married him. He was brilliant at playing sports, especially extreme sports, and he completely fell in love with the mountains …’ While Sue was speaking Julien had started fiddling with something on the collar of my ski jacket. He was so close to me I could smell the washing powder of his clothes mixed with aftershave and man. Let’s just say I was struggling to pay attention to my Love-Stolen Dreamer. ‘So as soon as our kids were old enough,’ she continued, ‘they would go off with him, throwing themselves down ski slopes having all sorts of fun. But I am a lot slower than them and I got fed up with everyone having to wait. And I promise you, Kate, there is nothing worse than a group of energy-drink-filled teenagers groaning as you snowplough towards them at three miles an hour. And my then-husband, who I still wanted to think of me as a sexy goddess, giggling in the background calling me “slow old mum”! It was soul-destroying …’ Julien stopped fiddling with the collar of my ski jacket, content he had fixed the mysterious non-existent problem, then started looking about my person for other things to do. ‘So to avoid feeling like that one day I just opted out.’ Julien was now on his knees adjusting my ski boots, which was the closest thing to a proposal since, well, since Gabriel, which actually made me feel a bit nauseous. ‘But what I didn’t realise, Kate, was that day, that was the beginning of a pattern of opting out that spanned two decades. Two decades! That’s well beyond our separation and divorce. My ex-husband was the adventurous parent; I was the watchful mother. Our roles were defined and became set in stone.’

  ‘But we ‘ave changed all that this week, ‘ave we not?’ Julien said, finally switching his attention onto Sue.

  ‘Oh, it’s been amazing!’ she squealed, looking from Julien to me. ‘Oh, Kate, I love it!’ She couldn’t stop smiling. ‘I actually love it.’ She literally couldn’t close her lips over her teeth. ‘I LOVE IT!’ she yelled, air punching. ‘I feel like I’ve got back a part of myself I’d totally lost. It feels like being with an old friend again, who makes you laugh and smile and reminds you who you used to be. It’s so long since I have been this person. So long since I felt like this person. I like this person! I like me!’ She laughed, sat back in her seat, then slapped her own thighs.

  ‘And you, Kate?’ Julien was back on me. ‘Do you like who you are?’ He stared only at my lips when he spoke. ‘Are you happy like Sue?’

  ‘Well, I, er, I think, I er …’ Why couldn’t I just say yes like any normal miserable person would have done?

  ‘Well, perhaps the surprise I ‘ave arranged for you will help. Come, come, it’s going to start any minute.’ Julien wandered out of the bar carrying his skis and my skis while Sue beamed excitedly and nodded for me to follow. I was not entirely sure what they had planned, and when I say that I mean I literally had no idea. As far as I was concerned I was going to informally interview them tonight, then shadow her ski lesson tomorrow. But I am all for surprises and unplanned presents, unless it’s the kind of surprise my pet cat Rupert used to leave for me, because I am not and never will be good with partially dead, headless mice.

  Outside the snow was tumbling down in heavy flakes, the last of the daylight quickly ebbing away. Julien laid our skis on the ground and beckoned me over.

  ‘So,’ he said, clipping me into my skis and handing me my ski poles. ‘Tonight there is a night-time torch-lit descent. All the ski instructors do it every week—it’s for the tourists. We go to the top of that piste there—’ he pointed into the darkness ‘—then we ski back down ‘olding flares. As we come down ze mountain in the dark it will look like a giant snake of fire. The tourists love it.’

  ‘I’m not good enough to do it yet,’ Sue said, handing me a giant unlit flare, ‘but I’d love you to do it for me, if that’s OK, then you can tell me what it’s like. I promise as soon as I am good enough I will do it myself.’

  ‘Yes, you will, Sue,’ Julien confirmed, gently squeezing Sue’s arm. ‘You will do it with me, next holiday, I am sure.’ Julien looked back to me, his eyes anything but innocent. ‘So, Kate, will you come with me? I’d love you to, really—let’s come together.’ I looked from his wanton eyes to Sue, who was positively beaming at me.

  You see, my reluctance at that moment was down to past experience, because I was already very familiar with this kind of night-time fire-lit mountain descent. I’d done it before, with Gabriel, and we always ended up having sex in a forest on the way down. What if this was some kind of ski instructor sex trap? Or sexual initiation into a new ski resort? Or my grandma’s idea to get me back into a saddle I totally didn’t need to be in?

  Julien suddenly clapped his hands together and said, ‘Then it’s agreed!’ before grabbing my hand and pulling me along next to him; down the deserted piste; down to a lone chairlift; down towards the very limits of my powers of personal restraint.

  We arrived at the chairlift to find about 50 other ski instructors already there, waiting to be whisked up the dark mountain. Julien and I took a chairlift together, alone. He immediately slid across the seat until he was next to me. He put his arm tight around me.

  ‘I don’t want you to be cold, Kate,’ he said as he pretended to check the zip of my coat was pulled up, that my hat was on properly, that I was as close as possible to his kissable bloody lips. ‘So you write,’ he said as he tucked some of my hair up into my hat. His face was so close to mine that we were talking nose to nose.

  ‘Yes, about love.’

  ‘That’s my favourite subject.’ He smiled, exhaling as he looked longingly at me. He was the exact opposite of Peter Parker the gay fridge magnet.

  ‘So, Julien,’ I said, eyes fixed straight ahead, ‘have you ever lost anything because you fell in love?’

  ‘If I lose something because of love it’s normally the love itself.’ He smiled at me. ‘I don’t have a lot to lose, Kate.’ Good looks, athletic body, ability to ski to an Olympic standard—could he be more glass half empty?

  ‘So what did you lose, Kate?’ he said, pulling me closer again.

  ‘Well, I think that I lost this,’ I said, gesturing to the view of the mountains, but Julien carried on staring at me, so I sat in silent meditation for the rest of the journey up. As we reached the top of the lift he grabbed me by my hand.

  ‘Let’s go over here,’ he said as we slid off the chairlift, pulling me past the group of assembling ski instructors, stopping some 40 metres away on a darkened cliff edge.

  ‘Kate, you are very honoured,’ he said, unclipping our skis. ‘This is a very special place. Come, I invite you to join me on my rock. Please take a seat.’ He pointed at an actual rock.

  ‘Shouldn’t we wait over there?’ I urged, backing away.

  ‘No, no, we have time. I have a present for you. Come.’

  I sighed and followed him over; there was only so long I was going to be able to fight it. I was a flame. French ski instructors were moths. Or perhaps it was the other way around. However it worked I always ended up in bed with one. It was an unwritten universal rule, like gravity and post-35 cellulite. So I sat down on his rock (not a metaphor) and he sat down beside me as close as he could physically manage and put one arm around me, pulling me in to him. We were huddled so close together I felt myself quite naturally curling into his embrace, beginning to rest my head into his shoulder, turning my head into his neck. How could I be so physically overly familiar with someone I had literally just met? It’s just, he was so like.

  ‘Kate, look,’ he whispered in my ear. He turned my face to look out at the view, pointing down the mountain. I followed his gaze. The ski resort
was about 1000 metres below, lit up against the darkness of the night like a tiny Ewok village. And the mountains in front of us stretched for miles; hundreds upon hundreds of peaks, the last of the setting sun far away in the distance. I touched my hand to my breastbone and thought of Mary. For the first time in as long as I could remember, looking at this view, I felt peaceful.

  ‘Here,’ Julien said, handing me a small plastic cup. ‘It might be a little warm,’ he apologised as he unzipped his jacket and took out a bottle of champagne (it’s a mystery, all the things they can keep in there). He poured me a glass then gently rubbed my back to take the edge off the cold.

  ‘So, Kate, do you like who you are when you are ‘ere?’ He gestured to the view in front of us. I looked from his beautiful face to the view.

  ‘I love who I am when I am here.’

  ‘Then my job is done,’ he said before stroking the side of my face, his lips hovering less than an inch from my face. I felt as if I were dissolving into him, into the moment, into the rock where we sat, and I am sure beautiful Julien knew this. I must have been the gazillionth girl he’d captured, put on his rock and fed slightly warm booze to. Not that I was complaining; chilled champagne is overrated.10

  Julien and I stayed on that rock for a long time, him wrapped all around me, me making no attempt to fight him off. We stayed long after the other ski instructors had lit their flares; long after they had skied off, one after the other, a slow-moving snake of fire curving down the dark mountain; long after the fireworks exploded thousands of feet below. I had to keep reminding myself that I was in fact on a work assignment paid for by my financially obsessed boss. Chad would be expecting a world-class article from me, or at least a largely fictitious interpretation of what may or may not be a run-of-the-mill middle-aged lady’s ski holiday, but I definitely couldn’t leave empty-handed, empty-headed, with another ski instructor notch on what was an already well-carved post. Although … over 11,000 True Love readers had written in advising Pirate Kate to enjoy as many other pirates as feasibly possible before settling on just one ship, so in a way I was working by not working.