Читать книгу Love Is A Thief - Claire Garber - Страница 12

Sport in London is not something I know a great deal about. My normal form of exercise over the last few years has been snowboarding at high speed down a mountain behind Gabriel while he yelled, ‘I am in love with Kate. I love Kate!’ to whomever he passed before we’d disappear off piste, through a forest, down a secret snow path to a secluded chalet where we’d make love by an open fire before naming all the children we wanted to have while I crossed my fingers, and sometimes my toes, and hoped I’d just been impregnated by my future husband … or something like that.

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.