‘He’s not— it’s none of your business where he is.’
‘He’s not here?’
‘No,’ Neve admitted reluctantly, and she took a deep breath to try and centre herself, but when Max’s fingers looped round her wrists, she gave a nervous start and tried to jerk free. ‘What are you doing? Get off me!’
‘You were jealous when you saw me with Jane, weren’t you?’
‘No! I wasn’t! I just thought it was impolite that—’
‘Bullshit,’ Max murmured in her ear, and his breath tickled and made Neve shiver as if it was the depths of winter and not a sticky summer night. ‘You were jealous, just like I’m jealous at the thought of you and Mr California together.’
Neve felt the anger begin to fade. ‘I wanted to explain but you were just gone. You went so quickly it was as if you were never here at all.’
Max’s hands were still round her wrists but now they felt comforting. ‘I wanted you to give me a sign …’ He closed his eyes and when he opened them again, Neve could see her own sadness reflected back at her. ‘If you’d given me any reason to hope, I’d have staged a sit-down protest.’
‘But you didn’t give me even the slightest indication that you wanted us to make a proper go of it.’ Neve tried to look cross but her heart wasn’t in it. ‘I dropped enough hints.’
‘No, you didn’t. You asked me if I was ready to be some other girl’s second pancake,’ Max told her. ‘Then a few days later, you tell me he’s coming back and it’s time for me to go.’
‘I never said it like that,’ Neve protested, struggling to get her hands free again because just standing so close to Max and having this conversation was too intense when she had all these emotions that she hadn’t dared let herself feel bubbling up again. ‘Every time I thought about William coming back, I’d think about you and how I didn’t want us to end. It’s complicated …’
Max still held her, his thumbs stroking the spot on her wrists where her pulse was thundering away. ‘Uncomplicate it then. Did you miss me?’
‘Of course I did! I’ve missed you so much, I hurt from it.’
Then, and only then, did Max release her but it was only so Neve could wind her arms around his neck because they were kissing. She couldn’t say who leaned in first, but all of a sudden there was the familiar but shocking touch of lips on lips.
It started off glacially slow as if they needed time to reacquaint themselves, but with the first glide of Max’s tongue into Neve’s mouth, it became fast and greedy and they were clutching at each other, hands delving and unbuttoning, teeth biting, then soothing the pain away, and Neve could feel her legs buckling as Max pulled her down on to the black and white linoleum and, then he was hard on top of her, his lips driving her crazy as he kissed a path down her neck.
‘When I saw you on the stairs before, I’d forgotten how beautiful you are,’ he whispered against her skin.
‘Spotty, not beautiful,’ she corrected gently, running her finger along his crooked nose. ‘Now you, you’re beautiful.’
‘I even missed your inferiority complex.’ Max smiled and shifted against her, so she could feel his cock pressing along the seam of her jeans where her clit was throbbing frantically.
‘Not being inferior. It’s a point of fact. I’m covered in zits,’ Neve said and she didn’t know why she felt the need to share that with Max but then she was glad that she had because he was kissing each one of the angry red bumps along her forehead and chin and cheeks, even though a few of them were starting to suppurate. ‘Don’t do that, it’s completely unhygienic. Kiss my mouth instead.’
Neve didn’t even care that they were going to have sex on her kitchen floor. She only cared that Max was all fingers and thumbs as he tried to prise his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans, which were halfway down his legs. She sat up to help but then had to clumsily scramble to her feet and kick off her own jeans, which were pooled around her ankles.
‘Do you want to move this to the bedroom, then?’ Max asked, leaning back on his elbows so he could look at her standing there in her unbuttoned blouse and knickers.
And maybe they were destined to be together because Neve didn’t think she could ever be this relaxed and unclothed with anyone else. But she’d think about that when she wasn’t hopping from one leg to the other. ‘I need to pee!’ she yelped, because it had been ages since her last juice and it always went right through her and now that she was upright, she realised that she’d been holding it in for ages. ‘Now! Don’t go anywhere!’
She also could never share information about her bodily functions with anyone who wasn’t Max, Neve thought, as she washed her hands and stared at her face in the mirror. She was so flushed that her spots weren’t even that noticeable and she liked the way she looked when she was with Max; all kiss-sore and saucer-eyed. She could hear him crashing about in the kitchen and a loud, ‘What the fuck!’ as she opened the bathroom door and was just about to order him to her bedroom in a come-hither voice, when she saw that he was rooting through her fridge, in his hand the empty Cleanse bottle that she’d thrown across the kitchen.
‘Max?’ she said uncertainly and he paused, head still in her refrigerator.
‘What the fuck?’ he said again, his voice muffled, then he straightened up and in his other hand was the wire bottle cage containing tomorrow’s three juices. ‘What are you doing with this shit?’
‘Well, I’m detoxing, it’s why I’m so spotty,’ Neve said carefully. ‘Lots of toxins build up over time and your body can’t shift them and your energy levels get all out of whack and—’
‘You’re doing this to lose weight, aren’t you?’
And that was a surprise, why? ‘You know my goal is to be a size ten. It’s not like I made a secret of it.’
Max tried to shrug but his shoulders were so stiff with anger that it was more of a jerk. ‘And what was wrong with what you were doing before?’
‘It was taking too long.’
‘Oh, so you’re on a clock. Funny that going on a juice fast just so happens to coincide with Mr California’s triumphant homecoming,’ Max scoffed and Neve didn’t know how he could stand there still naked, still half-hard and totally at ease as he laid into her, while she was suddenly wishing that they were doing this fully clothed. If they had to talk about her body, then she didn’t want her body so prominently displayed.
‘Look, I put on five pounds when I was with you.’ No matter how hard she tried, her words sounded like an accusation. ‘I’m not like other girls. I can’t just lose five pounds by cutting back on sweets and crisps. It takes more effort than that.’
She couldn’t bear it any longer but entered the kitchen hunched over to hide her belly and thighs as she groped one-handed for her jeans.
‘That is not a good enough reason to choke down this crap!’ Max waved the bottles of precious liquid about, to make his point, and Neve held her breath as they bumped around in their wire cage. Even with her 50 per cent discount, they were still fifteen pounds a bottle.
‘Can you put them down? Gently, please,’ she begged, easing one foot into her jeans. ‘And can you turn round while I get myself dressed?’
Max thumped the bottles down on the table so hard they bounced, and when Neve whimpered in protest, he exploded. His face got so red and angry that she wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see cartoon steam coming out of his ears. ‘You are not drinking this crap!’ he howled. ‘Two people died in New York doing this bloody Cleanse.’
‘They probably had underlying medical problems,’ Neve muttered.
‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ Max shouted. ‘Really, what do you think is going to change when you’re in a size-ten frock? What’s going to be different?’
Neve didn’t answer at first because she was fastening her jeans and she needed time to think, although really this should have been a no-brainer. ‘I’ll be different,’ she said eventually. ‘I’ll be happier. I’ll be normal.’
‘I don’t
know how you can be the smartest person I’ve ever met and also the most stupid,’ Max snapped, as he pulled on his jeans. ‘What’s going to magically happen between now and you being a size ten that’s going to make you different and happy and normal?’
‘I will be different,’ she said fiercely, as if saying it with enough vehemence was enough to make it so. ‘The only reason you want to keep me fat is because you can’t handle being in a relationship with someone who’s slim enough and pretty enough to make demands on you.’
‘That’s crap,’ Max spluttered.
‘What’s crap is you making judgements about me when you’re far from perfect yourself,’ Neve shrieked, her voice so shrill that it scraped her throat. ‘You go to your therapist and jaw on about your intimacy issues when the only issue was your uncontrollable urge to sleep with girls solely because of what they looked like. You’re the shallow one, not me!’
‘I’ll tell you something about those girls. Not one of them, not the models or the actresses, went on about the way they looked as much as you do,’ Max said. He wasn’t shouting any more, but spitting the words out like bullets. ‘You’re not self-deprecating, sweetheart. You’re the most self-involved, narcissistic person I have ever met.’
‘I bet you don’t even know what narcissism means!’ Max might not have been shouting any more, but Neve certainly was. ‘At least William’s on my intellectual level.’
‘It’s never going to work between you two, you know that, don’t you?’
It was like having a glass of icy-cold water suddenly thrown in her face. Max was completely still, no longer stabbing at the air with his fingers to make his point, but standing there with his hands in his pockets.
‘Yes, it will,’ Neve said as she quietened down too.
Max started walking towards her, his face so intent and serious that Neve took a step back. Then he changed direction so he was standing in front of her corkboard and could give one of the photos that was pinned to it a derisive flick.
‘No, it won’t,’ he said, his hand covering the picture of Neve and William taken at a garden party in Oxford. It was the only photo from back then that Neve could look at without cringing. She and William were sitting on a bench and she was smiling awkwardly for the camera, while William was in half-profile and gazing at her with such tenderness that having Max’s hand obscuring their faces made it seem like he was also obliterating the happy memories she had of William. ‘This isn’t any more real than we were.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Neve said witheringly, her eyes shooting daggers into Max’s back as he stooped to give the photograph a closer inspection. ‘What William and I have … well, I wouldn’t expect someone like you to understand.’
It wasn’t often that Neve chose her words solely for the damage they could inflict, but she still felt a twinge of satisfaction as she saw Max’s spine stiffen; however, when he turned back to her, his expression was thoughtful.
‘There’s nothing to understand.’ Max cocked his head. ‘All you’ve got there is a lot of long words and hot air. The most you’ll ever do is hold hands. Pity it takes more than that to get you off though.’
Neve went hot, then cold, and back to hot. Hotter than a thousand, flaming, fiery suns. ‘Get out!’
It wasn’t crockery or anything sharp and pointy that might take out an eye, but Neve scooped up Max’s shirt from the floor and threw it at him. He caught it one-handed, which was even more infuriating. ‘Well, there’s nothing here worth staying for.’
She never wanted to see him again, and Neve was sure Max felt exactly the same way but it wasn’t that simple when he had to put his socks and sneakers back on while she stood there with her hands on her hips, eyes narrowed and this terrible rage bubbling and brewing so she had to tense every muscle she possessed so she wouldn’t suddenly find her hands wrapped around his windpipe.
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.
Chapter Thirty-eight
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.
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