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.
Chapter Forty-one
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.
‘I’m going to fucking kill you!’ she shouted, until she realised that Charlotte wasn’t shouting back and that the banging she could hear was coming from next door where it sounded like the Scoins had a battering ram aimed at the party wall.
It was enough to catch Neve off-guard and Charlotte lunged at her, not to scratch or hit but to wrap her arms tightly around Neve. ‘Stop it,’ she said sharply. ‘Just stop it, Neevy.’
Her legs didn’t want to hold her up any more so Neve sank to the floor, Charlotte still holding her as she sat there, shaking and panting heavily. Slowly she came back to the present, where her face was buried in Charlotte’s neck and her foot still hurt and she had a hundred other aches and pains both inside and out.
‘Let me go,’ she said, struggling to free herself.
Charlotte didn’t budge. ‘Promise you won’t try and strangle me again.’
‘I promise,’ Neve said. Her words must have passed muster because Charlotte’s arms fell away, leaving Neve feeling curiously bereft as she raised her head and looked right into the eyes of her enemy. Or the left eye because the right eye was red and almost swollen shut.
‘Oh God, did I do that?’
‘Yeah, and it hurts like hell,’ Charlotte said – she sounded surprisingly unconcerned. ‘It’s OK. I split your lip.’
Neve put her hand to her mouth and gingerly prodded her bottom lip; her hand came away bloody. Her wrap dress had unwrapped and she was about to peer down her legs to see how her big toenail had fared in the mêlée, when Charlotte picked up a tub of rapidly melting Chunky Monkey.
‘What is all this crap?’ she asked, gesturing at the debris that littered the hall floor: broken biscuits and crisps burst free of their packets, tomato ketchup arcing across the wall so the entrance looked like a scene from a splatter movie.
‘It’s my food,’ Neve said defiantly. ‘I bought it and I’m going to take it upstairs and eat it. All of it.’
‘No, you’re not,’ Charlotte said. ‘You can’t eat stuff like this any more ’cause it will make you fat again.’
‘Well, according to you, I’m still fat so what difference does it make?’ Neve braced her legs and tried to stand up, but it proved too much effort. ‘Stop being nice to me. It’s not convincing and it’s not going to make me see the error of my ways and guilt me into saying sorry to you.’
Charlotte didn’t say anything at first. She stretched her legs out in front of her and gave Neve a thoughtful look. ‘You are noisy …’ she began.
‘And most of the time I’m as quiet as a bloody mouse,’ Neve hissed. She hated feeling angry all of the time, so she was turned inside out and back to front but never right way round again. It was exhausting. ‘I’ve sat upstairs before, not moving, hardly even daring to breathe, and you’ve still banged on the ceiling with your bloody broom.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘But nothing! It’s my home! I’m meant to be able to shut the door and escape from the world, but I’m scared to even make a cup of tea because it sets you off. And FYI, I’m perfectly entitled to use the washing line a couple of days a week and walk up the stairs to my flat and—’
‘You don’t know what it’s like living underneath you,’ Charlotte insisted, but she wouldn’t look at Neve; she stared at a squashed loaf of bread instead. ‘Every sound carries.’
‘Sure it does, and if I’m so noisy, then how come you never start on Celia and Yuri who slam doors and play loud music and you never made a fuss when you knew Max was there?’ Just saying his name and remembering how it felt to have him with her was an ache that would still be there long after her lip stopped throbbing and her toe no longer felt as if it was damaged beyond salvation. ‘You’re just a bully. You always have been and you always will be.’
‘I’m not a bully.’ Charlotte sounded indignant. ‘We just don’t get on, that’s all.’
Neve stared at her in disbelief. ‘We don’t get on because you waged a hate campaign against me at school; you called me that awful name and you took my clothes after PE and you got your friends to spit at me. And OK, when you married Dougie I didn’t exactly roll out the welcome mat but it’s not as if you ever apologised. Why won’t you admit it?’
Charlotte wrinkled her nose. ‘When we were at school …’ She looked up to the ceiling for inspiration. ‘I was really unhappy and picking on you made me feel better.’
‘Is that the best you can do?’
‘I’m trying to explain,’ Charlotte said, pulling a face. ‘I’m not good with, like, words and stuff. My dad had left and I went out with Dougie for two weeks and then he dumped me and I got put in Remedial English. I was such a loser so I just made out that you were a bigger loser and it made me feel better.’
‘But why me?’
‘Well, you were Dougie’s sister and it was easier to take it out on you than him – you talked posh and you always had your head in a book.’ Charlotte, at last, was beginning to look sheepish. Neve would rather she looked ashamed, but she’d settle for sheepish. ‘And I knew you wouldn’t fight back.’
‘And I was fat,’ Neve reminded her.
‘Well, see, you weren’t,’ Charlotte said. ‘I mean, you were a bit porky, but you weren’t fat fat. Not to start with.’
‘I’ve always been fat fat,’ Neve said tartly, but, for once, that wasn’t important. ‘So, why did you decide to reinstate your reign of terror?’
‘What?’
‘Why have you been bullying me again?’ Neve asked quietly.
Charlotte looked away again, then winced as she levered herself up and got to her feet. ‘Look, we need to clear up this mess.’ She swivelled around to look at her Juicy Coutured rear end. ‘I’ve been sitting in ice cream and—’
‘I asked you a question, Charlotte.’
‘I know you did.’ Charlotte walked towards the stairs. ‘You can come up to mine, if you like.’
Neve really didn’t have a choice, so she followed Charlotte into the first-floor flat that she’d never been in since it had been converted.
It was bland and impersonal; a symphony of magnolia and oatmeal, taupe and cream. Almost as if Charlotte and Dougie had decorated it solely for the purpose of having a neutral interior that would appeal to prospective buyers because neither of them planned on sticking around that long. The only personal touch was a wedding photo on the mantelpiece. Charlotte and Dougie were standing on either side of the Elvis impersonator who’d married them in Vegas. Neve had never seen Charlotte look so happy as she beamed a gummy smile while Dougie stood there looking red-faced and uncomfortable.
Charlotte walked into the lounge with a roll of black bin bags and a bucket of hot soapy water. ‘Shall we sort out the hall?’
They worked quickly and silently as they dumped the ruined food in the garbage bags and stacked them by the front door. Then Neve washed the ketchup off the walls as Charlotte tackled the pools of melted ice cream.
Then they were back in Charlotte’s flat, sitting at her kitchen table, drinking tea. Charlotte had changed into a clean tracksuit and had a bag of frozen peas pressed against her eye, and Neve had her foot propped up on her chair, her big toe padded with gauze and a towel draped over it because they’d both agreed that even looking at it made them both want to dry heave.
It was progress of a sort.
Just as Neve decided that she’d lost her advantage and Charlotte would never confess the rest of the awful truth, she put down her mug and looked steadily at Neve.
‘Dougie doesn’t love me,’ she said. ‘I don’t think he ever did, not really. Just married me to prove to your dad that he was a proper grown-up.’
Suddenly Neve didn’t think she wanted to hear the rest of Charlotte’s confession. Not if it was going where she thought it was going.
‘I’m sure that’s not the case,’ she said weakly.
‘Nah, it is.’ Charlotte rested her elbows on the table. ‘I’ve loved him ever since Year Nine and I thought if I loved him enough, then eventually I could make him love me back.’
‘It doesn’t work like that, does it?’ Neve was thinking of William; all that energy she’d expounded on loving him. The thing about love was that it caught you unawares, turned up in the most unexpected places, even when you weren’t looking for it.
‘You can say that again,’ said Charlotte, getting up and walking to the freezer to swap the frozen peas for frozen carrots. With her back to Neve, she said, ‘He’s shagging someone else. Lots of someone elses.’
Neve shut her eyes. She didn’t want to feel sorry for Charlotte and she was sure that Charlotte didn’t want her sympathy, but she could empathise. When Amy had turned up earlier that evening, she’d been annoyed, had even felt a little betrayed, but it was nothing compared to the agony she felt at the thought of Max with someone else. He’d probably shagged lots of someone elses too by now.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and she meant it.
‘You don’t have to be,’ Charlotte said matter-of-factly, pulling out the chair and sitting down again. ‘He drinks too much and he stays out all night and I don’t say anything. Then I scream at him for all kinds of stupid shit that doesn’t m
atter because I’m too scared to talk about the stuff that does matter.’
‘Because then he might say he doesn’t love you and walk out for good,’ Neve guessed.
Charlotte looked at her in surprise. ‘Yeah. How did you know that?’ She gave Neve the ghost of a smile. ‘You’re really, really smart.’
‘Oh, in some ways I’m really, really stupid,’ Neve said. She put down her mug and folded her arms. ‘This has got to stop. Neither of us can live like this. You have to stop making me feel like shit because you feel like shit. Does that even work?’
‘Not really,’ Charlotte said, and then she started to cry.
It was horrible. Neve could tell that Charlotte was humiliated at the thought of crying in front of her, because she curled in on herself so Neve couldn’t see her face through the curtain of hair. She kept trying to swallow down the sobs, which just made them sound even more desperate and pitiful as they were wrenched from her.
There was nothing Neve could do, so she did nothing. She simply sat there quietly, and when it seemed like Charlotte was done, she got up, soaked a piece of kitchen roll under the tap and gave it to her, her hand on Charlotte’s shoulder for one brief moment.
Charlotte carefully dabbed at her cheeks. ‘It really hurts to cry when you’ve got a black eye.’
‘Hurts to drink hot tea with a split lip,’ Neve offered and they shared a weak smile.
‘You know what, Neevy? He won’t even hold my fucking hand when we’re walking down the street. How fucked up is that?’
‘It’s very fucked up.’ Neve glanced up at the clock. It was past midnight, which was early considering that she felt as if she’d lived several lifetimes over the last few hours. ‘It’s late. I should be going.’
‘Are we friends now, then?’ Charlotte asked doubtfully.
‘I think friends is pushing it.’ Charlotte looked a little put out by that. ‘Shall we just say that we’ve called a truce with a ceasefire effective immediately?’
‘You what?’