Me Before You: a novel

my happiness in his face. I didn’t think Will could be affected by
anything that I did. When he had seemed disapproving about my
decision to move in with Patrick, I had thought it was about him not

---

liking Patrick rather than any feelings he had for me. More important,
I didn’t think I had looked particularly happy.
At home, I couldn’t shake this feeling of anxiety. It was like a low-
level current running through me, and it fed into everything I did. I
asked Patrick, “Would we have done this if my sister hadn’t needed
my room at home?”
He looked at me as if I were daft. He leaned over and pulled me
to him, kissing the top of my head. Then he glanced down. “Do you
have to wear these pajamas? I hate you in pajamas.”
“They’re comfortable.”
“They look like something my mum would wear.”
“I’m not going to wear a corset and stockings every night just to
keep you happy. And you’re not answering my question.”
“I don’t know. Probably. Yes.”
“But we weren’t talking about it, were we?”
“Lou, most people move in with each other because it’s sensible.
You can love someone and still see the financial and practical
advantages.”
“I just…don’t want you to think I made this happen. I don’t want to
feel like I made this happen.”
He sighed, and rolled onto his back. “Why do women always
have to go over and over a situation until it becomes a problem? I
love you, you love me, we’ve been together nearly seven years, and
there was no room at your parents’ house anymore. It’s actually
pretty simple.”
But it didn’t feel simple.
It felt like I was living a life I hadn’t had a chance to anticipate.
That Friday it rained all day—warm, heavy sheets of it, like we
were in the tropics, making the guttering gurgle and bowing the
stems of the flowering shrubs as if in supplication. Will stared out the
windows like a dog denied a walk. Nathan came and went, a plastic
bag lifted above his head. Will watched a documentary about
penguins, and afterward, while he logged on to his computer, I
busied myself, so that we didn’t have to talk to each other. I felt our
discomfort with each other keenly, and being in the same room as
him all the time made it that much worse.

---

I had finally begun to understand the consolations of cleaning. I
mopped, cleaned windows, and changed duvets. I was a constant
whirl of activity. No dust mite escaped my eye, no tea ring my
forensic attentions. I was dislodging the lime scale on the bathroom
taps using paper towels soaked in vinegar (my mother’s tip) when I
heard Will’s chair behind me.
“What are you doing?”
I was bent low over the bath. I didn’t turn around. “I’m descaling
your taps.”
I could feel him watching me.
“Say that again,” he said, after a beat.
“What?”
“Say that again.”
I straightened up. “Why? Are you having problems with your
hearing? I’m descaling your taps.”
“No, I just want you to listen to what you’re saying. There is no
reason to descale my taps, Clark. My mother won’t notice it, I won’t
care, and it’s making the bathroom stink like a fish and chips shop.
Besides, I’d like to go out.”
I wiped a lock of hair from my face. It was true. There was a
definite waft of large haddock in the atmosphere.
“Come on. It’s finally stopped raining. I just spoke to my dad. He
said he’ll give us the keys to the castle after five o’clock, once all the
tourists are out.”
I didn’t feel great about the idea of us having to make polite
conversation during a walk around the grounds. But the thought of
being out of the annex was appealing.
“Okay. Give me five minutes. I need to try and get the smell of
vinegar off my hands.”
The difference between growing up like me and growing up like Will
was that he wore his sense of entitlement lightly. I think if you grow
up as he had done, with wealthy parents, in a nice house, if you go
to good schools and nice restaurants as a matter of course, you

---

probably just have this sense that good things will fall into place, that
your position in the world is naturally an elevated one.
Will had escaped into the empty grounds of the castle his whole
childhood, he said. His dad let him roam the place, trusting him not
to touch anything. After 5:30 
P.M.
, when the last of the tourists had
gone, as the gardeners began to trim and tidy, as the cleaners
emptied the bins and swept up the empty cartons of drink and
commemorative toffee fudge, it had become his private playground.
“First girl I ever kissed was in front of the drawbridge,” he said,
slowing to look toward it as we walked along the gravel path.
“Did you tell her it was your place?”
“No. Perhaps I should have. She dumped me a week later for the
boy who worked in the minimart.”
I turned and stared at him in shock. “Not Terry Rowlands? Dark
slicked-back hair, tattoos up to his elbows?”
He raised an eyebrow. “That’s him.”
“He still works there, you know. In the minimart. If that makes you
feel any better.”
“I’m not sure he’d feel entirely envious of where I ended up,” Will
said, and I stopped talking again.
It was strange seeing the castle like this, in silence, the two of us
the only people there apart from the odd gardener in the distance.
Instead of gazing at the tourists, being distracted by their accents
and their alien lives, I found myself looking at the castle for perhaps
the first time, beginning to absorb some of its history. Its flinted walls
had stood there for more than eight hundred years. People had been
born and died there, hearts filled and broken. Now, in the silence,
you could almost hear their voices, their own footsteps on the path.
“Okay, confession time,” I said. “Did you ever walk around here
and pretend secretly that you were some kind of warrior prince?”
Will looked sideways at me. “Honestly?”
“Of course.”
“Yes. I even borrowed one of the swords off the walls of the Great
Hall once. It weighed a ton. I remember being petrified that I wouldn’t
be able to lift it back onto its stand.”

---

We had reached the swell of the hill, and from here, at the front of
the moat, we could look down the long sweep of grass to the ruined
wall that had marked the boundary. Beyond it lay the town, the neon
signs and queues of traffic, the bustle that marked the rush hour. Up
here it was silent apart from the birds and the soft hum of Will’s chair.
He stopped the chair briefly and swiveled it so that we looked
down at the grounds. “I’m surprised we never met each other,” he
said. “When I was growing up, I mean. Our paths must have
crossed.”
“Why would they? We didn’t exactly move in the same circles.
And I would just have been the baby you passed in the pram, while
swinging your sword.”
“Ah. I forgot—I am positively ancient compared to you.”
“Eight years would definitely have qualified you as an ‘older
man,’” I said. “Even when I was a teenager my dad would never
have let me go out with an older man.”
“Not even if he had his own castle?”
“Well, that would change things, obviously.”
The sweet smell of the grass rose up around us as we walked,
Will’s wheels hissing through the clear puddles on the path. I felt
relieved. Our conversation wasn’t quite as it had been, but perhaps
that was only to be expected. Mrs. Traynor had been right—it would
always be hard for Will to watch other people moving on with their
lives. I made a mental note to think more carefully about how my
actions might make an impact on his life. I didn’t want to be angry
anymore.
“Let’s do the maze. I haven’t done it for ages.”
I was pulled back from my thoughts. “Oh. No, thanks.” I glanced
over, noticing suddenly where we were.
“Why? Are you afraid of getting lost? C’mon, Clark. It’ll be a
challenge for you. See if you can memorize the route you take in,
then take the reverse one out. I’ll time you. I used to do it all the
time.”
I glanced back toward the house. “I’d really rather not.” Even the
thought of it had brought a knot to my stomach.
“Ah. Playing it safe again.”

---

“That’s not it.”
“No problem. We’ll just take our boring little walk and go back to
the boring little annex.”
I knew he was joking. But something in his tone really got to me. I
thought of my parents, my sister with her big new life. Mine was to
be the small life, my ambitions the petty ones.
I glanced over at the maze, at its dark, dense box hedging. I was
being ridiculous. Perhaps I had been behaving ridiculously for years.
It was all over, after all. And I was moving on.
“Just remember which turn you take, then reverse it to come out.
It’s not as hard as it looks. Really.”
I left him on the path before I could think about it. I took a breath,
and walked in past the sign that warned 
NO UNACCOMPANIED CHILDREN
,
striding briskly between the dark, damp hedging which still glistened
with raindrops.