You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me (36 page)

‘They’re going to eat you alive,’ Celia announced with grim satisfaction. ‘I can’t believe that you didn’t tell me about this wedding. It sounds hysterical! And, more importantly, what are you going to wear?’

‘That black vintage dress I wore to the
Skirt
party, which only fits if I wear foundation garments under it,’ Neve muttered.

‘Oh, you’ve lost loads more weight since then.’

‘I haven’t. I’ve lost four pounds and barely an inch off my hips,’ Neve said, trying to resist Celia’s attempts to pull her to her feet. ‘And I’m meant to have – and I quote – “a va-va-voom number which shows off your girls” to go clubbing in. I can’t do this.’

‘Now, now, the word “can’t” isn’t in Mandy’s vocabulary,’ Celia teased, wedging a hand in Neve’s armpit and hauling her up. ‘You must have something halfway sexy in your wardrobe. Let’s go and have a look.’

Celia was another person who had never heard the word ‘no’, Neve thought as she was dragged to her bedroom, then made to stand in front of her wardrobe while Celia rifled through the contents and provided a running commentary.

‘Five black wrap dresses! Five! Why do you need five?’ Celia threw them on the bed, as if she couldn’t bear to look at them any more.

‘Well, one has long sleeves, and one has kimono sleeves and that one has a satin edging at the waist, and—’

‘How did you get a massive rip in this?’ Celia had already moved on and was holding up the black vintage frock Neve had worn the first time she’d met Max, taken him home and torn a huge frayed hole in the dress in her haste to properly lose her virginity.

Neve stared at the dress and blinked rapidly. ‘Well,’ she said slowly, ‘I suppose I must have caught it on something?’

‘Are you asking me or telling me?’ Celia demanded sternly. ‘Max didn’t tear it off you in a fit of passion, did he?’

‘No! God, why do you say these things?’ Neve snatched the dress from Celia, tearing it even more in the process. ‘Just concentrate on the problem at hand. Is this repairable?’

‘No, you’ve torn it right across the skirt,’ Celia said sulkily. ‘You’ve ruined vintage. There’s a word for people like you.’

If there was, then Neve didn’t care to know what it was. She gestured at her sparse wardrobe. ‘Will you please focus? In your professional opinion, is there anything here that’s remotely suitable for a wedding or a night out on the town with a bunch of girls who are really into fake tan?’

Celia flung herself down on the bed and put her arms behind her head. ‘This pancake relationship of yours … I mean, I thought you’d have broken up with him by now. It was only meant to be for a couple of months and you didn’t sound like you were that happy with him this time last week. But then when we had dinner on Sunday you were being really sweet to him like you meant it and weren’t just doing it to rack up some relationship points.’

Neve sighed and sat down on the bed because Celia was sounding very belligerent and it was clear that making over her sister’s wardrobe was very low down on her list of immediate priorities. Also, Celia had unknowingly hit upon an uncomfortable truth; a few days ago the thought of dumping Max had seemed like the answer to several problems, or at least the problem of not being able to successfully sleep together, but now everything had changed. Not that she could tell Celia why everything had changed. No matter how many times Neve explained it to other people, the arrangement always sounded odd and callous. But when Neve wasn’t explaining it and it just
was
, it was starting to feel natural. As if Neve was exactly where she needed to be, which was with Max.

‘Well, he has grown on me in the last few days,’ she admitted. ‘And yes, I suppose in some ways it’s sort of become a proper relationship, albeit with the understanding that it’s not going to last beyond a certain point.’

‘I’m still not convinced,’ Celia decided, sitting up and wrapping her arms around her knees. ‘I get that sometimes you might meet a guy and there’s no way in hell he could ever be The One, but you still end up shagging him for a while. But to be with someone who knows that you’re in love with another bloke … Max does know about William, doesn’t he?’

‘Of course he does,’ Neve said huffily, because really, what kind of girl did Celia think she was?

‘Well, I know why you’re all about the pancakes, but what does Max get out of it? Apart from the pleasure of your charming company, which is beyond price,’ Celia added quickly as she saw her sister’s eyes flash.

That was a question that Neve still didn’t have an adequate answer to, so she tried to shrug insouciantly. ‘I don’t know. You’d have to ask him.’

‘Yeah, like he’d tell
me.
’ Celia dragged herself off the bed so she could survey the sorry state of Neve’s wardrobe. ‘There is nothing here I can work with.’

‘You don’t think I could wear one of my wrap dresses to the wedding if I added some accessories?’ Neve suggested.

‘Er, unless it’s a Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress in an on-trend graphic print, then no. You have nothing remotely sexy to wear clubbing either. I don’t think any of your clothes have even sat next to sexy on the bus.’ Celia put her hands on her hips. ‘We’ll have to go shopping.’

‘Anything but that.’ Neve squinched up her face in horror as if Celia had asked if she could pull out all of her toenails one by one. In fact, that would be preferable. ‘I’m completely broke and I promised myself I wasn’t going to buy any new clothes until I was a size ten.’

‘But sweetie, you’re going to a WAG wedding, you need a new frock.’ Celia patted Neve’s shoulder. ‘Just to make your misery a hundred times worse, Mum’s down for the weekend and I said I’d go shopping with her on Saturday. Except she thinks we’re going to Oxford Street but actually I’m taking her to Westfield – it’s
so
much cooler. You’ll have to come too. I can’t let you buy two statement dresses unsupervised.’

‘I’m not going shopping with Mum and there’s nothing you can say that will make me change my mind.’ Neve tilted her chin defiantly.

‘Well, a) I’m going to tell Mum that you refused to go shopping with her and let her wear you down with hourly phone calls demanding to know how she could have raised such a heartless daughter who doesn’t want to spend quality bonding time with the woman who almost died giving birth to her. I should also warn you that she’ll spend at least quarter of an hour reminding you that the midwife had never seen a baby with such a large head. And b) Grace is lending me her discount cards so I’ll get between twenty and forty per cent off in all the shops we go to.’ Celia smiled beatifically. ‘But if your mind’s made up, then fine.’

‘Have I told you how much I hate you lately?’

‘All the time and right back at you,’ Celia replied, flopping down on the bed so she could put an arm around Neve’s slumped shoulders. ‘Now, if we have to spend a day with Mum, then we need to talk about all the things that we’re absolutely
not
to talk about in her hearing.’

Neve knew that she’d lost almost thirteen and a half stone. That her hips had gone down from sixty-one inches to forty-three inches. Her bras were now a 34DD and not a 52GG. Objectively, she knew that.

But subjectively, when she went shopping and was trying on clothes in a harshly lit changing room and could see all her flabby white flesh on display, she still felt like a Death Fat – was sure she looked like one too.

Even worse, clothes shopping with her mother was giving Neve a terrible sense of déjà
ew
back to those horrific August afternoons when they’d gone shopping for a new school uniform. By the time she was fourteen, Neve was too big to get into Marks & Spencer’s largest school skirt and had to make do with a navy one from their plus-size collection instead. Then there was the year that she’d busted out of the regulation school blazer and her mother had got special permission to have her friend Agnes run one up in a cheap poly blend that hadn’t looked even remotely like everyone else’s blazers. Charlotte had just about exploded with spite when Neve had turned up for school wearing Agnes’s best effort which didn’t do up over her chest, had puckered seams and gave her electric shocks in the Physics lab.

Neve perched on the bench in the fitting room and tried to avert her gaze from her reflection because, really, did anyone look good under fluorescent striplight when they were wearing the sturdiest bra and knickers that money could buy? And what was taking Celia so long?

Neve had thought that Celia and their mother were on the same page as her – the page that had a picture of a nice black dress on it. But Celia had decided she was going to bully Neve into buying a black trouser suit ‘with a fitted tuxedo-style jacket. You’ll look just like Marlene Dietrich.’

As Neve had stared at her in disbelief because the only thing that would make her look like that lady was radical plastic surgery, liposuction and a different set of genetics, her mother had added her two-penn’orth.

‘You can never go wrong with a smart pair of black slacks,’ she’d informed Neve. ‘And they’ll come in useful for job interviews and court appearances. Oh, and funerals too.’

‘Here you go,’ said Celia’s voice from behind the cubicle curtain, because Neve had trained her well enough to know she wasn’t allowed into the hallowed space without express permission. ‘Try these on.’

Two black trouser suits were thrust through the gap in the curtain, but because this was an upmarket high street chain that had delusions of grandeur, the curtains were billowy, swagged chintz.

‘Celia, can you please get me some black dresses?’ Neve called, but there was silence.

Without much enthusiasm, Neve hung up the suits. Why Celia had brought her a size fourteen, she didn’t know, but she’d try on the size sixteen first just to show willing, and when the trousers got stuck on her child-bearing hips, she’d firmly insist that they moved on to black dresses.

The trousers slid easily over her bottom with the minimum of tugging, and Neve could even fasten them, but they gaped at the waist and were far too tight over her hips and thighs. Neve took the jacket off the hanger and tried it on over her bra, just to satisfy her curiosity. The jacket fitted at least; she could do up all of the buttons, but …

‘How are you doing in there?’ Her mother’s strident tones carried through the curtain then, to Neve’s horror, it was pulled back so her mother could march into the cubicle. ‘Let’s have a look at you.’

‘The trousers don’t fit,’ Neve said, wrapping her arms round her waist defensively. ‘Jacket’s OK, I suppose.’

‘Let me see.’ Her mother forced Neve’s arms down and then had the audacity to stick her hand in the waistband of the trousers. ‘These are far too big for you.’

‘They’re too small. They’re clinging to my bottom and my thighs.’

‘Nonsense. They’re too big and the jacket is bagging over your bosoms.’

‘Mum! Get off me!’ Neve tried to bat away her mother’s hands, which were busy unbuttoning the jacket.

‘I gave birth to this body and it was no picnic, believe me, and we’re all girls together. Nothing to be embarrassed about.’ Her mother had succeeded in getting the jacket undone. ‘Oh, you’re much smaller-busted than I would have thought.’

‘What did I tell you?’ Now Celia was pushing back the curtain so she could stare at Margaret Slater in horror. ‘You don’t come into the changing room uninvited. You don’t offer an opinion, unless Neve’s asked for it, and there is definitely no touching. Get your hands off her!’

‘Really, I’ve never heard the like,’ Mrs Slater grumbled, unhanding her eldest daughter. ‘You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, Neevy. Ah, there’s hardly anything left of you.’

‘There’s plenty of me,’ Neve snapped, buttoning up the jacket again and offering herself up for Celia’s inspection.

‘You need to go down a size,’ her sister said. ‘It’s all too big.’

‘Am I talking to myself? Yes, the trousers are too big on the waist but they’re too tight on my gargantuan backside.’

‘Please, just put on the size fourteen so we can compare and contrast because I’m losing the will to live here,’ Celia begged.

‘Fine, whatever.’ Neve reached for the other suit, then glared at her mother and sister in the mirror. If Margaret Slater didn’t have a good twenty-five years on her youngest daughter, they could have been mistaken for twins. Same height, same build, same look of indignation on their faces, though Mrs Slater had started to go a few shades lighter on the Clairol colour chart, once the fiery red of her hair had started to fade. ‘I don’t need an audience, thank you very much.’

‘Well, we’re here now,’ her mother said, dropping down on the cushioned bench. ‘Lord, my feet are killing me. Now, this wedding – who do we know who’s getting married?’

Neve grabbed the other suit and threw Celia a desperate look because when they’d drawn up their list of Things Not To Be Discussed In Front Of Mum, they’d also entered into a pact to provide a diversion if their mother wouldn’t let something go. Not letting something go was Margaret Slater’s
raison d’être
.

‘We’ve already told you, Ma, it’s a friend of one of Neve’s friends that you don’t know,’ Celia said quickly. ‘Anyway, have I told you that Dougie and Charlotte are fighting all the time? Looks like we might have the first divorce in the family before too long.’

‘Hmmmph. When I think of all the lovely girls he courted and he gets married to
her.
’ Mrs Slater pursed her lips and looked up to the heavens. ‘I really should ask Father Slattery to drop in on them. But then
she’s
not Catholic, is she?’