Stealing Hearts

It was meant to be Chloe's day at the doctors.

Yet Chloe didn't go.

Instead she woke up late the day after the great cookie demolition had taken place in the living room. By the time she had rolled out of her bed and pulled some jeans and a hoodie on it was ten o'clock. The time when she was meant to be sat in the office of her doctor and listening to what he had to say once again. But today Chloe was feeling rebellious and was of the strict conviction that she did not need a man in a white lab coat telling her what to do.

Slowly and still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, Chloe meandered in direction of the living room with the final destination being the kitchen. She walked into the living room and stopped in her tracks.

Eleanor and George were lying together on the sofa, a red blanket thrown over them as they slept peacefully. It was a situation that Chloe had often wished to be in. She left a small sigh escape her lips and watched with horror as George stirred and opened his eyes.

He started up slightly upon seeing Chloe standing in the living room doorway.

"Oh hey I didn't think you'd be in," George said sleepily, stretching the arm, that wasn't wrapped around Eleanor, out.

It was a sentence that would have been better left unsaid. George knew that Chloe was meant to be seeing the doctor that day, but it was a truth that he had been hiding from the girl who caused him such anxiety over the safety of his girlfriend.

"Why not?" Chloe asked sharply, confused as to the question that George had thrown at her.

"Oh it's just El said something about you looking for a job," George said with hasty retreat.

This element was true however. Much to George's happiness, Eleanor had informed him the night before that Chloe was going to look for a job in town. George viewed this with relief as it meant having Chloe at a greater distance to his girlfriend.

The latter had just begun stirring in George's arms and she opened her eyes to find Chloe fixing George with a slightly hostile gaze, and him looking worried. However upon realizing that his girlfriend was now awake he let out a sigh of relief, as she would surely elevate the mood of the moment with her kind and warming nature.

Eleanor smiled up at George and placed a delicate kiss on his cheek before fixing her attention on her flat mate, whom she smiled at, but a note of worry also stuck up in Eleanor's eyes. She knew that Chloe was meant to be at the doctors and anxiety rose up in her when she realized that today Chloe was feeling slightly anarchic.

But Chloe's health was not an openly discussed subject amongst the friends and Eleanor intended to keep it that way for everyone's well being. So rather than question Chloe's presence, Eleanor untangled herself from George and heaved herself off the sofa.

"Come on let's eat some breakfast, I can make pancakes," Eleanor said with a grin to George and Chloe, and before she knew it George had sped into the kitchen ripping the fridge door open and had begun pulling out the various ingredients needed for his favourite breakfast.

Chloe smiled politely at her friend yet she had an excusing face on.

"As much as I would love to stay there's something I need to sort out in town, I'll grab a bite to eat somewhere," Chloe said quietly and looked at her slightly disappointed friend through her thick lashes.

"Okay, well if you're sure…" Eleanor faltered slightly, unease settling into her stomach.

Chloe just nodded and shot Eleanor a smile. The latter went to hug her friend before moving into the kitchen where George was impatiently banging a cooking spoon on the counter, anticipating the arrival of the kitchen chef herself.

Chloe watched Eleanor walk into the kitchen, before her gaze fell around the room. Her searching eye fell on the navy blue jumper of George's that was lying on the floor, having been shed yesterday due to the increasing presence of the artificial heat created by the central heating.

Giving into the rising tension and the inexplicable urge, Chloe snatched the jumper off the floor, sprinted to her room and pulled the shoebox out from underneath her bed. She threw the lid of and squished the jumper inside the rapidly filling box. Slamming the lid back down she then pushed the box away with as much force as she could muster, so that her treasure trove was hidden from public eye by the dark cave under her bed.

Pulling on her outdoor coat Chloe walked through the apartment and exited as quickly as she could, not wanting to attract the attention of Eleanor or George, who were having a flour fight in the kitchen.

Only once Chloe was stood outside where the wind hit her pink cheeks, did she let the relief and calm wash over her, as she began her walk into the centre of York.

Back up in the apartment, having cleared up the mess of white powder, George with his serious face on, looked at his girlfriend and kept opening and closing his mouth, the words not wanting to come out right.

"El I think you should talk to her," he finally managed to bring out as Eleanor tossed a pancake in the air.

"George we've been over this a million times," Eleanor was about to start her usual sermon, but George cut across her.

"She's skiving off her doctors appointment and she's still not properly cured yet, don't tell me that that doesn’t worry you," George said with sudden harshness. He let anger take over as his main emotion; it was better than letting worry obtain the upper hand.

Eleanor bit her lip as she set the frying pan down on the stove.

"But she's got her meds George!" She proclaimed rather meekly, as if this would make it all better.

"But she doesn't take them! The packets are still full El. You need to talk to her before she pulls you back into all that old trouble again," George said rather desperately, not ashamed of how much he need the assurance of his girlfriend's safety.

"George, she's got kleptomania, it's not like she's a schizophrenic," Eleanor defended her friend meekly but knew that George had won this battle.

In the whole six months that Eleanor had been living with Chloe it had been difficult. It was at the height of her illness and almost not a day went by when the police had not brought Chloe home, waving stolen artefacts in Eleanor's face and chiding her like a child.

At first the things Chloe took were of insignificant value; pens or paperclips, but as Chloe's anxiety and tension rose so did her desire for things of more material value. It was not a choice Chloe had made consciously, yet she did little to suppress these urges. Eleanor remembered vividly the day the police brought Chloe home and in their possession was a £100 bracelet that Chloe had tried to take.

Then things had hit an all time low when Chloe stole Eleanor's childhood friend. Chloe had taken to dressing like Eleanor whenever her tension and anxiety peaked. She started taking up some of Eleanor's mannerisms and way of speech. Eleanor's childhood friend soon found Chloe a far more attractive companion and it was in this way that Eleanor had lost three very good and old friends.

Despite all of this Eleanor stuck by Chloe, knowing that the real Chloe would never do something like that. Yet George became increasingly protective of Eleanor and would have preferred Eleanor moving in with him, but she put her foot down and insisted on staying with Chloe. So George was left with little alternative but to move in with Eleanor where he could stay near her and make sure that Chloe never harmed Eleanor through her anxiety and urges to steal.

"I'm worried for you El," George said softly taking a hold of her hand. "This illness is messing with her head and her emotions are all over the place. Some kleptomaniacs develop bi polar issues. I don't want you to get hurt."

It was a heartfelt confession that made Eleanor's heart soften. She smiled up at her boyfriend and paled a delicate kiss on his lips.

"I'll be okay as long as I've got you," Eleanor said with sincerity lining her smile, as she went in to kiss him again, one hand in his hair, the other on his shoulder.

Little did she know that George's presence was, what was soon going to bring her into a dangerous predicament.

But the young couple did not know this, and after Eleanor having promised to speak to Chloe once she returned from town, they both fell hungrily onto the pancakes, the only downer to the morning was when George was unable to find his navy jumper that he was going to lend Eleanor whilst her laundry was being washed.

"Have you seen my jumper?" George called from the living room into the kitchen where Eleanor was washing up their used plates.

"No I haven't sorry babes," came the sing-song reply from a girl who was feeling more light hearted than ever.

Yet it was George who had a sinking feeling growing in his stomach. If anything this was only the start.