‘But what did you do?’ William asked. ‘I’m sure it couldn’t have been something that bad.’
‘But it was bad. Very, very bad.’
‘Neevy, you haven’t got a bad bone in your body and if you did upset this other person, I’m sure you didn’t mean to,’ William said soothingly, and it was at times like this, when he was so simpatico, that Neve wondered if he took a pill every morning that gave him the ability to always know exactly the right thing to say.
‘I just don’t know what to do to make the situation right,’ Neve admitted. ‘Or to make myself feel better.’
‘You could apologise to them,’ William suggested. ‘Explain the circumstances that led to this um … error of judgement and I’m sure they’d realise that you’d never normally behave like that. You haven’t been plagiarising, have you, Neve?’
‘God, no! Of course I haven’t,’ Neve spluttered, shocked that William could even think such a thing. ‘I would never do something like that.’
‘Well, then it really can’t be so bad. You do have a tendency to fret. Just explain, apologise, move on,’ William said firmly, and it was just the advice Neve had been hoping for, except …
‘When you say apologise, do you mean in person? Or on the phone so that I’d actually have to speak to them – because I’m not entirely sure I could do that.’
William sighed. ‘Oh Neevy, what am I going to do with you? Write them a letter … you do write beautiful, eloquent letters.’ He sighed again. ‘It’s always lovely to see a blue airmail envelope waiting for me in my mailbox.’
Neve couldn’t help sighing too, though her sigh was the sigh of pure longing. ‘That’s such a nice thing to say,’ she said in a voice that was verging on a simper. ‘And such good advice. I’ll write this person a letter and then I might even be able to sleep tonight without worrying about it.’
They shared a few more pleasantries about the weather and how Neve would absolutely go to the British Library at the earliest opportunity, then William was ringing off and Neve was left to clutch her head in her hands for entirely different reasons.
She’d let Max touch her in ways and places that only belonged to William. William would never have tried taking those kinds of liberties with a woman he’d only just met. Neve suddenly remembered how Max had kissed her and asked to come home with her when he didn’t even know her name. He was a cad and he was probably moving in on another victim as Neve sat in her kitchen and brooded.
Neve tiptoed to the lounge, sat down at her desk, opened her top drawer and selected a sheet of Basildon Bond. Then she pulled out her best fountain pen, because if she was going to write a letter, then she was going to do it properly. Besides, it was bad manners to type personal correspondence. She prevaricated a while about putting her address in the top right-hand corner, but Max already knew where she lived and she couldn’t write a letter without putting her address in the top right-hand corner – that wasn’t the way she rolled. That done, she could get down to the real business in hand:
Dear Max
I just wanted to apologise for my behaviour the night that we met. It was completely out of character and something that I sincerely regret. Not least, because Celia has told me that you were rather upset about what transpired.
I’m not making excuses, but in my defence I had had rather a lot to drink and I’m not used to alcohol. It lowered my inhibitions and coloured my judgement, and I found myself acting in a way that has left me feeling deeply ashamed.
This is very hard for me to write but I feel that I owe you an honest explanation for my actions. When you asked me if I was recovering from a love affair gone awry, you couldn’t have been more wrong. I’ve never been in a relationship or even been on a date, which I know is very unusual for a woman my age, but you see I am deeply in love with a man who’s been out of the country for the last three years.
During this time, I’ve made several huge lifestyle changes, one of which is losing a considerable amount of weight. Not because of William (that’s his name), but I must admit that his absence has been a motivation in wanting to transform myself for his return.
I had this foolish idea that as part of my journey of self-discovery, I needed to embark on some interaction with the opposite sex. Nothing too onerous to start with: some light flirtation, a few dates and then, hopefully a short-lived affair that would ease my passage into this new world. A pancake relationship, if you will, so that when William comes back from overseas, I’ll have gained some experience and insight into what makes a relationship work and won’t make any mistakes. I would hate it if our life together were ruined before it ever really began because of my nerves and my ignorance in matters of the heart.
But last night, as I’ve said, I had too much to drink and I was so flattered (and also confused) by your attentions, that everything became derailed. It suddenly seemed terribly important that I get the sex part of my plan out of the way, but my inexperience and my issues with my body overcame the alcohol and well, you know the rest.
I can’t stress enough that none of this was your fault. I gave every indication that I wanted to have sex with you, and you were very conscientious in soliciting my consent throughout each stage of our unfortunate encounter. I am very grateful that you stopped when you did, as I fear that today I would feel an entirely different kind of regret if we’d seen it through to the bitter end.
Please don’t think I was using you in any way. I got the impression that you had a very relaxed attitude to these sorts of intimacies and I think I gave you the impression that I shared the same casual disregard for sexual relations.
I know that I don’t have the right to ask anything of you, but I would be eternally grateful if you kept the contents of this letter to yourself. I love my sister to pieces but she can be very protective of me and has a tendency to over-dramatise.
Once again, I apologise if I’ve caused you any distress or inconvenience.
With kind regards
Neve Slater (Celia’s sister)
Neve read the letter back with mounting horror. She had often been complimented on her prose style; she’d even won a national short story competition at the age of eleven and she’d had several pieces published in Isis, when she was at Oxford. But this letter … God, it was so stilted and prim, as if it were written by a spinster of the parish who had too many cats and a big interest in the chapel.
But she was still reaching in her desk drawer for an envelope and a book of stamps, because posting the letter meant that this whole tawdry episode was done. Dusted. Never happened.
Chapter Six
Neve never heard back from Max, which was a huge relief. It meant that she could put the whole unfortunate incident behind her and move on. At least she’d learned from the experience – and what she’d learned was that she wasn’t ready to interact with the opposite sex. Not emotionally. Not mentally. And certainly not physically.
At least she could do something about the last one. After all, she had a proven track record when it came to losing weight, and as it was the second Saturday in February, and time for her monthly fitness review with her trainer, Gustav, Neve was hoping for some good news. It was the only time that Neve was allowed to step on a scale. Gustav was emphatically anti-scales but very pro-tape measures.
‘You’ve lost another inch off your …’ He gestured at his chest. Neve didn’t know if it was because Gustav was Austrian or gay but he didn’t like to ever say the b words – boobs, bust or breasts – but preferred to use hand gestures instead.
‘They’ve gone down? Again?’ Neve looked down at her chest in dismay.
‘Half an inch from your upper waist, nothing from your lower waist, no change on your hips. Maybe a quarter of an inch off your left thigh, nothing off the right.’
There had been a brief, blissful window of time when Neve thought she might end up with a classic hour-glass figure, but those halcyon moments hadn’t lasted and now she was a definite pear-shape.
‘But
when is the fat going to shift from below the waist?’ she asked desperately, clutching a thigh so Gustav could see it jiggle. ‘How many squats and lunges is it going to take?’
Gustav wheeled his chair back even as he gave her his sternest look. They were in his tiny office on the top floor of the gym Neve went to in Highgate. She’d started off in a far less swanky gym in Finsbury Park, but when Gustav had moved to the one in Highgate, he’d wangled her a heavily discounted membership and made this stiff but heartfelt speech about how they were on a journey together and, ‘We don’t stop, not even when we reach the finishing line. It’s a journey for life, Neve.’
Neve wasn’t entirely sure, because it was hard to know with Gustav, but she thought it had been his way of saying that their professional relationship had become a friendship. A very co-dependent friendship.
‘Neve, I tell you this again and again, you don’t decide where and when the fat comes off. It comes off when it wants to. You have to be realistic. What else do I always say?’
‘“I didn’t put the weight on overnight and I’m not going to lose it overnight,”’ Neve parroted back dutifully. ‘But being realistic I still need to lose a good forty pounds, sorry, eighteen kilograms. And realistically can I do it in six months?’
‘If you’re very good and very patient and do exactly as I tell you,’ Gustav said implacably. Normally it was good that he reacted with a stony face when Neve was having a crisis of faith, but sometimes it was just really, really irritating.
‘But I’ve plateau-ed. I know it, you know it. I put on five pounds when it’s my special lady time and then I lose five pounds after it’s finished. It’s been like that for three months now!’ Neve finished on an aggrieved wail. ‘I already work out six days a week and I cycle everywhere and always take the stairs and I—’
‘You’ve been weighing yourself in secret, haven’t you?’ Gustav asked huffily, folding his arms so his biceps bulged even more than they did in repose.
When they’d first met on that fateful day when Neve had entered a gym for the first time in her life and had been dripping gallons of sweat on an exercise bike and trying hard not to have a heart attack, she’d been terrified of Gustav. He looked like something out of Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia with his tanned, muscled frame, icy blue eyes and icy blond flat-top, and the Austrian accent had been the cherry on top of the Aryan cake. Over the last two and a half years, he’d been impossibly kind to Neve in an uncompromising, ‘tough love’ way, and she was incredibly fond of him. Even now, when his eyes were flashing and his thin lips had thinned so much that they’d ceased to exist.
‘I said right at the beginning of this that there was to be no unsupervised weighing,’ he said. ‘You promised.’
‘I know I did and I’m sorry, but sometimes I need numbers.’
‘Only measurements count,’ Gustav reminded her, his voice gentle now that Neve was suitably repentant. ‘You know that when you break a promise to me, you break a promise to yourself. I told you the last fifty pounds would be the hardest to lose.’
‘I didn’t think it would be this hard.’
‘Your metabolism is so unpredictable,’ Gustav sniffed. ‘We’ll change things up a little.’ He eyed her thoughtfully. ‘Maybe you should take an exercise break for a week so you can reboot your system.’
‘I can’t do that!’ Neve looked at him in horror. ‘I’ll balloon up overnight and anyway, I’m used to expending a certain amount of energy every day and I won’t be able to sleep.’ She could feel her brow pulling together as she gave Gustav a beseeching look. ‘Anything but a gym break.’
Gustav caved in immediately, the way he always did when Neve showed a commitment to her fitness and training regime above and beyond what he expected of her. ‘You’ve come such a long way,’ he murmured, his clipped vowels softening, which was a sure sign that he was touched. ‘I’m so proud of you. It’s why I got you this.’
He reached into his desk drawer, and Neve’s spirits, which had sunk at the prospect of cutting back on the gym, lifted. Maybe Gustav had relented and was going to let her have a pedometer, after all. But pedometers didn’t come in big red envelopes.
‘Happy Valentine’s Day,’ Gustav said with a straight face because he never joked during a personal consultation.
Neve took the envelope gingerly. Even though there’d been the usual card from her mother that morning and a text from Celia, she’d been trying to forget it was Valentine’s Day. At least it had the decency to fall on a Saturday this year because she hated the smug girls on the tube in the evening with their smug bouquets of smug red roses.
‘Do you usually get your clients Valentine’s Day cards?’ Neve asked, as she opened the envelope and was confronted by two red hearts nestling against each other.
‘Of course I don’t.’ Gustav shuddered. ‘Harry and I are still very happy with each other, but you’re not just my client, Neve, you’re my friend.’ He paused. ‘One of my best friends.’
‘And you’ve changed my life,’ Neva said, all humour wiped from her voice. ‘And I would hug you but we’ve just been doing body conditioning and we’re both very sweaty.’
Gustav nodded. ‘Harry’s making me dinner tonight but I’ve got twenty minutes if you want to do some light sparring?’
As Neve pulled on the boxing gloves she looked around the deserted gym (just one man pounding away on the treadmill, but he had appalling body odour so it was no wonder that he didn’t have plans for tonight), and had a sudden epiphany that this would be the last Valentine’s Day she’d spend alone. This time next year, William would be back and she’d be in a size ten and everything would be perfect.
Neve felt exhausted yet invigorated from punching away her demons then cycling home in the pouring rain. Her revelation that these would be the last few months that she’d spend single had put a smile on her face that wouldn’t budge. As she freewheeled up Abelard Road and saw all the lights off at number 27, life seemed pretty good. Neve usually went out on a Saturday night, even if it was only to the cinema, but her coupled-up friends were having romantic dates and all her single friends had, quite rightly, decided that going out on Valentine’s Day and having to fight their way through smooching couples was a recipe for rage black-outs and suicidal thoughts.
Neve was content to stay in because it looked as if Charlotte had harangued Douglas into taking her out so they could celebrate the absolute farce that was their marriage, which meant that Neve could run up the stairs with her shoes on and stomp about as much as she liked. Even listen to Radio Four and bang utensils about as she made dinner. She slid off her bike to unlatch the gate and saw a shadowy figure sitting on her doorstep.
Celia and Yuri were at a ‘Fuck St Valentine and the Horse He Rode In On’ night in Dalston, so Neve reached for her keys, which she could wield as a weapon. Then the figure stood up and the lamp-post across the road revealed who her supposed attacker was.
‘What are you doing here?’ she yelped at Max.
‘I got your letter and I had a hunch you’d be home alone on a Saturday night,’ Max explained as Neve remained half in and half out of the gate. ‘I want to talk to you.’
‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ Neve insisted, fingers clenched tight around her keychain as she ignored the dig about her supposed Saturday-night spinsterdom. ‘I said everything I had to say. I apologised!’
‘Well, yeah you did – in between casting me as some sort of man slut. Look, I’m not here to have an argument. I just want to … chat,’ Max finished as if it wasn’t the right word but was the only one he could think of.
‘I don’t think we have anything to talk about.’ The rain was still coming down thick and fast and dripping down the collar of Neve’s cagoule. ‘Look, it’s not convenient. I’ve been to the gym and cycled home and I’m soaking wet …’
‘I could come in while you have a shower and get changed,’ Max said easily.
Neve eyed him suspiciously. There was absolutely no way he was co
ming into her flat and sitting in her lounge while she was naked in her bathroom. Not unless he thought that, despite everything she’d said in her letter, she wanted another bash at it. ‘No, you can’t,’ she hissed in a scandalised whisper. ‘Wasn’t last time bad enough?’
‘Believe me, I’m still having nightmares about it,’ Max snapped back. ‘I only want to talk. Look, what about the pub on the corner?’
‘What about it?’
‘Meet you there, say, in half an hour?’ Max stepped out of the porch and Neve had no choice but to wheel her bike back so he could remove himself from the premises.
‘You have got an umbrella, haven’t you?’ Neve heard herself ask. ‘I could lend you— oh.’
Max was opening a huge golfing umbrella that appeared to have started life at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. ‘So does that mean I’ll see you in thirty?’ He was level with her now, only her bicycle between them to act as a chaperone.
‘Well, I s’pose,’ Neve said ungraciously. ‘Though I can’t imagine what we have to talk about.’
‘Great,’ Max said. ‘I’ll have a white wine waiting for you.’
‘I’m not drinking,’ Neve called after his departing figure. ‘Not ever again!’
Neve wanted to meet Max at the Hat and Fan about as much as she wanted a week’s gym break. But she’d seen the resolute look in his eyes as they’d passed and she could just imagine him marching back to the house and leaning on the doorbell until she let him in.