Page 39 of Thief

“Bit early for a drink, isn’t it?” Kat commented. “It’s not even twelve.”

“It’s for the dish, extra flavour.” John ignored her sarcasm and shut the fridge door. He scooped mushrooms and the onions into the palm of his hand and handed them to her. “Here, you start chopping this lot up, and I’ll fry the chicken.”

Kat pulled out the immaculate chopping board, a small black-handled knife and went to work on the mushrooms, chopping them into neat halves.

“No, no, not like that.” John scooted to her side and took the knife. “Watch, you have to slice the tips of the stalks like this…then tear their little coats off.” Expertly, he removed the top strands of white peel. “You try,” he said, handing her the knife.

Kat took it and copied him exactly.

“Hey, you’re a natural, that’s perfect.”

“So where did you learn to cook?” she asked. “In the army?”

“God, no. The army fed us well if we were at base, but mainly it was reconstituted rubbish. Tear off the top, add hot water and eat. It all tasted the same in the end no matter what the pack claimed it to be. I guess that’s why I can’t stand those microwave meals you eat, they remind me of years of taste-bud abuse.”

“So you learnt to cook where?”

“Mainly self taught. Not having a Mum around meant I was a latchkey kid. I’d get in from school and hang around alone in the house until Dad came back from the jeweller’s shop he worked in. By the time I was eleven, I’d got fed up of being hungry and had taken to starting on our dinner.” John flicked the switch on the hob and placed a deep stainless steel pan over it. He smiled at the memories. “It wasn’t long before we were in a routine. Dad would come in, and I’d have dinner on the table. We weren’t rich by any stretch of the imagination, but we had enough money for me to be experimental with recipes. I even had a vegetable patch for a few years, grew loads of stuff.” He chucked the chicken into the hot pan and it began to spit.

“Sounds like a good way to learn,” Kat said, finishing the mushrooms and starting on the large, brown onion.

She was going slowly, so he turned off the heat and rinsed his hands. “When I was in the army, I didn’t cook for years, and living alone, it’s not much fun cooking.” He dried his hands. She was struggling with the onion peel, but he resisted the urge to take over the task. “So how come you can’t cook anything other than toast?”

Kat drew a long breath. “No one has ever offered to show me before.” She finished removing the onion’s crispy brown shell.

“Not even one of your foster parents?”

“No, I was a royal pain in the arse. They were just grateful if I wasn’t causing chaos. They weren’t all bad. Most of it was me, my own doing.” Kat cut the onion into quarters. Her eyes were beginning to water, and she shifted her shoulders away from John.

“Why were you like that? Why were you a pain in the butt for all your foster parents?”

“Because,” she sniffed noisily as the onion unleashed its full torment, “because I believed if I was a naughty little girl no one would want to adopt me and I’d be free to go with my parents when they eventually came back. I was sure one day they’d discover what a mistake it had been giving me up and they’d want me in their lives once more.”

John looked her up and down again. But this time, instead of seeing a sexy little figure, he saw the lonely, lost little girl she’d once been—that she still was deep down. He found himself wanting to hold her. Comfort her, be the person she’d never had. But he stopped himself; he couldn’t be like that with Kat. It was too damn complicated. He had to remember she’d ruined his life and messed up his whole bloody future.

* * * *

Kat was really struggling. She’d never actually voiced her childish hopes about her parents coming to rescue her from the foster homes. She’d buried them deep for years and couldn’t cope with returning dreams to the light of day now they were destined never to be fulfilled. Yet here she was falling to pieces with a few probing questions from this big guy who was trying to teach her to cook. She blamed the onion, of course. It must be that. She’d always controlled her emotions; the onion was the only variable.

She sniffed again and felt a heavy tear roll down her cheek. Cursing inwardly, she let it hover on her chin, refusing to wipe it because that would be admitting its existence, admitting pain still lived within her. It hadn’t been fought and defeated like she’d always thought it had. She tensed her jaw and clenched her fingers. She needed to keep her hard outer shell intact. It was her armour against the world.

A sudden shake caught her chest and stuttered her breath. Her shoulders wouldn’t keep still despite her best efforts. She hated her bubbling emotions that were spiralling out of control and taking command of her body.

Suddenly, John was behind her. He pressed his chest onto her back, wrapped his arms around her upper arms and grabbed a hold of her hands. “It’s the onions,” he murmured into her hair. “They get me like that too.” He peeled her fingers from the knife and released the others from the onion.

Kat nodded in silent agreement. She was too afraid to speak, too afraid to utter even the smallest sound. She knew her voice would wobble, and the last thing she wanted was John to think she was actually crying. She couldn’t bear him to know she had a vulnerable spot and he’d hit it. She was hard and tough, inside and out. She didn’t cry—ever.

“It’ll be alright in a minute. Turn away from the onion.”

She spun from the offending vegetable. John didn’t move. His body was directly in front of her, and his arms had coiled around her. The next thing Kat knew, he’d pulled her into his warm chest and completely enveloped her in a solid embrace. She went to struggle, shake him off. Who did he think he was? But then she realised she quite liked being held secure and tight. It felt nice, so she decided to stay—just for a minute.

“It’s alright,” John soothed over the top of her head as he tightened his arms all the more. “It’s alright to feel sad, you know.”

His words and actions flicked a switch somewhere deep inside. The emotions Kat had subconsciously kept buried for years bubbled violently to the surface. It was too big to be contained, too raw. Like a salty dam bursting its banks, she cried and cried. Her breathing came in racked, harsh sobs as she buried her face deep into her own palms. Pressed tightly against his hard chest, she used him to support her weak, shaking body as hot, desperate tears containing years of denied pain flowed uncontrollably down her cheeks.

He smoothed his palm over her hair, over and over, down into her nape and onto her shoulders as he made quiet soothing noises, telling her it was all going to be alright, that he was there. His gentleness made her cry all the more. Being held by someone, not for sex but because they cared, however fleetingly, was not something she was used to.

Eventually her sobs died themselves out. She’d used his T-shirt like a Kleenex, but he didn’t seem to care. He still held her tightly, and gradually her breathing returned to a normal, steady rhythm.

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