me before you, 12.1

me before you, 12
12


I can tell you the exact day I stopped being fearless.

It was almost seven years ago, in the last lazy, heat-slurred days of July, when
the narrow streets around the castle were thick with tourists, and the air filled
with the sound of their meandering footsteps and the chimes of the ever-present
ice cream vans that lined the top of the hill.

My grandmother had died a month previously after a long illness, and that
summer was veiled in a thin layer of sadness; it gently smothered everything we
did, muting mine and my sister’s tendencies to the dramatic, and cancelling our
usual summer routines of brief holidays and days out. My mother stood most
days at her washing-up bowl, her back rigid with the effort of trying to suppress
her tears, while Dad disappeared to work each morning with a grimly
determined expression, returning hours later shiny-faced from the heat and
unable to speak before he had cracked open a beer. My sister was home from her
first year at university, her head already somewhere far from our small town. I
was twenty and would meet Patrick in less than three months. We were enjoying
one of those rare summers of utter freedom - no financial responsibility, no
debts, no time owing to anybody. I had a seasonal job and all the hours in the
world to practise my make-up, put on heels that made my father wince, and just
generally work out who I was.

I dressed normally, in those days. Or, I should say, I dressed like the other
girls in town - long hair, flicked over the shoulder, indigo jeans, T-shirts tight
enough to show off our tiny waists and high breasts. We spent hours perfecting
our lipgloss, and the exact shade of a smokey eye. We looked good in anything,
but spent hours complaining about non-existent cellulite and invisible flaws in
our skin.



And I had ideas. Things I wanted to do. One of the boys I knew at school had
taken a round-the-world trip and come back somehow removed and unknowable,
like he wasn’t the same scuffed eleven-year-old who used to blow spit bubbles
during double French. I had booked a cheap flight to Australia on a whim, and
was trying to find someone who might come with me. I liked the exoticism his
travels gave him, the unknownness. He had blown in with the soft breezes of a
wider world, and it was weirdly seductive. Everyone here knew everything about
me, after all. And with a sister like mine, I was never allowed to forget any of it.

It was a Friday, and I had spent the day working as a car park attendant with a
group of girls I had known at school, steering visitors to a craft fair held in the
grounds of the castle. The whole day was punctuated with laughter, with fizzy
drinks guzzled under a hot sun, the sky blue, light glinting off the battlements. I
don’t think there was a single tourist who didn’t smile at me that day. People find
it very hard not to smile at a group of cheerful, giggling girls. We were paid £30,
and the organizers were so pleased with the turnout that they gave us an extra
fiver each. We celebrated by getting drunk with some boys who had been
working on the far car park by the visitor centre. They were well spoken,
sporting rugby shirts and floppy hair. One was called Ed, two of them were at
university - I still can’t remember where - and they were working for holiday
money too. They were flush with cash at the end of a whole week of stewarding,
and when our money ran out they were happy to buy drinks for giddy local girls
who flicked their hair and sat on each other’s laps and shrieked and joked and
called them posh. They spoke a different language; they talked of gap years and
summers spent in South America, and the backpacker trail in Thailand and who
was going to try for an internship abroad. While we listened, and drank, I
remember my sister stopping by the beer garden where we lay sprawled on the
grass. She was wearing the world’s oldest hoody and no make-up, and I’d
forgotten I was meant to be meeting her. I told her to tell Mum and Dad I’d be
back sometime after I was thirty. For some reason I found this hysterically funny.
She had lifted her eyebrows, and stalked off like I was the most irritating person
ever born.

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. Til 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.