Me Before You: a novel

get drunk and silly with men you don’t know…
His fingers squeezed mine. A faint movement, but there it was.
“Louisa. It wasn’t your fault.”
I cried then. Not sobbing, this time. The tears left me silently, and
told me something else was leaving me. Guilt. Fear. A few other
things I hadn’t yet found words for. I leaned my head gently on his
shoulder and he tilted his head until it rested against mine.
“Right. Are you listening to me?”
I murmured a yes.

---

“Then I’ll tell you something good,” he said, and then he waited,
as if he wanted to be sure he had my attention. “Some mistakes…
just have greater consequences than others. But you don’t have to
let that night be the thing that defines you.”
I felt his head still pressed against mine.
“You, Clark, have the choice not to let that happen.”
The sigh that left me then was long, and shuddering. We sat
there in silence, letting his words sink in. I could have stayed there
all night, above the rest of the world, the warmth of Will’s hand in
mine, feeling the worst of myself slowly begin to ebb away.
“We’d better get back,” he said eventually. “Before they call out a
search party.”
I released his hand and stood, a little reluctantly, feeling the cool
breezes on my skin. And then, almost luxuriously, I stretched my
arms high above my head. I let my fingers straighten in the evening
air, the tension of weeks, months, perhaps years, easing a little, and
let out a deep breath.
Below me the lights of the town winked, a circle of light amid the
black countryside below us. I turned back toward him. “Will?”
“Yes?”
I could barely see him in the dim light, but I knew he was
watching me. “Thank you. Thank you for coming to get me.”
He shook his head, and turned his chair back toward the path.

---

18
“Disney World is good.”
“I told you, no theme parks.”
“I know you said that, but it’s not just roller coasters and whirling
teacups. In Florida you’ve got the film studios and the science
center. It’s actually quite educational.”
“I don’t think a thirty-five-year-old former company head needs
educating.”
“There are disabled loos on every corner. And the members of
the staff are incredibly caring. Nothing is too much trouble.”
“You’re going to say there are rides especially for handicapped
people next, aren’t you?”
“They accommodate everyone. Why don’t you try Florida, Miss
Clark? If you don’t like it you could go on to SeaWorld. And the
weather is lovely.”
“In Will versus killer whale I think I know who would come off
worst.”
He didn’t seem to hear me. “And they are one of the top-rated
companies for dealing with disability. You know they do a lot of
Make-A-Wish Foundation stuff for people who are dying?”
“He is not dying.” I put the phone down on the travel agent just as
Will came in. I fumbled with the receiver, trying to set it back in its
cradle, and snapped my notepad shut.
“Everything all right, Clark?”
“Fine.” I smiled brightly.
“Good. Got a nice frock?”
“What?”
“What are you doing on Saturday?”
He was waiting expectantly. My brain was still stalled on killer
whale versus travel agent.
“Um…nothing. Patrick’s away all day training. Why?”

---

He waited just a few seconds before he said it, as if it actually
gave him some pleasure to surprise me.
“We’re going to a wedding.”
Afterward, I was never entirely sure why Will changed his mind about
Alicia and Rupert’s nuptials. I suspected there was probably a large
dose of natural contrariness in his decision—nobody expected him to
go, probably least of all Alicia and Rupert themselves. Perhaps it
was about finally getting closure. But I think in the last couple of
months she had lost the power to wound him.
We decided we could manage without Nathan’s help. I called up
to make sure the marquee was suitable for Will’s wheelchair, and
Alicia sounded so flustered when she realized we weren’t actually
declining the invitation that it dawned on me that her embossed
correspondence really had been for appearance’s sake.
“Um…well…there is a very small step up into the marquee, but I
suppose the people who are putting it up did say they could provide
a ramp…” She trailed off.
“That will be lovely, then. Thank you,” I said. “We’ll see you on the
day.”
We went online and picked out a wedding present. Will spent
£120 on a silver picture frame, and a vase that he said was
“absolutely vile” for another £60. I was shocked that he would spend
that much money on someone he didn’t even like, but I had worked
out within weeks of being employed by the Traynors that they had
different ideas about money than I did.
I decided to wear my red dress—partly because I knew Will liked
it (and I figured today he was going to need all the minor boosts he
could get)—but also because I didn’t actually have any other dresses
that I felt brave enough to wear at such a gathering. Will had no idea
of the fear I felt at the thought of going to a society wedding, let
alone as “the help.” Every time I thought of the braying voices, the
assessing glances in our direction, I wanted to spend the day
watching Patrick run in circles instead. Perhaps it was shallow of me
to even care, but I couldn’t help it. The thought of those guests
looking down on both of us was already tying my stomach in knots.

---

I didn’t say anything to Will, but I was afraid for him. Going to the
wedding of an ex seemed a masochistic act at the best of times, but
to go to a public gathering, one that would be full of his old friends
and work colleagues, to watch her marry his former friend, seemed
to me a surefire route to depression. I tried to suggest as much the
day before we left, but he brushed it off.
“If I’m not worried about it, Clark, I don’t think you should be,” he
said.
I rang Treena and told her.
“Check his wheelchair for anthrax and ammunition,” was all she
said.
“It’s the first time I’ve gotten him a proper distance from home
and it’s going to be a bloody disaster.”
“Maybe he just wants to remind himself that there are worse
things than dying?”
“Funny.”
“Okay. Have fun. Oh, and don’t wear that red dress. It shows way
too much cleavage.”
The morning of the wedding dawned bright and balmy, as I had
secretly known it would. Girls like Alicia always got their way.
“That’s remarkably bitter of you, Clark,” Will said when I told him.
“Yes, well, I’ve learned from the best.”
Nathan had come early to get Will ready so that we could leave
the house by nine. It was a two-hour drive, and I had built in rest
stops, planning our route carefully to ensure we had the best
facilities available. I got ready in the bathroom, pulling stockings over
my newly shaved legs, painting on makeup and then rubbing it off
again in case the posh guests thought I looked like a call girl. I dared
not put a scarf around my neck, but I had brought a wrap, which I
could use as a shawl if I felt overexposed.
“Not bad, eh?” Nathan stepped back, and there was Will in a dark
suit, a cornflower-blue shirt, and a tie. He was clean-shaven, and
carried a faint tan on his face. The shirt made his eyes look
peculiarly vivid. They seemed, suddenly, to carry a glint of the sun.

---

“Not bad,” I said—because, weirdly, I didn’t want to say how
handsome he actually looked. “She’ll certainly be sorry she’s
marrying that braying bucket of lard, anyway.”
Will raised his eyes heavenward. “Nathan, do we have everything
in the bag?”
“Yup. All set and ready to go.” He turned to Will. “No snogging the
bridesmaids, now.”
“As if he’d want to,” I said. “They’ll all be wearing pie-crust collars
and smell of horse.”
Will’s parents came out to see him off. I suspected they had just
had an argument, as Mrs. Traynor could not have stood farther away
from her husband unless they had actually been in separate
counties. She kept her arms folded firmly, even as I reversed the car
for Will to get in. She didn’t once look at me.
“Don’t get him too drunk, Louisa,” she said, brushing imaginary
lint from Will’s shoulder.
“Why?” Will said. “I’m not driving.”
“You’re quite right, Will,” his father said. “I always needed a good
stiff drink or two to get through a wedding.”
“Even your own,” Mrs. Traynor murmured, adding more audibly,
“You look very smart, darling.” She knelt down, adjusting the hem of
Will’s trousers. “Really, very smart.”
“So do you.” Mr. Traynor eyed me approvingly as I stepped out of
the driver’s seat. “Very eye-catching. Give us a twirl, then, Louisa.”
Will turned his chair away. “She doesn’t have time, Dad. Let’s get
on the road, Clark. I’m guessing it’s bad form to wheel yourself in
behind the bride.”
I climbed back into the car with relief. With Will’s chair secured in
the back, and his smart jacket hung neatly over the passenger’s seat
so that it wouldn’t crease, we set off.
I could have told you what Alicia’s parents’ house would be like even
before I got there. In fact, my imagination got it so nearly spot on that
Will asked me why I was laughing as I slowed the car. A large
Georgian rectory, its tall windows partly obscured by showers of pale

---

wisteria, its drive a caramel pea shingle, it was the perfect house for
a colonel. I could already picture her growing up within it, her hair in
two neat blond plaits as she sat astride her first fat pony on the lawn.
Two men in reflective tabards were directing traffic into a field
between the house and the church beside it. I wound down the
window. “Is there a car park beside the church?”
“Guests are this way, Madam.”
“Well, we have a wheelchair, and it will sink into the grass here,” I
said. “We need to be right beside the church. I’ll go just there.”
The two men looked at each other, and murmured something
between themselves. Before they could say anything else, I drove up
and parked in the secluded spot beside the church. And here it
starts, I told myself, catching Will’s eye in the mirror as I turned off
the ignition.
“Chill out, Clark. It’s all going to be fine,” he said.
“I’m perfectly relaxed. Why would you think I wasn’t?”
“You’re ridiculously transparent. Plus you’ve chewed off four of
your fingernails while you’ve been driving.”
“So…how are we playing today?”
Will followed my line of vision. “Honestly?”
“Yup. I need to know. And please don’t say Shock and Awe. Are
you planning something terrible?”
Will’s eyes met mine. Blue, unfathomable. A small cloud of
butterflies landed in my stomach.
“We’re going to be incredibly well behaved, Clark.”
The butterflies’ wings began to beat wildly, as if trapped against
my rib cage. I began to speak, but he interrupted me.
“Look, we’ll just do whatever it takes to make it fun,” he said.
Fun. As if going to an ex’s wedding could ever be less painful
than root canal surgery. But it was Will’s choice. Will’s day. I took a
breath, trying to pull myself together.
“One exception,” I said, adjusting the wrap around my shoulders
for the fourteenth time.
“What?”
“You’re not to do the Christy Brown. If you do the Christy Brown I
will drive home and leave you stuck here with the pointy-heads.”

---

As Will turned and began making his way toward the church, I
thought I heard him murmur, “Spoilsport.”
We sat through the ceremony without incident. Alicia looked as
ridiculously beautiful as I had known she would, her skin polished a
pale caramel, the bias-cut off-white silk skimming her slim figure as if
it wouldn’t dare rest there without permission. I stared at her as she
floated down the aisle, wondering how it would feel to be tall and
long-legged and look like something most of us only saw on
airbrushed posters. I wondered if she was wearing control pants. Of
course not. She would be wearing pale wisps of something lacy—
underwear for women who didn’t need anything actually supported,
and which cost more than my weekly salary.
While the vicar droned on, and the little ballet-shod bridesmaids
shuffled in their pews, I gazed around me at the other guests. There
was barely a woman there who didn’t look like she might appear in
the pages of a glossy magazine. Their shoes, which matched their
outfits to the exact hue, looked as if they had never been worn
before. The younger women stood elegantly in four- or five-inch
heels, with perfectly manicured toenails. The older women, in kitten
heels, wore structured suits, with padded shoulders and silk linings
in contrasting colors, and hats that looked as if they defied gravity.
The men were less interesting to look at, but nearly all had that
air about them that I could sometimes detect in Will—of wealth and
entitlement, a sense that life would settle itself agreeably around
them. I wondered about the companies they ran, the worlds they
inhabited. I wondered if they noticed people like me, who nannied
their children, or served them in restaurants. Or pole-danced for their