You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me (27 page)

‘This is breakfast?’ he asked incredulously. ‘Can’t I have toast?’

‘Well, this is
your
breakfast,’ Neve corrected him. ‘I always work out on an empty stomach on Monday mornings and I don’t have any bread in the house. Sorry.’

Neve didn’t know it was possible to eat muesli resentfully, but Max managed it. She didn’t want to start the new week on such a sour note, even though the thought of the Board of Trustees’ meeting on Wednesday afternoon made her stomach clench. Which was another good reason not to eat breakfast; she wasn’t sure she’d be able to keep anything down.

‘Actually this muesli isn’t too bad,’ Max suddenly announced. ‘As long as I make sure there are at least two raisins in every spoonful. And I can have coffee, can’t I? You wouldn’t deprive me of coffee.’

Three cups of espresso later, Max was restored to his usual vaguely chipper self and ready to leave. Neve walked with him and Keith to the bottom of the road, her mind already on her workout and what she’d say to Rose and Chloe, and even Philip, if she actually found some reserves of courage and confronted them about their whisper campaign. It was blatantly obvious that the three of them were planning to throw her under the bus to keep their own jobs. After all, there had been that time when Rose caught her sticking a personal letter in the post tray and …

‘… and maybe during the week isn’t such a good idea but we should have another crack at it next Sunday.’

Neve realised that Max was talking to her about something important, judging by his serious expression. Even Keith was gazing up at her solemnly.

‘A crack at what?’

‘Sleeping together!’ Max jostled her arm. ‘If we can’t sleep together without you disappearing into the living room halfway through the night, then this relationship is doomed.’

‘Pancake relationship,’ Neve reminded him.

‘Whatever! Do you know what an achievement it is for me to share a bed with a woman that I haven’t had carnal knowledge of? And get up at six thirty without a word of complaint?’ He nudged Neve’s arm and gave her that cheeky smile that he seemed to think could get him out of any amount of hot water. ‘I feel like I’ve grown as a person.’

‘It would only be an achievement if I was your proper girlfriend and you actually wanted to have carnal knowledge of me but you managed to hold yourself back,’ Neve bit out. ‘But I’m not and you don’t.’

‘Christ! You can’t have it both ways, Neve! You’re the one who’s saving it for that William bloke and I’m the one who’s allowed a few kissing and groping rights before I have to stop.’ Max scowled at her. ‘And you are starting to sound like a proper girlfriend. You’ve got the nagging part down perfectly.’

‘I’ve had no sleep,’ Neve growled, and she didn’t think she’d ever growled at anyone before. ‘Have you any idea how hard it is to do a two-hour workout on no sleep?’

‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’

They’d both stopped walking, all the better to stand still and glare at each other. Neve didn’t know how long they stood there, but in the end she gave a tiny, defeated sigh. ‘I haven’t got time for this. Gustav will be furious if I’m late.’

She expected Max to rap out another ‘What
ever
!’ Instead, he took her chin in one hand. ‘Are you all right?’ he wanted to know. ‘Is something bothering you, apart from our complete failure to sleep together?’

Neve hadn’t told Max about the AGM and her fears of being sacked for gross misconduct. He never asked her about her work and was already on record as stating that the Archive was the last bastion of tweed-wearing lesbians and a far cry from his world of wall-to-wall parties and celebrity wrangling. And she certainly couldn’t tell him that she and William had had their first ever argument.

‘It’s nothing. Just really dull work stuff. I’d tell you but it would render you catatonic,’ she muttered, turning her head so Max had to let his hand fall away. ‘I have to go. I’ll call you in the week.’

Then she hurried away, because Gustav really was going to be furious with her if she didn’t get a move on.

As she was about to cross over the road, some impulse made Neve turn around, if only to see Max and Keith walking in the opposite direction. But Max was still standing where she’d left him, and when he caught Neve’s eye, instead of raising his hand and waving like a normal person, Max just stood there watching her so Neve had no option but to start walking again, her cheeks a fiery red as if she’d been caught doing something completely awful.

It was the kind of situation that was so out of Neve’s remit that she longed to be able to talk to Chloe and ask her advice, which wasn’t an option any more.

When she got home from work that evening she found a note from Charlotte shoved under her door.
Whn r u going 2 do smthng abt yr bike. Is totes in way. Won’t tell u again!!!!!!!!!!!!!
For a brief moment, a faint smile appeared on Neve’s face and for an even briefer moment, she contemplated knocking on Charlotte’s door to ask for relationship advice, if only because Charlotte’s head might actually explode.

Anyway, even if Charlotte wasn’t Charlotte, with pure evil running through her veins instead of blood, she was hardly an expert on relationships. Lately, she and Douglas kept having the same fight over and over again.

‘Fucking shut up!’

‘No,
you
fucking shut up!’

There was always Celia, but if Neve intimated that all was not right in pancake paradise, Celia would come up with fifty different variations on ‘I told you so,’ and she’d be unbelievably smug about it too. So when Neve went down to Celia and Yuri’s flat the night before the AGM to pack Celia’s suitcase because she was flying to Berlin to shoot fashion for
Skirt
, she resolved to keep her mouth shut.

It wasn’t hard. Celia was far more interested in how many outfit options she’d need for five days, and while Neve diligently folded clothes and made sure all of Celia’s many bottles and jars of beauty gloop were screwed tightly shut, Celia was on her iPhone checking the weather in Berlin, then she had to call Grace to find out how many outfits she was packing, and all that Neve had left to do was ball Celia’s socks and put them in her shoes, when Celia finally deigned to speak to her.

‘So, hey, meant to ask you if you’re planning on dumping Max in the next couple of days?’ she asked hopefully.

Neve’s head shot up from her silent contemplation of Celia’s suitcase. ‘Why? Has he said something?’

Celia didn’t notice Neve’s distress as she was standing in front of the mirror in just pants and a T-shirt with a platform sandal on one foot and a peep-toe shoe boot on the other. ‘Do I dare risk an open toe?’ she mused, before she turned back to Neve. ‘It’s just it’s his birthday this weekend and Grace says that if you’re still faux dating, I should chip in more money for the Fashion Department’s present. So, are you?’

As far as Neve knew she was, but if Max hadn’t even told her it was his birthday then she didn’t imagine she’d be faux dating for much longer. ‘I suppose,’ she said, without much enthusiasm.

‘OK. Can you lend me fifty quid then?’

Neve tossed a balled-up pair of socks at Celia, which missed their target by a good few metres. ‘No, I can’t! It’s three days until I get paid and I’m broke.’ And now she had to buy a birthday present for Max too.

‘But it’s three days till I get paid too and I earn less money than you,’ Celia pointed out.

It was hard to believe when Neve was barely earning fourteen thousand a year before tax that Celia had actually found a job that paid even less. ‘But you don’t have to pay rent or a mortgage.’

‘Well, neither do you,’ Celia sniffed. ‘Come on, don’t be tight.’

‘I’m not being tight,’ Neve said indignantly. ‘You’d have loads of money if you didn’t fritter it away on shoe boots and hot pants …’

‘They’re called short shorts, Grandma.’

‘Well, I’m paying off two student loans and I have gym fees and Gustav fees – and have you any idea how much I spend a week on organic fruit and vegetables?’ Neve demanded. ‘I’m not lending you any more money. You never, ever pay me back.’

It was a fair point, because by Neve’s reckoning, Celia owed her well over a thousand pounds, but it was something neither of them mentioned. Apart from now, because Neve was in a foul mood and Celia was the only person she dared take it out on.

‘Snippy, much?’ Celia kicked off her shoe boot and stood on one leg in her platform heel, but still managed to convey huge amounts of pathos. ‘If you’re not going to lend me money, then it would really help if you could dump Max so I only have to put in twenty quid.’

Neve hadn’t considered it before, but dumping Max would be a solution to one of the many problems that was weighing down on her. ‘Well, I’ll think about it,’ she said and wasn’t even attempting to be funny, but Celia grinned and pretended to check the calendar on her phone.

‘Nuh-huh, Neevy! You said you’d date him for two months and you’ve still got another four weeks to go.’ She gave her sister a stern look. ‘You know what they say about quitters, don’t you?’

Rose had ordered sandwiches from Pret A Manger for the AGM. They were arranged on platters in the Reading Room (the Archive was closed to visitors in honour of such an auspicious occasion) along with a tray of tired-looking fruit. Neve paused in the doorway and looked at the sandwiches in dismay – Rose knew she could only eat wraps because they had fewer carbs. She knew and she obviously didn’t care because she already thought of Neve as an ex-colleague.

‘Don’t just stand there, Neevy,’ Chloe grumbled from behind her. ‘Move!’

The five Trustees always sat on the window side of the long table that ran the length of the room, and the Archive staff would cram themselves in along the other side. But it wasn’t quite as simple as that, because no one wanted to get stuck next to Mr Freemont. Not just because he was grumpiness incarnate, but because he had severe odour issues, which was little wonder when he’d worn the same pair of grey trousers, grey shirt and maroon cardigan every day for the entire three years that Neve had worked at the Archive. Come rain, come shine, come blizzard, come heatwave, Mr Freemont never deviated from his outfit and never took it off either, if the stench that emanated from him was anything to go by.

So choosing a seat for the AGM, or any meeting that Mr Freemont attended, was like a game of musical chairs. The rest of the staff jostled, side-stepped and, in the case of Chloe, body-checked, in their efforts to secure a chair as far away from Mr Freemont as possible. Right now, they were shuffling restlessly from foot to foot by the reception desk as they waited for Mr Freemont to enter the room and take his seat.

At five to one exactly, he bustled into the room, paused for one, suspense-filled moment, then purposefully strode to a chair exactly halfway down the table – but didn’t sit down.

‘Don’t just stand there,’ he demanded querulously of his staff. ‘Sit!’

No one moved, apart from Neve who took a timid step forward.

‘Don’t do it, Neve,’ Philip hissed in her ear but she ignored him because she was mad at him, and by inching herself ahead of the staff she was in prime position to gallop to the other end of the table when Mr Freemont sat down exactly level with the tray of sandwiches, which were positioned left of centre, just like he did every year.

Neve allowed herself a faint smile of triumph as Rose was almost sent flying by one of the part-time PhD students and lost precious seconds so she had no choice but to sit next to Mr Freemont, her face turned the other way and utter loathing oozing from her every pore.

After fifteen minutes of desultory chit-chat and eating those sandwiches that they were positive that Mr Freemont hadn’t touched with his smelly fingers (it was an absolute, unequivocal certainty that he didn’t wash his hands after he peed), the five Trustees trooped in.

There was the old man who’d fall asleep within the first five minutes. Behind him was the crusty Professor of Medieval History at University College London, who always wanted to know why they didn’t archive any material written before the 1700s. Neve rather liked the dishevelled woman from the Arts Council but she didn’t like Jacob Morrison, literary super-agent, with his sharp suits, air of superiority and the way he always looked right through her. Bringing up the rear was the Chairwoman of the Board, Harriet Fitzwilliam-White, whose father had founded the Archive and generally regarded the staff as not mentally competent enough to protect his legacy. Last year, Neve thought that she and Rose might actually come to blows over the thorny topic of upgrading from Windows ’98.

It was impossible for Neve to slump on her hard-backed chair like everyone else as the meeting started. She was far too anxious to slump and was mentally rehearsing the impassioned speech she’d give in defence of her work ethic when the moment arose.

The moment was taking a long time to arise. Instead, they spent a laborious hour going over the minutes of the last AGM, before moving on to the other items on the agenda.

It was the same as it ever was. The only good news was that they’d secured some funding from a couple of small bequests and a grant from a bunch of book-loving do-gooders – but it didn’t seem like
much
funding. Certainly not enough to maintain four full-time members of staff, assorted part-timers and keep them in Post-it notes and teabags. Not that anyone else seemed particularly bothered, though it was hard to tell. When Neve scanned the assembled faces she was met with glazed eyes.