You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me (48 page)

‘I want you to eat at least one piece of toast, then you’re going to have to slap on the war paint,’ Max murmured as if he could read her thoughts. ‘Can’t have you looking all pale and wan in the wedding photos, Mandy will kill you. And I want you fighting fit for mocking duties.’

Even given the fragile state of her health, Neve was looking forward to the wedding. Not just shamelessly gawping at the celebrities who’d be attending, or even hanging out with her gang of new best friends who’d promised to point out all the celebrities to her, but mostly she couldn’t wait to spend the day with Max. He was in an insanely good mood and when Max was in an insanely good mood, cracking jokes, his eyes twinkling, he was such fun to be around.

‘You’re much better at mocking than I am,’ Neve said.

Max bowed his head in acknowledgement of that indisputable fact. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Neevy, you do a nice line in an acidic quip. Now, eat a piece of toast like a good little girl.’

She was halfway through a piece of dry toast when Max’s phone rang.

‘It’s Bill,’ he said, looking at the caller display. ‘Probably calling to ask if anyone’s seen Kelly. God knows what time she got home last night.’

Neve’s last memory of Kelly was seeing her doing tequila slammers in the karaoke bar so she pulled a dubious face, which made Max laugh as he answered the phone.

‘Bill? How is the father of the bride this morning?’ he asked cheerfully. ‘Lovely day for a WA … white wedding.’

She was still draped over Max’s shoulder so Neve could feel the exact moment that he tensed up, before he even said, ‘Oh, right. Yeah, that does sound like a bit of a problem.’

Not wanting to eavesdrop, Neve stood up and, munching unenthusiastically on her toast, began to assemble her wedding outfit. She hoped that last night’s KFC hadn’t gone straight to her hips.

‘No, it’s OK. Of course I understand,’ Max was saying in a tight, strained voice as if it, whatever
it
was, was not at all OK. ‘Well, you can tell Mandy to stop crying for starters. It’s not the end of the world and she’ll be gutted when she looks at the photos twenty years from now and she’s got bloodshot eyes.’

Neve glanced over at Max who was sitting hunched over, elbows on his knees and a miserable look on his face. ‘Really, Bill, it’s fine. To tell you the truth, Neve’s been sick all night – must have been something that she ate – and she’s probably better off spending the day in bed.’

Something bad
had
happened, though Neve was foggy on the details. For a moment she wondered if either Mandy or Darren had called off the wedding, but that couldn’t be it because there wouldn’t still be wedding photos that Mandy had to look picture-perfect for. Maybe they’d over-booked the church or … oh God, she’d made such an exhibition of herself last night that they didn’t want her anywhere near the wedding party in case she started knocking back the Veuve Cliquot again.

‘Honestly, Bill, you don’t have to do that. It’s all good. Wish Mandy all the best for me and I’ll talk to her when she gets back from St Barts, OK?’

Neve was just debating whether to unzip the garment bag and put on her trouser suit, when Max hung up.

‘Well, you needn’t bother with that,’ he said. ‘In fact, if you want to go back to bed, then I’m not going to stop you.’

‘What’s
happened?
Has the wedding been called off? Did I do something so terrible last night that they don’t want—’

‘You’re not the problem, I am.’ Max smiled thinly. ‘I’m not allowed to go to the wedding.’

‘But why?’ Neve hung up the garment bag and tottered over to the sofa so she could take Max’s hand and …

Max tutted and pulled away. ‘No hand-holding, remember?’ he snapped, and she knew he was upset and angry over the mysterious phone call and was taking it out on her because she was the only person in range, but it still hurt.

Neve sat down close to Max in the hope that she could emit rays of sympathy and support through her thick terry-towelling robe. ‘Please tell me what happened.’

‘Well, you don’t sell the rights to your engagement, wedding and honeymoon for two million quid without signing a lengthy legal contract with lots of clauses,’ Max explained, leaning back against the cushions as if he was totally at ease with the situation. It might have been more convincing if his voice wasn’t catching on every other word as if it hurt to breathe. ‘Turns out that journalists who aren’t employed by
Voila
magazine are prohibited from attending the wedding …’

‘But you’re going as a friend!’

‘… in any capacity, professional or otherwise,’ Max parroted in a toneless voice. ‘Mandy’s agent had to go through the guest-list with the magazine’s celebrity fixer this morning and all hell broke loose.’

‘Well, it’s morally reprehensible to auction off an access-all-areas pass to your wedding day anyway,’ Neve said crossly, because even though she liked Mandy, she really did, she liked Max a whole lot more.

‘No long words, Neevy, not right now.’ Max smiled another one of those teeth-baring excuses for a smile. ‘That little bitch. I’ve made her hundreds of thousands of pounds.’

‘If I were you, I’d have nothing more to do with her. It’s a shocking way to treat somebody.’

‘Yes, it is, but then that little bitch has made
me
tens of thousands of pounds,’ Max said bitterly. ‘Well, at least we don’t have to spend ages sitting in a draughty church and then choke down dry chicken in a cream sauce at the reception while Mandy mugs for the cameras.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Neve offered. It seemed an inadequate thing to say when Max was sitting there, his body so tightly wound that Neve was frightened to touch him, and an awful grimace instead of a smile on his face.

‘Yeah, well, this whole weekend has been a complete waste of petrol,’ Max said, standing up. ‘We might just as well head back to London.’ He grabbed his leather jacket from the back of a chair. ‘I need to clear my head. You can go back to bed for an hour, if you want.’

‘Are you all right?’ It was a dumb question. Neve knew that as soon as she’d said it. ‘Well, of course you’re not. I saw you with Bill and Jean on Thursday night and I could tell that you’re more than Mandy’s ghost-writer. You’re part of the family, Max, so I—’

‘No! I’m not part of the family,’ Max said sharply, as he headed for the door. ‘Sure, I’m fun to have around but that’s part of the job. All it really comes down to is how much use I am to the McIntyre brand, and right now, I’m no fucking use at all.’

He slammed the door behind him and for one tense moment Neve thought the piece of toast was going to reappear, but it didn’t and she could sit on the sofa and burst into tears.

Neve wasn’t a big crier but the excesses of the night before had left her feeling shaky and fragile. Mostly she was crying because Max was angry and hurt, and that made her feel angry and hurt by proxy, especially as she didn’t know how to make him feel better. Even if she did, she wasn’t sure that Max would let her come close enough to try.

If she hadn’t lost her phone, which was probably being used to make a very long, very expensive call to an overseas number at that very moment, Neve knew there were any number of people she could call who’d offer her all sorts of advice: Celia, her mum, Philip, Chloe, Rose, even Gustav who, after lecturing her on the hidden calories in alcohol, would tell Neve to go for a long run, which would make her feel better. And she knew, like she knew the fat units, calorie content and number of carbs in over four hundred different types of food, that if she called her father, he’d drop everything to fetch her and bring her home.

She had all these people in her life and sure, Max knew hundreds of people and he might call them his friends, but when it really came down to it, he had no one who was really there for him when he was hurting, except a Staffordshire Bull Terrier with severe boundary issues. And her. Max deserved to have a bigger support network than one girl and a dog.

When Max returned nearly two hours later, Neve’s eyes were even more puffy than the last time he’d seen her, but she was pale, composed and had read her way through the
Guardian, CityLife
, the hotel information pack and guide to the local area, and watched an old episode of
Come Dine With Me
while she waited for him.

‘You’re dressed,’ Max said, as he shut the door behind him. ‘Are you packed too?’

‘No.’ There had been a long speech planned, but seeing Max walk through the door with the same cold, remote look on his face made it clear that this wasn’t the time for long speeches. Instead, Neve got to her feet and hurled herself at Max.

He immediately went rigid, trying to squirm away as she wrapped her arms tight around him. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Shut up and let me hold you,’ Neve mumbled, though she wasn’t holding him so much as restraining him.

‘I don’t need to be held,’ Max said stiffly. ‘You’re being stupid.’ And to show Neve just how stupid she was being, he kept his arms by his sides and a long-suffering look on his face as she stroked his back and pecked at his cheeks with her lips.

It was like hugging a concrete girder and Neve wondered what she needed to do to get through to Max, because she was all out of ideas. ‘I’m not just your pancake girlfriend, I’m your
friend,
’ she told him fiercely. ‘I’m going to care about you and worry about you and want you to be happy whether you like it or not. So you’d better get used to it, all right?’

Max’s lips twisted as if he had a whole lot to say about that and none of it good. Then he murmured something too quietly for Neve to hear.

‘What was that?’

‘Can you let go?’ Max asked, still rigid in her embrace. It sounded horribly portentous – as if he was asking her to do more than drop her arms.

Neve loosened her grip, but kept her hands around Max’s waist, because all of a sudden it seemed terribly important to keep a connection between them. ‘What did you just say?’

Max wouldn’t look at Neve but stared at a spot above her head. ‘I said that you wouldn’t want me as your friend, or anything else, if you knew what I was really like.’

‘What
are
you really like?’ Neve asked, though she was dreading the answer.

Max wrenched himself away from her then, as if he couldn’t bear to be touched. He walked over to the window. ‘I’m a fuck-up,’ he said harshly. ‘Everything in my life is fucked up, and the only reason that I’m in this fake relationship with you is because my therapist thought it would be a good idea.’

Finally, Neve had the explanation that she’d been searching for – the reason why someone like Max would want to be with someone like her, even if it was only just pretend. She was surprised to find that she wasn’t that upset – it really didn’t seem that important right then.

She sank down on a squashy leather cube that she’d been using as a footstool. ‘What made you decide to see a therapist?’

‘Because there’s something wrong with me,’ Max said, his voice distorted because he was gulping hard, but at least he was talking so Neve stayed where she was. ‘I have this great job and a cool flat and I go out every night to these fantastic parties and meet all these famous, glamorous people and they’re all my best mates but I feel empty inside. Like, none of it means anything and none of it’s real.’

There was nothing Neve could say so she just ‘hmmm-ed’ to let Max know she was listening.

‘And the reason why I shag around is because I can’t bear to be on my own. My therapist says that I don’t commit to any of the women I shag because I’m scared of intimacy, but the thing is, I don’t know
how
to be intimate with anyone. And I’m only seeing my therapist because I slept with Shelly, and Mandy and Kelly were furious with me and Bill took me out for a chat, like he was my fucking father or something, and told me I needed to sort myself out because I was better than that.’

‘You are,’ Neve said quietly, as she tried to process Max’s furious onslaught.

‘And I shagged one of the interns at work and I didn’t know she was engaged to the son of the MD and I nearly lost my job, and my Editor said if I didn’t get some help then she’d have to fire me. So I’m “in therapy”,’ Max still had his back to Neve but she could see him air-quote, ‘and she’s trying to peel back my layers and get to the real person, but I don’t think he exists. I’m just all style and absolutely no fucking substance.’

‘Come on, you know that’s not true.’ Neve got to her feet and even took a couple of steps towards Max but she could see his shoulders shaking. He didn’t sound as if he was crying, but he sounded as if he was close, and Neve instinctively knew that he was only holding it together because she was on the other side of the room. ‘Look, I know you and I are only temporary, but the more I get to know you, the more I like you.’

Max coughed wetly. ‘You say that because you’re a nice girl and you’re trying to make me feel better, I get that, but we’re not real. The only real thing I had was the McIntyres and I let myself think that they cared about me and that I was the son they never had, but it was just bullshit.’

‘No,’ Neve said sharply, hesitation forgotten as she stumbled towards Max. ‘That’s not true. I’ve spent my entire life on the sidelines, just watching other people. I’m an expert people-watcher and when I saw you with Bill and Jean, it was obvious that they
do
care about you, and … well, so do I. I care about you too, Max.’