You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

  ‘But I would never do that!’ Neve gasped, indignation making her look up so all she could see was tanned flesh and nipples. ‘I’m a nice person. Or I try to be.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you seem all right,’ Kelly said, and there was a murmur of agreement as though Neve had passed some test that she wasn’t even aware that she’d been taking. ‘But if you have a hidden camera and your best friend is on the showbiz desk of the News of the World …’

  ‘One of my best friends is a forty-something gay man who’s writing his PhD on Stephen Spender,’ Neve protested. ‘My sister works on Skirt, but she’s not interested in anything other than fashion.’

  ‘Oooh! Does she get free clothes?’ Lauren asked.

  ‘Not really, but sometimes she pretends that things got lost on photo-shoots and doesn’t give them back.’ Neve forced her shoulders down from around her ears. ‘Look, I’m sure it can’t be much fun having a new person foisted on you when it’s the day before your best friend’s wedding and you all just want to relax and have your Spa Day. I understand that and I’m going to have a shower and then I’ll get a cab back to the hotel.’

  ‘Don’t be soft,’ Tasha scoffed. ‘Come and have a steam and tell us which celebs your sister’s met.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Neve insisted grimly and she was just going to have to come clean and tell them. ‘Look, I used to be very large. Very, very large and I’m still large and I don’t like—’

  ‘How big were you?’ Emma demanded boldly. ‘’Cause you’re not much bigger than me.’

  Neve blinked to clear her vision and then she looked at Emma, who was stripped down to bra and thong and was about two dress sizes smaller than Neve. ‘I used to be twenty-five stone,’ she admitted. ‘And you’re taller and slimmer than me and I’m much, much saggier than all of you.’

  ‘Get away,’ Emma snorted. ‘Did you have a gastric bypass or a lap band?’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t have either. I just, you know, ate less and exercised more.’

  ‘So, how much have you lost exactly?’

  ‘How long did it take you?’

  ‘I went on Atkins to get rid of the baby weight after I had our Keiran and I got so constipated. Did you low-carb it?’

  The questions were flying thick and fast and Neve started looking beyond the fake tan and the manicures to Lauren’s caesarean scar and Emma’s lopsided breasts and Kelly pointed out that she had stretchmarks on her thighs and Tasha said that people came up to her on the street and asked her if she was anorexic.

  Each one of them had something they hated about their bodies. Neve wasn’t sure if that made her feel better or worse, but she stood up and began to take off her clothes even though it felt as if she was about to jump out of a light aircraft without a parachute. Or dive into shark-infested waters. Or charge naked into battle. She still wasn’t going to charge naked into the steam room but she could compromise and wrap a towel around herself or something.

  When Neve was finally down to her gutbuster knickers and racer-back bra and frantically snatching up a towel from the neatly folded stack on a counter, Kelly said, ‘I don’t know what you’re complaining about. You look fine to me. It’s just as well the bubbly should be arriving soon. You really need to chill out.’

  It was a pity that the several glasses of champagne she’d had during the course of the afternoon hadn’t supplied Neve with the necessary amount of Dutch courage she needed to face Max after her impersonation of a Billingsgate fishwife that morning. It also made dealing with the key card that opened the door very tricky.

  Neve hoped that she could sidle stealthily into the room then just look at Max with her most hangdog expression (she had it on very good authority that it was imbued with the very essence of hangdog), so that Max would instantly forgive her and she wouldn’t have to stammer through an abject apology. That was the plan. But after fumbling with the key card and rattling the handle, the door suddenly opened.

  She looked up, expecting to see Max standing there but he’d simply left the door ajar. Neve had known that he was still mad at her because he’d switched his phone off and every time she’d called to apologise it had rolled straight to voicemail, but she hadn’t imagined that he’d still be this mad. The only person she knew who could hold a grudge this long was, well … herself.

  Neve stepped through the door, mentally preparing herself for the wintry look on Max’s face and the barbed remarks that he’d had all day to work on, but he was sitting with his back to her at the small desk between the bed and the window, his fingers flying over his laptop keyboard.

  At least she could get on with the big apology without any interruptions from the peanut gallery, she thought glumly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, because that was the best place to start. ‘I’m sorry I was such a witch this morning and you were right, I was scared of spending the day with Mandy’s friends ’cause they were very hostile last night and I took it out on you. And actually, they were really nice to me today. Well, not at first but we bonded eventually and it turned out that we had lots in common, though you wouldn’t think that, would you?’

  There was still no response from Max, but he’d stopped typing, which had to be a good sign. Frankly, Neve would take her victories where she could.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry for what I said about that Shelly.’ Neve edged nearer to Max. ‘I know I’ve no right to make judgements about the people you were with before me, but you could have given me heads up about her, Max. You must have known that someone would mention that you and she had got together. That’s why I was so angry.’ She squinched up her face as she got to the really difficult part of the apology. ‘Well, also I was angry because I felt jealous and I know it’s ridiculous because we’re not meant to have that kind of relationship, but when I think about the girls you were with before me, what they looked like, I know I don’t measure up.’

  Neve placed her hands on Max’s shoulders and he flinched for a second. She tried to communicate everything she was feeling through her fingertips, and when that didn’t seem to work, Neve began to knead the knots of tension she found. There was one, just below Max’s neck, that was absolutely huge.

  She leaned over so she could whisper into Max’s ear, her voice low and urgent. ‘You have to know that when I’m with you, I’m not thinking of William. Well, hardly ever. And the things that we’ve done, that I’ve done, I would never do them because I was trying them out on you so I could … could … hone my technique. That was really low, Max.’

  There wasn’t much left to say, especially as Max was still giving her the silent treatment. He was much better at sulking than she was. Neve always caved in as soon as Celia blurted out, ‘I’m sorry,’ with the appropriate amount of conviction.

  ‘God, why are you still mad at me?’ she demanded pitifully, straightening up and taking her hands off Max, because her soothing touch wasn’t having any effect. ‘I’ve tried to apologise, what more can I say?’

  She was all set to give up and skulk in the bathroom until it was time to go out with the girls, when Max cleared his throat. ‘You said you wanted to end it,’ he reminded Neve in a voice that wasn’t quite as Arctic as she’d been expecting.

  ‘No, I said that there was no point in carrying on with this if … if I wasn’t the type of girl you wanted to be with, and I’ve already told you why I said that. But if you want to call it quits, then just tell me,’ Neve pleaded, but Max had retreated back into silence. He didn’t so much as twitch a muscle. ‘God, you’re bloody impossible sometimes.’

  She was in the middle of turning herself around in preparation for the most majestic flounce of her life when Max looped his arm around her waist and now it was his turn to pull Neve’s stiff, resisting body nearer.

  ‘I don’t want it to be over,’ he said, with enough sincerity that she almost believed him. And then he kissed the back of her arm, which was the only part of her that he could get his mouth on. ‘And I’m sorry too. I should have told you about Shelly, but i
t’s a bit of a sore point really.’

  ‘Why is it a sore point?’ Neve asked, and she wriggled a little in Max’s hold just to let him know that he had to do better than that.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it. It’s in the past. I’m moving forward,’ Max said mechanically, as if he’d learned the words by rote. ‘I’m here with you and that’s all that matters. Not what I did months ago with some other girl or you heading off into the sunset with Mr California in a few weeks’ time. But right here, right now.’

  Neve wound a lock of Max’s sticky hair round her finger. ‘It’s not like this will end and the next day I’ll be with William.’ The truth was that she didn’t know what it would be like, because she always skipped over the logistics and went straight to the happy ending. ‘And I hope, whatever happens, that we’ll still be friends. I like having you in my life, apart from when you’re giving me an icy cold shoulder.’

  Max pulled Neve closer, turned her around so he could rest his head on her breast. ‘Was I really that bad? I’ll have to try and warm you up,’ he said, and it was so like Max to deflect an honest but painful discussion by getting sexy but even through two layers of clothing, Neve could feel his breath on her skin and her breasts felt fuller and heavier so she wanted to press them against Max’s mouth and have him take the ache away. Instead she let him wrap his arms all the way around her and she kissed the top of his head, and when he tried to pull her on to his lap, she guessed they were friends again.

  ‘You know, I live in fear of breaking your legs when you try to make me do that,’ she told him, wriggling free of his arms so she could perch on the edge of the desk. ‘So, what have you been doing all day?’

  ‘Oh, I got some writing done,’ Max said, leaning back and looking up at Neve properly for the first time since she’d walked through the door. ‘Jesus Christ, Neevy, you look amazing!’

  Neve remembered now that she didn’t even remotely resemble the girl he’d seen that morning with her hair scraped back and a moody expression on her face. After the Spa-ing was done, they’d been chauffeured to a swank Manchester salon to get their hair and make-up done for that evening. ‘Really?’ she asked. ‘They tried coming at me with bronzer, which I resisted but I did wonder if it was still a bit too much.’

  ‘No, it’s just enough,’ Max said, his gaze riveted to Neve’s face as she fluttered sooty lashes at him. Whenever she’d tried to do smoky eyes, she’d ended up looking as if she hadn’t slept for a month, but the make-up artist had showed her how to do it properly and made her go a hundred shades deeper than her usual rose-tinted lip salve, so she now had glossy red lips that made her want to pout, even when there wasn’t that much to pout about.

  She tried to angle herself up so she could see her reflection in the mirror opposite. ‘I don’t even look like me,’ she said, because it would have been really arrogant to tell Max that actually she loved her present incarnation who was all eyes, cheekbones and pillowy lips.

  ‘Yes, you do. You just look like a really high-maintenance version of you.’ Max peered up at her. ‘Your hair – it’s so big.’

  ‘I know!’ Neve nodded happily. The hairdresser hadn’t even wanted to blowdry, much less backcomb what he called her ‘virgin hair’, but he’d sexed up her usual ponytail by clipping a foam wedge to her crown and pulling her hair over it so she had a big bouffant that Neve hoped was more Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s than Amy Winehouse. ‘I think I’m at least two inches taller.’

  ‘At least,’ Max echoed. ‘So, did you have a nice time in the end?’

  Neve wasn’t sure that they’d talked through things properly, but it was a relief to have that cold, pinched look on Max’s face replaced by his usual easy grin and hear him laugh as she told him about working out with the WAGs and Mandy making her wedding planner strip off and come into the steam room so she could sweat out her toxins and lock down the final seating plan.

  ‘And they finally told me what a medi-pedi is,’ Neve said, reaching down to start unlacing her sneakers. ‘A qualified podiatrist turned up with this thing that looked like a potato peeler and shaved all the hard skin off my feet as if they were two massive hunks of Parmesan cheese.’

  ‘That’s disgusting.’

  ‘It was,’ Neve agreed, tugging off her socks and nearly falling off the desk in the process. ‘But feel how soft my feet are.’

  She waggled her foot in Max’s face as he reared back even though her feet were as fragrant and silky smooth as they were ever likely to be.

  Max wasn’t looking at her feet but her face again. ‘Are you drunk?’

  ‘Of course I’m not,’ Neve scoffed, because she wasn’t drunk. Although now the row was over and they were friends again, the sheer relief was making her feel lightheaded. ‘I had a leetle bit of champagne.’ She tried to hold up her thumb and forefinger to illustrate the minuscule amount of champagne that she’d drunk, which wasn’t as much as the others had knocked back, and she’d had some croutons with her chicken salad at lunch to mop up the alcohol, but now she was having difficulty in getting her thumb and forefinger to do what she wanted.

  ‘What have those girls done to you?’ Max shook his head. ‘You are. You’re pissed.’

  ‘Maybe just a teensy bit merry,’ Neve decided, clutching Max’s arm so she could get down from the desk. ‘But I’m only going to drink spritzers tonight and Mandy wants everyone tucked up in bed by eleven so we don’t have hangovers tomorrow. She’s very detail orientated.’

  ‘You should eat something before you go out,’ Max said firmly. ‘Something laden with carbs to give you some ballast.’

  Neve glanced at the clock on the nightstand. ‘I haven’t got time.’ Max was dogging her footsteps as she went from wardrobe to bathroom. ‘You’re not going to be stuck in here writing all evening, are you?’

  ‘I’m meeting Bill for a drink so we can work on his father-of-the-bride speech,’ Max said, eyeing up the dress that was in Neve’s hand. ‘Don’t suppose that has a zipper you might need a hand with?’ he asked with a leer.

  ‘No, it just goes on over my head so …’ Neve put her hands on her hips and tried to look stern. ‘You’re not doing anything to me that will smudge my make-up or flatten my hair,’ she said, shutting the bathroom door.

  She’d just succeeded in carefully easing the dress on without dismantling her bouffant when Neve heard a banging on the door of their suite, then the sound of much shrieking and laughter.

  Neve buckled her three-inch Mary-Janes, which seemed to be getting less comfortable the more she wore them, and was just about to step back, look at herself in the mirror and decide that silver-sequined shift dresses really weren’t her thing, when the bathroom door crashed back on its hinges and the bathroom was invaded by skimpily dressed, bare-legged, shiny-haired, highly excitable women.

  ‘Right, you’ll do,’ Kelly said. ‘Let’s get going. We’ve got a pink stretch limo waiting in a no parking zone behind the hotel, because the front is crawling with paps.’

  Neve had to push Tasha and Lauren out of the way so she could get a good look at herself in the mirror. ‘Does this look OK?’ She tugged at the hem of the dress. ‘I don’t look fat?’

  ‘You look gorgeous,’ Emma said as she sprayed herself with a generous amount of Neve’s Chanel No. 19. ‘Lose the tights.’

  Neve would lose her 60-denier, body-shaping opaque tights when they were ripped from her cold, dead legs. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Maybe I should wear jeans and a nice little top. My sister Celia says—’

  No one was interested in Celia’s opinion that heels, jeans and a statement top could take a girl from day to evening and even cocktails. Tasha took Neve’s arm and yanked her out of the bathroom. ‘Just grab your phone,’ she ordered.

  ‘Purse …’

  ‘You don’t need a purse,’ Lauren said pityingly. ‘Dinner’s paid for, limo’s paid for, we’re on six different guest-lists with bar tabs, what do you need money for?’

  ?
??Take your purse,’ Max said, shouldering Emma out of the way. ‘And call me if you want to bail out early and— Christ, that dress is a bit short.’

  Neve looked down at her legs in dismay. ‘My legs look sturdy even in body-shaping tights.’

  ‘Of course they don’t,’ Max snapped, his face reddening when Emma openly laughed at his over-protective boyfriend routine. ‘You look great, that’s what I’m worried about.’

  ‘Aw, sweet,’ Tasha cooed. ‘Don’t worry, lover boy, we’ll have her back by midnight. Or around midnight.’

  ‘No, Mandy said we had to be back by eleven,’ Neve reminded them. ‘She was really particular about that.’

  ‘Eleven, twelve, what’s the diff?’ Emma drawled, grabbing Neve’s hand and pulling her towards the door. ‘Will you get a move on?’

  As she was hustled out of the door, she heard Max bark, ‘I want her back in one piece.’

  There was a collective cackle from the cheap seats. ‘One piece was never part of the deal.’

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Something diseased and furry had crawled into her mouth and expired while she slept. That was the only possible explanation as to why Neve had a rancid taste in her mouth and a heavy, viscous paste coating her teeth and tongue.

  ‘I think I’m dying,’ she groaned. The wretched state of her mouth was the least of it. There was a pounding in her head, echoed in the roiling of her gut, and her bones ached, her vital organs ached, her throat ached, even her hair follicles ached.

  ‘You’re not dying,’ said a voice in her ear, which sounded like nails scraping down a blackboard, even though Max’s voice had barely risen above a whisper. ‘You’ve got a hangover.’

  Neve had had hangovers before and they just made her feel a tiny bit nauseous and grouchy. This felt like the bastard child of bubonic plague and the ebola virus.