You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me (11 page)

Only when the sandwiches had been concealed and Max had tucked his bag behind the sofa so Neve wouldn’t have to look at it did she settle back down, reaching for the mug of tea with a trembling hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I’m OK if I know in advance that there’s going to be food I can’t eat, but when it takes me by surprise …’ She tailed off because no one really understood that food wasn’t just fuel or that there was no harm in a little bit of what you fancied; every meal, every morsel was a battle in a never-ending war.

‘You said in your letter …’ Max began, then stopped as his eyes trailed over her. ‘You look fine to me and I saw enough of you that night …’

‘You saw only what I wanted you to see,’ Neve confessed, remembering the way that she’d kept her arms pinned to her sides, hadn’t even taken her slip off.

‘I think I saw a little bit more than that, when I was under the covers,’ Max said in this slow, amused way that should have made her hackles and every hair on her body rise. Instead, Neve felt a tiny shiver run through her that had nothing to do with the aftershocks from the cheese sandwiches and more to do with the way Max’s voice dipped down so low as if the memory of being between her thunderous thighs was a pleasant one.

‘It was dimly lit, you’d been drinking,’ Neve insisted. She swallowed hard because this was never easy to say, even if she’d been able to write it in a letter. ‘My body … if I’d been this weight all the time, my body would look different. But I weighed a lot more than this and it shows.’

‘So you’ve lost a couple of stone.’ Max shrugged again. ‘You women. You’re all so fixated on your weight, and really, unless you’re morbidly obese there’s nothing to worry about. You always think you weigh more than you do.’

On some level, as soon as she’d seen Max sitting on her doorstep, Neve had known that they’d have this conversation. At least that would be one thing she’d be spared with William because he’d known her back then. Anyway, after tonight, she was 100 per cent certain that she’d never see Max again so she might as well go for broke.

‘I always know exactly how much I weigh,’ she said, hoping that Gustav hadn’t fitted her with a bugging device. ‘And I was morbidly obese.’

‘Oh, please …’ Max was all set to start scoffing, but Neve had expected that too, which was why she’d taken down the photo that was usually taped to the fridge door and stuck it in her bag so she could pull it out and slam it down on the table.

‘Morbidly obese,’ she repeated. ‘I used to weigh three hundred and fifty-eight pounds. That’s twenty-five and a half stone. I’d say I was a size thirty-two because that was the largest size that Evans did – but even that was tight.’

Max stared down at the photo with a horrified expression. ‘Fucking hell! That’s not you,’ he breathed. ‘It can’t be.’

The picture had been taken at the family Christmas dinner four years ago. Neve had been caught unawares, because normally she ran, or waddled, away from the camera lens. But on this occasion, Celia had managed to snap her just as she was manoeuvring a cocktail sausage wrapped in bacon towards her mouth, jaw open wide to receive the offering so the camera had really captured the full glory of her several chins. The rest of her wasn’t pretty either; a black-clad mountain of amorphous flesh with a round pale face perched unsteadily on top of it.

Neve didn’t have to look at the picture on the table because she saw it at least five times a day when she was getting skimmed milk or leafy green things out of the fridge. Maybe it was the familiarity that had lessened the shock value, but these days it was like looking at a girl she used to know, rather than a girl she used to be.

‘It is me,’ she said simply, because she was used to people’s disbelief when they saw the picture. Even Celia, who’d taken the bloody thing. ‘You weren’t
that
big,’ she’d always stubbornly insist. ‘It’s just a bad angle.’

‘Now that you’ve seen it, do you understand why I am like I am?’ Neve asked quietly.

‘Wow,’ Max said. He looked at Neve sitting there, and even though the grey tunic was as voluminous as a size sixeen could get, there was no mistaking the whittling of her body. ‘You’re half the woman you used to be, quite literally.’

Neve never tired of the look that Max was giving her, the look she’d received from so many other people who hadn’t seen her since her transformation. It was a look of dopey stupefaction, usually followed by a swift, ‘Fuck me!’

‘More than half,’ she said a little smugly, but she’d earned the right to be smug. ‘I’ve lost two whole Kylie Minogues.’ Then her expression grew serious. ‘So you see, that’s why I’ve never had a boyfriend or been in a relationship.’

Max pushed the photo away as if he couldn’t bear to look at it any longer. ‘But lots of f— larger people have relationships.’

‘You can say the f-word, it doesn’t bother me,’ Neve told him, curling her legs up beneath her because she could do that now. And cross them too, if she wanted. ‘I know there are lots of fat people in happy, healthy relationships, but I wasn’t one of them. I mean, I had friends but I was miserable about the way I looked so I’d eat to cheer myself up and that just made me bigger, which made me more miserable. I wasn’t exactly in the right frame of mind to put myself out there to try and find a boyfriend. I was sure that most men hated the way I looked too.’

‘But this guy, this William, he didn’t hate you?’

Neve shook her head. ‘No, he didn’t hate me. Not at all.’

Max rested his elbows on his knees and stared serenely at Neve. ‘And he feels the same way about you?’

His unblinking gaze was like truth serum. ‘Well, I think so.’ She squared her shoulders and forced herself to look Max straight in the eye. ‘The heart knows, isn’t that what they say?’

‘If he loves you, then he won’t care what size you are or what experience you may or may not have,’ Max said softly. ‘Not if he really loves you.’

‘It’s not just that.’ Neve closed her eyes momentarily. ‘He’ll ask me if I’ve been seeing anyone and I’d have to say no, and he knew that I wasn’t involved with anyone when I was at Oxford and that night we had … if I was like that with William, it would ruin everything and I’d want to die.’

It sounded so silly and melodramatic when she said it out loud, but Max just nodded. ‘Look, you should have said it was your maiden voyage,’ he remarked cheerfully. ‘We could have taken it slower, much slower. I guarantee you’d have had a good time.’

‘Oh God,’ Neve said faintly, because sex was not something you discussed in such a jovial manner or in a public place or with someone who wasn’t Celia and even then it was under extreme duress.

‘No, really,’ Max insisted, mistaking Neve’s mortification for disbelief. ‘There’s no point in being modest about it; I’m really good at sex. Fantastic at foreplay, never have to be asked to go down on a girl – in fact, I love it, especially when—’

‘Please, for the love of God, will you stop,’ Neve begged. ‘Just stop talking about
it
.’

‘You really are very repressed. You can’t even say it, can you?’ Max frowned. ‘Look, that night, you said that you’d taught Celia everything she knows and believe me, she knows a lot, and you—’

Neve clutched a hand to her frantically beating heart. ‘Oh, sweet Jesus, you’ve slept with my little sister!’

‘Of course I haven’t,’ Max said indignantly, and Neve wanted to smack him – because even though she was hugely relieved he hadn’t shared Celia’s bed, there was no need for him to sound so affronted. Celia was quite the catch. ‘I never sleep with the
Skirt
girls – well, apart from the interns and I’ve sworn off them too lately – but I’ve been away on location shoots with your sister and she’s not a shy little flower and I thought you were cut from the same cloth. You practically dragged me to your bedroom.’

Even though it was hot enough in the snug to have Neve red-faced and slowly roasting in her grey wool tunic, she shivered. ‘Look, I said I was sorry in the letter so why are you subjecting me to this postmortem?’

She must have sounded really forlorn, because Max shifted uncomfortably on his sofa. ‘I really did want to make sure that you were all right,’ he said. ‘That you weren’t still beating yourself up over what happened.’

‘Well, I wasn’t until you showed up on my doorstep and now I’m back to castigating myself,’ Neve sighed.

Max leaned forward so he could take Neve’s limp hands in his cool grasp. Neve longed to tug them away but Max tutted as he felt her fingers flutter. ‘Look, Neve, you’re a pretty, intelligent girl and you shouldn’t be spending Valentine’s Night sitting in a crappy pub – no offence.’

‘None taken,’ Neve said, because the only reason she loved the Hat and Fan was because of the memories, not the actual funky-smelling reality of it. ‘But you’re also spending Valentine’s Night in a crappy pub too.’

‘Yeah, but I have three other places to be after this,’ Max informed her loftily. ‘
I’m
not going to spend the rest of the night home alone.’

Neve did try to tug her hands away then, but Max refused to let go. ‘Stop being so huffy,’ he said. ‘I’m here to help you.’

‘I don’t need your help!’

‘Here’s what’s going to happen,’ Max said, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘We’re going to go back to yours so you can change into something that’s a lot less, well, sackclothy, and then we’re going into town and we’re going to get you laid. What do you think about that?’

Neve thought quite a lot about that but she couldn’t get any words out as she was coughing and spluttering. ‘I don’t want to get laid,’ she said eventually. ‘I never did. Not for ages. There are other steps.’

‘If I were you I’d forget the other steps for now and just get the shagging out of the way,’ Max advised her, like he was some kind of shagging expert, which actually, fair point. ‘Think of it as like ripping off a plaster really quickly so it doesn’t hurt, and once you’ve got the sex out of the way, then you can get on with the other stuff.’

‘I don’t want to get sex out of the way,’ Neve hissed. ‘In fact, I think sex is completely off the agenda for now.’

‘So, you’re going to wait for this William bloke to do the honours?’ Max clarified, absent-mindedly stroking Neve’s wrist right where her pulse was pounding away. The movement was like a mantra, calming and comforting even as Neve wanted to pick up her mug of rapidly cooling tea and fling it in Max’s face. ‘You’re saving yourself for him because he’s your one true love? Christ, that’s a lot of pressure for someone to live up to.’

Max was right, which was infuriating. But if their stalled sexual encounter had taught Neve anything, it was that she wasn’t ready for sex. ‘I need relationship experience, not sex experience,’ she told him.

‘Come on, I’ll take you to Black’s. It’s always stuffed with literary types and I’ll sort you out some bloke who can bang on about books and then, er … well, bang you.’

Neve did manage to snatch her hand away. ‘Ugh, that’s disgusting!’ She pointed one quivering finger at Max, who grinned at her. Caddishly. ‘
You’re
disgusting! It’s not funny to be twenty-five and have no idea how any of this is meant to work. There’s no earthly way that someone like you could possibly understand how terrifying and confusing sex and relationships and dating is when you’ve never done any of it.’

She was close to tears, close enough that she had to sniff loudly before continuing. ‘I wasted so much time in this cycle of fat and self-loathing, and now there’s
no
time and it feels like an impossible task to go out and try to meet someone and flirt with them and laugh at their jokes.’ She shrugged. ‘Then, what? You start to date and there’s all this rigmarole and leaving two days before you call them and that could drag on for weeks and weeks. I want to skip straight to three months into the relationship.’

She wasn’t sharing so much as ranting, but Max looked like he was hanging on her every word and Neve saw there was a crumpled piece of Basildon Bond in his hand that looked horribly familiar. ‘What’s a pancake relationship?’ he asked, tracing that particular line with the tip of one finger.

‘It’s so dumb. Just this really tortured analogy …’

‘I love tortured analogies. They’re my favourite kind.’

It was hard to know when Max was laughing at her. ‘Well, when you make pancakes, the first pancake tastes all right but you’re basically testing out the consistency of the batter and it’s never quite the right shape or thickness so it gets chucked away.’

Max looked confused. ‘I’ve never heard of that.’ He frowned. ‘So when you make pancakes, you throw the first pancake away?’

‘Well, I don’t eat pancakes any more and when I used to make them, I always ate the first one,’ Neve recalled dryly. ‘And the second one and the third one and the one after that, until there was no more batter left. But generally people who aren’t compulsive over-eaters throw the first one away. And I want a relationship like that.’

‘So a relationship that’s OK as relationships go, but it’s not quite the right consistency so you can just dump the poor bloke when this other guy gets back from wherever he’s been,’ Max summed up, then smiled faintly as he picked up his pint glass.

‘It sounds terrible and heartless when you put it like that,’ Neve protested. ‘It’s just a fun little affair, nothing serious, and with no hard feelings when the time comes to go our separate ways.’

‘And what’s in it for the guy in this pancake relationship? Does he know he’s going to get his marching orders or are you going to pretend that he might really be the one and—’