As she had a quick, perfunctory shower, Neve couldn’t think of any logical reason why Max would want to talk to her about the letter. Besides, it was one thing to be honest and real in a letter, but doing it in person was something else entirely. She quickly towel-dried her hair, because it was only going to get wet again and stood in bra, knickers and woolly socks, inspecting her outfit options. She wasn’t getting gussied up again, it would only give Max the wrong idea – not that he seemed to have any fond memories of the time they’d spent together. Still, she had her pride and wasn’t going to turn up in a tracksuit and a bad attitude.
Neve pulled on her Long & Lean Gap jeans, which did nothing to stop her from being Short & Stumpy, then after some brief dithering she slipped on a slate-grey, empire-line wool tunic that ended mid-thigh and covered a multitude of sins – or at least it covered her hips.
A quick glance at the clock and Neve realised she had ten minutes to present herself at the pub. She gathered her hair in a loose ponytail, swiped at her mouth with her trusty Black Honey Clinique Almost Lipstick and pulled on her Primark faux Uggs, even though Celia had tried to make her promise that she’d never leave the house in them.
The rain had eased, so, tugging on hat and gloves, Neve ran along the street and one minute before her half-hour was up, she pulled open the door of the Hat and Fan.
Normally Neve hated going into pubs on her own, but the Hat and Fan was like a second home, even though she hadn’t stepped foot in it for nearly three years. She was delighted to see that it was still the hostelry that gentrification had overlooked. There were still horse brasses mounted behind the bar, along with packets of pork scratchings, a truly terrible reproduction of the Monarch of the Glen hanging above the simulated blaze of the fake log fire, and on the other side of the bar, there was a snug. And everyone still called it the snug.
Ida and Jack were still sitting at their usual table in the little nook by the door, nursing a port and lemon and a pint of bitter respectively, and as Neve stepped further into the toasty warmth of the bar, over a paisley-patterned carpet that hadn’t been taken up to expose the wooden boards beneath, every head turned to look at her. It was that kind of pub.
‘Neevy, my darling!’ cried Bridie, the landlady. ‘Will you look at this girl? She’s wasting away.’
‘Not really,’ Neve said, removing her hat and waving at the three O’Leary brothers who always sat at the bar.
‘There’s nothing left of you,’ Bridie insisted. ‘I’d have barely recognised you if I didn’t know you better than my own flesh and blood.’
Bridie had recognised her just fine when Neve had bumped into her in Tesco the week before, so Neve just smiled vaguely and looked around for Max. ‘He’ll be in the snug then,’ one of the O’Leary brothers said – Neve was never sure which one was which. ‘The young fella who came in earlier.’
Neve grinned. Max wouldn’t have been allowed to buy a bag of crisps without a fierce interrogation and the suggestion that he’d be much happier in the Old Dairy on the corner where ‘they have all that poncy imported lager’.
She opened the frosted-glass door that led through to the stuffy little lounge that always smelled of mothballs, and there he was; sitting on one of the pockmarked imitation-leather sofas and looking like he wished he had an elsewhere to be.
Chapter Seven
‘You were the one who wanted to meet here,’ Neve said, as Max’s lips twisted in greeting.
‘You could have said it was your regular watering-hole.’
‘Not really, but this was my gran’s old pub so I kind of grew up here,’ Neve said, looking around with a half-smile as she remembered Sunday lunches at the long table in the main bar and standing on her grandpa Fred’s feet while he waltzed her around to her grandmother’s old Frank Sinatra records. ‘It feels like home.’
‘As long as I’m landlady, this will always be your home,’ Bridie said as she bustled in. ‘Give me your coat, love, and tell me what you want to drink.’
‘Can I get a cup of tea?’ Neve asked as she handed Bridie her coat.
‘I could make you a plate of sandwiches or how about a nice bowl of soup? I’ve got some homemade Oxtail upstairs.’
‘Just tea’s fine, thank you,’ Neve said, sitting down on the sofa that was arranged at a right angle to Max’s.
Bridie shot Max a look that seethed with suspicion. ‘And will your young man be wanting anything else?’
Max looked fairly harmless in jeans and a stripy woollen jumper, and he really hadn’t done anything to warrant such open hostility, but just having a penis and knowing Neve by name was crime enough.
‘He’s not my young man,’ Neve said softly, with an apologetic smile in Max’s direction, which got her a raised eyebrow in return. ‘This is Max. He works with Celia.’
As Bridie’s face curdled as if someone had trodden in dog shit and tracked it across the carpets, Neve inwardly smacked her hand against her forehead. Celia was the black sheep of the Slater clan with her outlandish clothes and her poseur friends and the way she’d run off to New York after her A-levels and ‘broken your poor mother’s heart’ as Bridie would have it. Neve didn’t remember her mother’s heart breaking. She’d been really annoyed when Celia had landed uninvited on Auntie Catherine’s doorstep in New Jersey, but that was as far as it had gone.
‘Well, I’ll be getting you a cup of tea then,’ Bridie said, one hand on the snug’s door. ‘Just yell if you need anything.’ She left the door ajar, all the better to hear Neve’s pained cries if Max was overcome by lust and forced himself on her.
‘So one word from you and there’ll be a procession of flaming torches as they throw me out?’ Max asked, draining the contents of his pint glass.
‘I think they’ll just run you through with pitchforks,’ Neve said calmly because she was on home turf, as it were, and felt slightly less at a disadvantage.
‘You do have a sense of humour, then?’ Max shrugged. ‘I was beginning to wonder.’
And just like that, Neve felt awkward and unsettled again. ‘Look, about that night. I really am sorry,’ she began uncertainly. ‘I tried to explain in the letter. I don’t understand why you had to hunt me down to hash it out all over again.’
‘No one’s ever sent me a letter apologising after a one-night stand.’
‘It wasn’t a one-night stand,’ Neve interrupted in a fierce whisper. ‘Not really.’ Surely there had to be actual prolonged penetration for it to qualify as a one-night stand?
‘It kinda was,’ Max whispered back, and Neve was grateful that he’d realised that every ear in the main bar was straining in their direction. ‘Anyway, it freaked me out and then I was worried that you were even more freaked out and I wanted to make sure you were OK.’
It wasn’t at all what Neve had been expecting and she let herself relax slightly. Or at least exhale and unclench.
‘So, are you?’ Max prompted, reaching over to gingerly nudge Neve’s arm as if he was afraid she might break if he touched her, or more likely scream for help.
‘Am I OK?’ Neve considered the question, but the burn in her cheeks answered it for her. ‘I think so, apart from wondering if it’s possible to die of shame.’
‘See? That’s what I was afraid of.’ Max scooched right to the very corner of his sofa, so he was as close to Neve as he could get while still keeping a respectable distance between them. ‘Sex is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s no big deal.’
‘But it is a big deal,’ Neve said, pausing as the sheer magnitude of the act hit her again. ‘Or it should be. It’s just about the most intimate thing you can do with someone and I had too much to drink and ploughed straight into the sex without any thought. I’ve spent longer debating whether I should buy a pair of shoes.’
Max’s eyebrows had risen higher and higher as Neve delivered her speech, and just as he opened his mouth to plead the case for free and easy love, Bridie was back carrying a tray with a pint of lager on it, a steaming mug of tea and a
plate of doorstep sandwiches.
‘Now I know you said you weren’t hungry but you look as if you haven’t had a decent meal in weeks,’ Bridie insisted forcefully, even though Neve knew that if she ever survived a plane crash she had enough fat reserves to last at least a month if she couldn’t find any nuts and berries. ‘Cheese and pickle. You used to love cheese and pickle.’
Neve felt her nostrils twitch as Bridie ceremoniously placed the sandwiches in front of her. Never mind the cheese and pickle, she could smell the butter. Thick, creamy, salty butter.
Max was talking to Bridie, who was dialling down the hostile vibe as he smiled at her and told her that she didn’t look old enough to be running her own pub, but all Neve could hear was a rushing in her head as she looked at the plate of sandwiches. There had to be at least one thousand and five hundred calories there. That was two full hours at the gym doing high-impact cardio. But, God, that butter …
Neve blinked slowly and tore her gaze away from the plate as Bridie’s voice became sharper. ‘Sorry?’ Neve said. ‘Did you say something?’
‘I was just asking if your mum’s in Yorkshire or Spain at the moment?’ Bridie’s eyes gleamed inquisitively.
‘They’re in Yorkshire,’ Neve admitted, knowing full well that her mum would be getting a phone call within the hour to let her know that her eldest daughter was out in public with a man, whose intentions were, as yet, undeclared.
‘I really should give her a ring,’ Bridie said predictably, as she practically ran to the door. ‘Midsomer Murders’ about to start so best keep this shut. Don’t want to disturb you.’
Neve had visions of Bridie putting her mum on speaker-phone so Ida and Jack and even the taciturn O’Learys could come in on the chorus. ‘My dad persuaded my mum to move back to Yorkshire after my gran died,’ she told Max, who probably wasn’t the least bit interested, but if she was using her mouth for talking, then she couldn’t be eating sandwiches. Sandwiches that had been liberally spread with butter and were heaped with really sharp crumbly cheddar and Bridie’s home-made pickle, which tended to take the top layer of skin off the roof of your mouth, in a really good way. ‘But they bought a place in Spain too, on the Costa del Sol, so they spend half the year there. God, you have to eat these.’
Even putting the tips of her fingers on the plate so she could push it over to Max made Neve’s resolve weaken. Visualising her size ten self waltzing down the street in a slinky black dress wasn’t having its usual effect.
‘I’ve already had something to eat,’ Max protested. ‘Just leave them.’
‘I can’t! You’ve spent ten minutes with Bridie, so you must know that she’ll stand over me until I’ve eaten them – and I do not eat stuff like this.’ Neve looked around wildly for a handy wastepaper basket or a window that would actually open, while Max stared at her like she was frothing at the mouth. It did feel as if her saliva glands were working overtime.
‘Why don’t you just have one?’ Max suggested reasonably, as if he was talking to a reasonable person with a reasonable attitude to food.
‘Just have one?’ Neve echoed incredulously. ‘Would you tell a drug addict to have just one rock of crack?’
‘It’s a cheese sandwich, not a Class A narcotic.’ Max was still sitting on his sofa, though Neve had half-expected him to run to the door by now. She’d much rather re-enact every excruciating moment of their night together than have him witness one of her food freak-outs. ‘Just wrap them in the napkins, put them in your bag and chuck them in the bin when you leave.’
Neve spotted Max’s messenger bag, emblazoned with the Marc Jacobs logo, propped against the table leg. ‘Can’t you put them in your bag? Please.’ She could feel the first warning throb in her tear ducts. ‘I’m begging you, Max.’
Saying his name plaintively worked like a magic incantation because Max was carefully wrapping up the sandwiches in the red napkins provided by Bridie. He was doing it with a really put-upon air, but he was doing it and that was all that mattered. ‘I hope these don’t leak pickle juice on my phone charger,’ he grumbled.
Only when the sandwiches had been concealed and Max had tucked his bag behind the sofa so Neve wouldn’t have to look at it did she settle back down, reaching for the mug of tea with a trembling hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I’m OK if I know in advance that there’s going to be food I can’t eat, but when it takes me by surprise …’ She tailed off because no one really understood that food wasn’t just fuel or that there was no harm in a little bit of what you fancied; every meal, every morsel was a battle in a never-ending war.
‘You said in your letter …’ Max began, then stopped as his eyes trailed over her. ‘You look fine to me and I saw enough of you that night …’
‘You saw only what I wanted you to see,’ Neve confessed, remembering the way that she’d kept her arms pinned to her sides, hadn’t even taken her slip off.
‘I think I saw a little bit more than that, when I was under the covers,’ Max said in this slow, amused way that should have made her hackles and every hair on her body rise. Instead, Neve felt a tiny shiver run through her that had nothing to do with the aftershocks from the cheese sandwiches and more to do with the way Max’s voice dipped down so low as if the memory of being between her thunderous thighs was a pleasant one.
‘It was dimly lit, you’d been drinking,’ Neve insisted. She swallowed hard because this was never easy to say, even if she’d been able to write it in a letter. ‘My body … if I’d been this weight all the time, my body would look different. But I weighed a lot more than this and it shows.’
‘So you’ve lost a couple of stone.’ Max shrugged again. ‘You women. You’re all so fixated on your weight, and really, unless you’re morbidly obese there’s nothing to worry about. You always think you weigh more than you do.’
On some level, as soon as she’d seen Max sitting on her doorstep, Neve had known that they’d have this conversation. At least that would be one thing she’d be spared with William because he’d known her back then. Anyway, after tonight, she was 100 per cent certain that she’d never see Max again so she might as well go for broke.
‘I always know exactly how much I weigh,’ she said, hoping that Gustav hadn’t fitted her with a bugging device. ‘And I was morbidly obese.’
‘Oh, please …’ Max was all set to start scoffing, but Neve had expected that too, which was why she’d taken down the photo that was usually taped to the fridge door and stuck it in her bag so she could pull it out and slam it down on the table.
‘Morbidly obese,’ she repeated. ‘I used to weigh three hundred and fifty-eight pounds. That’s twenty-five and a half stone. I’d say I was a size thirty-two because that was the largest size that Evans did – but even that was tight.’
Max stared down at the photo with a horrified expression. ‘Fucking hell! That’s not you,’ he breathed. ‘It can’t be.’
The picture had been taken at the family Christmas dinner four years ago. Neve had been caught unawares, because normally she ran, or waddled, away from the camera lens. But on this occasion, Celia had managed to snap her just as she was manoeuvring a cocktail sausage wrapped in bacon towards her mouth, jaw open wide to receive the offering so the camera had really captured the full glory of her several chins. The rest of her wasn’t pretty either; a black-clad mountain of amorphous flesh with a round pale face perched unsteadily on top of it.
Neve didn’t have to look at the picture on the table because she saw it at least five times a day when she was getting skimmed milk or leafy green things out of the fridge. Maybe it was the familiarity that had lessened the shock value, but these days it was like looking at a girl she used to know, rather than a girl she used to be.
‘It is me,’ she said simply, because she was used to people’s disbelief when they saw the picture. Even Celia, who’d taken the bloody thing. ‘You weren’t that big,’ she’d always stubbornly insist. ‘It’s just a bad angle.’
‘Now that you’
ve seen it, do you understand why I am like I am?’ Neve asked quietly.
‘Wow,’ Max said. He looked at Neve sitting there, and even though the grey tunic was as voluminous as a size sixeen could get, there was no mistaking the whittling of her body. ‘You’re half the woman you used to be, quite literally.’
Neve never tired of the look that Max was giving her, the look she’d received from so many other people who hadn’t seen her since her transformation. It was a look of dopey stupefaction, usually followed by a swift, ‘Fuck me!’
‘More than half,’ she said a little smugly, but she’d earned the right to be smug. ‘I’ve lost two whole Kylie Minogues.’ Then her expression grew serious. ‘So you see, that’s why I’ve never had a boyfriend or been in a relationship.’
Max pushed the photo away as if he couldn’t bear to look at it any longer. ‘But lots of f— larger people have relationships.’
‘You can say the f-word, it doesn’t bother me,’ Neve told him, curling her legs up beneath her because she could do that now. And cross them too, if she wanted. ‘I know there are lots of fat people in happy, healthy relationships, but I wasn’t one of them. I mean, I had friends but I was miserable about the way I looked so I’d eat to cheer myself up and that just made me bigger, which made me more miserable. I wasn’t exactly in the right frame of mind to put myself out there to try and find a boyfriend. I was sure that most men hated the way I looked too.’
‘But this guy, this William, he didn’t hate you?’
Neve shook her head. ‘No, he didn’t hate me. Not at all.’
Max rested his elbows on his knees and stared serenely at Neve. ‘And he feels the same way about you?’
His unblinking gaze was like truth serum. ‘Well, I think so.’ She squared her shoulders and forced herself to look Max straight in the eye. ‘The heart knows, isn’t that what they say?’
‘If he loves you, then he won’t care what size you are or what experience you may or may not have,’ Max said softly. ‘Not if he really loves you.’