You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me (39 page)

‘You feel better now?’ Mrs Slater asked, rubbing Neve’s back. ‘He was drunk, he was angry with Celia and Dougie, but not with you, Neevy. And he should never have spoken to you like that but he was worried about you, we both were, and we should have sat down and talked to you about – well, maybe dropping a few pounds. You made this awful wheezing sound when you were going up the stairs.’

‘That’s the thing, Ma. He had to say it and I had to hear it so I could lose a lot more than a few pounds, but it still really hurt.’

‘You never knew your grandmother because she died before you were even thought of, but she was a very large lady.’ Her mother bit her lip, then decided to plough on. ‘It’s another thing your father doesn’t like to talk about, but I think you need to hear this. She had heart problems and she caught diabetes …’

‘You can’t
catch
diabetes, Mum,’ Neve corrected because she couldn’t help herself when there was an incorrect use of a verb.

‘Well, she
got
diabetes and she wouldn’t change her diet and she lost the sight in one eye and had terrible problems with her teeth and feet. Had to have two of her toes amputated. Then she died of a heart attack when she was fifty-one with three children under eighteen left to look after themselves. That’s no age to die, Neevy. And your Auntie Susan, well, she’s going the same way. Your dad’s side of the family, they run to fat.’

Neve had been horrified when Gustav insisted she went to the doctor’s before they started her fitness programme, and her blood-sugar levels had been in high double figures, although now they never deviated from a very respectable four point eight. Yes, she’d known about Type 2 diabetes during her fat years, but it had never been enough of an incentive to stop herself from unwrapping another Twix.

‘I’m disgustingly fit now, Mum,’ Neve assured her. ‘I mean, I know I’m still a bit overweight but I’m really healthy, and everything’s working like it’s supposed to be. No wheezing unless Gustav’s made me do super-sets without any breaks.’

‘Well, I don’t know what super-sets are but your father’s very proud of you, we both are. He often says you’re the spitting image of his mother when she was younger. Last Christmas, he said it was like seeing a ghost walk in through the front door.’ She patted Neve’s arm. ‘It would mean the world to him if you let him back into your life. What’s the harm in letting him mend a leaking tap or something?’

‘Well, I’ll think about it.’ Neve put her head back on her mother’s shoulder. ‘Thanks for telling me about Grandma Slater. At least I can see where Dad was coming from.’

‘Your father says I talk too much, but it’s not easy being married to a man who can go hours without saying anything but, “Shall I put the kettle on then, pet?”’

‘But you wouldn’t have him any other way, would you?’ Neve asked curiously.

Her mother pulled a face and was taking far too long to come up with an answer for Neve’s liking. ‘Well, I wouldn’t mind if he looked a bit more like Pierce Brosnan, but he’ll do,’ she snorted, and then she didn’t say anything because she was too busy laughing like a hyena.

There was a letter from William waiting for Neve on the day that Max was due back from LA.

Usually the sight of that pale blue envelope gave Neve a serious case of the happies, but that morning it gave her a nasty shock, as if someone had pushed a dog turd through the letterbox. Neve scooped it up and stuffed it in her pocket and it wasn’t until lunch-time that she’d finally worked up enough courage to read it.

And in way she wished she hadn’t, because it was the kind of letter that she’d always dreamed William would send her.

Dearest Neve

I wanted to ring you. I should have rung you, but sometimes it’s easier to put my thoughts and feelings on paper, because when I try to say them out loud my words are clumsy and inadequate
.

I realise that I’ve treated you appallingly these last few weeks. I’m hanging my head in shame and offering the most abject of apologies for the inexcusable crabbiness of my last letter. Though when I say letter, I actually mean my terse request for teabags and water biscuits. All I can say in my defence is that I’d had a terrible day that culminated in an argument with a visiting professor over a missing footnote, which meant I was hauled up in front of the Dean. All this and I was going through Sainsbury’s Red Label withdrawal. But really that’s an explanation rather than an excuse
.

Then there was that infamous phone call when I should have offered you sympathy and understanding instead of hectoring you about your future at the Archive. I just wish, Neve, you could see how special you are. Your friends are fortunate to have you in their lives, as am I, and it saddens me when you fail to see your great potential. I know that you will achieve important things in your life but you need to know that too
.

Ah, yes, there are so many other things I need to apologise for, aren’t there? Like, shattering the calm of your Sunday with my endless requests for research help. And completely ignoring the letter you sent me with your thought-provoking comparison between our meeting of minds and Lou Andreas Salome and Rilke. After I’d read your letter properly, with a glass of Shiraz and a fervent wish that you were sitting there next to me, to debate the finer points of your argument, I came to the realisation that you’re my intellectual soulmate. I have close friends in LA, people who mean a lot to me, but with you, Neve, it often feels as if we’re sharing the same brain, unless we’re talking about Miss Austen, of course! I’ve never met a woman with such an enquiring mind or such a vivid, elegant imagination. Ah, the places you will go …

I should be back in blessed Blighty by the middle of July and I’m longing to see you. I’ve so much to share with you that I think you’ll need to block an entire fortnight out of your schedule (rest assured I haven’t started pronouncing that word in the same way as my American colleagues) so we can get reacquainted
.

Though I feel that I know you so deeply. How strange that the years and ocean between us have brought us closer together
.

I have to go now. Did I tell you that some ex-pats and I have formed a cricket team? I fear I’m late for practice
.

Much love

William

PS: Sorry to impose (yet again!) but could you possibly look up the enclosed references for me next time you’re at the British Library and fax them to me? Number at the top of the page
.

*

Neve put the letter down and sighed deeply. With William so far away and Max suddenly at the forefront of her life, she’d allowed herself to get sidetracked. William was the golden, glittering prize that was just within reach, so close she could almost touch it. It had been the horrible shock of her father’s words that had galvanised Neve into taking the first wobbly steps on her weight-loss journey, but somehow the closer it got to William’s return, the more her transformation became about William. It wasn’t about losing weight so William would drop to his knees and declare, ‘My God, Neevy, when did you get to be so beautiful?’ it was about becoming the kind of woman she wanted to be. The kind of woman who deserved a golden, glittering prize because, damn it, she’d worked so hard and for so long that she was overdue her reward.

But when would she start to
feel
like a golden girl? Would it be the day she effortlessly zipped up a size ten dress or would it be when William came back and everything just fell into place? She had just over three months before he was in her life again and not just a voice on the phone or a copperplate script on airmail paper, and Neve didn’t feel as if she was ready. God, her body certainly wasn’t and she was still as awkward and self-conscious as she’d been the last time she’d seen William standing on the station platform as she’d forlornly waved at him from the window of the train.

Which was why she had Max. He was meant to be the goodtime guru; bringing the fun into her life and limbering her up for a real relationship. But they still had so much ground to cover and they hadn’t even really cracked the sleeping-together thing yet. Inevitably, Neve’s mind drifted to the dark of her bedroom and the sense memory of Max’s hands on her, in her … and her stomach clenched with a deep, dark pleasure like it did every time she thought about it.

She had to learn to be more like Max, Neve decided as she cycled home. Max wasn’t fixating on every aspect of their fake relationship and Max didn’t have any problem in being with Neve and seeing other women. He’d probably slept with a different woman every night that he’d been away, and she doubted he was having any pangs of conscience over it. Just because Max roused these passions in her didn’t mean anything deeply significant; she’d been virtually celibate all her life, was it any wonder she had all these new confusing feelings that she didn’t know how to deal with?

What she did know, Neve thought, as she quickly changed into jeans and a smock top with an Art Noveau tulip pattern that Celia had said was very on-trend, was that she had to lighten up. All she and Max meant to each other was a no-strings, fun-filled fling, which they’d both walk away from with no regrets and no recriminations – but what she had with William was real. It was what her heart yearned for.

Then Neve heard two short rings of the doorbell and her stomach clenched again.

As soon as she opened her door, Keith was frantically wriggling past her legs so he could bound down the stairs with a series of high-pitched yelps, as if he instinctively knew who was visiting. Then he ran up and down the hall, barking all the while, until Neve opened the front door.

Neve barely had time to register Max standing there with a smile that made his entire face light up, because she was trying to make a grab for Keith’s collar, but he hurled himself out of the door so he could pelt up the path, skid to a halt and race back. He did that several times, until finally on the last sprint back to the door he leaped up at Max, front paws skittering at his leather jacket, tongue frantically licking Max’s hands.

Neve didn’t think she’d ever seen such complete rapture.

‘Hey, little fella, did you miss your old man?’ Max asked throatily, squatting down so Keith could swipe his face with his big, pink tongue. Then he looked up at Neve, who was trying not to go all misty-eyed. ‘Hello, angelface, did you miss me too?’

‘Hi! Yes! It’s really good to see you,’ Neve said, trying to inject huge amounts of light-hearted perkiness into her voice. To her ears, she sounded kind of manic. ‘My goodness, you’ve caught the sun.’

Max’s skin had deepened to caramel and he looked entirely snackable. squatting there in jeans and his stripy jumper.

Keith had calmed down enough that Max could stand up, though the Staffie was glued to the heels of his Converses. ‘It was really hot in LA,’ Max said. ‘Well, when I wasn’t freezing my bits off in air-conditioned buildings. And everyone was so tanned and musclebound that I
have
to start running again now that it’s getting warmer.’

‘Well, we could go running together,’ Neve suggested brightly. She hadn’t stopped grinning and her cheeks were beginning to ache, and trying to keep some emotional distance was hard when just standing next to Max on her doorstep made her realise how much she had missed him. What’s more, she’d forgotten how handsome he was, and when he smiled at her, all she wanted to do was smile back. ‘I’ve got Keith’s stuff ready for you.’

She stepped through the open door, expecting Max to follow her, but he stayed where he was. ‘Neve? I need to tell you something.’

It sounded horribly ominous and the inane smile was wiped off her face instantly. ‘Oh?’

At least now Max had crossed over the threshold and wasn’t planning on delivering the bad news on the doorstep. But it did sound as if he was going to dump her there and then, which was fine. In fact, it would make things far less complicated, Neve tried to tell herself as Max sat down on the stairs and patted the space next to him.

Neve sat down and looked at Max anxiously. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing’s the matter,’ Max assured her quickly, and he was gulping as if he was nervous – but then, if you’d never gone in for relationships before then you’d never had to end one either. ‘Are you cool with what happened the night before I left?’

She could feel her cheeks heating up because it was one thing to text about it, but to talk about it … ‘Well, yes. I mean, it was fun, wasn’t it?’ Neve could still feel the echo of that need which had clawed its way out of her with harsh, pained little cries as Max’s fingers twisted and turned inside her, the palm of his hand grinding against her clit. Fun didn’t come anywhere close to describing it. ‘Um, are
you
not cool with it?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Max drawled. ‘Made me hard every time I thought about it and I’ve been thinking about it a lot.’

Neve put her hands to her cheeks, which felt like they were on fire. If she was about to be dumped, then Max was going about it in a very circulatory way. ‘So, er, is that what you wanted to tell me?’

Max put his hand on her knee. Neve stared down at his long fingers resting on the dark blue denim of her jeans. ‘It’s just if we’re going to do
that
, then I figured I’m not going to tart around and sleep with other women any more. It just seems
rude
, y’know?’