‘Yes, but you wouldn’t be writing it, I would,’ William reminded her. ‘Though of course, I couldn’t do it without your help.’
‘William …’
‘I thought we’d work on a synopsis and the first three chapters, then start shopping it to agents and—’
‘William!’ Neve had to say his name very sharply so they could talk about her. ‘I’m already writing a book. Well, I’ve started anyway.’
‘You’re writing a book?’ There was no need for him to sound quite so incredulous, or look faintly amused. ‘A novel?’
‘No, it’s a biography of Lucy Keener and I’m editing her poems and short stories, though my agent thinks that we might publish them separately, after he’s got a deal for her novel,’ Neve said, and she’d wanted to impart her news with pride but William had a furrowed brow and he didn’t look particularly ecstatic, so she kept it down to an apologetic mumble.
‘You have an agent?’ William asked, with a faint edge to his voice.
‘Yeah … well, Jacob Morrison. He worked at the Archive when he came down from Cambridge and now he’s on the Board of Trustees.’ Neve shrugged. ‘It might not come to anything, but—’
‘No, it’s wonderful. I’m very happy for you; it just took me rather by surprise,’ William said. He swallowed hard as if he was gulping down on his own disappointment and pique, but then he gave her one of those smiles that she’d lived for when she was at Oxford. ‘Well done, you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Neve said, and now it was her turn to cover his hand and squeeze his fingers. ‘I didn’t mean to suddenly hit you with it. I was going to write and tell you but I’ve not been such a good correspondent over the last few months, have I?’
‘Well, it sounds as if you’ve had a lot going on,’ William said. He entwined his fingers with hers and the only thing that Neve felt was sadness that she’d wasted so much time loving a William who existed only in her head. ‘You’re not really going to make me forage for myself in the wilds of Warwickshire?’
They went back and forth for nearly an hour, William extolling the virtues of the University of Warwickshire’s English Department, the beautiful countryside, the thriving arts scene and how he absolutely couldn’t manage without her, none of which were the selling points they should have been.
Neve was still trying to process the shocking information that she wasn’t madly and passionately in love with William, but even if she still was, ‘I’m a London girl, born and bred,’ she insisted. ‘Warwickshire’s the country and the country’s full of big lumbering animals that smell awful and I don’t do wellies.’
William smiled again, though by now it was lacking its usual wattage. ‘I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to tinker with your book in your own time.’
Hadn’t he heard a single word she’d said? Neve narrowed her eyes and was all ready to snap out another, much more explicit refusal, when she saw William’s eyes flit appreciatively over her again. Was this his way of saying that he wanted to be with her in a mutually supportive literary relationship like Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, or Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald? Though that hadn’t worked out well for poor old Lizzie or Zelda. ‘I’m afraid I must regretfully decline your kind offer,’ Neve joked feebly, as William frowned.
‘This doesn’t have anything to do with your, er, transformation?’ He waved a vague hand in the direction of her size twelve body. ‘I’m trying to understand, so forgive me if I don’t put this very elegantly, but now that you look the way you do, do you feel as if you don’t need to try so hard on the intellectual front?’
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Neve could tell that he regretted them. Though that might have had something to do with the way she was glaring at him. ‘Excuse me?’ she spat, and as Dougie and Celia always pointed out, it didn’t matter that Neve never swore because she could make ‘Excuse me?’ sound like ‘Go fuck yourself.’ ‘You think I did all this so I could give my over-taxed brain a rest? Is that what you really think?’
William’s hands fluttered ineffectually. ‘Neve … I’m sorry. That came out all wrong, I was rather scared that it might.’ He brushed his hair back from his forehead. ‘So, coming to Warwick with me is a categorical no?’
She nodded, still so angry with him that she didn’t trust herself to speak.
‘You’re full of surprises this evening,’ William said, reaching up to fiddle with his collar because her fury and her glaring had left him discomfited. ‘It’s not just the way you look – you’ve changed since I’ve been away.’
‘It’s been three years,’ Neve said, and she made a conscious decision to let her anger go. It wasn’t worth it and William wasn’t to blame for failing to live up to her expectations of him. There wasn’t a man alive, not even the Dalai Lama, who could be that perfect. She didn’t measure too highly on the perfect scale either. ‘I don’t think all the changes I’ve made have necessarily been for the better.’
‘I think that’s called getting older.’
‘Well, whatever it is, it sucks.’
They sat there for a while, neither of them saying anything. Neve began to wonder how long she had to sit there, before an appropriate length of time had passed and she could make her excuses and leave. Meeting up with William had been nothing but one agony after another and she needed to be on her own to lick her metaphorical wounds, pack away all those silly adolescent dreams and come to terms with the knowledge that if William wasn’t her golden ticket, then all she had to look forward to was a life that didn’t have Max in it. A miserable, lonely little life.
Neve lifted her head to tell William that, or at least mutter something about a subsequent appointment, but William wasn’t even looking at her. He was gazing across the room. Then he suddenly smiled.
Neve thought she’d memorised all his smiles, but she’d never seen this one before. William looked incandescent as he lifted his hand and waved frantically at someone.
Neve peered over her shoulder to see a girl coming towards their table, her own smile just as luminous as William’s.
William stood up, in time for the girl to throw her arms around him. ‘Baby,’ she said in an American accent. ‘I missed you.’
‘I missed you too,’ William said, and even his voice sounded different: softer, lighter, happier. ‘The afternoon seemed to last an eternity.’
The girl giggled, then giggled some more as William tickled her waist as he let her go. The only person who wasn’t smiling or giggling or doing anything but sitting there with a frozen look on her face was Neve.
William went off to find another chair and Neve tried to smile but it felt more like a grimace as the girl gave her a friendly but slightly blank look, as if she hadn’t expected to find Neve sitting there.
She was beautiful. Maybe the most beautiful girl that Neve had ever seen in real life. She was tall and slim, not just slim, but lithe and toned with long, naturally wavy caramel-coloured hair that she pushed back with a nervous hand so Neve could get a better look at her face, which was perfectly symmetrical, free from make-up and gorgeous. Neve marvelled that they could both have eyes, nose and mouth, but while hers were wholly unremarkable, this girl’s features looked as if they’d been sculpted by some divine hand.
And, of course, she was wearing faded blue jeans, a white T-shirt and flip-flops with an easy elegance that made them look like haute couture, while Neve was sitting there in a borrowed dress and bra, a pair of Spanx, sandals that were cutting into her feet, hair that was getting lanker and limper by the second and a natural look that had taken two people an hour to achieve.
‘There you are, baby,’ William announced proudly, placing a leather chair in front of the girl, as if he’d personally gone all the way to the Conran Shop and carried it back on his shoulders. ‘What would you like to drink?’
The vision wanted a glass of Chardonnay, William was ordering another bottle of lager and Neve knew that she couldn’t get up and go, not for at least another half-hour, but
she couldn’t sit there sober.
‘I’ll have a glass of Sauvignon Blanc,’ she told the waiter. ‘A large glass.’
‘So, Amy, this is Neve, who made my last three years at Oxford bearable,’ William said, as Amy proffered a hand for Neve to shake. ‘Neve, this is the other surprise I wanted to tell you about. I’d like you to meet Amy, my very dear friend from LA who’s, well … somehow I’ve managed to convince her to …’ William took a deep breath. ‘I’ll try that one again. Neve, I’d like you to meet Amy, my fiancée.’ Neve’s hands were sweaty but Amy didn’t flinch as they shook hands, only smiled uncertainly. ‘Oh! Neve! But you’re so pretty,’ she said, then giggled nervously. ‘I mean, William’s told me so much about you.’
That’s funny, Neve thought. He’s told me absolutely nothing about you.
‘You never said …’ she began accusingly, because there had been all those letters and not once had William thought to mention that he was head over heels in love with another woman and planning to plight his troth, but then she stopped. There had been some oblique references to a close friend and something about frozen yogurt. Amy looked like the kind of girl who’d be evangelical about … what was it? The refreshing delights of frozen yogurt. Neve willed her hectoring, spiteful inner voice to shut the hell up. At least, William had implied, whereas there were many, many things she hadn’t felt the need to enlighten him about with even a vague hint.
The waiter arrived with their drinks and Neve practically snatched her glass off his tray and took a swift gulp. She could feel the alcohol sizzling all the way down to her empty stomach.
They were both looking at her nervously as if their future happiness depended on her reaction to their nuptials. There was no point in sitting there feeling bitter and jealous when she’d already relinquished any claim on William.
Neve raised her glass so her wine was transformed into liquid gold as it was backlit by the spectacular sunset outside. ‘Congratulations,’ she said. ‘I hope you have a very long, very happy marriage.’
Amy giggled again and William let out a breath. He had every right to be nervous – in all the time that he was giving her the hard sell on upping sticks and leaving her job to follow him to the Midlands, he hadn’t thought to tell her that she was going to play third wheel.
‘I wanted it to be a surprise,’ William explained weakly.
‘Well, mission accomplished,’ Neve said, because just one good gulp of wine was enough to make her light-headed and loose-tongued. She turned to Amy. ‘Anyway, it’s a lovely surprise. So, how did you two meet?’
They’d met in a coffee shop where Amy was waiting tables. Not even because she was taking acting lessons and had grand ambitions to get spotted by a talent scout or an agent but because, ‘I figured I could either wait tables in Des Moines, Iowa, or I could wait tables in Hollywood.’ Amy had mucked up William’s order of a chai latte and a bran muffin, and it had been love at first sight. Then during their roadtrip, because, of course, he’d taken Amy on his literary odyssey, William had realised that he couldn’t bear to leave Amy on the wrong side of the Atlantic and had gone down on one knee in the hallway of Rowan Oak, William Faulkner’s former home in Oxford, Mississippi.
Neve wanted Amy to be a bitch so she could hate her, just a little, but she wasn’t. She was sweet and disarming, as if she didn’t know she was so beautiful she could get away with being neither. The only downside to Amy was her giggle, which was starting to grate on Neve’s tattered nerves, and her serious lack of book smarts or street smarts or any other kind of smarts.
‘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 someon
e.’ 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.