You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me (63 page)

It was a short march to the front door, which she wrenched open. Two of Celia’s friends were sitting on the stairs smoking a joint and not bothering to hide the fact that they’d been eavesdropping because they nudged each other and giggled until they saw the look on Neve’s face. ‘Go away,’ she hissed through clenched teeth, then pressed herself against the wall, as Max brushed past her.

She was all ready to slam the door behind him, in a way that would have Charlotte claiming copyright infringement, but Max came to a halt in the hinterland between her flat and the stairwell. ‘One last thing,’ he said evenly.

Now what? Then light dawned. ‘Your key? I’ll give it to—’

‘Even if you starved yourself down to a size zero, you’re always going to be a fat girl, Neevy,’ Max whispered in her ear, as she shrank away from him. ‘You don’t know how to be anything else.’

His words felt like a knife plunging into her belly again and again, twisting this way and that way, tearing skin and flesh, so all Neve could do was press the flat of her hand hard into her stomach to try and ease the pain.

Max was set to step smartly past her and be gone, be done with her, but at the last moment, he turned his head so he could look her straight in her tearing eyes. Neve could see the realisation hit him like a speeding train. That of all the terrible things they’d just said to each other, of accusation and counter-accusation angrily flung around, Max had crossed a line he didn’t even know had existed.

‘I shouldn’t have …’ he began clumsily. ‘I take that back.’

Neve bent her head so she wouldn’t have to look at him and waved her hand in the direction of the hall, cowering back when he raised a hand to touch her cheek.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he said, and he still wouldn’t go. Not unless she made him. ‘Will you say something?’

Neve reared forward, hands hitting Max square on the chest so she could push him out of the door backwards. ‘Fuck off!’ she said, and slammed the door in his shocked face.

After the rage, came the deluge.

Neve had known that the violent mood swings couldn’t last for ever, but she hadn’t imagined that they’d be replaced by an attack of melancholy that had her taking to her bed because she couldn’t see the point of getting up.

Although she called it melancholy because it conjured up images of Victorian ladies swooning back on chaises longues, while their concerned mamas dabbed at their foreheads with handkerchiefs soaked in eau de cologne, it felt a lot more like depression.

A big swirly depression that was a blend of the mean reds, the black dogs and a very blue period so that everything looked bruised, especially the dark circles around Neve’s eyes because she couldn’t stop crying. It was all she could do to get out of bed to take delivery of her juice, drink her juice, go to the loo after the juice had taken effect, then crawl back to bed and cry herself to sleep.

Despite what Max had said, Neve wasn’t stupid. She knew that her melancholia was in large part due to the Cleanse, but all of it, the peeing, the acne, the mood swings, the dry heaving, would be worth it if the pounds had melted away.

She still hadn’t weighed herself because she was scared of the absolute, incontrovertible truth that she’d find on the scales. None of this would have been worth it, if all that she’d lost were a couple of pounds and the goodwill of friends and family. The only thing that Neve knew right now was that she didn’t feel as if she was taking up any less space in the world.

But feeling like that wasn’t anything new or anything that Neve didn’t deal with on a daily basis. What was tearing her into tiny little pieces, so she didn’t think she’d ever be whole again, was the fight with Max.

There was the shame of all the hurtful, hateful things she’d said because she was angry; she hadn’t really meant them but it was too late to take them back now. Of course, he’d said hurtful, hateful things right back, but she’d deserved them. Apart from the one hurtful, hateful thing that she couldn’t dismiss, couldn’t put down to the heat of the moment.

You’ll always be a fat girl. You don’t know how to be anything else
.

It was the sordid, secret truth that Neve had always shied away from before it could become fully formed. Max had made it real, because after a few short months, he knew her better than anyone.

That was the worst thing about having a relationship with someone, even a pretend relationship. You opened up, let someone in, and when it was over, they had all the ammunition they needed to completely destroy you. When Max had spoken about her fat before, on the night she’d got naked for him, he’d said that it had fucked her up, but what they both knew was that she was still fucked up and likely to stay that way for ever.

Being a size ten had assumed such mythical proportions for Neve, but what if it didn’t change anything? What if she was still an outsider, still not normal, still a freak?

It all kept ricocheting around Neve’s brain, making her head ache and making her cry, until the fifth morning of her confinement, when she woke up with tears rolling down her cheeks yet again.

‘Enough!’ she said out loud, forcing herself to sit up. ‘This has to stop.’

She got out of bed on shaky legs, stripping the sheets and bunging them in the washing machine, before heading to the bathroom to shower off five days of bed sweat and tearstains.

Then, wrapped in her old size thirty towelling robe, which doubled as a security blanket, and swigging from her bottle of breakfast Cleanse, Neve switched on her phone. Celia had contacted the Archive to tell them that Neve had summer flu, because ‘I’ve tried the old “I’ve got a broken heart” excuse and it never works’, so there were several peevish enquiries from Mr Freemont as to when she was coming back. There were also less peevish enquiries from Rose, Chloe and Philip, which should have filled Neve with warm fuzzies that there were still some people who weren’t blood relatives who liked her, but she was all out of warm fuzzies. But when she saw that she had a missed call and a voice message from William, it was like a beacon of hope in a post-apocalyptic landscape.

Neve fingered a particularly painful spot on her chin as she listened to William’s breezy message. ‘Neve? William here. I’m back in London. Let’s meet as soon as humanly possible. I have news that won’t keep and I can’t wait to see you. Call me.’

With a hand that shook slightly, Neve returned William’s call, without giving herself time to reflect on the ramifications of such an audacious move. She needed to change, and right now having William back in her life was the only way she knew how to make that happen.

‘Ah, it’s the elusive Ms Slater,’ he said, before Neve could even spit out a hello. ‘Where have you been? I called you Sunday and it’s Thursday now. Even in LA, three days is industry standard for returning calls.’

‘I’ve had flu. Summer flu,’ Neve explained in a rusty voice.

‘Oh, poor thing. Must be why you sound so croaky. Are you better now?’

Physically she was getting there. Emotionally, she was sure that a strong gust of wind might knock her over. ‘I think I’m ready to start getting up and about now.’

‘Well, that’s why I’ve been trying to get hold of you. I’m going out of town this weekend,’ William said.

Neve looked up at the ceiling in despair.
Not again
. ‘Oh. So when will you be back this time?’

‘No, I absolutely have to see you before I go,’ William said firmly. ‘How about tomorrow evening?’

Neve looked down at her unshaven legs, and prodded her towelling-swathed belly. Then she traced the bumpy surface of her face, until she remembered that the last time William had seen her, she was twice the woman she was now. Anything had to be an improvement on that. ‘Tomorrow, as in Friday tomorrow?’ she clarified.

‘The very same,’ William said with a slight chuckle that warmed his clipped vowels. ‘Do you mind awfully coming south of the river? I know what you north Londoners are like.’

‘Well, the South Bank is usually as far south as I go,’ Neve admitted, already seeing her and William strolling along the Embankment hand in hand, because with William she’d hold his hand on the very first date. ‘Would that be all right for you?’

‘God, you’re so parochial, Neve,’ William sighed, then he chuckled again, as if her unwillingness to cross the Thames was absolutely adorable. ‘OK, shall we say seven at the Royal Festival Hall Members’ Bar? It’s on the sixth floor; the view is absolutely breathtaking.’

‘That sounds lovely,’ Neve agreed. ‘Well, I’ll see you then, I suppose.’

‘I can’t wait,’ William said. ‘And I have two surprises for you, so prepare to be astounded.’

He rang off and Neve sat on her lumpy red bucket chair in a daze for a few long moments as she contemplated the new direction her life was about to take. Change was good. It was just what she needed – William was just what she needed – so why did it feel as if William was less her destiny and more a way to get over Max?

Neve stood up, intending to change into her running gear and pound the paths of Finsbury Park until she cleared her head. Then she caught sight of herself in the mirror. It was all she could do not to scream out loud as she peered at her face and the pustules that seemed to have multiplied while she was talking to William. Actually, the spots were the very least of it.

She needed an extreme makeover. She needed some really intensive spot cream. She really needed a haircut and she needed Celia like she’d never needed her before.

Neve had never truly appreciated Celia’s talents. She never understood what Celia was going on about when she declared that shoulders were the new legs or justified spending four hundred pounds on a pair of over-the-knee boots because they were ‘very on-trend’.

But she’d never had a fashion and beauty emergency on the scale of the one she was having now, and Celia, God bless her, was ready and able to rise to the occasion.

She came home from work with a bulging bag of potions, unguents and creams, courtesy of the
Skirt
Beauty Department, and slathered Neve’s face in a paste that smelled like horse manure but was
guaranteed to eradicate 98 per cent of most facial blemishes overnight
.

Celia had even made appointments for Neve to have a mani-pedi, cut and blow dry, and her armpits, legs and bikini line de-Hobbited, before she met Celia in the
Skirt
fashion cupboard at three the next afternoon.

‘I’m going to call in some clothes for you,’ Celia said, because on Planet Fashion, the clothes came to you, rather than the other way round. ‘What were you thinking in terms of outfits?’

‘A dress,’ Neve mumbled because it was hard to move her mouth when her face was covered in blemish-eradicating cement. ‘A nice dress. What are those very long dresses called?’

‘Maxi-dresses,’ Celia replied. ‘Um, don’t really think you’ve got the length of leg for one of them. You’d be swamped.’

‘Hardly,’ Neve snorted.

‘Don’t! You’ll crack your zit mask. That stuff costs a hundred and fifty quid a pot,’ Celia snapped. ‘And don’t start with all that “find me a burka” stuff either. What size are you now?’

Neve decided that shrugging wouldn’t move any facial muscles. ‘I was mostly a size fourteen before I started the Cleanse.’

‘It’s hard to tell what’s going on under there,’ Celia complained, pulling a face as she indicated Neve’s voluminous dressing-gown. Then she pulled a different, more conflicted face. ‘Look, Neve, you know I love you, right? Like, I love you to
pieces
and I want you to be happy, and if you think that Willy McWordy is your route to happiness, fine, then I’m on board …’

‘But?’ Neve prompted, because she could tell that the whole point of the speech was to get to the ‘but’.

‘But you have to promise me that you’ll stop the Cleanse, because apparently people have died from it, and you’re not you any more and I miss you,’ Celia finished with a sniff, because she was close to tears.

‘I know,’ Neve said softly, because she’d come to the same conclusion during the last stages of her Bed-In. Anyway, once she saw William tomorrow, the truth would be out. Hopefully not being a size thirty-two would make up for not being a size ten. ‘I’ve got juices for tomorrow and then I’m done.’

‘You promise?’

‘I promise!’

‘Do you promise on Mum and Dad’s life?’ Celia demanded. ‘No, hang on, do you swear on Jane Austen’s grave?’

‘Seels! I do. I promise. I’ll use up tomorrow’s juices and then I’ll start reintroducing solids,’ Neve said.

‘OK.’ Celia seemed satisfied with Neve’s sincerity but was frowning at her sister’s swathed body. ‘I still need to know your size. Why don’t you go and weigh yourself, then I’ll take your measurements.’

‘Can’t we just go on guesswork?’ Neve begged.

‘Aren’t you even a little bit curious about how much you’ve lost?’ Celia asked. ‘I mean, your face looks really thin and what I can see of your chest looks bony.’

Neve was almost dying from curiosity but there were also huge amounts of dread mixed in with it. The longer she put it off, the more she might have lost. Especially if she waited until first thing in the morning – well, first thing
after
she’d had a really long run. ‘I don’t know,’ she said hesitantly.

‘It should go without saying that I won’t tell a soul. Not even Ma,’ Celia declared, getting up from the sofa.