Finally, Neve had the explanation that she’d been searching for – the reason why someone like Max would want to be with someone like her, even if it was only just pretend. She was surprised to find that she wasn’t that upset – it really didn’t seem that important right then.
She sank down on a squashy leather cube that she’d been using as a footstool. ‘What made you decide to see a therapist?’
‘Because there’s something wrong with me,’ Max said, his voice distorted because he was gulping hard, but at least he was talking so Neve stayed where she was. ‘I have this great job and a cool flat and I go out every night to these fantastic parties and meet all these famous, glamorous people and they’re all my best mates but I feel empty inside. Like, none of it means anything and none of it’s real.’
There was nothing Neve could say so she just ‘hmmm-ed’ to let Max know she was listening.
‘And the reason why I shag around is because I can’t bear to be on my own. My therapist says that I don’t commit to any of the women I shag because I’m scared of intimacy, but the thing is, I don’t know how to be intimate with anyone. And I’m only seeing my therapist because I slept with Shelly, and Mandy and Kelly were furious with me and Bill took me out for a chat, like he was my fucking father or something, and told me I needed to sort myself out because I was better than that.’
‘You are,’ Neve said quietly, as she tried to process Max’s furious onslaught.
‘And I shagged one of the interns at work and I didn’t know she was engaged to the son of the MD and I nearly lost my job, and my Editor said if I didn’t get some help then she’d have to fire me. So I’m “in therapy”,’ Max still had his back to Neve but she could see him air-quote, ‘and she’s trying to peel back my layers and get to the real person, but I don’t think he exists. I’m just all style and absolutely no fucking substance.’
‘Come on, you know that’s not true.’ Neve got to her feet and even took a couple of steps towards Max but she could see his shoulders shaking. He didn’t sound as if he was crying, but he sounded as if he was close, and Neve instinctively knew that he was only holding it together because she was on the other side of the room. ‘Look, I know you and I are only temporary, but the more I get to know you, the more I like you.’
Max coughed wetly. ‘You say that because you’re a nice girl and you’re trying to make me feel better, I get that, but we’re not real. The only real thing I had was the McIntyres and I let myself think that they cared about me and that I was the son they never had, but it was just bullshit.’
‘No,’ Neve said sharply, hesitation forgotten as she stumbled towards Max. ‘That’s not true. I’ve spent my entire life on the sidelines, just watching other people. I’m an expert people-watcher and when I saw you with Bill and Jean, it was obvious that they do care about you, and … well, so do I. I care about you too, Max.’
She wrapped her arms around him, rested her head against his shoulderblade and hugged him as hard as she could. This time Max didn’t wriggle or squirm but seemed to relax back against her. ‘I don’t even know what caring looks like,’ he muttered.
‘Yes, you do,’ Neve told him. ‘Once you stopped making such a concerted effort with the flirting and the shmoozing, you’ve been nothing but kind and patient with me. I know I’m not the easiest of people to be around, but you’ve stuck it out and maybe it’s because your therapist has told you to, but you committed to our fake relationship and you should be proud of that.’
Max patted Neve’s hands, which were clasped over his midriff. ‘I should be proud that I’ve managed to last two months in a fake relationship with a girl who’s in love with someone else?’
It was impossible to continue having a conversation with Max’s back so Neve twisted around so she was standing between him and the window and could look him right in his red-rimmed eyes. She’d been right about the tears. ‘Yes, I’m in love with William and yes, he has my heart, but he doesn’t have all of it.’ She held up her thumb and forefinger. ‘I’d say there’s a tiny part of my heart that is yours alone.’
‘You’re just saying that,’ Max insisted sulkily, as if he didn’t want to be talked out of his downward spiral. ‘I bet on the inside you’re furious that I wasn’t honest with you from the start.’
And maybe she was a little annoyed, but the truth was better than the version of the truth that Neve had been tormenting herself with: that Max saw her as nothing more than a challenge and that once she’d fallen for his considerable charms, his work would be done.
‘Well, you should have told me, but I can see why it was difficult for you to tell that kind of thing to a comparative stranger.’ She shrugged and smiled. ‘I’m glad you have told me, and whether you like it or not, I’m sticking around for a bit, so you’re just going to have to put up with it, all right?’
Max pulled a face but then, unbelievably, a tiny glimmer of a smile appeared. It was maybe first cousin to a smile but it was as welcome as the first hint of sun after weeks of rain. ‘All right,’ he agreed.
‘Glad to hear it.’ And when Neve squeezed him extra tight, he squeaked in protest but then he was hugging her back. Max was a great hugger. Neve always felt like a tiny, fragile slip of a thing when his long arms were around her.
Neve’s head was telling her to get out of there as fast as she could because the weight of responsibility was bearing down on her and she could just about look after herself, never mind anyone else. But the tiny piece of her heart that she’d just given to Max spoke louder and so she stayed right where she was.
‘I’ve got a present for you,’ Max said, when Neve finally, reluctantly, released him. He pulled a familiar-looking object out of his jacket pocket. ‘Apparently you left it in the limo.’
‘I thought I’d never see it again!’ Neve exclaimed, snatching her phone and cradling it to her breast. She immediately started reading her text messages.
‘You know, the room is paid for up until Monday morning,’ Max said casually as Neve made the unhappy discovery that she’d taken a pouting, preening photo of herself in the mirror of a club toilet and had sent it to everyone in her address book, including her parents and Mr Freemont, with the message, Do I look foxy or what? ‘If you wanted to stay?’
‘Stay where?’ Neve muttered distractedly, as she wondered whether she could bear to read the text messages she’d received in reply.
‘In Manchester for the weekend, with me,’ Max said uncertainly, as he stared down at his feet. ‘We should be OK as long as we avoid Alderley Edge. I think Voila magazine has probably put up roadblocks anyway. I mean, unless I’ve completely ruined everything by over-sharing and behaving like a tool.’
Neve put down her phone because if they were going to stay until Monday, she could postpone worrying about her drunk texting until then. ‘Don’t be silly, you haven’t ruined anything, and it is a nice room, although the stripy wallpaper is still making me feel bilious.’
‘Shall we go out then?’ Neve didn’t know how to deal with this hesitant version of Max, who still seemed so flat and dejected, especially when he was giving her a tired, resigned look. ‘I suppose you’d like to go to the Old Trafford Centre and do some shopping.’
‘God, anything but that!’ After last Saturday’s shopping expedition, Neve was all shopped out until it was time to start thinking about Christmas. ‘I’ve been reading a guide to Greater Manchester and apparently there are some local areas of outstanding beauty. Can’t we go to one of them instead? Please? I think a long walk would clear both our heads.’
Max wouldn’t tell Neve where they were going. Instead he zipped her up into his favourite red hoodie and drove them out of Manchester towards Ashton-under-Lyne.
It was a long time since Neve had been out of London and she’d forgotten that north of the Watford Gap could feel like another country. The scenery was wilder and more rugged than the fields and gardens of southern England, and even the place names – Rusholme, Cheadle Hulme, Wythenshawe
– sounded exotic in a dark, satanic mills kind of way.
Max had been quiet and subdued for most of the journey but he suddenly grinned as he pulled into the car park of the Daisy Nook Country Park. ‘I’m guessing that even a hangover won’t put you off a long walk with river views?’
A long walk was exactly what she needed and Neve hoped that Max would benefit from the endorphin rush too. The focal point of the park was the River Medway running through a wooded valley between Oldham and Ashton-under-Lyne. They stopped off at the Visitors Centre to get a map and headed for the Waterhouses Aqueduct, so they could walk along the footpath, which was eighty feet above the park.
Neve could feel the last remnants of her hangover float away in the breeze as she breathed in the clean air and knew that whenever she smelled that peaty top note, she’d always remember this weekend. They leaned over the wall to look down at the children paddling in the river below them. Although it was a sunny day in late April, there was still a chill that lurked just beneath the warmth of the sun – certainly not paddling weather, Neve thought, but the youth of Greater Manchester were obviously made of hardy stuff.
They barely spoke as they climbed down from the aqueduct and walked along the canal path. Every now and again, their arms brushed against each other and Neve wished that she’d never issued a decree against holding hands. The imaginary boundary that would be breached if they held hands didn’t seem to matter so much any more, but she made do with Max’s hoodie, which was soft and warm and smelled of Brylcreem so that it felt as if she was being hugged by him, even when he went on ahead to see if there was a café around the next bend.
After a couple of hours, the sky clouded over and the sun disappeared. The first fat drops of rain began to fall as soon as Max mentioned heading back to the car. Then the first fat drops suddenly became a sluicing torrent, forcing them to shelter under a canopy of trees.
‘It’s just a shower,’ Max said hopefully, pulling Neve back by her hood as the rain slanted down on their feet. ‘Probably.’
The rain stirred up the ground so everything smelled earthy and ripe, and there was no sign that it would ever stop. Neve pulled out the map and squinted at it in the dim light. ‘Can you remember exactly where you parked the car?’
‘I think it was near Stannybrook Road?’ Max made it sound like a question rather than a definite location. ‘You think we should make a run for it?’
‘You have any better ideas?’
Max didn’t, so on Neve’s count of three they started running. It was hard to read a map in a downpour, while running full pelt. They got lost twice and kept coming back to the lake in the centre of the park, until Max spotted a sign to the Visitors Centre and from there, they squelched back to the car, sneakers sodden and muddy.
‘I can feel my jeans chafing every time I change gears,’ Max moaned as he slowly edged on to the main road. ‘And you’re dripping over my car.’
‘You’re dripping over your car too,’ Neve pointed out, reaching down to tug off her plimsolls and socks, so she could prop her feet up on the dashboard. ‘You know what this rain means, don’t you?’
‘That we’re going to die from bronchial pneumonia?’
‘The wedding … I saw the marquee going up yesterday and Mandy showed me the spot by the lake where they were going to take the wedding photos.’ Neve looked at Max from under her lashes and smiled. ‘I’d say this rain was God’s punishment for treating you so badly, wouldn’t you?’
Chapter Twenty-nine
Max started stripping off his wet clothes before Neve had even got the door of their suite open. Neve left him struggling to free himself from a chokehold of wet cotton as she ran for the privacy of the bathroom. She knew that if she were a normal girl, she’d let him have a hot shower while she soaked in the tub. They could even have bathed together, but she wasn’t a normal girl and so she couldn’t blame Max for repeatedly banging on the bathroom door to ask how much longer she was going to be.
Eventually she relented and let him shower while she combed out her wet hair and slathered moisturiser on skin that still felt horribly dehydrated. Mostly though she surreptitiously stared at Max’s reflection in the mirror as he stepped out of the shower and briskly dried himself off. She loved watching the flex of his biceps as he rubbed at his hair with a towel, and his long lean legs that led up to taut buttocks and the two delicious dimples just above them. She was just willing him to turn round so she could get a full frontal view too when she realised her mouth was hanging open and she was practically drooling.
Max did turn round then and catch her eye as she snatched up her moisturiser again and smeared a huge dollop on her face.
‘You did look really foxy last night, to quote your text message,’ he remarked casually.
‘I sent it to everyone!’
‘But I think you look prettier now wrapped in a towel with wet hair and gunk all over your face,’ he continued softly. ‘If you wanted to spend the rest of the weekend in a towel, well, that would be fine with me.’
‘I’m not pretty,’ Neve snorted, peering critically at the bruises around her eyes. ‘You’re seriously deluded, but I appreciate the sentiment.’
‘You know, I think you’re getting better at taking a compliment,’ Max mused, flicking her with the edge of his towel and grinning when Neve squawked in outrage. ‘You’re pretty, Neve, just deal with it.’
Wrapped in a fluffy towelling robe, Neve left the bathroom and walked over to the huge floor-to-ceiling window that took up one wall. It was still raining, but now she was inside, Neve could appreciate how the rain made the street-lamps and headlights sparkle down on the street below.
‘Shall I make reservations for the restaurant downstairs or do you want to go out?’ Max asked, his hands settling around her waist.
It was Saturday night and they had the whole city laid out before them and … ‘So, I need to put on clothes and dry my hair and leave our room?’
‘Well, I don’t care if you want to go out wearing a dressing-gown, but not everyone has my relaxed attitude to appropriate restaurant attire. We could always stay in and make a serious dent in the room-service bill.’
Neve twisted around. ‘Do you mind? It’s just I’m still achy and I have six blisters from those stupid shoes.’ She had a whole list of other complaints but they were interrupted by the deafening rumble of her stomach. It seemed to last for ever and sounded a lot like thunder rolling across the sky.
‘I had a huge lunch after I stormed off in a huff, but have you had anything since that piece of dry toast?’ Max asked.
Neve shook her head. She was so used to not listening to her body when it was demanding food, on the hour, every hour, that she hadn’t realised she was hungry. Ravenously, rapaciously, voraciously hungry. If Max wasn’t holding her there was a good chance she’d drop to her knees and start gnawing on the legs of the coffee table.
‘I want steak,’ she announced. ‘Steak so rare that it’s dripping blood over the plate. And a salad, I suppose.’
‘Let’s assume that you threw up everything you ate yesterday and factor in your bridal boot camp and the long walk you had today, which ended with a sprint back to the car … well, I think you’re functioning on minus five thousand calories and you could probably have some carbs without the world caving in.’
‘Don’t be an enabler, Max.’
‘Don’t be a diet bore, Neve.’
They compromised. Max would order an extra-large bowl of chips and Neve would eat some of them, because everyone knew that food eaten off someone else’s plate had at least half the calories of regular food.
Although Max insisted that a bathrobe was fine for in-room dining, Neve decided to change into something a little less comfortable, especially as Max kept talking to her cleavage every time the belt began to loosen.
She was just pulling on her spare, unsodden jeans and the cherry-print blouse she’d been planning to wear with her wedding suit, when she heard a knock on the door and h
urried out of the bathroom in time to see two waiters wheeling in a trolley with yes, plates obscured by huge silver domes just like they had in the movies.
In her attempt to get nearer to lift up a dome and swallow her fillet steak in one gulp, Neve kept getting in everyone’s way because more staff were coming into the room laden down with gift boxes, ice buckets, a platter of chocolate-covered strawberries and a huge bouquet of roses and lilies.
‘I know you said you wanted to put a huge dent into the room-service bill, but isn’t this a little excessive?’ she hissed at Max.
‘But I only ordered dinner and a selection of DVDs,’ he hissed back. Then he cleared his throat. ‘Excuse me, but I think there’s been a mix-up. I didn’t order flowers or champagne or boxes of … stuff.’
‘These arrived by courier while you were out, sir.’ The most senior of the flunkies, judging by his age and the cut of his suit, handed Max an envelope. ‘Have a good evening.’
‘Who’s it from?’ Neve asked, as Max pulled out a sheet of notepaper and scanned the contents. ‘What does it say?’
‘Read it yourself.’ Max thrust the paper at her and Neve looked down at the childish scrawl.
Dear Max and Neve
I’m so gutted that you weren’t part of me and Dazza’s big day. Wish I’d never signed that stupid contract but two mill is two mill and I promised my Nanna she could have a new kitchen.
Anyway, I wish you were here with us and I can’t believe you won’t get to see me in my red Dolce & Gabanna wedding dress and the leopardprint number they ran up for the evening reception.
But you can still toast me and Dazza, unless you totally hate me.