You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me (40 page)

Max’s statement had just made their complicated situation even more complicated, but Neve was almost gasping with relief. ‘Right, well, good. If that’s what you want.’ She patted his hand nervously. ‘I’m fine with doing
that
, or variations on
that
, but we’re still agreed that we’re not going to have sex, right? Because if you need to have sex, then I totally understand if you want to carry on with other women.’

Max sighed. Then he grinned. Then he sighed again. ‘Do you know how many men would love to hear their girlfriends say that?’

‘Pancake girlfriends,’ Neve reminded him.

‘Whatever.’ Max’s hand slowly and deliberately moved from her knee to her thigh. ‘There are a hundred different ways we can get each other off without full-on sex.’

‘Not hundreds, surely?’ Neve frowned, then dug her elbow into Max’s ribs because he wasn’t even bothering to hide the fact that he was laughing at her. ‘Four or five surely, then the rest are just variations on a theme.’

‘So, we’re agreed? Lots of fun sexy times, but no actual shagging?’

‘And no hand-holding either,’ Neve interjected because now she thought about it, agreeing not to hold Max’s hand had been one of her better ideas. During the last few weeks, there had been countless opportunities where Neve could have taken Max’s hand, but she always checked herself because holding hands was what proper couples did. And now that they were going to have ‘fun sexy times’, every time she checked herself it was a reminder that this wasn’t for keeps. She wasn’t in love with Max and, God knows, he wasn’t in love with her, judging from the exasperated expression on his face at that moment.

‘So, you’re cool with me getting you off, but I still can’t hold your hand?’ he clarified with deep and heavy irony.

‘Yes, and when you say it like that it sounds ridiculous.’ Neve glared at him. ‘Don’t raise your eyebrows at me. OK, it
does
sound ridiculous but I need some boundaries. Boundaries are very good things; without them there’s just chaos and uncertainty and confusion.’

‘Your head must really hurt from all the unnecessary thinking you make it do,’ Max said, standing up. ‘So, I would help you up but I don’t want you to think that I’m trying to cop a feel of your hand.’

Neve got up and started to climb the stairs. ‘Don’t be cranky with me, Max.’

‘I’m not being cranky,’ Max said, but it seemed to Neve that they stomped up the stairs in a tense silence.

‘I just need to put the spare cans of dog food in the bag,’ Neve said, once they were inside her flat. ‘I won’t be a second.’

‘So, no holding hands …’

‘I told you …’

‘If I’m not allowed to hold your hand, am I still allowed to do this?’ Max demanded, and just as Neve was about to ask what
this
was, he backed her up against the wall, hands around her wrists, and kissed her.

Neve tugged her hands free, not because it was almost too much like holding hands, but because as soon as Max bit down on her bottom lip she wanted to wrap her arms around him and kiss him back.

‘Now, are you allowed to tell me that you’ve missed me or is that against the rules too?’ Max asked, once they’d had to stop kissing, as Keith was barking furiously because if anyone was meant to be getting Max’s undivided attention, it was him.

‘I’m sorry,’ Neve said. ‘Of course, I missed you and will you … do you want to stay for tea or do you have at least three product launches and a shop opening that you have to go to tonight?’

‘I don’t know. Depends what you’re making.’

‘I’ve got two salmon fillets and … oh, I see!’ Neve pouted. ‘Well, I certainly didn’t miss you teasing me. Come into the kitchen and I’ll put the kettle on.’

Neve went to take his hand and checked herself, noticeably pausing, because holding someone’s hand after you’d kissed for ten minutes was such an automatic gesture and just proved that it was a line they shouldn’t cross.

‘You think too much,’ Max said, as he watched Neve spoon coffee into the cafetière. ‘I’m not leaving you on your own again – you have too much time to think and it doesn’t lead to anything good.’

‘What’s going to happen next time you go to LA?’

‘I’ll have to take you with me,’ Max said lightly, because it was a joke. It
had
to be a joke. ‘There’s nothing else for it.’

‘I don’t think I’m an LA kind of girl,’ Neve said just as lightly, because she thought she might be starting to get the hang of light-hearted banter. ‘But I want to hear all about it. How did the cover shoot go?’

They talked for hours. Over coffee, over dinner and then over the red wine Max bought when he took Keith for a walk.

Max was so good at painting pictures with his words that Neve was right there with him as he drove down Sunset Boulevard, the road lined with palm trees, then pulled into the sweeping driveway of the Polo Lounge where his hire car was parked by a valet wearing a pink polo-shirt. She could picture the minimalist photo studio where he’d waited for five hours for a B-list actress to arrive to be shot, and she could even see the obsequious expression on her publicist’s face as he blatantly lied to Max about the reasons for his client’s no-show.

There was no way her own week could even begin to measure up, but Neve told Max about the expedition to Westfield and Celia storming off in a huff, only to appear a few hours later laden with presents and a shame-faced apology. Neve even told him about the heart-to-heart with her mother and showed him the text message she’d sent to her dad later that evening.

‘Jennifer Aniston has a new film coming out,’
Max read out loud. ‘
Maybe we could see it when you’re in London?
Is that secret code?’

‘It’s secret code for “I know that you’re sorry and I’m sorry too”.’ Neve smiled at the perplexed look on Max’s face. ‘My dad loves Jennifer Aniston. I mean, he
really
loves her. Celia and I went halves on the boxed set of the entire ten seasons of
Friends
for his fiftieth birthday, and we’re sure we saw him wiping away a tear when he opened it.’

Max patted Neve’s feet, which were resting on his lap. ‘So, did it work?’

Neve nodded and held out a hand for her phone, so she could scroll through her messages. ‘He texted me back a minute later.
I’d like that. Will check cinema listings. All best, Dad.
’

She squirmed a little under Max’s gaze. ‘Look, we’ll go and see the film, we’ll talk about Jennifer Aniston’s Oscar-worthy performance and what a home-wrecking tramp Angelina Jolie is, and everything will be all right.’

‘It’s that easy?’ Max asked.

‘It is if I want it to be. He’s my dad and I can’t change the way he is, so my only other choice is to just accept him with all his faults. That’s what love is, isn’t it?’

‘So I’m told.’ Max suddenly smiled wickedly. ‘Just so you know, if we have a row and you’re too chicken to apologise, text me and ask me if I want to go and see Angelina Jolie’s new film, because she’ll never be a home-wrecking tramp to me.’

Neve picked up a cushion and threw it at Max’s head. ‘We’re Team Aniston in our family.’

‘Say that again and I won’t give you any presents.’ Max pinched her big toe and held on tight as Neve tried to pull her foot away. ‘I have a bag full of gifts but I could just leave them outside Oxfam tomorrow.’

‘You brought me presents? My birthday isn’t for ages.’

‘They’re to say thank you for looking after Keith and I thought that generally, if boyfriends went away, they came back with presents for their girlfriends. Even pancake girlfriends. That’s not crossing any lines I didn’t know about, is it?’

It wasn’t. Especially when Max was pulling out a fancy cardboard bag with ribbon handles from the side of the sofa.

‘I didn’t mind looking after Keith,’ Neve said, cringing ever so slightly because Keith had had her wrapped round his paws the entire week. Max held the bag up and shook it gently so it made a very promising rustling sound. ‘Well, if you insist.’

Neve opened the bag, peered inside and pulled out a large box. ‘Noise cancelling headphones; do they get rid of the background noise when I’m listening to my iPod?’ she asked, taking out a huge pair of headphones that looked like doughnuts attached to a hair band.

‘Well, they can, but they cancel out all background noise too, even if you’re not listening to your iPod, so you won’t have to sit in the bathtub any more.’

‘But my fingers will still be making a terrible noise as I type and Charlotte will still bang on the ceiling with her broom handle.’

Max grinned. ‘Yeah, but with these bad boys strapped to your head, you won’t hear her.’

‘How can such a thing be possible?’ Neve held up the headphones. ‘So, I could wear them in bed and they’d drown out the sound of your snores?’

‘I do not snore!’ Max hissed.

‘Well, you do when you lie on your back,’ Neve told him as Max shook his head in protest. ‘I think this is the best present anyone’s ever given me. Even better than when I got the
Oxford English Dictionary
for my twelfth birthday.’

‘Aren’t you going to open the rest of your presents?’ Max’s eyes were half closed as if present-giving was a tedious chore, but when Neve turned her attention back to the bag, he sat up and leaned forward so he didn’t miss her reaction.

There was a pretty moss-green, velvet pouch to keep her Scrabble tiles safe, a box of gourmet low-carb, sugar-free chocolates, and then right at the bottom was a flat squidgy parcel wrapped in layers and layers of gossamer-soft tissue paper.

Neve felt Max suddenly tense up as she began to delicately peel back the gold embossed sticker that sealed up the parcel. There were so many pieces of tissue paper, each one a pale sherbet shade of pink, yellow, lilac or green, Neve felt as if she was playing a very posh version of Pass the Parcel, but when the last piece of tissue was swept away, there was no toy surprise just three neatly folded pieces of clothing that felt as smooth and fragile as silk beneath her fingers.

‘I thought they might solve the sleepwear problem,’ Max said in an oddly strained voice. ‘Do you like them?’

Neve held up a slip in a dusky colour that wasn’t quite pink and wasn’t quite lavender but probably had an old-fashioned name like Ashes of Roses, delicate black lace stitched around the bodice and hem. There were two other slips still resting in their tissue nest; one a dull red that was miles away from the nasty, lurid red of cheap nylon underwear, the other a smudgy, inky blue, both of them adorned with cobwebs of black lace. In fact, slip was too prosaic a word for them; Neve really wanted to call them something French like peignoir or negligée.

‘They’re gorgeous,’ she breathed reverently. They really were, but there was no way they were going to fit her.

‘One of the assistants was about the same size as you – well, maybe a little larger, and she looked at the pictures of you on my phone.’ Max swallowed nervously as Neve looked at him sceptically because fancy shops called … she looked at the logo on the gold sticker … called
Boudoir
did not have sales assistants who were about her size or maybe a little larger. ‘You do like them, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do, they’re lovely,’ Neve was able to say truthfully, because even if they didn’t fit her, she could very well have them framed and hung on her bedroom wall. ‘You didn’t have to get me presents, I liked having a four-legged room-mate.’

‘I know he can be a pain in the arse and I felt guilty leaving all those instructions, but he seems happy.’ Max looked down at Keith who was sprawled on the floor in front of them, licking enthusiastically at his undercarriage.

Neve thrust the bag of presents away and bit her lip. ‘Max, I don’t deserve any gifts. I was a
terrible
dog-sitter. Keith didn’t respect my authority at all!’

Max didn’t seem that surprised as Neve began to explain how she’d failed to obey his list. Neve could tell he was trying hard not to laugh as if he’d suspected all along that she would cave in immediately under the pressure of a paw prodding her leg or prolonged nocturnal whimpering. He only looked annoyed when Neve confessed that Celia had brought home a range of dog outfits from the
Skirt
offices and they’d dressed Keith up and taken photos.

‘Christ, Neve,’ he snapped. ‘Thanks for violating him.’

‘But he loved it,’ she protested. ‘The next evening he brought me one of the T-shirts in his mouth, as if he wanted to put it on again.’

She decided, on reflection, it was best not to tell Max that one of the outfits had been a tutu and that same night, she and Celia had let Keith sit on a kitchen chair so he could eat his freshly prepared lean steak mince at the table.

She also decided that for someone who was so keen on boundaries and lines that shouldn’t be crossed, she wasn’t very good at enforcing them.

‘Just as well I’ve persuaded the dog-walker to take Keith again when we’re away,’ Max said, less sharply. ‘At least he doesn’t force Keith to dress up.’

There’d been no forcing about it, but Neve still hung her head. ‘I’ll never do it again,’ she promised. ‘And thank you for my presents, unless you’re going to take them back now.’

‘Well, I would, but those slips really aren’t my colour,’ Max said solemnly. ‘Why don’t you try one on while I take Keith out for his last walk, and if I like what I see then I might be persuaded not to donate your presents to Oxfam tomorrow.’