You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me (32 page)

‘She was deep into her
Chalet School
phase at the time …’

‘And Celia and I are doing kid stuff in the back, like playing I Spy and counting up all the black and white cars and …’

‘You two fought from the minute you got in the car,’ Neve said, interrupting this little trip down memory lane, which was losing a lot in translation. ‘And Mum kept turning around every five seconds to scream, “If you two don’t stop right now, I’m coming back there and knocking …”’

‘“ … your bloody heads together”,’ the three of them said in unison.

‘And what were you doing while all this was going on?’ Max asked, nudging Neve’s foot with his toe.

‘I was trying to read
Eustacia Goes to the Chalet School
even though Celia kept smacking me in the face with her ballet Barbie.’

Celia tried to look repentant as she gnawed on a chicken bone. ‘In my defence, I was only six but anyway, Dad was so fed up with us that when we made him stop at a service station …’

‘Though he’d had to stop at every service station because as soon as our mum gets in the car and the engine starts running, she says she feels it right in her bladder,’ Douglas explained, though Neve was certain that their mother didn’t want that kind of information revealed over Sunday roast – or at any other time. ‘So me and Seels get out the car because anything’s better than staying
in
the car but Neve won’t budge because she’s all up in the Chalet School – and when we get back to the car it isn’t there! What do you think about that, then?’

‘Um, I don’t know,’ Max said. ‘Did you get turned round when you left the service station?’

‘Not even!’ Celia sniffed. ‘Dad only drove off without us. We had to wait there for an hour and it was in the prehistoric era before mobile phones so we couldn’t call and Mum was just about to dial 999 from a payphone because she thought they’d been kidnapped, when Dad pulled up and said that he wasn’t going to let us back in until we promised to shut up.’

‘Except it was only twenty minutes,’ Neve said. ‘Half an hour tops. And he only drove to the other side of the service station.’

‘I can’t believe you let Dad just drive off like that,’ Douglas said, because even after seventeen years he wouldn’t let it go.

‘But I didn’t even realise you weren’t there,’ Neve explained for the hundredth time. ‘I’d got to the chapter where they were caught in a blizzard and had to stay in a mountain hut; it was riveting.’

‘Tell Max what you and Dad did when you finally got your nose out of the Chalet School,’ Celia ordered and Neve thought she was being a bit heavy-handed with the righteous indignation but Max was grinning, his eyes darting to each of them in turn as they spoke.

‘We had egg, chips and beans and a Cornetto for afters and he read the paper and I read my book and neither of us said a blessed word to each other,’ Neve recalled with relish. ‘Good times, my friends, good times.’

‘While we had to make do with some soggy cheese and pickle sandwiches,’ Douglas said. ‘And when we got back in the car, I think we managed to stay quiet for, hmmm, five minutes.’

‘More like two minutes,’ Neve said dryly. She looked at the remains of the chicken; if she was really lucky she might be able to make soup from the carcass. ‘Everyone done?’

There were empty plates all round, except for one solitary and exceedingly crispy roast potato sitting on Max’s plate. Celia was already reaching for it. ‘If you’re not going to eat that, can I have it?’ she asked, fork poised.

‘No,’ Max said, slapping her hand as she made a dive for it. ‘It’s Neve’s.’

Neve could see Douglas and Celia exchanging raised eyebrows and a smirk as Max handed over his treasure, so she shut her eyes to enjoy her tiny moment of carbo-riffic bliss without them ruining it.

‘Thank you,’ she said, when she was done. There was pudding, and it couldn’t be shared between three, but to her surprise, Neve realised that she didn’t want to kick Douglas and Celia out just yet. Though it pained her to admit it, it had been lovely to have a family dinner and Max wouldn’t be opening the second bottle of Cava if he wanted them to go.

‘So, I have a question to ask about your sister,’ he announced as he expertly popped the cork. There was a twinkle in his eye that Neve didn’t trust at all but she was sure it couldn’t be anything too embarrassing. She’d led such a blameless life.

‘Like, what?’ Douglas wanted to know, bristling slightly as if he might have to defend Neve’s honour, which was sweet and very unexpected.

‘Like, have you ever heard her say the f-word? That’s what she calls it,’ Max explained, as Celia snorted with laughter. ‘She can’t even bring herself to say it as she explains why she won’t say it.’

‘Oh, stop it!’ Neve tried to swipe at Max with her oven mitt but he was too far away. ‘I told you, I don’t like swearing.’

‘It’s true; she really doesn’t swear that much,’ Celia said, shaking her head as if she couldn’t understand why anyone would have a problem with frequent cursing. ‘I mark it on the calendar if she says “bloody”.’

‘I’m not
that
bad!’

‘Except for that one time, of course.’ Douglas leaned back in his chair and smiled smugly.

‘What time?’ Neve asked crossly as she tried to give Max a look that said, ‘Can you believe this?’ though from the eager expression on his face, he wanted to believe it more than anything.

‘The time you were back from Oxford and working all hours on some essay
thing
and I get woken up by you screaming, “Fuck you! You fucking useless excuse for a fucking computer!”’

Celia sat up straight and gasped: ‘I’d forgotten all about that! The Day That Neve Swore – they’re going to make it a public holiday.’

‘What was I meant to do? The computer just died on me and I hadn’t backed anything up.’ Neve covered her burning face with the oven mitt. ‘There were extenuating circumstances.’

‘Don’t suppose either of you caught this on tape, did you?’

‘No birthday presents …’ she growled at him warningly, even though Max was too busy clutching his sides to pay any attention.

‘It’s not on tape,’ Celia said sadly. ‘Though the memory lives on in our hearts. There were quite a few more “fucks” after that first outburst. Mum was all for getting Father Slattery to do an exorcism because she thought Neve was possessed.’

‘I can’t believe you’ve been holding out on me all this time,’ Max said between giggles. All the sharp angles of his face were softened and he looked at least ten years younger. ‘Come on, Neve, just say it. Say the f-word. It’s my birthday!’

Neve scrunched up her face as if she was seriously weighing up the consequences of dropping the f-bomb, while the three of them looked at her expectantly. ‘It’s never going to happen,’ she said at last. ‘Swearing is neither big nor clever and I’m not going to bow to peer pressure.’

‘Oh, you always do this.’ Celia jumped up so she could pretend to throttle her, while Neve tried to swat her away until the fake strangulation turned into a hug. ‘Just as well I love you, you little non-swearing freak of nature.’ Celia rested her chin on top of Neve’s head and looked at Max. ‘So, what about you, Birthday Boy? You got any embarrassing childhood stories to share?’

‘None that I’m going to tell you,’ Max said, pushing his plate away. ‘I’m an only child so there aren’t any witnesses.’ He gave Neve and Celia, then Douglas, a long, hard look. ‘It’s cool that you three are so close.’

‘Those two are thick as thieves, but there’s no way I’d want to hang out with my little sisters,’ Douglas announced cheerfully. ‘And you two never used to be so tight until Celia buggered off to New York.’

‘True,’ Celia conceded, letting go of Neve so she could start clearing the table, which was a Celia first. ‘But I was so upset and pissed off when I left and Neve had been in Oxford for three years so I didn’t feel like I knew her that well, but then … Do you remember those emails you sent me, Neevy? They were so sweet, then you flew out to New York and we had so much fun that week.’

It was obvious that there was backstory but Max didn’t start firing questions in all directions. He just waited until Celia had turned back from the sink, tilted his head and simply said in a voice that was as warm as honey in the sun, ‘New York?’

Neve could see why Max interviewed celebrities for a living. The combination of head tilt and soft voice was a lethal combination that made you want to sit down as close as possible to that sympathetic gaze and unburden. Well, it would have done if Neve hadn’t tried to repress all the painful memories of what had made Celia bugger off to New York.

But Celia wasn’t made of such stern stuff. Neve finished clearing the table, did the washing up, put the dishes away, made coffee and Celia and Douglas were still regaling Max with the sorry saga of the last Sunday lunch they’d had en famille.

It had been a gorgeous, golden day; the French doors wide open so a light breeze blew into the dining room. It was also meant to be a happy day to celebrate Neve’s First from Oxford, Celia’s A-level results and Douglas taking over the family business. All three Slater children taking big steps out into the world.

Except it had also been the week that Celia had spectacularly failed all her A-levels because instead of revising, she’d been sneaking out of the house to meet her friends and chat up boys. Douglas had fouled up a huge contract from the local council and got arrested for being drunk and disorderly when he’d gone out to drown his sorrows. So the Sunday lunch, where their parents planned to make the big announcement that their three responsible, adult children were getting a flat apiece in their grandmother’s house while their parents took early retirement and split their time between Yorkshire and the new place they’d bought in Malaga, had come at the end of a week of arguments, tears and slammed doors.

Neve had spent most of the week in her room steadily rereading all her Jane Austen novels (such a joy to read for pleasure now that her Finals were over), crying because William had flown out to California days before and eating her way through packets of chocolate fingers dipped in vanilla ice cream. But she’d had a ringside seat at the dining table, when her father staggered back from the Hat and Fan drunk.

Her mother hadn’t even had time to put down an over-cooked lamb joint on the table before he’d torn into Celia and Douglas. ‘The pair of you make me sick,’ he’d shouted, his face red raw with anger and alcohol as he kept banging the electric carving-knife on the table to make his point. ‘If it was up to me you’d be out on your ear.’

Douglas had shouted right back, Celia had cried, her mother had kept saying, ‘Barry, that’s enough! Barry, will you just stop!’ and Neve had just sat there waiting for it all to be over so she could barricade herself in her room and disappear to a world where there was never any shouting, just barbed remarks from behind fans at Regimental Balls.

‘It was awful,’ Celia was saying. ‘But that’s the thing with Dad. He’s so quiet and he bottles stuff up, then he just explodes. He was really sorry about it afterwards, sent a huge bunch of flowers over to Auntie Catherine’s house in New Jersey. Must have cost him a packet.’

Douglas picked up the thread. ‘Yeah, he slept it off, then he took me to the pub to say he was sorry and give me this speech about manning up and accepting responsibility. I preferred it when he was shouting at me.’

‘And what about you?’ Max asked Neve, who was sitting there silently, hands curled around a mug of peppermint tea. ‘Did you escape all this paternal wrath?’

‘Kind of. Well, no, not really,’ Neve said quietly.

‘At least he didn’t shout at you,’ Douglas said, as if that had made it better. It hadn’t. It had made it worse.

Because Neve had been sitting there, tuning in and then tuning out as the row raged on and maybe she’d even been feeling a little superior because she’d been awarded a First and been accepted on to her MA course with funding from the British Academy. Those were achievements that any parent would be proud of.

Yes, she’d definitely been feeling a little superior and then relieved, as her father stopped shouting, sank down in his chair and put a hand to his ruddy forehead and …

‘He said to me, “As for you, I can hardly bear to look at you. You’re eating yourself to death.”’ When her father had said it, the words had been underpinned by a flat, resigned anger that was far more terrifying than anything he’d directed at Celia and Douglas, but after years of practice, Neve could repeat the words without any emotion, her face a perfect blank. Max, however, managed to look outraged and appalled and sympathetic on her behalf.

‘He shouldn’t have said that. He had no right …’

‘He had every right,’ Neve retorted sharply. ‘It was the truth and he did me a favour. Yes, it hurt and yes, it was a shock, but it was a shock I needed. So here I am at just over twelve stone.’

‘Really? You don’t look like you weigh that much,’ Douglas said, earning himself a slap from Celia and an anguished, ‘Don’t tell Charlotte how much I weigh,’ from Neve. ‘Well, she doesn’t. And Dad did do her a favour. He did all of us a favour. Neevy isn’t fat any more, Seels found her work ethic and I made an honest woman out of Charlie.’

‘Take more than that to make an honest woman out of
her,
’ Celia muttered darkly, and maybe the snide remarks and the picking of old scabs that should have been left to heal was just as much a part of having dinner with your family as all the giggling over long-ago trips to the seaside. She turned to Max, who hadn’t taken his eyes off Neve though she refused to look at him. ‘Despite what Neve might have told you, Dad isn’t so bad.’