You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me (67 page)

‘I thought it always rained in England,’ she told Neve. ‘But it’s
so
sunny. Do you think it will be sunny in War-wick?’

‘Baby, I told you, the second w is silent,’ William said. Amy still had her head turned in Neve’s direction so she couldn’t see him rolling his eyes or looking at Neve with a rueful smile that she was supposed to return.

But she didn’t. So Amy wasn’t the sharpest tool – William still wanted to marry her. Despite all his intellect and knowledge of fourth-wave feminism, he’d still chosen beauty over brains; wanted to settle down with a girl who was gorgeous and giggly but who would never be able to even pronounce Heidegger, let alone debate the finer points of
Being and Time
. And he’d had the nerve to tell Neve that her drastic makeover had decreased her IQ points.

Neve smiled vaguely at Amy as the other girl chattered away excitedly about how she couldn’t wait to see War-wick and felt another pang of regret that William had fallen a few more inches off his pedestal. She’d spent all those years obsessing and pining over William’s mind and beauty, but she’d never even noticed what he lacked.

He wasn’t funny, he wasn’t perceptive, he didn’t get her, not at all, and God, he wasn’t Max.

‘… dating, Neve?’

She blinked as Amy said her name and realised that her glass was almost empty, the room was spinning around her and they were both looking at her expectantly.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t quite catch that.’

‘Amy was just asking you if you were dating anyone?’ William explained, giving his fiancée a stern look. ‘You’re not in California any more, baby. Generally, it’s impolite to ask strangers personal questions the first time you meet them.’

‘Oh, sorry, Neve. I didn’t mean to be rude.’

‘You weren’t,’ she said, giving William a reproachful look. ‘I’ve known William for years so if you two are engaged, then we’re not strangers, are we? We’re friends who don’t know each other that well … yet.’

Amy nodded. ‘I’d like that.’

‘Me too,’ Neve said, and she was surprised to find that she meant it. She felt a little sorry for Amy, swapping the sunny West Coast for a smaller, greyer life in a town where she wouldn’t know anyone except William. ‘Warwick’s not that far from London on the train.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ William said, though he didn’t sound like he was about to turn cartwheels at the thought of them becoming BFF.

‘You must be dating,’ Amy persisted, as William sighed. ‘William’s always saying how smart you are but he never told me that you were
so
gorgeous. I mean, like, I saw pictures, but y’know … you don’t look
anything
like that now.’

‘Amy …’ William sighed again and she turned to him with a helpless shrug and a hurt look.

‘I’ve lost a lot of weight since William last saw me,’ Neve said, her voice lacking any pride in the achievement. ‘I wanted that to be
my
surprise.’

‘Yes, well, it suits you,’ William said uncomfortably, because he didn’t want to acknowledge this new,
gorgeous
Neve as the girl he used to know. Neve understood that now. If he had loved her at all, even in the smallest way, it had been for her brains and her slavish devotion to him. Having to confront the fact that Neve was more than just brains, that she might actually be a sexual being, had to be as much of a headspin for him as it was for Neve to discover that she didn’t love him and that even if she did, he wanted to spend the rest of his life with someone who wasn’t her.

It was all so painfully, horribly awkward that Neve wanted to slide off her chair and hide under the table. Instead she smiled inanely, Amy giggled and William summoned up a slightly manic grin, as he squeezed both their hands. ‘So, goodness, isn’t that fantastic? My two best girls finally get to meet each other.’

Amy and Neve both murmured in agreement and Neve wasn’t sure how much more of this she could take because it was just so …

‘Anyway, Neve, you never said if you were dating or not?’ Amy asked again, and Neve suspected that the other girl was more desperate to plug the gaping hole in the conversation rather than get the lowdown on her love-life. Besides, this was the part that Neve had rehearsed over and over again, though when she had, it was William asking the question. And she’d reply in a casual, insouciant way so he’d know that she wasn’t the silly, fat girl he’d left behind. She was a woman of the world.

‘I was seeing someone.’ She manoeuvred the words past the huge lump in her throat. ‘But it didn’t work out.’

‘Oh, that’s too bad,’ Amy cooed. ‘Did he have commitment issues?’

Neve swiftly shook her head because she wasn’t sure that she was even capable of speech any more. It was all too much. The expectation, the disappointment and, worst of all, now that William was no longer a distraction, all she could feel was the pain of not having Max.

‘It was all my fault,’ she said, her voice trembling. ‘I ruined everything and he said terrible things and I deserved every single one of them.’

She stayed for another hour, another glass of wine, and she could see William surreptitiously glancing at his watch and Amy biting her lip and shooting him anguished looks as Neve talked about Max. She managed to steer clear of any mention of pancakes, but telling William and Amy about the myriad ways she’d screwed up and how much she missed Max still gave Neve plenty to talk about.

Halfway through, she noticed the way William was looking at her – that soft, tender look she remembered so well. But the scales had fallen from her eyes and she recognised it for what it really was: pity. Not even sympathy, which would have been kinder, but pity – and that was when she started to cry.

In the end, William lied and said that he and Amy had made dinner reservations in Fulham. Neve knew he was lying because his face flushed and he tugged at his shirt collar and Amy blurted out, ‘I thought we were just going back to your place,’ but she wouldn’t have wanted to be around herself either.

They led her out of the bar and down all six flights of stairs, hiccuping softly because she was all cried out now.

‘Shall we walk across the bridge to Embankment?’ William wondered aloud, as Amy tucked her arm into Neve’s. ‘Or is Waterloo all right?’

‘I have to get a cab,’ Neve sniffed. ‘I have gaffer tape on the soles of my sandals.’

She wasn’t sure, out of the three of them, who was more relieved when she was finally deposited in the back of a black cab and crossing the river back to north London.

As luck would have it, she got a chatty driver who wanted to talk about the appalling season Arsenal had just had. Neve suspected that she started crying again because it was the only way to get him to shut up.

‘Bad break-up, love? He’s not worth it.’

He is. Max is worth every single tear, she thought as they turned into Stroud Green Road. Through blurred eyes, she looked at the wig shop and the funeral directors, before she saw the friendly glow of Tesco’s.

‘You can let me out here!’ Neve yelped.

She lasted for thirty seconds of gaffer-taped soles slapping against hard pavement, thin leather straps cutting and chafing her skin, before she unbuckled her sandals and walked into Tesco’s with bare feet.

The security guard gave her a dirty look as she took a basket but Neve didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything any more. There was this hollow ache inside her and she knew of only one way to fill it, because being a size twelve sucked like nothing had ever sucked before.

At least when she was fat her flesh had shielded her from the world. People hadn’t seen her, they’d just seen her fat, and as far as they were concerned, her fat meant that she was lazy and stupid and it had been easy to exceed their expectations. It was impossible not to when the bar was raised so low that it had almost touched the floor.

Her fat had been a Get Out of Jail Free card. Her fat was to blame for the jobs she didn’t get and the love affairs she’d never had and all the slights and rejections and the failures. If she wasn’t fat, then there was nothing left to hide behind.
She
was the problem. Neve understood now that when she’d been a size thirty-two, she’d been insulated and protected and safe. She’d give anything to feel like that again.

A box of Tunnock’s Tea Cakes was the first thing she tossed in her basket. Neve looked down at them and hesitated. Then her stomach growled, her heart ached and her throat felt raw from crying. She was
so
doing this.

Her mind made up, the rest was easy. Brightly coloured bags of crisps, salt and vinegar, cheese and onion, and bacon. How had she managed to live without bacon-flavoured crisps for so long? Chocolate Hobnobs, chocolate digestives, chocolate cake liberally smeared with thick chocolate butter-cream frosting – anything as long as it was chocolate. There was cheese too, which she’d grill and pile on to thick sliced white bread and coat in tomato ketchup. A tub of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream and one of Phish Food too while she was at it – and she hadn’t even been down the confectionery aisle yet. Neve hurled fistfuls of chocolate into her heavy basket and tucked a huge bottle of full-fat Coke under her arm on the way to the till.

Then she walked home, the pavement cutting into the soles of her feet, but she didn’t care. What was a little more pain when you were already one gigantic ball of hurt? When you’d wasted years of your life loving someone who only existed in your head, and in your desperate pursuit of that love, you failed to see that you already had something that was real and special and utterly precious?

Neve stumbled up her garden path, tutting furiously when she had to put down her precious cargo and fish for her keys. The house was in darkness and as Neve fumbled for the light switch, three heavy carrier bags awkwardly clutched in one hand, she stumbled, stubbed her toe against the wheel of her bike and screamed as it toppled off its kick-stand and crashed against her legs.

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Neve was trapped between the wall and her bike, her foot pinned under the handlebars. She didn’t even have room to put down her shopping, but had to huff and puff like a little piggy as she lifted the bike off her foot and sent it clattering back against the opposite wall.

Neve hopped on one leg, as she tried to simultaneously put down her bags and clutch her injured foot. Her toes felt as if they were crushed beyond all repair, and as she doubled over from the weight of her shopping, the shooting pains in her foot made her want to throw up because she had a very low pain threshold and …

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ From darkness came light and Charlotte’s voice screaming down the stairs. ‘Can’t you fucking do anything quietly?’

Neve glanced up to see Charlotte’s malevolent face peering over the banisters. She ignored her because now the lights were on she was able to look down at her foot in all its mangled glory. She slowly unpeeled her fingers from around her foot to find that her big toenail had lifted up and blood was oozing out.

‘Oh God,’ she mumbled, and she wanted to steel herself to investigate further, to see just how firmly attached her nail was, but even the abstract thought of an unattached toenail made her shudder – and anyway, Charlotte was storming down the stairs.

‘What is your problem?’ Charlotte demanded, before she’d even reached the bottom. ‘I can’t live with your constant noise and you left your washing on the line all day like you’re the only one who wants to use it. You’re selfish! You’re, like, the most selfish person I’ve ever met.’

‘I’m sorry, Charlotte,’ Neve snapped. ‘I’m a little busy here.’

‘If you didn’t leave it there, you wouldn’t have fallen over your bike in the first place,’ Charlotte snapped back, stabbing an angry finger into Neve’s chest for emphasis. ‘And you wouldn’t have fallen over it, if you weren’t such a fat cow.’

‘What did you just say?’ Neve said, her voice eerily calm, which was odd because on the inside she was screaming.

Charlotte
was
screaming. ‘Are you deaf as well as stupid?’ She jabbed her rigid finger into Neve even harder. ‘You’re as fat and disgusting as you were at school. I can’t believe I ended up living underneath Neve the Heave.’

Neve swallowed hard, took a deep breath and stood there motionless, so still that she could feel the hot, humid air of the night stir around her. ‘Get your hand off me,’ she said in a constricted voice that didn’t even sound like her.

‘Oh, what are you going to do about it?’ Charlotte sneered.

Neve didn’t even feel her hand come up, not until her palm cracked against Charlotte’s cheek, the blow jarring all the way up Neve’s arm and rocking the other girl into the wall.

‘I am not fat! I am not stupid! How fucking dare you? What gives you the fucking right to treat me like crap?’ Each word was punctuated by a blow, as she pounded her fists against any part of Charlotte that she could reach as her sister-in-law twisted and flailed in her efforts to get away from her. ‘I hate you! I hate every bone in your fucking miserable body.’

Charlotte was screaming right back at her and when she realised that Neve wasn’t going to stop, she fought back, punching her way out of the corner that Neve had boxed her into.

They crunched over Neve’s shopping but Neve didn’t care about anything other than gouging Charlotte’s eyes out and getting her hands round her throat so she could stop her hateful, vile words once and for all.