Me Before You (22 page)

When the Red Lion closed we all went and sat in the centre of the castle maze. Someone managed to scramble over the gates and, after much colliding and giggling, we all found our way to the middle and drank strong cider while someone passed around a joint. I remember staring up at the stars, feeling myself disappear into their infinite depths, as the ground gently swayed and lurched around me like the deck of a huge ship. Someone was playing a guitar, and I had a pair of pink satin high heels on which I kicked into the long grass and never went back for. I thought I probably ruled the universe.

It was about half an hour before I realized the other girls had gone.

My sister found me, there in the centre of the maze, sometime later, long after the stars had been obscured by the night clouds. As I said, she’s pretty smart. Smarter than me, anyway.

She’s the only person I ever knew who could find her way out of the maze safely.

‘This will make you laugh. I’ve joined the library.’

Will was over by his CD collection. He swivelled the chair round, and waited while I put his drink in his cup holder. ‘Really? What are you reading?’

‘Oh, nothing sensible. You wouldn’t like it. Just boy-meets-girl stuff. But I’m enjoying it.’

‘You were reading my Flannery O’Connor the other day.’ He took a sip of his drink. ‘When I was ill.’

‘The short stories? I can’t believe you noticed that.’

‘I couldn’t help but notice. You left the book out on the side. I can’t pick it up.’

‘Ah.’

‘So don’t read rubbish. Take the O’Connor stories home. Read them instead.’

I was about to say no, and then I realized I didn’t really know why I was refusing. ‘All right. I’ll bring them back as soon as I’ve finished.’

‘Put some music on for me, Clark?’

‘What do you want?’

He told me, nodding at its rough location, and I flicked through until I found it.

‘I have a friend who plays lead violin in the Albert Symphonia. He called to say he’s playing near here next week. This piece of music. Do you know it?’

‘I don’t know anything about classical music. I mean, sometimes my dad accidentally tunes into Classic FM, but –’

‘You’ve never been to a concert?’

‘No.’

He looked genuinely shocked.

‘Well, I did go to see Westlife once. But I’m not sure if that counts. It was my sister’s choice. Oh, and I was meant to go see Robbie Williams on my twenty-second birthday, but I got food poisoning.’

Will gave me one of his looks – the kind of looks that suggest I may actually have been locked up in somebody’s cellar for several years.

‘You should go. He’s offered me tickets. This will be really good. Take your mother.’

I laughed and shook my head. ‘I don’t think so. My mum doesn’t really go out. And it’s not my cup of tea.’

‘Like films with subtitles weren’t your cup of tea?’

I frowned at him. ‘I’m not your project, Will. This isn’t
My Fair Lady
.’

‘
Pygmalion
.’

‘What?’

‘The play you’re referring to. It’s
Pygmalion. My Fair Lady
is just its bastard offspring.’

I glared at him. It didn’t work. I put the CD on. When I turned round he was still shaking his head.

‘You’re the most terrible snob, Clark.’

‘What?
Me
?’

‘You cut yourself off from all sorts of experiences because you tell yourself you are “not that sort of person”.’

‘But, I’m not.’

‘How do you know? You’ve done nothing, been nowhere. How do you have the faintest idea what kind of person you are?’

How could someone like him have the slightest clue what it felt like to be me? I felt almost cross with him for wilfully not getting it.

‘Go on. Open your mind.’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’d be uncomfortable. I feel like … I feel like they’d know.’

‘Who? Know what?’

‘Everyone else would know, that I didn’t belong.’

‘How do you think I feel?’

We looked at each other.

‘Clark, every single place I go to now people look at me like I don’t belong.’

We sat in silence as the music started. Will’s father was on the telephone in his hall, and the sound of muffled laughter carried through it into the annexe, as if from a long way away.
The disabled entrance is over there
, the woman at the racecourse had said. As if he were a different species.

I stared at the CD cover. ‘I’ll go if you come with me.’

‘But you won’t go on your own.’

‘Not a chance.’

We sat there, while he digested this. ‘Jesus, you’re a pain in the arse.’

‘So you keep telling me.’

I made no plans this time. I expected nothing. I was just quietly hopeful that, after the racing debacle, Will was still
prepared to leave the annexe. His friend, the violinist, sent us the promised free tickets, with an information leaflet on the venue attached. It was forty minutes’ drive away. I did my homework, checked the location of the disabled parking, rang the venue beforehand to assess the best way to get Will’s chair to his seat. They would seat us at the front, with me on a folding chair beside Will.

‘It’s actually the best place to be,’ the woman in the box office said, cheerfully. ‘You somehow get more of an impact when you’re right in the pit near the orchestra. I’ve often been tempted to sit there myself.’

She even asked if I would like someone to meet us in the car park, to help us to our seats. Afraid that Will would feel too conspicuous, I thanked her and said no.

As the evening approached, I don’t know who grew more nervous about it, Will or me. I felt the failure of our last outing keenly, and Mrs Traynor didn’t help, coming in and out of the annexe fourteen times to confirm where and when it would be taking place and what exactly we would be doing.

Will’s evening routine took some time, she said. She needed to ensure someone was there to help. Nathan had other plans. Mr Traynor was apparently out for the evening. ‘It’s an hour and a half minimum,’ she said.

‘And it’s incredibly tedious,’ Will said.

I realized he was looking for an excuse not to go. ‘I’ll do it,’ I said. ‘If Will tells me what to do. I don’t mind staying to help.’ I said it almost before I realized what I was agreeing to.

‘Well, that’s something for us both to look forward to,’ Will said grumpily, after his mother had left. ‘You get a
good view of my backside, and I get a bed bath from someone who falls over at the sight of naked flesh.’

‘I do not fall over at the sight of naked flesh.’

‘Clark, I’ve never seen anyone more uncomfortable with a human body than you. You act like it’s something radioactive.’

‘Let your mum do it, then,’ I snapped back.

‘Yes, because that makes the whole idea of going out so much more attractive.’

And then there was the wardrobe problem. I didn’t know what to wear.

I had worn the wrong thing to the races. How could I be sure I wouldn’t do so again? I asked Will what would be best, and he looked at me as if I were mad. ‘The lights will be down,’ he explained. ‘Nobody will be looking at you. They’ll be focused on the music.’

‘You know
nothing
about women,’ I said.

I brought four different outfits to work with me in the end, hauling them all on to the bus in my Dad’s ancient suit carrier. It was the only way I could convince myself to go at all.

Nathan arrived for the teatime shift at 5.30pm, and while he saw to Will I disappeared into the bathroom to get ready. First I put on what I thought of as my ‘artistic’ outfit, a green smock dress with huge amber beads stitched into it. I imagined the kind of people who went to concerts might be quite arty and flamboyant. Will and Nathan both stared at me as I entered the living room.

‘No,’ said Will, flatly.

‘That looks like something my mum would wear,’ said Nathan.

‘You never told me your mum was Nana Mouskouri,’ Will said.

I could hear them both chuckling as I disappeared back into the bathroom.

The second outfit was a very severe black dress, cut on the bias and stitched with white collar and cuffs, which I had made myself. It looked, I thought, both chic and Parisian.

‘You look like you’re about to serve the ice creams,’ Will said.

‘Aw, mate, but you’d make a great maid,’ Nathan said, approvingly. ‘Feel free to wear that one in the daytime. Really.’

‘You’ll be asking her to dust the skirting next.’

‘It
is
a bit dusty, now you mention it.’

‘You,’ I said, ‘are both going to get Mr Muscle in your tea tomorrow.’

I discarded outfit number three – a pair of yellow wide-legged trousers – already anticipating Will’s Rupert Bear references, and instead put on my fourth option, a vintage dress in dark-red satin. It was made for a more frugal generation and I always had to say a secret prayer that the zip would make it up past my waist, but it gave me the outline of a 1950s starlet, and it was a ‘results’ dress, one of those outfits you couldn’t help but feel good in. I put a silver bolero over my shoulders, tied a grey silk scarf around my neck, to cover up my cleavage, applied some matching lipstick, and then stepped into the living room.

‘
Ka-pow
,’ said Nathan, admiringly.

Will’s eyes travelled up and down my dress. It was only then that I realized he had changed into a shirt and suit
jacket. Clean-shaven, and with his trimmed hair, he looked surprisingly handsome. I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of him. It wasn’t so much how he looked; it was the fact that he had made the effort.

‘That’s the one,’ he said. His voice was expressionless and oddly measured. And as I reached down to adjust my neckline, he said, ‘But lose the jacket.’

He was right. I had known it wasn’t quite right. I took it off, folded it carefully and laid it on the back of the chair.

‘And the scarf.’

My hand shot to my neck. ‘The scarf? Why?’

‘It doesn’t go. And you look like you’re trying to hide something behind it.’

‘But I’m … well, I’m all cleavage otherwise.’

‘So?’ he shrugged. ‘Look, Clark, if you’re going to wear a dress like that you need to wear it with confidence. You need to fill it mentally as well as physically.’

‘Only you, Will Traynor, could tell a woman how to wear a bloody dress.’

But I took the scarf off.

Nathan went to pack Will’s bag. I was working out what I could add about how patronizing he was, when I turned and saw that he was still looking at me.

‘You look great, Clark,’ he said, quietly. ‘Really.’

With ordinary people – what Camilla Traynor would probably call ‘working-class’ people – I had observed a few basic routines, as far as Will was concerned. Most would stare. A few might smile sympathetically, express sympathy, or ask me in a kind of stage whisper what had happened. I was
often tempted to respond, ‘Unfortunate falling-out with MI6,’ just to see their reaction, but I never did.

Here’s the thing about middle-class people. They pretend not to look, but they do. They were too polite to actually stare. Instead, they did this weird thing of catching sight of Will in their field of vision and then determinedly
not
looking at him. Until he’d gone past, at which point their gaze would flicker towards him, even while they remained in conversation with someone else. They wouldn’t talk about him, though. Because that would be rude.

As we moved through the foyer of the Symphony Hall, where clusters of smart people stood with handbags and programmes in one hand, gin and tonics in the other, I saw this response pass through them in a gentle ripple which followed us to the stalls. I don’t know if Will noticed it. Sometimes I thought the only way he could deal with it was to pretend he could see none of it.

We sat down, the only two people at the front in the centre block of seats. To our right there was another man in a wheelchair, chatting cheerfully to two women who flanked him. I watched them, hoping that Will would notice them too. But he stared ahead, his head dipped into his shoulders, as if he were trying to become invisible.

This isn’t going to work
, a little voice said.

‘Do you need anything?’ I whispered.

‘No,’ he shook his head. He swallowed. ‘Actually, yes. Something’s digging into my collar.’

I leant over and ran my finger around the inside of it; a nylon tag had been left inside. I pulled at it, hoping to snap it, but it proved stubbornly resistant.

‘New shirt. Is it really troubling you?’

‘No. I just thought I’d bring it up for fun.’

‘Do we have any scissors in the bag?’

‘I don’t know, Clark. Believe it or not, I rarely pack it myself.’

There were no scissors. I glanced behind me, where the audience were still settling themselves into their seats, murmuring and scanning their programmes. If Will couldn’t relax and focus on the music, the outing would be wasted. I couldn’t afford a second disaster.

‘Don’t move,’ I said.

‘Why –’

Before he could finish, I leant across, gently peeled his collar from the side of his neck, placed my mouth against it and took the offending tag between my front teeth. It took me a few seconds to bite through it, and I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the scent of clean male, the feel of his skin against mine, the incongruity of what I was doing. And then, finally, I felt it give. I pulled back my head and opened my eyes, triumphant, with the freed tag between my front teeth.

‘Got it!’ I said, pulling the tag from my teeth and flicking it across the seats.

Will stared at me.

‘What?’

I swivelled in my chair to catch those audience members who suddenly seemed to find their programmes absolutely fascinating. Then I turned back to Will.

‘Oh, come on, it’s not as if they’ve never seen a girl nibbling a bloke’s collar before.’

I seemed to have briefly silenced him. Will blinked a couple of times, made as if to shake his head. I noticed
with amusement that his neck had coloured a deep red.

I straightened my skirt. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I think we should both just be grateful that it wasn’t in your trousers.’