Me Before You: a novel

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
around 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 willfully 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 annex, 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 annex. His friend the violinist sent us the promised free tickets,
with an information leaflet on the venue attached. It was a forty-
minute 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 place us at the front, with
me on a folding chair beside Will.

---

“It’s actually the best location,” 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 annex fourteen
times to confirm where and when the concert it would be taking
place and what exactly we would be doing.
Will’s postconcert evening routine would also take some time,
she said. She needed to ensure that someone was there to help.
Nathan had other plans later. 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.”
“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 three different outfits to work with me in the end, hauling
them all onto 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 5:30 
P.M.
, 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,” I said, “are both going to get Mr. Muscle in your tea
tomorrow.”
I put on my third 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 gray 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 traveled 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 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’re too polite to actually stare. Instead, they do
this weird thing of catching sight of Will in their field of vision and
then determinedly not looking at him. Until he’s gone past, at which
point their gaze flickers toward him, even while they remain in

---

conversation with someone else. They won’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 programs in one
hand, gin and tonics in the other, I saw this response pass through
them in a gentle ripple that 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 center 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 straight in front of him,
his head dipped into his shoulders as if he were trying to become
invisible.