Before Max caught her staring, Neve picked up the laminated menu, which was difficult when she was wearing woolly gloves. She was about to ask why they were sitting outside when it occurred to her that maybe Max didn’t want to be seen with her in a crowded public place.
‘Are you ready to order?’ Max asked, and Neve realised there was a waitress at her side.
She ordered a pot of tea and was going to send the waitress away when her stomach growled warningly. Normally she’d never dream of eating on a date or in front of anyone who wasn’t immediate family, but Max watching her eat scrambled eggs on granary toast didn’t even compare to their first half-clothed encounter.
The waitress left far too quickly for Neve’s liking, so there was just Max gazing steadily at her and she hadn’t said a single word to him since she sat down.
‘Have you had a good week?’ she asked shyly, painfully aware of how breathy and high-pitched her voice sounded and how she didn’t want to take off her stupid woolly hat with the ear-flaps because she knew she’d have really shocking hat hair.
Max nodded. ‘Been a bit of a nightmare, if you must know,’ he sniffed. ‘Trying to lock down the August cover. If there’s one thing worse than dealing with the talent, it’s dealing with the talent’s agent, manager and publicist. Complete mare.’
Neve nodded in what she hoped was a sympathetic manner. She’d got the general gist of the conversation, Max had had a hard week, but the specifics eluded her. ‘The talent? Is that someone’s nickname in the entertainment industry?’
‘No,’ Max said slowly and rather condescendingly. ‘It’s how I describe a celebrity when I can’t say their name because I’ve had to sign a confidentiality agreement.’
‘Oh. I see.’ Neve felt as if she’d been unfairly chastised for not knowing the machinations of the entertainment industry, but from the way Max winced as the clouds momentarily parted to allow a faint beam of sunlight through, she suspected he had a hangover and decided not to take it personally. ‘Why are you working on the August cover when it’s the beginning of March?’
‘Hasn’t Celia ever explained to you about lead times?’ Neve shook her head and Max groaned theatrically. ‘Well, get her to fill you in next time you see her. It’s really hard having to explain these things to civilians.’
At least she was picking up some media buzzwords. Celebrities were called ‘the talent’ and lowly peasants like Neve were known as ‘civilians’.
‘I’ll be sure to do that,’ Neve said crisply, folding her arms because she was annoyed and absolutely freezing but she was damned if she was going to let Max know that. ‘Silly old me, thinking that working on a fashion magazine was glamorous.’
‘It is glamorous,’ Max snapped. ‘And Skirt isn’t a fashion magazine. It’s actually a luxury lifestyle title.’ He paused as the waitress returned with a pot of tea for Neve and Max’s triple espresso. ‘Thank you, darling. I’m going to need another one of these in about ten minutes.’
Neve reluctantly removed a glove so she could pour herself a cup of tea and waited for Max to ask her how her week had been, but he was too busy knocking back his coffee in one swift gulp.
‘So what glamorous things have you done this week?’ she persisted and she didn’t even care, but hearing Max jaw on about a lot of vapid celebrities had to be better than sitting there in tense and resentful silence. She couldn’t believe that he’d agreed to go on a date with her, and had gone to all the trouble of actually turning up when he had zero interest in making even polite conversation.
‘The usual. Launches, screenings, after-shows … Oh, and I went to the soft opening of Jamie Oliver’s new restaurant,’ Max said with markedly more enthusiasm than he’d shown up to now. ‘Nigella and Sophie were both there – Sophie Dahl, that is. She dared me to nick the salt and pepper pots but that wasn’t even the best thing that happened this week.’
It sounded pretty spectacular to Neve, who had a lot of time for Sophie Dahl and her struggles with her weight, though she was slightly shocked that she’d encourage Max in acts of petty larceny. ‘It wasn’t?’
‘Didn’t even come close,’ Max said, resting his elbows on the table and giving her a swift and wicked smile. ‘My publishers bought me a Mini Cooper, though Mandy sent hers back because she wanted them to paint it pink and put in a sunroof.’
‘That would be a car?’ Neve clarified because she wanted to make sure it wasn’t more obscure media slang.
‘Yup. Penalties and Prada was Tesco’s bestselling fiction title last year and we just hit quarter of a million copies sold.’ He smiled to himself. ‘Of course, that doesn’t include foreign sales.’
‘Quarter of a million?’ Neve echoed, and if she sounded appalled then she just couldn’t help it.
‘Why are you scrunching up your face like you’re standing downwind of a sewage pipe?’
‘Well, it’s great that you got a new car and, well, at least it means that people are buying books, I suppose,’ Neve hedged, but then she couldn’t rein in these indignant words that needed to be spoken out loud. ‘But really it says everything that’s wrong about the publishing industry, that a quarter of a million people bought and read a sex and shopping novel that wasn’t even written by one of those footballer girlfriends, and yet most of the shortlisted titles on the Orange Prize, which is an award for women writers, don’t even sell ten thousand copies. It’s just not right.’
‘Well, it’s probably because they’re crap and go on about how shit it is to be an oppressed woman in a burqa in Iran or they’re one of those worthy books about a young girl coming to terms with her burgeoning sexuality in a rural town some time in the past when it was all ration books and no TV,’ Max rapped back at her.
Neve choked on her tea. Really choked on it so she spat drops of it on the paper tablecloth. ‘Name me three books that were on the shortlist for last year’s prize?’ she hissed at him and didn’t even wait for Max to answer because it would be a bloody long wait. ‘You can’t. I’m guessing you can’t even name the winner.’
‘Yeah, well, have you even read one of my books?’
‘You mean one of Mandy McDonald’s books, don’t you?’ Neve corrected.
‘It’s Mandy McIntyre, sweetheart, which you’d know if you read anything that was printed in this century.’
Neve had read lots of books that had been written in the current century, though she was currently hard-pressed to think of a single one. ‘At least I read books,’ she sneered, and she thought it might have been the first time that she’d ever sneered at anyone, but really, Max was the most objectionable person she’d ever met – so full of himself and obsessed with the shallow and superficial.
‘It’s probably why you work in some dusty old library, full of elderly lesbians with their cardigans buttoned all the way up to their necks as they read Agatha Christie novels and leer at your arse when they ask you to get books down from the top shelf,’ Max announced scathingly as Neve spat tea over the tablecloth again.
‘It’s a literary archive and there’s nothing wrong with wearing cardigans,’ she all but shrieked, though that really was neither here nor there, but Neve never felt properly dressed without a cardigan, and yes, she usually did up all the buttons because she tended to feel the cold. ‘And there’s nothing wrong in being a lesbian, unless you’re completely homophobic.’
‘How dare you?’ Max gasped. He certainly looked angry though he sounded as if he was ramping up the outrage for comic effect. ‘I am not homophobic. Almost all of my male friends are gay and I love Lady Gaga.’
Neve snorted in derision and would have got up there and then, flouncing off to Waitrose, and maybe even swearing under her breath, but the waitress was back with a laden tray.
She was rewarded with a devastating smile from Max that made her flutter her eyelashes and shove her breasts in his face as she placed a full English breakfast, a basket of pastries and a pot of coffee in front of him. Almost as an afterthought, she put down Neve’s pl
ate.
‘Sweetheart, you’re a lifesaver,’ Max said as he drizzled ketchup all over his eggs. ‘Honestly, you keep spoiling me like this and we’re going to have to make things official.’
The waitress giggled even though Max didn’t even attempt to sound sincere, Neve thought to herself angrily, as she tugged off her other glove so she could eat her toast and eggs with a knife and fork. She’d been brought up properly, unlike Max who was shovelling baked beans on to a torn-off piece of toast.
It was hard to keep a grip on her cutlery when her fingers were turning blue. ‘Why are we sitting outside anyway?’ she asked.
To her surprise, Max smiled weakly and gestured under the table. ‘I brought my wingman in case things got sticky, but I needn’t have bothered as things have been going so fantastically well.’
‘You brought your what?’ Neve scooched back her chair so she could peer under the table. Curled around Max’s chair legs was a stocky, tan-coloured dog that looked like a Rottweiler or a bull mastiff or another breed of devil dog that the Daily Mail was always trying to get banned. Neve gave the dog, and the bondage harness it was wearing, a wary look but she needn’t have bothered. The dog glanced up, caught Neve’s eye, and then huddled further under the chair with its front paws over its eyes. It was unbelievably cute but also rather a blow to Neve’s ego.
‘I don’t think he likes me,’ she said.
‘Keith doesn’t like anyone.’
‘Your dog’s called Keith? That’s not a dog’s name.’
Max shrugged helplessly. ‘It’s the only name he’ll answer to. I tried out other noble and rugged names like Troy and Cassius, but he wasn’t having it. Are you really too cold out here? You should have said something.’
Neve shook her head. ‘I’ll be all right as long as I warm my hands on the teapot every couple of minutes,’ she said, because there wasn’t much else she could say. They were meant to be brunching together and if Max had brought his dog, then they were going to have to brunch al fresco.
‘It’s just I try to spend a lot of time with Keith on the weekend. I have a dog-walker, but Keith gets left on his own during the week and he has serious abandonment issues.’
‘He does?’ Neve risked another look at Keith, who was still doing the whole see no evil thing.
‘Well, he was a stray …’ Max paused. ‘You sure you want to hear this?’
‘Of course I do. I always wanted a puppy when I was little but Celia had asthma so I made do with a goldfish. Goldfish are really boring pets,’ Neve added, as she thought back to the many fish she’d owned and the many times she’d come downstairs in the morning to find their bloated, white-bellied corpses floating on top of the water.
‘I didn’t have any pets,’ Max said. ‘Though one time I stole my friend’s guinea pig and took it home, which didn’t go down well with my mum. She thought we had rats.’
Neve smiled and Max smiled back and it was such a relief not to be sniping at each other that Neve stopped fidgeting with the sugar bowl or pretending to read the menu or even calculating how long it would be before she could leave.
‘So, you were going to tell me the root of Keith’s abandonment issues,’ Neve prompted. ‘You don’t think he’ll get paranoid if we talk about him?’
‘Paranoia is so far down the list of his emotional disorders that I think we’ll be OK,’ Max said with a grin, leaning back on his chair. ‘So a couple of summers ago, my Broadband went wonky and I had to get an engineer around …’
Neve had finished her scrambled eggs and toast and was on her second pot of tea by the time Max had finished the heart-wrenching saga of Keith’s early years. He’d followed the Broadband engineer into Max’s flat. Max had assumed that Keith belonged to the engineer and it was a bit of a cheek for him to take his dog along on house calls, but the engineer had found Keith sitting on the doorstep and thought that he was Max’s dog.
‘I think he belonged to someone who’d gone on holiday and couldn’t afford to have him kennelled so they just dumped him and hoped he’d be there when they got back,’ Max said, reaching down to pat Keith. ‘He was a bit beaten up, as if he’d got into a lot of fights, and when I took him to the animal shelter, they discovered these older scabs and scars as if his owners hadn’t treated him very well.’
‘So you didn’t leave him at the shelter?’ Neve asked.
‘Oh, I did,’ Max assured her. ‘But I went back for him five minutes later. He had a skin condition and cowered and barked when anyone but me went near him and I couldn’t see him being adopted any time soon, so I broke him out of there.’
Neve could feel everything in her turning to mush. ‘Aw, poor Keith,’ she cooed. ‘Poor little pooch.’
It was a voice other women reserved for clucking at babies and kittens but Neve had yet to see a baby that didn’t look like an angry, hairless old man, and ever since she’d been bitten by next door’s cat when she was six and had to have a tetanus shot, she’d been a dog person. When her mother had corralled her into going to the Goddess Workshop to boost her self-esteem, there had been a lot of banging on about finding her happy place. It turned out that her happy place was a field of lolloping, rollicking Labrador puppies and, although she wasn’t a crier, a particularly poignant episode of It’s Me or the Dog could have her in pieces.
‘Keith lives in the lap of luxury these days,’ Max said sourly, his eyes crinkling up as if he was trying to suppress a smile. ‘He’s spoiled rotten.’
Neve felt it was only fair to revise her low opinion of Max. He couldn’t be quite so feckless and shallow if he’d actually managed to make a commitment to another living being who obviously adored him if the snuffly noises from under the table were anything to go by.
‘He deserves to be spoiled,’ Neve insisted, and then she was sticking her head under the table so she could talk in that sickly voice again. ‘You need lots of TLC, don’t you? Yes, you do.’
Keith raised his head, and just as Neve expected him to either bare his teeth or retreat so far under Max’s chair that he came out the other side, he cautiously came a little closer to her outstretched hand and sniffed it.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Max muttered, when he saw what was going on.
‘He knows I’m a friend,’ Neve said, gently rubbing the back of her hand against Keith’s head. ‘You’re a lovely boy, aren’t you?’
‘Have you got some liver treats hidden up your sleeve?’
Neve shook her head. ‘I don’t normally carry liver treats on the off-chance that I might run into a skittish dog I want to befriend.’
‘Keith usually hates strangers.’ Max frowned, as he watched Keith nuzzle Neve’s hand. ‘You should feel very honoured.’
All in all, it was a good place for their disastrous date to end, Neve decided as she pulled her purse out of her bag and tried to catch the waitress’s eye. ‘Well, this has been, um … interesting, but I think …’
Max reached across the table to place his hand on top of hers to stop her from opening her purse. ‘I’ll get this,’ he said firmly. His fingers were shockingly warm against her chilled skin. ‘You’re freezing!’
‘Really, I’m fine,’ Neve told him as she tried not to shiver, but it was less to do with the cold and more to do with Max’s thumb rubbing against the tender place on the underside of her wrist where her veins criss-crossed like lines on the tube map. ‘Anyway, I really should be going.’
‘Well, before you do, we should probably decide what we’re going to do on our next date,’ Max said. ‘There’s a fashion and film exhibition at the V&A that looks quite good.’
‘Next date? We’re not dating,’ Neve spluttered. ‘Why would you even think that?’
‘Well, technically we’ve been on three dates now, so I think that we’re having one of those pancake relationships that you’re such an expert on. And you did phone up and ask me out, so why are you so surprised? What did you think we were doing?’
It was a really good question and one that N
eve couldn’t even begin to answer. ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure what …’ She tried again. ‘Really, why would you even be interested in that kind of arrangement with someone like me? Is it my novelty value?’
‘Kind of, yeah,’ Max admitted. He pouted slightly. ‘I can tell that you don’t like me that much and you’re about the only person I’ve ever met who doesn’t think I’m ace with added bits of aceness.’ He treated Neve to an outrageous wink. ‘You’re going to be powerless to resist me in the end.’
Neve didn’t have the guts to tell Max that she’d probably like him a lot more if he didn’t come out with such arrogant twaddle. Obviously her face gave her away, because Max stopped holding her hand so he could wag a finger at her in admonition.
‘You’ll see. It’s like the time everyone said that there was no way I could get Madonna for the cover of Skirt, but I spent a year wooing her publicist and then when the interview was set up, everyone said she’d be really difficult and I’d be lucky to get ten minutes.’ Max smiled triumphantly. ‘The interview lasted two hours and then we went clubbing. If Madonna loves me, then you will too.’
It was the first and only time that Neve had ever been compared to Madonna. It felt oddly insulting. She raised her eyebrows. ‘Max, it’s not that I don’t like you – that is, I don’t not like you – but I just can’t see you in even a pancake relationship.’
Max flapped his hand in front of his face as if he was swatting a fly. ‘Look, short of fucking some circus freaks and posting the video on YouTube, you name it, I’ve done it. At least twice. Having a relationship and not even a sexual one is so straight, it’s practically perverted.’
Now Neve was definitely insulted. ‘Well, I’m happy to be of service,’ she snapped.