Me Before You (50 page)

A tear had plopped on to the rickety table in front of me. I wiped at my cheek with my palm, and put the letter down on the table. It took me some minutes to see clearly again.

‘Another coffee?’ said the waiter, who had reappeared in front of me.

I blinked at him. He was younger than I had thought, and had dropped his faint air of haughtiness. Perhaps Parisian waiters were trained to be kind to weeping women in their cafes.

‘Maybe … a cognac?’ He glanced at the letter and smiled, with something resembling understanding.

‘No,’ I said, smiling back. ‘Thank you. I’ve … I’ve got things to do.’

I paid the bill, and tucked the letter carefully into my pocket.

And stepping out from behind the table, I straightened my bag on my shoulder and set off down the street towards the parfumerie and the whole of Paris beyond.

Thank you to my agent, Sheila Crowley at Curtis Brown, and to my editor, Mari Evans at Penguin, both of whom immediately saw this book for what it is – a love story.

Special thanks to Maddy Wickham, who encouraged me at a point when I was not sure whether I could, or should, actually write it.

Thanks to the wonderful team at Curtis Brown, especially Jonny Geller, Tally Garner, Katie McGowan, Alice Lutyens and Sarah Lewis, for enthusiasm and fine agenting.

At Penguin, I would also particularly like to thank Louise Moore, Clare Ledingham and Shân Morley Jones.

Huge gratitude to all on the Writersblock board – my own private Fight Club. Minus the Fighty bit.

Similarly to India Knight, Sam Baker, Emma Beddington, Trish Deseine, Alex Heminsley, Jess Ruston, Sali Hughes, Tara Manning and Fanny Blake.

Thanks to Lizzie and Brian Sanders, and to Jim, Bea and Clemmie Moyes. But most of all, as ever, to Charles, Saskia, Harry and Lockie.

1. Tell us a little about where your ideas for your characters and their stories come from.

They come from all over the place. It’s often a snippet of conversation or a news story that just lodges in my head and won’t go away. Sometimes I get an idea for a character too, and then unconsciously start knitting them together.
Me Before You
is the most ‘high concept’ book I’ve ever written – in that I could describe it in two sentences. But most of them are a lot more organic, and just contain lots of ideas and things that I’ve pulled together. With this book I think the issue of quality of life was probably to the front of my mind as I have had two relatives who were facing life in care homes, and I know that in one case she would probably have chosen any alternative to that existence.

2. Which of the characters in
Me Before You
do you identify with the most?

Well, there’s definitely a bit of Lou in there. I did have a pair of stripy tights that I loved as a child! I think you have to identify with all your characters to some extent, or they just don’t come off the page properly. But I also identify with Camilla a bit. As a mother I can’t imagine the choice she has to make, and I could imagine in those circumstances you would just shut down a bit emotionally.

3. What made you choose to set
Me Before You
in a small historical town with a castle at its centre?

I tried all sorts of settings for this book. I drove all over Scotland trying to find a castle and a small town that would ‘fit’. It was essential that Lou came from a small town, rather than a city, because I live in one myself and I’m fascinated by the way that growing up in one can be the greatest comfort – and also incredibly stifling. I wanted a castle because it was the purest example of old money rubbing up against ordinary people. Britain is still incredibly hide-bound by class, and we only really notice it when we go somewhere that it doesn’t exist in the same way, like the US or Australia. I needed the class difference between Will and Lou to be clear.

4.
Me Before You
deals with a very sensitive subject matter – a person’s right to die. Did you find this difficult to write about? What made you decide to write about this subject?

A few years ago, I heard about the case of Daniel James, a young rugby player who was paralysed and persuaded his parents to let him go to Dignitas. I was horrified by this case initially – what mother could do that? – but the more I read about it I realized that these issues are not black and white. Who is to say what your quality of life should mean? How do you face living a life that is so far from what you had chosen? What do you do as a parent if your child is really determined to die? And living as a quadriplegic is not just a matter of sitting in a chair – it’s a constant battle against pain and infection, as well as the mental challenges.
So these issues refused to go away. And I do believe you have to write the book that is burning inside you, even if it’s not the most obvious book for the market.

In fact, I wrote Me Before You without a publishing contract – and I wasn’t entirely convinced it would find a publisher, given the controversial subject matter. It was just something I needed to write. But doing it just for myself was strangely liberating. And luckily several publishers bid for it when it was finished, so I was very happy to move with it to Penguin.

5. Your books always have an incredibly moving love story at the heart of them. What is it about the emotional subject of love that makes you want to write about it?

I have no idea! I’m not very romantic in real life. I guess love is the thing that makes us do the most extraordinary things – the emotion that can bring us highest or lowest, or be the most transformative – and extremes of emotion are always interesting to write about. Plus I’m too wimpy to write horror …

6. Have you ever cried while writing a scene in any of your books?

Always. If I don’t cry while writing a key emotional scene, my gut feeling is it’s failed. I want the reader to feel something while reading – and making myself cry has become my litmus test as to whether that’s working. It’s an odd way to earn a living.

I was dreaming of food. Great sticks of crisp white baguettes, the crumb of the bread a virginal white, still steaming from the oven; warm, ripe cheese, its borders creeping towards the edge of the plate. Grapes and plums, stacked high in bowls, dusky and fragrant, their scent filling the air. I was about to reach out and take one, when my sister stopped me. ‘Get off,’ I murmured. ‘I’m hungry.’

‘Sophie. Wake up.’

I could taste that cheese. I was going to have a mouthful of the Reblochon, smear it on to a hunk of that warm bread, then pop a grape into my mouth. I could already taste the intense sweetness against its rich aroma.

But there it was, my sister’s hand on my wrist, stopping me. The plates were fading, their scents disappearing. I reached out to them but they began to pop, like soap bubbles.

‘Sophie.’

‘
What
?’

‘They have Aurélien!’

I turned on to my side and blinked. My sister was wearing a cotton bonnet, as I was, to keep warm. Her face, even in the feeble light of her candle, was leached
of colour, her eyes wide with shock. ‘They have Aurélien. Downstairs.’

I stared at her. My mind began to clear. From below us came the sound of men shouting, their voices bouncing off the stone courtyard, the hens, woken, shrieking in their coop. In the thick dark, the air vibrated with some terrible purpose. I sat upright in bed, dragging my gown around me, struggling to light the candle on my bedside table.

I stumbled past her to the window and glanced down into the courtyard. The soldiers, illuminated by the headlights of their vehicle; my younger brother, his arms wrapped around his head, trying to avoid the rifle butts that landed blows upon him.

‘What’s happening?’

‘The pig. They know about the pig.’

‘What?’

‘Monsieur Suel must have informed on us. I heard them shouting from my room. They say they’ll take Aurélien if he doesn’t tell them where it is.’

‘He will say nothing,’ I said.

We stared at each other, flinching as we heard our brother cry out. I don’t think you would have recognized my sister then: she looked twenty years older than her twenty-four. I knew her fear was mirrored in my own face. This was what we had dreaded.

‘They have a
Kommandant
with them. If they find it,’ Hélène whispered, her voice cracking with panic, ‘they’ll arrest us all. You know what took place in Arras. They’ll make an example of us. What will happen to the children?’

My mind raced, fear that my brother might speak out making me stupid. I wrapped a shawl around my shoulders
and tiptoed to the window, peering out at the courtyard. The presence of a
Kommandant
suggested these were not just drunken soldiers looking to take out their frustrations with a few threats and knocks – we were in trouble. His presence meant we were a crime to be taken seriously.

‘They will find it, Sophie. It will take them minutes. And then …’ Hélène’s voice rose, lifted by panic.

For a moment my thoughts turned black. Trying to gather them, I closed my eyes. And then I opened them. ‘Go downstairs,’ I said. ‘Plead ignorance. Ask him what Aurélien has done wrong. Talk to him, distract him. Just give me some time before they come into the house.’

‘What? What are you going to do?’

I waved her away. I gripped my sister’s arm. ‘Go. But tell them nothing, you understand? Deny
everything
.’

My sister hesitated, then ran towards the corridor, her nightgown billowing behind her. I’m not sure I ever felt as alone as I did in those few seconds, fear gripping my throat and the weight of my family’s fate upon me. I ran into Father’s study and scrabbled in the drawers of the great desk, hurling its contents – old pens, scraps of paper, pieces of broken clocks and ancient bills – on to the floor, thanking God when I finally found what I was searching for. Then I ran downstairs, opened the cellar door and skipped down the cold stone stairs, so sure-footed now in the dark that I barely needed the fluttering glow of the candle. I lifted the heavy latch to the back cellar silently, the one that had once been stacked to the roof with beer kegs and good wine, slid one of the empty barrels to one side and opened the door of the old cast-iron bread oven.

The piglet, still only half grown, blinked sleepily. It
lifted itself to its feet, peered out at me from its bed of straw and grunted. Surely I’ve told you about the pig? We liberated it during the requisition of Monsieur Girard’s farm. Like a gift from God, it had strayed in the chaos, meandering away from those piglets being loaded into the back of a German truck and was swiftly swallowed by the thick skirts of Grandma Poilâne. We’ve been fattening it on acorns and scraps for weeks, in the hope of raising it to a size great enough for us all to have some meat. The thought of that crisp skin, that moist pork, has kept the inhabitants of Le Coq Rouge going for the past month.

Outside I heard my brother yelp again, then my sister’s voice, rapid and urgent, cut short by the harsh tones of a German officer. The pig looked at me with intelligent, understanding eyes, as if it already knew its fate.

‘I’m so sorry,
mon petit
,’ I whispered, ‘but this really is the only way.’ And I brought down my hand.

I was outside in a matter of moments. I had woken Mimi, telling her only that she must come but to stay silent – the child has seen so much these last months that she simply obeys without question. She glanced up at me holding her baby brother, slid out of bed and placed a hand in mine.

The air was sharp with the approach of winter, the smell of woodsmoke lingering in the air from our brief fire earlier in the evening. I saw the
Kommandant
through the stone archway of the back door and hesitated. It was not Herr Becker, whom we knew and despised. This was a slimmer man, clean-shaven, impassive. Even in the dark I could see intelligence, not brutish ignorance, in his face, which made me afraid.

This new
Kommandant
was gazing speculatively up at our windows, perhaps considering whether this building might provide a more suitable billet than the Fourrier farm, where senior German officers slept. Even in the dark I suspect he knew that our elevated aspect would give him a vantage-point across the town. There were stables for horses and ten bedrooms, from the days when our home was the town’s thriving hotel.

Hélène was on the cobbles, shielding Aurélien with her arms.

One of his men had raised his rifle, but the
Kommandant
lifted his hand, telling him to stop. ‘Stand up,’ he ordered them. Hélène scrambled backwards, away from him. I glimpsed her face, taut with fear.

I felt Mimi’s hand tighten round mine as she saw her mother, and I gave hers a squeeze, even though my own heart was in my mouth. And I strode out. ‘What in God’s name is going on?’ My voice rang out in the yard.

The
Kommandant
glanced towards me, surprised by my tone: a young woman walking through the arched entrance to the farmyard, a thumb-sucking child at her skirts, another swaddled and clutched to her chest. My night bonnet sat slightly askew, my white cotton nightgown so worn now that it barely registered as fabric against my skin. I prayed that he could not hear the almost audible thumping of my heart.