You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me (55 page)

Her father patted his gut. ‘I miss my beer,’ he muttered gruffly, so Neve guessed they were done talking about his cholesterol; she also knew that once they sat down, she’d be under pain of death not to open her mouth.

As she waited for the film to start, Neve wondered what she was doing there. Her father didn’t seem even a little racked with guilt over things that had been said and then things that
hadn’t
been said. Maybe he was thinking the same thing about her. It was hard to tell with Barry Slater.

Ninety minutes later, Neve was in much better spirits. Jennifer Aniston’s hair had been super-glossy, her co-star was handsome in a very rugged way, the obligatory best friend was kooky, the plot wasn’t too phallo-centric and it had all ended with a kiss in Central Park in springtime. Neve knew that she should probably spend more time catching up on Eastern European cinema but she really did love a good chick flick.

‘Did you enjoy it, Dad?’ she asked, as they made their way out of the cinema, her father’s hand on her elbow in case she couldn’t make it down the stairs on her own.

‘It were all right,’ he said. ‘Though I don’t know what that Brad Pitt was thinking of. Imagine leaving a woman like that.’

‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever know the real story,’ Neve mumbled because she didn’t want to encourage him.

‘Got the car parked round the corner. Thought we’d have dinner at Marco’s place,’ her father said, and Neve resigned herself to two more tension-filled hours.

They drove to Finsbury Park in a silence punctuated only by Barry Slater’s savage character assassinations of every other driver on the road. He also cast grave aspersions on their mothers, while Neve pressed her foot down on an imaginary brake pedal.

She could tell the exact moment that her father relaxed. It was when the restaurant door opened to let out the warm waft of garlic and fresh bread and Marco, the owner, rushed to welcome them inside.

‘Signor Slater, it’s been too long,’ he cried, and then he and her dad were clapping each other manfully on the back and as they made their way to a table by the window, they were greeted by Mr and Mrs Chatterjee who lived next door but one from her parents’ house.

Her father’s good mood showed no signs of abating, especially when Neve told him that his heart could handle a pizza as long as it wasn’t covered in too much cheese, and once her fingers were curled around a glass of red wine, Neve was sure that everything was going to be all right. They’d got off to a shaky start but that was only to be expected after three years of not saying very much to each other.

She smiled warmly at her father as he pulled a crumpled roll of paper from the back pocket of his trousers. ‘You brought something to read?’ he asked as he opened up
Which? Computing
.

It was then that Neve knew that nothing had changed. Sitting there reading like they’d used to do didn’t mean that everything was going to be all right. It meant that her father didn’t have a thing to say to her and Neve didn’t have a clue what to say to him. She rummaged in her bag and took out
Gay from China at the Chalet School
. If she couldn’t have comfort food, then she’d have comfort reading instead.

She hadn’t even finished the first paragraph when her father grunted. ‘You’re not
still
reading those bloody
Chalet School
books, are you?’

‘Well, rereading them, but—’

‘Do you remember when your Uncle George found the complete set of fifty hardbacks at a house clearance in Lytham St Annes …’

Neve had to stop him right there. ‘It was fifty-eight hardbacks, actually.’

‘I drove all through the night to pick them up, and when you opened up the box the next morning, you started crying loud enough to wake the dead,’ Barry Slater recalled, as if Neve’s reaction was still troubling him.

‘They were tears of happiness.’

‘There’s enough reason to cry without doing it when you’re happy too,’ he said, giving Neve an odd look.

‘I suppose,’ Neve murmured non-committally as she started reading again.

‘I remember
Eustacia Goes to the Chalet School,
’ her father announced proudly and Neve was forced to raise her head again.

‘How on earth do you remember that? You didn’t read them when I was in bed, did you?’

‘Give over,’ Barry Slater scoffed. ‘You told me all about it that time we went to Morecambe, when we had lunch together. Your ma still hasn’t forgiven me for that.’

‘Just so you know, neither have Seels and Dougie,’ Neve said, and she didn’t have to force the smile this time; her father was grinning too.

‘So, why are you reading those bloody books again when you’ve got a bloody degree from Oxford?’

So, Neve told him that she’d started rereading them for solace when things had been so stressful at work. Then she told him about the AGM, and when Marco came to clear their dinner-plates, she was telling him about her new writing gig and her newly acquired agent.

‘I’m trying not to have a complete panic attack about it,’ she finished, as her father ordered a decaffeinated coffee and a peppermint tea.

‘You’ve always had a knack for telling a story. I remember when you helped Celia with her English homework by rewriting
Romeo and Juliet
and setting it on Coronation Street, not that it did her any good.’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that. She loves working in fashion.’

Her father sniffed because as far as he was concerned, working in fashion wasn’t a proper job and never would be. ‘Didn’t think we’d have an author in the family. Your nan would be so proud of you, Neevy.’

‘Really?’ she asked, treading carefully because their truce was so new, so fragile, and her father never talked about his mother.

‘She was a very bright woman but her father, that’d be your great-granddad, didn’t believe that girls needed an education. He wouldn’t let her go to the local grammar when she passed her eleven plus. Then she had to leave school when she was fifteen so she could start paying her way at home. She always regretted that.’

‘You must miss her a lot. I mean, she died when you were eighteen and, well, I couldn’t imagine what I’d do if anything happened to you or Mum.’

Her father raised his eyebrows. ‘You’d cope, pet.’

Neve took a deep breath. ‘Look, Dad, I’m sorry about what—’

‘I’m proud of you too. Might not always show it, but you’re the first Slater to go to university, let alone Oxford, and I can’t pretend I know exactly what you do at that library, but don’t you ever talk yourself out of opportunities that come your way. You can do anything if you set your mind to it, and I’m not just talking about the book-writing either.’

She was grateful that that was all her father was going to say about her weight because over the last hour, Neve could feel the resentment and the hurt of the last three years slowly ebbing away, fading into the background, even if it wasn’t entirely exorcised. ‘You know, Dad, it doesn’t matter how many letters I’ve got after my name, I’m still me. I’m not ever going to forget where I came from.’

‘You’re a Slater through and through,’ her father said proudly. ‘That’s where you get your brains from. I love your ma, but her family, back of the queue when they were handing out common sense, the whole bloody lot of them.’

Once that had been cleared up, all of a sudden it was easy to know the right thing to say, which was, ‘Can you come back to my flat? The handle’s loose on the cutlery drawer and the shower keeps dribbling even when I’ve turned it off.’

Barry Slater was never happier than when he could perform some minor household repairs. After Neve had shut Keith in her bedroom because middle-aged men with toolboxes were yet another thing that gave him an attack of the vapours, her dad also rehung a picture, adjusted the time on her oven clock and offered to mount a rack on the hall wall for her bike.

‘Get it out of the way, it would,’ he remarked as Neve showed him out.

It would get the bike out of the way but it would also make Charlotte think that Neve had done it for her benefit – and that could never happen. ‘No, it’s OK,’ Neve told him. ‘It’s not really bothering anyone.’

Neve was just about to open the front door when her father put his hand on her arm. ‘So, this chap your mother said you were seeing … I hope he’s treating you all right.’

The chap in question would be phoning in half an hour to talk utter filth down the phone. Neve blushed. ‘Of course he is.’

‘He better be. Not right, getting you to look after that dog. It could turn on you at any second,’ Barry Slater muttered darkly, which was a perfect match for the expression on his face, and just as Neve resigned herself to their reunion finishing on a sour note, he opened his arms out to her. ‘You got a hug for your old man, then?’

There never was and never would be anyone who could hold Neve and make her feel so safe and secure. She willingly went into his arms and buried her face in his shoulder so she could smell the fabric conditioner her mother used, and sawdust from where he’d been drilling holes in her wall and this other indefinable, indescribable scent that was her dad.

‘Well, we can both get our arms all the way round each other now,’ her father said gruffly, and he tried to step back, but Neve just held him tighter, until after several long minutes, he kissed the top of her head and let go. ‘I’d better get going. Your ma’ll think I’ve been kidnapped.’

Neve finally opened the street door, and just as her father stepped out, she said, ‘Maybe we could go and see a Cameron Diaz film next time?’

‘She can’t hold a candle to Jennifer Aniston, but I’d like that a lot.’

Max flew back to a London that was so sunny even the boarded-up shops on Stroud Green Road looked pretty with the light reflecting off their metal grilles. Neve could almost pretend that she’d been in LA too, as every evening she and Max would eat dinner on his roof terrace, or climb down the rickety fire escape that led from her kitchen to the communal back garden. Neve much preferred his roof terrace because there was no Charlotte pointedly taking her washing off the line and making barbed remarks about Neve and the flimsiness of the patio furniture.

Neve moved through the week befuddled with fatigue because Max was jet lagged and kept waking up in the middle of the night. Of course, once Max was up, he was
up
and Neve would wake on a gasp because he was doing such delicious things to her. It didn’t help either that she was going to bed late and waking up early to rewrite chapter seven of her Lucy Keener biography, after Philip had given her some constructive criticism and Jacob Morrison had given her some criticism that was so brutal that it left Neve reeling. When she wasn’t immersed in Lucy Keener’s world, Neve was either stuck in the Archive’s back office or in Max’s arms. Either way, it didn’t leave much time for sleep.

The rosy glow she’d always taken for granted was now eclipsed by the shadows under her eyes, and the only thing getting Neve through each day was industrial amounts of coffee.

‘I can’t believe you’re still in the sleep-deprived stage of your relationship,’ Chloe said one Friday afternoon when she came into the back office to discover that Neve had nodded off in the middle of a tape she was transcribing. ‘Hasn’t the novelty worn off yet?’

‘If you had to listen to Lavinia Marjoribanks jaw on about how she’d have had a more successful literary career if she hadn’t spurned the advances of Vita Sackville-West, you’d fall asleep too,’ Neve said as she yawned.

‘That sounds quite exciting – lesbian shenanigans with the Bloomsbury Set.’ Chloe perched on the edge of Neve’s desk. ‘Does she dish the dirt on old Virginia?’

‘Believe me, this woman has such a monotone voice that she could make a threesome with George Clooney and Clive Owen sound like the most boring thing on earth.’ Neve rubbed her eyes and sank down on her desk. ‘I think I might throw up from over-tiredness.’

‘Poor Neevy. Maybe you’d better ask your pretend boyfriend for the night off so you can catch up on your beauty sleep,’ Chloe said, as she began to leaf through the pile of
Chalet School
books on Neve’s desk. ‘My mum would never let me read school stories when I was a kid. She said they were completely reactionary and had no characterisation.’

‘That is such a generalisation … and Max is
not
a pretend boyfriend. He’s a temporary boyfriend, which is an entirely different thing.’ Neve stretched her arms above her head. ‘I suppose a night on my own wouldn’t be such a bad thing, and I can see Max Saturday and Sunday.’

‘For a temporary boyfriend, he seems to monopolise all your time,’ Chloe murmured distractedly because she was now flicking through
The School at the Chalet
. ‘How’s the sex?’

‘Awesome,’ Neve said, because it was and she was too exhausted to hedge.

‘Personally, if I had a temporary boyfriend with a glamorous job, who serviced me frequently and orgasmically, I’d be thinking about making him permanent,’ Chloe said. ‘I mean, this other guy’s been away for ages and he’s an unknown quantity. Better the devil you know.’

It was the dilemma that Neve kept ruthlessly forcing to the back of her mind, every time it reared up. It seemed like the obvious thing to do, until she remembered that Max didn’t do real relationships and even if he did, she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life picturing William with the words WHAT IF? above his head in six-foot-high letters.