You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me (59 page)

‘God, I could get used to this kind of treatment,’ Max said, as she turned to walk into the kitchen. Then his arms were around her waist so he could nuzzle her ear. ‘So, we’re going to have a proper evening meal at a proper time for once?’

Max was. Neve was going to chew on some rocket leaves and try not to look resentful. As it was, she could feel herself stiffening in his embrace. ‘Please, Max … I need to check on the chicken.’

‘You’re so tense. I’ll give you a back rub later,’ Max promised, still with his arms around her so they had to shuffle to the kitchen. ‘Oh, I spoke to Mandy, she says hi.’

Stop being so nice to me, Neve thought despairingly, as Max finally let her go so she could open the oven door. The ordeal that lay ahead would have been so much easier if he’d been in a filthy mood when he’d come in and had been short and snappy with her. Or if she was still in a filthy mood about the five pounds that he’d helped her to gain, but … no, she wasn’t going to go there.

Maybe it had been a stupid idea to feed Max before she gave him the ‘let’s be friends’ speech. It smacked a little too much of the condemned man eating a hearty breakfast, but it wasn’t as if he was going to be absolutely devastated. Though Neve hoped that he’d be a little bit devastated because what had started out as awkward and artificial had become something real, something precious – to her, at least.

‘Why are you only eating leaves?’ Max suddenly asked, and Neve looked up from her bowl of rocket and radicchio leaves to see that Max had devoured half a chicken and was now giving her his full attention.

‘I’m really not that hungry,’ she muttered, and it was true. Her stomach had spent most of the day loudly protesting the new regime but now it felt as if there was a huge knot clogging up her intestines. ‘And I’ve decided to go on a detox.’

Max sighed. ‘Please don’t start that crap all over again. Do you think that deciding to detox counts as self-deprecation, because if it is, I know just the cure.’ He stared at the palm of his hand meaningfully and Neve began to wonder if, as well as a good meal, she should treat the condemned man to one last romp. ‘A chicken leg or a spanking. Your choice.’

Food or sex; that was what it really came down to. She could stuff her fat little face with Max and never, ever get to have sex with William – though she never really thought about William in a purely physical sense …

‘Neevy, what’s it to be?’ Max asked playfully, nudging her foot with his toe. ‘You digging in or bending over?’

‘No! Max, I don’t want any chicken and well, if you want to do
that …
we need to talk first.’

‘That sounds ominous.’ Max put down his lager and folded his arms. ‘Is this about me leaving the loo seat up again?’

Neve shook her head. ‘Max,’ she said. ‘Max …’

‘I’ve done something really bad, haven’t I? Did I pee on the seat, then not put it down? Is that why you keep saying my name in a really forlorn way, like I haven’t just let myself down, I’ve let you down too?’

‘No. Max …’ Neve looked up at the ceiling in supplication because she just couldn’t seem to get past repeating his name. She was really starting to reconsider the whole letter scenario. ‘I want you to know that I really care for you and I consider you to be one of my closest friends.’

That was better. It was a whole sentence, even if the words were all sticking together, and Max wasn’t grinning quite so widely now; he was listening intently, which was good. Sort of.

‘And I hope that you’ll always be one of my closest friends.’ Neve came to a grinding halt now that she’d got the friend part of her speech out of the way. Another swift look at the ceiling and a deep breath. ‘William called me the other day and he’ll be back in London, um, in just over two weeks’ time, so, you know, I think we should just be friends now.’

Max didn’t say anything at first. He was too busy peeling the label off his lager bottle. ‘So when exactly did he call you?’ he asked in a mild voice. ‘What day?’

‘Um, Friday, I think.’

‘The Friday before the weekend we just spent together?’

Neve looked at the top of Max’s head, which was still bent over his lager. ‘Yes. I was going to tell you then but I wasn’t—’

‘So you and Mr California are all ready to rock and roll?’

It was hard to get a handle on how Max felt about this new development. He wouldn’t look at Neve and his voice was devoid of any real expression. Neve looked at her half-eaten bowl of leaves, then at Max and wondered if the two of them were really mutually exclusive. How would she react if Max flung himself at her feet and begged her to stay with him?

‘Well, he says he has something really important to ask me but I’m not sure what it is,’ Neve said carefully. ‘So where does this leave us? What do you want to do?’

‘The rabbit food is for his benefit, then? Have to be perfect for Mr California?’ Max enquired with an edge to his voice.

‘I’ve put on a lot of weight over the last month,’ Neve explained, trying hard not to sound accusing. ‘So, even if William wasn’t coming back, I need to concentrate on my health and fitness programme again.’

‘Well, that’s that then,’ Max said, standing up and putting his lager bottle down on the table with more force than was strictly necessary.

‘That’s what?’ Neve stood up too. ‘How do you feel about this?’

‘I don’t feel anything either way.’ Max was already marching out of the kitchen and up the half flight of stairs to the bedroom, so he could start scooping up the little pile of socks and shorts that had become a permanent fixture. ‘Can you go and get my toothbrush and my razor?’

For the first time in a long time, Neve was scared to touch him. ‘What are you doing?’

‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ Max demanded as he shoved his clothes into his bag. ‘You can keep those Salinger books, by the way. I’m never going to read them.’

‘But they were a present,’ protested Neve. In all the possible outcomes she’d imagined, this hadn’t been one of them. At the very worst, she’d thought Max would storm out in a huff to walk Keith. Then he’d come back half an hour later and they’d talk it out and agree to be friends. In fact, all the possible outcomes that Neve had envisaged had ended up with them remaining buddies. But Max stuffing his goods and chattels into his Vivienne Westwood duffel bag was horribly, irrevocably final. ‘Please, Max. Can we sit down and talk about this?’

‘There’s nothing to talk about.’ Max shouldered past Neve on his way to the bathroom. ‘It was a pancake relationship. Like you keep constantly reminding me, the first pancake gets thrown away. I’ll be out of your hair in less than ten minutes.’

‘It doesn’t have to be like this,’ Neve said, standing in the bathroom doorway and watching as Max snatched up his shaving kit and his toothbrush and his shower gel, because hers was rose-scented and too girly for them to share. ‘You’re obviously upset. I am too.’

‘There’s nothing for either of us to be upset about,’ Max said tightly. ‘You got what you wanted from our little fling and now you’re ready to move up to the big league. Congratulations.’

‘But you were happy to go along with it,’ Neve reminded Max, blocking his exit when he stepped forward, because she wasn’t going to let him leave like this. ‘You said you weren’t cut out for a real relationship. Do you still feel the same way?’

Max stared her down, nothing teasing or soft in his eyes. ‘Our little experiment has proved, once and for all, that I don’t want or need a relationship. They’re completely overrated.’ He put the fingers of one hand on her shoulder and applied enough pressure to get Neve to move out of the way. ‘I mean, what’s so fucking great about a relationship? You have to think about someone else all the time and all you get in return is regular sex. Really not worth it.’

‘You’re just saying that,’ Neve choked as Max hurried down the stairs and scooped up Keith who’d come out of the living room to see what all the fuss was about. ‘If William wasn’t back, you’d be perfectly happy to carry on as we are.’

‘Oh, would I?’ Max sneered, struggling to tuck Keith under his arm as he tried to heft the duffel bag over his shoulder and open the front door at the same time. ‘Yeah, keep telling yourself that, sweetheart, if it makes you feel any better.’

‘Why are you being like this?’ The end of her sentence was drowned out by the slam of the front door behind him.

Neve sank to the floor, knees pulled tight against her body. She didn’t know how long she sat there but when her legs began to cramp, she slowly stood up and wandered through the flat. In ten minutes, Max had managed to eradicate all signs that he’d ever been here: sat on her sofa with his feet resting on the coffee table and refused to relinquish the remote control; perched on one of her kitchen chairs drinking tiny cup after tiny cup of espresso; slept in her bed, his arms tight around her, both of them a little sweaty, a little breathless from making love.

Max was gone.

Having a plastic tube inserted into her fundament so that approximately fifteen gallons of water could be flushed in and out of her colon really took Neve’s mind off Max marching out of her life the night before.

The only emotion that Neve could summon up was excruciating embarrassment. Or maybe it was shame? Even though the offending area was shrouded in a fluffy white towel and the colonic hydrotherapist spoke in a soothing low tone as she massaged Neve’s abdomen, they both knew that the reason she was there was the water gushing out of her bottom.

‘You might feel a slight cramping sensation over the next two hours but that’s just your colon reshaping itself,’ Neve was told, once the therapist had decided that her colon was squeaky clean, and she was back in her own clothes. ‘Did you read the information sheet?’

Neve nodded. She’d given it a cursory glance during the sleepless hours she’d spent pacing and moping and crying.

‘Well, remember not to drink alcohol or operate heavy machinery,’ the therapist said as she showed Neve to the door of the smart Primrose Hill townhouse, which didn’t look like the sort of place where such nefarious practices were carried out.

As Neve stepped out into the muggy heat of a hot June day, she wasn’t prepared for the head rush that made her stagger and clutch on to the wrought-iron railings for support. She stood there, blinking her eyes because the leaves on the trees looked greener and shinier, and over the roar of traffic and the sound of a piano playing from an open window, Neve was sure that she could hear the engines of the plane she could see circling in the sky above, which surely hadn’t been that blue before.

When she’d left her flat that morning, she’d felt hollow and bruised, but now she felt clean and purged, and, well, maybe still a little bruised but that was more the after-effects of the colonic rather than heartache. Neve pushed off from the railings, surprised that she had a swing in her step and a renewed sense of purpose.

Max was gone and that had always been part of the plan. And instead of obsessing about the manner in which he’d gone, she needed to remember that he’d had to go so there were no obstacles between her and William, apart from the twenty pounds she still had to lose. Neve patted her stomach, which felt flat for the first time in living memory. She’d probably already lost the five pounds she’d gained and still had another two colonics booked as part of the Cleanse; also, the therapist had said that some people lost as much as ten pounds each time.

Neve felt a surge of sheer delight as she imagined losing thirty pounds in a fortnight just from having her colon deep-cleaned. She beamed at an elderly woman who gave her a wide and tottery berth, then ran all the way round the corner to where she’d chained up her bike so she could hurry home and wait for the delivery of her Hardcore Cleanse juices.

Water was a recurring theme over the next week.

Neve had to plan her days carefully to make sure that she was never more than ten minutes away from a toilet. The Hardcore Cleanse did exactly what it said on its fancy black and white packaging. She drank. She peed. She drank. She peed. She was getting through two rolls of Andrex Quilted Velvet every day.

But it wasn’t just the peeing. The euphoria was now feeling less euphoric and more manic. Happily, the Cleanse coincided with Mr Freemont’s annual fortnight in Broadstairs. This was Rose’s cue to embark on a marathon reorganisation and swab-down of the Archive. She swore it had nothing to do with dispelling the lingering stench of Mr Freemont’s BO and more to do with having the opportunity to throw out the yellowing, desiccated piles of paper that he claimed were vitally important.

Normally Neve put up a spirited defence against dumping all those files in the recyling bin, but now she was happy to work off some of her Cleanse-sponsored energy by lugging boxes outside and scrubbing down floors and surfaces with hot, soapy water. But as soon as she plunged her rubber gloves into the bucket, she’d have to stop and run to the loo. She couldn’t even pass a pond or an ornamental water feature without the power of autosuggestion working its magic on her bladder.

The other benefit of Mr Freemont’s annual holiday was that they took it in turns to have three-hour lunch-breaks and one afternoon off a week, so Neve had plenty of time to run laps around the law courts and do press-ups in the office. She didn’t dare set foot in the gym as she was pretty sure Gustav had had her membership revoked after she’d sent him a furious email formally severing their trainer/client relationship during one of her more manic episodes.