i can eat cakes.

You can’t have your cake and eat it 

I hated that old bag next door, long before Bethany left, but after it got so much worse. Every dumb saying, she’d quote as if it was fact, even if it was in direct contradiction with another one.
Before I left to go to on that course, whilst Beth was still around she offered typical advice, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
And when I came back to find that Beth had been screwing another bloke it was a case of, “Whilst the cats away the mice will play.”
Never mind the fact that my heart was broken. Never mind that the life of my life was shacking up with another man, because, “It’s better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.”
As much as I hated her, I could cope with all that when she’d catch me on the way into the house, deliver her little pearl of wisdom, nod with satisfaction, and head back inside, as if her work was done. Once Beth left, she started to pop over to see me. She was worried I might not be able to look after myself, so she brought over an apple. I’m sure you know why, because, “An apple a day, keeps the doctor away.” But as if that wasn’t enough, she had more to say – this time, about Beth, “Well, you know what they say,” how I hated this all knowing ‘they’ – “you can’t steal what doesn’t want to be stolen.” If there was anyway I could have gotten away with throwing that apple right in her stupid old face, I would have done it, right then, but no, I was good, I urged her out of the house, and bashed the apple to smithereens with a rolling pin instead, picturing her head burst open as I did so.

I just wanted to get back at her so bad – the old bitch, not Bethany, my rage overtook the heartbreak pretty quickly. I thought about that mangy cat that was always rubbing around her legs, thought about testing whether there really was more than one way to skin one a cat, but it wasn’t that poor things fault. I figured it was the last one she said to me that got to me the most, so I had to put that one into practice. I started to call around for coffee after I got home from work for a few days, listen to more of her crap, until I saw an opportunity; car keys, left by the door. On the way out I grabbed them, and walked out, knowing she wouldn’t miss them till morning. I sat up, watching her house until the lights were out, waited half an hour, and walked up her drive. I left a bent up coat-hanger on her doorstep, hooked at the end as if used to grab keys, then took the car for a quick spin. I only drove it a couple of streets away, but left it with the keys in it, hoping someone would finish the job.

There was a knock on the door the next morning, and she was in ever such a state, trying to tell me what had happened, and finishing, “Who would take my little car?” she asked. And I just couldn’t help it. “Well, you know what they say, you can’t steal what doesn’t want to be stolen.” She left dumbfounded. As soon as the door was closed I clenched my fists together in joy, and laughed long and hard, and felt better than I had in a long time. Only trouble is, I wanted more. It got me thinking, is it true, what you don’t know, won’t hurt you? And if I give her some steaks a farmer friend had given to me, and she didn’t know about the E. coli in it, would it really not hurt her?