She was grateful that that was all her father was going to say about her weight because over the last hour, Neve could feel the resentment and the hurt of the last three years slowly ebbing away, fading into the background, even if it wasn’t entirely exorcised. ‘You know, Dad, it doesn’t matter how many letters I’ve got after my name, I’m still me. I’m not ever going to forget where I came from.’
‘You’re a Slater through and through,’ her father said proudly. ‘That’s where you get your brains from. I love your ma, but her family, back of the queue when they were handing out common sense, the whole bloody lot of them.’
Once that had been cleared up, all of a sudden it was easy to know the right thing to say, which was, ‘Can you come back to my flat? The handle’s loose on the cutlery drawer and the shower keeps dribbling even when I’ve turned it off.’
Barry Slater was never happier than when he could perform some minor household repairs. After Neve had shut Keith in her bedroom because middle-aged men with toolboxes were yet another thing that gave him an attack of the vapours, her dad also rehung a picture, adjusted the time on her oven clock and offered to mount a rack on the hall wall for her bike.
‘Get it out of the way, it would,’ he remarked as Neve showed him out.
It would get the bike out of the way but it would also make Charlotte think that Neve had done it for her benefit – and that could never happen. ‘No, it’s OK,’ Neve told him. ‘It’s not really bothering anyone.’
Neve was just about to open the front door when her father put his hand on her arm. ‘So, this chap your mother said you were seeing … I hope he’s treating you all right.’
The chap in question would be phoning in half an hour to talk utter filth down the phone. Neve blushed. ‘Of course he is.’
‘He better be. Not right, getting you to look after that dog. It could turn on you at any second,’ Barry Slater muttered darkly, which was a perfect match for the expression on his face, and just as Neve resigned herself to their reunion finishing on a sour note, he opened his arms out to her. ‘You got a hug for your old man, then?’
There never was and never would be anyone who could hold Neve and make her feel so safe and secure. She willingly went into his arms and buried her face in his shoulder so she could smell the fabric conditioner her mother used, and sawdust from where he’d been drilling holes in her wall and this other indefinable, indescribable scent that was her dad.
‘Well, we can both get our arms all the way round each other now,’ her father said gruffly, and he tried to step back, but Neve just held him tighter, until after several long minutes, he kissed the top of her head and let go. ‘I’d better get going. Your ma’ll think I’ve been kidnapped.’
Neve finally opened the street door, and just as her father stepped out, she said, ‘Maybe we could go and see a Cameron Diaz film next time?’
‘She can’t hold a candle to Jennifer Aniston, but I’d like that a lot.’
Chapter Thirty-three
Max flew back to a London that was so sunny even the boarded-up shops on Stroud Green Road looked pretty with the light reflecting off their metal grilles. Neve could almost pretend that she’d been in LA too, as every evening she and Max would eat dinner on his roof terrace, or climb down the rickety fire escape that led from her kitchen to the communal back garden. Neve much preferred his roof terrace because there was no Charlotte pointedly taking her washing off the line and making barbed remarks about Neve and the flimsiness of the patio furniture.
Neve moved through the week befuddled with fatigue because Max was jet lagged and kept waking up in the middle of the night. Of course, once Max was up, he was up and Neve would wake on a gasp because he was doing such delicious things to her. It didn’t help either that she was going to bed late and waking up early to rewrite chapter seven of her Lucy Keener biography, after Philip had given her some constructive criticism and Jacob Morrison had given her some criticism that was so brutal that it left Neve reeling. When she wasn’t immersed in Lucy Keener’s world, Neve was either stuck in the Archive’s back office or in Max’s arms. Either way, it didn’t leave much time for sleep.
The rosy glow she’d always taken for granted was now eclipsed by the shadows under her eyes, and the only thing getting Neve through each day was industrial amounts of coffee.
‘I can’t believe you’re still in the sleep-deprived stage of your relationship,’ Chloe said one Friday afternoon when she came into the back office to discover that Neve had nodded off in the middle of a tape she was transcribing. ‘Hasn’t the novelty worn off yet?’
‘If you had to listen to Lavinia Marjoribanks jaw on about how she’d have had a more successful literary career if she hadn’t spurned the advances of Vita Sackville-West, you’d fall asleep too,’ Neve said as she yawned.
‘That sounds quite exciting – lesbian shenanigans with the Bloomsbury Set.’ Chloe perched on the edge of Neve’s desk. ‘Does she dish the dirt on old Virginia?’
‘Believe me, this woman has such a monotone voice that she could make a threesome with George Clooney and Clive Owen sound like the most boring thing on earth.’ Neve rubbed her eyes and sank down on her desk. ‘I think I might throw up from over-tiredness.’
‘Poor Neevy. Maybe you’d better ask your pretend boyfriend for the night off so you can catch up on your beauty sleep,’ Chloe said, as she began to leaf through the pile of Chalet School books on Neve’s desk. ‘My mum would never let me read school stories when I was a kid. She said they were completely reactionary and had no characterisation.’
‘That is such a generalisation … and Max is not a pretend boyfriend. He’s a temporary boyfriend, which is an entirely different thing.’ Neve stretched her arms above her head. ‘I suppose a night on my own wouldn’t be such a bad thing, and I can see Max Saturday and Sunday.’
‘For a temporary boyfriend, he seems to monopolise all your time,’ Chloe murmured distractedly because she was now flicking through The School at the Chalet. ‘How’s the sex?’
‘Awesome,’ Neve said, because it was and she was too exhausted to hedge.
‘Personally, if I had a temporary boyfriend with a glamorous job, who serviced me frequently and orgasmically, I’d be thinking about making him permanent,’ Chloe said. ‘I mean, this other guy’s been away for ages and he’s an unknown quantity. Better the devil you know.’
It was the dilemma that Neve kept ruthlessly forcing to the back of her mind, every time it reared up. It seemed like the obvious thing to do, until she remembered that Max didn’t do real relationships and even if he did, she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life picturing William with the words WHAT IF? above his head in six-foot-high letters.
‘I wish men were like items from the deli counter and they came with a “try before you buy” offer,’ she grumbled. ‘I’ve spent six years wanting William to be mine. That’s nearly a quarter of my life. Besides, I’m only getting Max on his best behaviour because he knows it’s temporary.’
‘Guess you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. I hate it when that happens,’ Chloe said unhelpfully. She tapped Neve on the shoulder with The School at the Chalet. ‘Hey, can I borrow this?’
‘Knock yourself out,’ Neve muttered, reaching for the phone. ‘I’m going to call Max. At this rate I might actually fall asleep as I cycle home.’
Max wasn’t at all offended when Neve cancelled their plans to spend the night together. ‘Thank God for that,’ were his exact, uncomplimentary words. ‘I’m so knackered, I can’t think straight. I’ve spent the last half-hour looking for my iPod until I found it in the fridge.’
‘Are you sure that’s all right?’ Neve asked, because she wanted it not to be all right. If Max couldn’t live without her, not even for a mere twelve hours, then maybe it was a sign that her future should have Max in it.
‘Of course it’s all right,’ Max said cheerfully. ‘Between you and me, I think Keith could do with some male bonding time.’
Neve thought about their brief conversation all the way home. She searched hard for some double meaning in Max’s words to indicate that secretly he was bereft without her. Try as she might, there didn’t seem to be any.
As she was chaining up her bike in the hall, she dug out her phone just in case Max had texted her, but there was just a message from Orange telling her that her bill was ready to be viewed online. Neve was still standing in the hall, gazing hopefully at her phone when the front door opened and there was Charlotte.
It was too late to scurry upstairs, so Neve settled for giving the saddle of her bike a proprietary pat and nodding at her sister-in-law. ‘Oh, hi.’
‘Bike,’ Charlotte snapped, her face twisting into its usual grimace. ‘Your bloody bike is taking up the entire hall.’
Neve flapped her arms to show there was at least six feet of hall between her bike and the party wall. ‘No, it’s not.’
It was too close to call who was more surprised at Neve answering back, though Charlotte made a lightning-quick comeback. ‘Yes, it is,’ she insisted. ‘And you left your washing on the line all of yesterday. It’s a communal garden, not just yours, and there was no room on the line for anything else because your clothes take up so much space.’ She finished with a pointed look at Neve’s hips, just in case Neve hadn’t got the dig.
‘It wasn’t clothes; it was my bedlinen,’ Neve began. Then she stopped, because trying to reason with Charlotte was like trying to put out a forest fire with a glass of water. ‘Look, whatever. I don’t have time for this.’
Charlotte was still opening and closing her mouth when Neve turned on her heel and marched up the stairs. As she got to her landing, she could hear Charlotte reach her flat, then close the door behind her with a furious slam that made the whole building shake.
Neve half-expected Charlotte to start pounding away with the broom but then she heard Douglas come in a few minutes later, so she could get undressed and fall into bed on the freshly laundered sheets that Charlotte had been so angry about. After one chapter of The New Mistress at the Chalet School, she was asleep.
A couple of hours later, Neve was woken by her ringing phone. She lay there for a second, disorientated because it was still light outside, then reached for her mobile.
‘Can’t you manage without me for more than two hours?’ she asked teasingly, sitting up so she’d sound alluring rather than muffled.
‘Neve?’ said a vaguely familiar voice, that wasn’t the familiar voice she’d expected to hear. ‘It’s William.’
Her body went from hot to cold in an instant. Even though she was alone in her own bed, Neve felt horribly guilty. If she’d had a naked Max lying next to her, she might actually have died of shame.
‘Neve? This is Neve Slater?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted cautiously. ‘I wasn’t expecting a call from you.’
‘For a moment there, I thought I’d dialled the wrong number.’ For the first time, William’s perfectly enunciated, perfectly proper, BBC English made icy rivulets of fear trickle down Neve’s spine. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine. I just … erm … it’s a surprise to hear from you,’ she hurriedly improvised, scrambling out of bed so she could pace anxiously. She glanced at herself in the mirror. Her face was sleep-crumpled and her hair was sticking out in all directions.
‘I’m sorry, Neve, have I caught you in the middle of something?’
Neve pulled a face at her reflection because William couldn’t even begin to appreciate the exquisite irony of what he’d just said. ‘No, of course not. I just thought we were going to speak Sunday week. Everything’s all right, isn’t it?’ She frowned. ‘You’re not back in England already, are you? Because I thought you were aiming for the middle of July and it’s not even the end of June.’
‘Actually I am. I had to come back sooner than I expected, but I’m flying back to LA tomorrow morning,’ William said, as Neve closed her eyes and slumped against the wall. He couldn’t be back because she wasn’t a size ten and she wasn’t ready to finish with Max and she just wasn’t … ready. ‘I know it’s short notice, but are you free to meet up for a drink?’
‘What – now? Tonight?’
‘You know, your voice sounds different,’ William remarked and Neve wondered if he could hear the hysteria rising up in her like bile. ‘I’ve been meaning to mention it for ages. Maybe not as breathy as it used to be?’
‘Oh, it sounds the same to me. Well, I mean you don’t ever really hear your own voice properly, do you? Unless you hear your voice on someone else’s answerphone or something,’ Neve babbled. She smacked the palm of her hand against her forehead in the vain hope that she might be able to knock some sense into herself. ‘Sorry, you were saying? You want to meet up for a drink now.’ She squinted at the clock on her nightstand. It was eight thirty. She desperately tried to think of a cast-iron excuse that would get her out of meeting with her destiny when her destiny had turned up weeks ahead of schedule, but her mind refused to cooperate. ‘Well, I suppose I could get into town for, say, ten?’
William made a humming noise, like he always did when he was thinking. ‘That is rather late, isn’t it? It’s just I did so want to see you,’ he added, and that was just what Neve wanted him to say, had imagined him saying countless times in her head, but it wasn’t enough to dispel the panic and the fear and the feeling that she might throw up all over her bedroom rug. ‘I don’t want to just snatch a hurried hour with you. Would you mind terribly if we left it until I come back for good?’
Neve sagged in relief. Literally. She sank down to the floor because her legs wouldn’t hold her up any longer. ‘I suppose that makes sense, but it would have been lovely to see you,’ she said slowly, and she hated herself in that moment as she’d never hated anyone else. Not even Charlotte. ‘Shall we still speak the Sunday after next?’
‘Well, that’s the thing, you see, I’m doing a little literary roadtrip with, uh, a friend from LA, before I leave the States. A final hurrah, as it were,’ William said. ‘Actually it’s going to be rather fun. We’re going to start in California obviously, and visit John Steinbeck’s house in Salinas, and of course the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur.’
Half an hour later, William had eventually arrived at his final destination, New England, where he was ‘very excited about going to Concord. Can you believe that Thoreau, Emerson, Hawthorne and Louisa May Alcott all lived there?’
‘It sounds amazing,’ Neve said, and that at least she could be honest about. She could also allow herself a little fantasy that some time in the future when Max was at best just a friend and, at worst, a painful memory, William would retrace his roadtrip with Neve in the passenger seat next to him, reading maps and insisting that they detour via Amherst so she could lay some flowers on Emily Dickinson’s grave. ‘I’m so jealous. You’ll have to tell me all about it, when you call me from the road.’
‘Didn’t I mention it? I don’t really think I’m going to call until I’m back in London for good,’ William said quickly, almost shiftily to Neve’s ear, but that was probably because for the first time, she wanted him to have some secrets, some faults and then she wouldn’t feel quite so bad. ‘I mean, I’ll be on the road and staying in ghastly motels and I’ll be with my friend, but I’ll send you postcards. Lots and lots of postcards.’
‘Postcards would be fantastic.’ Neve swallowed past the lump in her throat. ‘Well, I guess I’ll see you soon.’
‘You will, and I’ll give you at least twenty-four hours’ notice next time,’ William chuckled and Neve sincerely hoped it was a joke, because she’d need at least two weeks’ notice to prepare herself mentally and physically. ‘I really did want to see you this visit, Neve, but everything’s been such a rush. I had to fly back to the UK at forty-eight hours’ notice.’
‘That’s all right.’ Neve tried not to sigh in relief again. ‘And I’ve been busy with work anyway and I’m writing—’
‘Yes, I know, beavering away
on your dead authors. There was actually something very important I wanted to ask you, but it can wait until we see each other in the fl … face to face.’
‘What kind of something?’ Neve asked. William was being so cryptic that suddenly she was intrigued and all kinds of curious.
‘It’s a surprise. A really pleasant surprise,’ William said. She’d forgotten how warm his voice sounded, so when he spoke to you, you felt as if you were the most important person in the world, or in his world. ‘You’ll never guess, so don’t even try.’
‘Not even a little guess?’
‘Honestly, it’s such a curve ball that I could give you a hundred guesses and you still wouldn’t come close,’ William said, then he chuckled and Neve smiled too.
‘Curve ball? Do you talk American now, William?’
‘Fluently, yo.’
They were both laughing now and it was stupid, the curviest curve ball ever, but maybe all her hoping and her hard work had paid off and William felt exactly the same way as she did. And that mysterious question was something along the lines of, ‘Neve, will you go out with me?’ except that sounded really adolescent and …
‘So, when I get back from roadtripping, you’re first on my to-do list,’ the real William was saying and Neve had to tear her attention away from the fantasy William who was turning up for their first official date with a huge yet tasteful bouquet of white roses. ‘Around the second week in July.’
That was only three weeks away, and that news completely obliterated all thoughts of first dates and tasteful bouquets from her mind. Even if she could find a surgeon who’d fit her with a gastric band that night, there was no way she could drop two dress sizes and another twenty pounds in three weeks. ‘OK,’ she said weakly. ‘That’ll be nice.’
‘I can’t wait,’ William said enthusiastically. ‘It’s been far too long.’
Neve murmured goodbye, wished William a lovely time on the road, then waited anxiously for the click on the line and the silence that followed. Then she flopped back on the bed and wondered why, when she was so close to getting what she’d wanted, it felt as if she was losing everything.
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