You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me (19 page)

Neve assumed her primmest face, which just made Celia giggle harder as she walked to the station entrance, stopping to look back at Neve and wave before she disappeared.

It was five forty now and, right on time, she saw Max hurrying under the bridge. Neve unfolded her arms so she didn’t look as if she was standing there impatiently as Max caught her eye and started running towards her.

‘Hello, gorgeous,’ Max panted, as he reached Neve’s side. He kissed her cheek, then the other one, his face cold against hers. ‘Sorry I’m late. I swear, I think time speeds up the second I leave my flat.’

‘I’ve only just seen Celia off,’ Neve said, eyes downcast because the first five minutes still felt awkward and it took her time to warm up. When Max arrived, Neve was always struck anew by how handsome he was. Then she had to adjust all her notions about him and try to drown out the voice in her head that wanted to know what the hell he was doing with her.

Once she was composed enough to look at him, Neve saw that Max was wearing jeans and a houndstooth coat that looked like it had seen better days, though Neve knew that when he took it off there’d be a Marc Jacobs or Prada label stitched inside. He was looking her up and down too, a slight smile on his face. Then he took her arm and started trying to move her in the direction of the station entrance.

Neve didn’t budge. ‘Where do you think we’re going?’

‘You said you were taking me bowling,’ Max said, looping his fingers round Neve’s wrist to tug at her gently. ‘We need to catch the tube.’

It had occurred to Neve after all the drama of Thursday night, that Max had planned all their dates up until then. She hadn’t had much to do but worry about what to wear then turn up at the agreed time and place.

So when Max revealed that there was nothing on the social calendar for that Saturday, Neve had taken charge. Though when she’d suggested that maybe they could both have a night off so she could catch up on
Tristram Shandy
, Max had been appalled. ‘I haven’t stayed in on a Saturday night since I was about twelve and I’m not going to start now,’ he’d said aghast, even more aghast than Celia had been, and for once he wasn’t hamming it up for comic effect. ‘I’ll phone a few people. There has to be
something
going on somewhere.’

‘We’ll go bowling early in the evening and then we’ll go out for dinner,’ Neve had said firmly, because both those activities were reasonably cheap and she didn’t get paid for another week. At the time, she was surprised that Max had agreed so quickly, but now as she watched his face crease in confusion, she realised that they had very different ideas about bowling.

‘We don’t need to get a tube,’ she said, pointing at the huge grey and red building across the road. ‘There’s a massive bowling alley five seconds away.’

Max stared at the askew pins decorating the outside of the venue with furrowed brow. ‘But I thought you meant we’d go to Bloomsbury Bowls or the All-Star Lanes, not …’

Not an ugly grey bowling alley that didn’t have any kitsch retro features or a waitress service featuring girls with pin curls and little 1950s bowling dresses. ‘It’s really all right once you get inside,’ Neve said weakly. ‘Look, I just thought we could do something local for once.’

‘Do they play really tinny disco music through the PA and have loads of ankle-biters getting in the way when you’re trying to bowl?’ Max asked.

‘Are you sure you’ve never been there before?’

‘I haven’t, but it sounds a lot like the place in Didsbury where I had my tenth birthday party,’ Max said. He took a deep breath. ‘OK, let’s do this. I can kick it with the common people.’

Taking Max bowling went better than Neve had dared hope. He’d winced theatrically when they’d got inside and seen hordes of kids, all hopped up on fizzy drinks, running around and shrieking. There’d also been some eye-rolling when Neve insisted the boy in charge of shoe rental sprayed foot deodorant in her bowling shoes before she could even think of putting them on. But then it had been all right because Neve was on home ground.

Bowling was a birthday tradition and a Bank Holiday tradition and also a bringing home a good school report tradition and even a ‘Christ, Barry, the kids are driving me bloody mad, get them out the house,’ tradition.

Neve knew how to input their names on to their electronic scoreboard even though the keys had rubbed off. She knew that they didn’t want to get stuck with the furthest lane to the left because the wood was slightly warped and the balls all veered to the right, and she knew that it was always best to start off with one of the heavy green balls on her first bowl then move to a lighter orange ball to try and strike down the last remaining pins.

Yes, she was worried how her back view looked as she ran up the lane with a lumbering gait, but Max was far more concerned that she kept getting strikes than how big her bum looked or how the bowling shoes made her legs seem shorter and stockier than normal.

‘Can’t we get them to put the bumpers up?’ he asked plaintively, as his balls kept rolling into the gutter. ‘Like they have.’ He gestured at the neighbouring lane.

‘They have the bumpers up because they’re tiny children,’ Neve pointed out and Max pouted, and maybe if it was a different kind of relationship, she’d have leaned up and kissed the pout right off his face.

Instead, Neve deliberately sent her next two balls into the gutter because tamping down the competitive side of her nature was another compromise she was willing to make. She still won their two games easily, even though Max grabbed one of the bumpers to line up his last few balls, much to the screaming delight of the teenagers at the next lane. He just couldn’t resist playing to a captive audience.

‘Well, I truly sucked at that,’ he announced, when they were back in their own unrented footwear and walking up Stroud Green Road. ‘But you … you have some serious moves.’

‘If it makes you feel any better, I broke three nails,’ Neve said, holding up a gloved hand.

‘I could kiss them better if you like,’ Max drawled, and it was a salient reminder that tonight it was just the two of them and she didn’t really know how to handle his flirting when they didn’t have at least ten of his sycophantic friends chaperoning them.

‘Maybe later. If you’re good,’ she added, in what was meant to be an equally flirtatious manner, but sounded a little too schoolmarm for her liking. ‘Very, very good.’

‘And what if I’ve been very bad?’ Max wanted to know and when Neve shot him a sideways glance, she could tell he was definitely teasing her.

‘No pudding for you then,’ she rapped back, tugging Max’s sleeve because it was time to cross the road. ‘Which is a pity, because the place I’m taking you to does a great tiramisu.’

‘We’re not going to the gastro pub, then?’

‘The common people don’t go to gastro pubs,’ Neve said. ‘They go to places like this.’

She stopped outside the huge Italian restaurant that had always provided post-bowling refreshment on all Slater family outings. Max peered inside with some trepidation as a waiter walked past holding a birthday cake ablaze with candles.

‘Looks cool,’ he said gamely. ‘Wouldn’t be so packed if the food was terrible, would it?’

Neve didn’t have a chance to extol the virtues of the wood-fired oven, before the door was wrenched open and the owner, a wizened little man, his wrinkled face grinning from ear to ear, gathered her in his arms.

‘Miss Neevy,’ he said, pushing Neve back, so he could get a good look at her. ‘You’re wasting away. We fill you up with some pasta, huh?’

‘Only a tiny bit of pasta,’ Neve demurred. She could hear Max sniggering behind her as Marco led them inside with a flourish.

‘The best table in the house for Miss Neevy,’ he shouted to no one in particular. ‘You treat her badly, I get my boys to take you out back and chop you into little pieces,’ he shot out of the side of his mouth at Max, as they were led to a table by the window.

‘I’m very nice to her,’ Max protested, then to Neve’s mortification, he and Marco had a stand-off about who was going to pull out her chair.

Max won that battle but Marco made a big show of unfolding a snowy white napkin and placing it reverently on Neve’s lap.

‘I get you a bottle of wine on the house,’ he insisted, ignoring Neve’s frantic hand gestures. ‘How’s Barry and Margaret? They well, huh?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she hissed at Max, when Marco finally left after enquiring about the health of all of the Slater clan and asking Neve how ‘the job at the library’ was going. ‘I didn’t expect Marco to warn you off.’

‘Well, you’d better smile and laugh at everything I say. I don’t want to be chopped into tiny pieces,’ Max hissed back, as he gazed around the room. ‘What does it say on the back of the waiters’ shirts?’

‘“A nice-a place to stuffa your face”.’ Neve tried hard not to laugh. Max was all about opening-night parties at the V&A, air-kissing models and eating canapés made with crème fraiche. This really wasn’t his scene. ‘You hate it, don’t you?’ she asked, between giggles.

‘I don’t spend
all
my time eating mahi-mahi in minimalist restaurants in Soho. I can do beer and the pizza.’ Max opened his menu. ‘You’ve got the whole of Finsbury Park eating out of your hand, haven’t you?’

‘Finsbury Park till I die,’ Neve said as solemnly as she could when it felt as if another round of giggles might unleash themselves.

‘You’ve smudged your mascara,’ Max pointed out, reaching across the table to brush his thumb against her cheek. Neve was used to the arm round her shoulders and the restrained kiss goodnight, but this was a whole new territory of touching, especially since, now that he’d brushed away any stray smuts, Max was still cupping her cheek. ‘I like the side of you I’m seeing tonight.’

‘What side is that, then?’ Neve asked. She wanted to lean into Max’s hand, and suddenly wished that it meant something real because it was so lovely to be
touched
as if she was something precious, but she forced herself to remain still.

‘Pink-faced and giggly – makes your eyes look very blue,’ Max said matter-of-factly, as if he wasn’t just spinning her some line for once but it was the God’s honest truth. Then he took his hand away. ‘Now what should I have to eat? Pizza or pasta?’

‘Well, the pizza’s good,’ said Neve, who could still feel the phantom touch of Max’s fingers on her skin.

‘Do you want to share some garlic bread as a starter?’

‘Max! I need to tell you something,’ Neve blurted out.

He looked up in surprise at her forceful tone. ‘What?’

Neve rearranged her cutlery and adjusted the position of the salt and pepper pots. ‘This is a really big deal for me, having dinner with you because … well, I have serious issues with food.’ She sat back and waited for … she wasn’t sure what exactly, but she had an image in her head of Max throwing his napkin down in disgust and walking out, singularly unimpressed by her confession.

‘And how does that make you different from ninety-nine per cent of all other women?’ he asked, tilting his chin so it seemed more like a challenge than a question.

‘I’m just warning you, because I take ages to order and sometimes I have to send food back if they haven’t followed my precise instructions.’ Neve bit her lip. ‘Celia says I’m an absolute pain when we go out for dinner.’

Max shrugged. ‘I go out for lunch every day with people who work in entertainment or fashion, and it’s all egg-white omelettes and no carbs. Sometimes they even bring their own specially prepared meals and ask the chef to heat them up. Honestly, I’ve seen food issues and I bet yours don’t even come close.’

This didn’t make Neve feel better. It made her feel worse, because the people that Max was talking about were probably all size zero and got paid millions of pounds to maintain their figures while she wouldn’t even be able to get her big toe into a size zero anything.

‘Well, it makes me feel like a freak,’ she admitted slowly. ‘Like I shouldn’t make so much of a fuss when I’m the size I am. People probably think I go home and stuff myself with cake.’

It was impossible to read Max’s expression; his features were completely blank. ‘I’m sure no one thinks that,’ he said finally, with a look that was verging on exasperated. ‘You just imagine that they do.’

‘I’ve ruined everything, haven’t I? I’ve been Weird Food Issues Girl and now you’re all like, “God, would she just shut up because she’s ruined my appetite and I just want to eat dinner then get the hell away from her.”’

‘My inner voice doesn’t sound anything like that,’ Max said as he picked up a packet of breadsticks. ‘Now change the subject or I’m going to stab myself in the eye with one of these.’

Neve opened and closed her mouth a few more times, like a demented goldfish. Then she narrowed her eyes because Max had that challenging tilt to his chin again, like he thought she couldn’t do it. ‘OK, OK,’ she said. ‘I took Celia here for her birthday last year, and there was a mix-up with the cake, so I asked the waiters to improvise.’

Max was pouring them both a glass of wine and Neve paused to tell him to stop because she might just as well scarf down some packets of sugar. Then she thought better of it, snatched the glass he was holding out to her and took a few fortifying gulps. ‘You have to know that Marco had the night off, that’s a very important fact,’ she said, picking up her thread again. ‘So, we’ve finished the main course and I give the signal, then all the lights go off and all the waiters came to our table, singing “Happy Birthday” and holding something behind a menu.’