Me Before You: a novel

This is me? I thought, staring at the grim-faced girl who was less Venus than a sour
housekeeper checking the surfaces of her soft furnishings for dust.
This time I think he even felt sorry for me. I suspect I was the plainest model he had ever
had. “It is not you, mademoiselle,” he insisted. “Sometimes . . . it takes a while to get the
true essence of a person.”
But that was the thing that upset me most. I was afraid he had already got it.
• • •
I
t was Bastille Day when I saw him again. I was making my way through the packed streets
of the Latin Quarter, passing under the huge red, white, and blue flags and fragrant wreaths
that hung from the windows, weaving in and out of the crowds that stood to watch the
soldiers marching past, their rifles cocked over their shoulders.
The whole of Paris was celebrating. I am usually content with my own company, but that
day I was restless, oddly lonely. When I reached the Panthéon I stopped: Before me rue
Soufflot had become a whirling mass of bodies, its normally gray length now packed with
people dancing, the women in their long skirts and broad-brimmed hats, the band outside
the Café Léon. They moved in graceful circles and stood at the edge of the pavement
observing one another and chatting, as if the street were a ballroom.
And there he was, sitting in the middle of it all, a brightly colored scarf around his neck.
The great chanteuse Mistinguett rested a hand possessively on his shoulder as she said
something that made him roar with laughter. She stood out, with her dazzling smile and

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rose-covered headdress, as if she had been drawn more brilliantly than anyone else. Her
coterie of acolytes and assistants hovered around them both.
I stared in astonishment. And then, perhaps compelled by the intensity of my gaze, he
looked round and saw me. I ducked swiftly into a doorway and set off in the opposite
direction, my cheeks flaming. I dived in and out of the dancing couples, my clogs clattering
on the cobbles. But within seconds his voice was booming behind me.
“Mademoiselle!”
I could not ignore him. I turned. He looked for a moment as if he were about to embrace
me, but something in my demeanor must have stopped him. Instead he touched my arm
lightly and motioned me toward the throng of people. “How wonderful to bump into you,” he
said. I began to make my excuses, stumbling over my words, but he held up a great hand.
“Come, mademoiselle, it is a public holiday. Even the most diligent must enjoy themselves
occasionally.”
Around us the flags fluttered in the late-afternoon breeze. I could hear them flapping, like
the erratic pounding of my heart. I struggled to think of a polite way to extricate myself, but
he broke in again.
“I realize, mademoiselle, that shamefully, despite our acquaintance, I do not know your
name.”
“Bessette,” I said. “Sophie Bessette.”
“Then please allow me to buy you a drink, Mademoiselle Bessette.”
I shook my head. I felt sick, as if in the mere act of coming here I had given away too
much of myself. I glanced behind him to where Mistinguett was still standing amid her group
of friends.
“Shall we?” He held out his arm.
And at that moment the great Mistinguett looked straight at me.
It was, if I’m honest, something in her expression, the brief flash of annoyance when he
held out his arm. This man, this Édouard Lefèvre, had the power to make one of Paris’s
brightest stars feel dull and invisible. And he had chosen me over her.
I peered up at him. “Just some water, then, thank you.”
We walked back to the table. “Misty, my darling, this is Sophie Bessette.” Her smile
remained, but there was ice in her gaze as it ran the length of me. “Clogs,” one of her
gentlemen said from behind her. “How very . . . quaint.”
The murmur of laughter made my skin prickle. I took a breath.
“The emporium will be full of them for the spring season,” I replied calmly. “They are the
very latest thing. It’s la mode paysanne.”
I felt Édouard’s fingertips touch my back.
“With the finest ankles in all Paris, I think Mademoiselle Bessette may wear what she
likes.”
A brief silence fell over the group, as the significance of Édouard’s words sank in.
Mistinguett’s eyes slid away from me. “Enchantée,” she said, her smile dazzling. “Édouard,
darling, I must go. So, so busy. Call on me very soon, yes?” She held out her gloved hand
and he kissed it. I had to drag my eyes from his lips. And then she was gone, a ripple
passing through the crowd, as if she were parting the sea.
So, we sat. Édouard Lefèvre stretched out in his chair while I was still rigid with
awkwardness. Without saying anything, he handed me a drink, and there was just the
faintest apology in his expression as he did so, with—was it really?—a hint of suppressed
laughter. As if it—they—were all so ridiculous that I could not feel slighted.
Surrounded by the joyful people dancing, the laughter, and the bright blue skies, I began
to relax. Édouard spoke to me with the utmost politeness, asking about my life before Paris,
the politics within the shop, breaking off occasionally to put his cigarette into the corner of

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his mouth and shout, “Bravo!” at the band, clapping his great hands high in the air. He knew
almost everybody. I lost track of the number of people who stopped to say hello or to buy
him a drink: artists, shopkeepers, speculative women. It was like being with royalty. Except I
could see their gaze flickering toward me while they wondered what a man who could have
had Mistinguett was doing with a girl like me.
“The girls at the store say you talk to les putains of Pigalle.” I couldn’t help myself: I was
curious.
“I do. And many of them are excellent company.”
“Do you paint them?”
“When I can afford their time.” He nodded at a man who tipped his hat to us. “They make
wonderful models. They are generally utterly unself-conscious about their bodies.”
“Unlike me.”
He saw my blush. After a brief hesitation, he placed his hand over mine, as if in apology.
It made me color even more. “Mademoiselle,” he said softly, “those pictures were my failure,
not yours. I have . . .” He changed tack. “You have other qualities. You fascinate me. You
may believe otherwise, but I can tell: You are not intimidated by much.”
I thought for a moment. “No,” I agreed. “I don’t believe I am.”
We ate bread, cheese, and olives, and they were the best olives I had ever tasted. He
drank pastis, knocking back each glass with noisy relish. The afternoon crept on. The
laughter grew louder, the drinks came faster. I drank two small glasses of wine, and began
to enjoy myself. Here, in the street, on this balmy day, I was not the provincial outsider, the
shopgirl on the lowest-but-one rung of the ladder. I was just another reveler, enjoying the
Bastille celebrations.
And then Édouard pushed back from the table and stood in front of me. “Shall we
dance?”
I took his hand, and he swung me out into the sea of bodies. I had not danced since I had
left St. Péronne. Now I felt the breeze whirling around my ears, the weight of his hand on
the small of my back, my clogs unusually light on my feet. He carried the scents of tobacco,
aniseed, and something male that left me a little short of breath.
I don’t know what it was. I had drunk little, so I could not blame the wine. It’s not as if he
were particularly handsome, or that I had felt my life lacking for the absence of a man.
“Draw me again,” I said.
He stopped and looked at me, puzzled. I couldn’t blame him: I was confused myself.
“Draw me again. Today. Now.”
He said nothing but walked back to the table, gathered up his tobacco, and we filed
through the crowd and along the teeming streets to his studio.
We went up the narrow wooden stairs, unlocked the door into the bright studio, and I
waited while he shed his jacket, put a record on the gramophone, and began to mix the
paint on his palette. And then, as he hummed to himself, I began to unbutton my blouse. I
removed my shoes and my stockings. I peeled off my skirts until I was wearing only my
chemise and my white cotton petticoat. I sat there, undressed to my very corset, and
unpinned my hair so that it fell about my shoulders. When he turned back to me I heard his
sharp intake of breath.
He blinked.
“Like this?” I said.
Anxiety flashed across his face. He was, perhaps, afraid that his paintbrush would yet
again betray me. I kept my gaze steady, my head high. I looked at him as if it were a
challenge. And then some artistic impulse took over, and he was already lost in
contemplation of the unexpected milkiness of my skin and the russet of my loosened hair,

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and all semblance of concern for probity was forgotten. “Yes, yes. Move your head, a little to
the left, please,” he said. “And your hand. There. Open your palm a little. Perfect.”
As he began to paint, I watched him. He scanned every inch of my body with intense
concentration. I watched as satisfaction inked itself on his face, and I felt it mirror my own. I
had no inhibitions now. I was Mistinguett, or a streetwalker from Pigalle, unafraid,
unselfconscious. I wanted him to examine my skin, the hollows of my throat, the secret
glowing underside of my hair. I wanted him to see every part of me.
As he painted I took in his features, the way he murmured to himself while mixing colors
on his palette. I watched him shamble around, as if he were older than he was. It was an
affectation—he was younger and stronger than most of the men who came into the store. I
recalled how he ate: with obvious, greedy pleasure. He sang along with the gramophone,
painted when he liked, spoke to whom he wished, and said what he thought. I wanted to live
as Édouard did, joyfully, sucking the marrow out of every moment and singing because it
tasted so good.
And then it was dark. He stopped to clean his brushes and gazed around him, as if he
were only just noticing it. He lit candles and a gaslight, placing them around me, then sighed
when he realized the dusk had defeated him.
“Are you cold?” he said.
I shook my head, but he walked over to a dresser, pulling from it a bright red woolen
shawl, which he carefully placed around my shoulders. “The light has gone for today. Would
you like to see?”
I pulled the shawl around me and walked over to the easel, my feet bare on the wooden
boards. I felt as if I were in a dream, as if real life had evaporated in the hours I had sat
there. I was afraid to look and break the spell.
“Come.” He beckoned me forward.
On the canvas I saw a girl I did not recognize. She gazed back at me defiantly, her hair
glinting copper in the half-light, her skin as pale as alabaster, a girl with the imperious
confidence of an aristocrat.
She was strange and proud and beautiful. It was as if I had been shown a magic looking
glass.
“I knew it,” he said, his voice soft. “I knew you were in there.”
His eyes were tired and strained now, but he was satisfied. I stared at her a moment
longer. Then, without knowing why, I stepped forward, reached up slowly, and took his face
into my hands so that he had to look at me again. I held his face inches from my own and I
made him keep looking at me, as if I could somehow absorb what he could see.
I had never wanted intimacy with a man. The animalistic sounds and cries that had
leaked from my parents’ room—usually when my father was drunk—had appalled me, and I
had pitied my mother for her bruised face and her careful walk the following day. But what I
felt for Édouard overwhelmed me. I could not take my eyes from his mouth.
“Sophie . . .”
I barely heard him. I drew his face closer to mine. The world evaporated around us. I felt
the rasp of his bristles under my palms, the warmth of his breath on my skin. His eyes
studied my own, so seriously. I swear even then it was as if he had only just seen me.
I leaned forward, just a few inches, my breath stilled, and I placed my lips on his. His
hands came to rest on my waist, and tightened reflexively. His mouth met mine, and I
inhaled his breath, its traces of tobacco, of wine, the warm, wet taste of him. Oh, God, I