Me Before You

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. ‘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 n**ed flesh.’

‘I do not fall over at the sight of n**ed 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.

‘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’ll be asking her to dust the skirting next.’

‘It is a bit dusty, now you mention it.’

‘You,’ I said, ‘are both going to get Mr Muscle in your tea tomorrow.’

I discarded outfit number three – a pair of yellow wide-legged trousers – already anticipating Will’s Rupert Bear references, and instead put on my fourth 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 grey silk scarf around my neck, to cover up my cl**vage, applied some matching lipstick, and then stepped into the living room.

‘Ka-pow,’ said Nathan, admiringly.

Will’s eyes travelled 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 cl**vage 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 kind of 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 were too polite to actually stare. Instead, they did this weird thing of catching sight of Will in their field of vision and then determinedly not looking at him. Until he’d gone past, at which point their gaze would flicker towards him, even while they remained in conversation with someone else. They wouldn’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 programmes in one hand, gin and tonics in the other, I saw this response pass through them in a gentle ripple which 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 centre 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 ahead, his head dipped into his shoulders, as if he were trying to become invisible.

This isn’t going to work, a little voice said.

‘Do you need anything?’ I whispered.

‘No,’ he shook his head. He swallowed. ‘Actually, yes. Something’s digging into my collar.’

I leant over and ran my finger around the inside of it; a nylon tag had been left inside. I pulled at it, hoping to snap it, but it proved stubbornly resistant.

‘New shirt. Is it really troubling you?’

‘No. I just thought I’d bring it up for fun.’

‘Do we have any scissors in the bag?’

‘I don’t know, Clark. Believe it or not, I rarely pack it myself.’

There were no scissors. I glanced behind me, where the audience were still settling themselves into their seats, murmuring and scanning their programmes. If Will couldn’t relax and focus on the music, the outing would be wasted. I couldn’t afford a second disaster.

‘Don’t move,’ I said.

‘Why –’

Before he could finish, I leant across, gently peeled his collar from the side of his neck, placed my mouth against it and took the offending tag between my front teeth. It took me a few seconds to bite through it, and I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the scent of clean male, the feel of his skin against mine, the incongruity of what I was doing. And then, finally, I felt it give. I pulled back my head and opened my eyes, triumphant, with the freed tag between my front teeth.

‘Got it!’ I said, pulling the tag from my teeth and flicking it across the seats.

Will stared at me.

‘What?’

I swivelled in my chair to catch those audience members who suddenly seemed to find their programmes absolutely fascinating. Then I turned back to Will.

‘Oh, come on, it’s not as if they’ve never seen a girl nibbling a bloke’s collar before.’

I seemed to have briefly silenced him. Will blinked a couple of times, made as if to shake his head. I noticed with amusement that his neck had coloured a deep red.

I straightened my skirt. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I think we should both just be grateful that it wasn’t in your trousers.’

And then, before he could respond, the orchestra walked out in their dinner jackets and cocktail dresses and the audience hushed. I felt a little flutter of excitement despite myself. I placed my hands together on my lap, sat up in my seat. They began to tune up, and suddenly the auditorium was filled with a single sound – the most alive, three-dimensional thing I had ever heard. It made the hairs on my skin stand up, my breath catch in my throat.

Will looked sideways at me, his face still carrying the mirth of the last few moments. Okay, his expression said. We’re going to enjoy this.

The conductor stepped up, tapped twice on the rostrum, and a great hush descended. I felt the stillness, the auditorium alive, expectant. Then he brought down his baton and suddenly everything was pure sound. I felt the music like a physical thing; it didn’t just sit in my ears, it flowed through me, around me, made my senses vibrate. It made my skin prickle and my palms dampen. Will hadn’t described any of it like this. I had thought I might be bored. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard.

And it made my imagination do unexpected things; as I sat there, I found myself thinking of things I hadn’t thought of for years, old emotions washing over me, new thoughts and ideas being pulled from me as if my perception itself were being stretched out of shape. It was almost too much, but I didn’t want it to stop. I wanted to sit there forever. I stole a look at Will. He was rapt, suddenly unselfconscious. I turned away, unexpectedly afraid to look at him. I was afraid of what he might be feeling, the depth of his loss, the extent of his fears. Will Traynor’s life had been so far beyond the experiences of mine. Who was I to tell him how he should want to live it?

Will’s friend left a note asking us to go backstage and see him afterwards, but Will didn’t want to. I urged him once, but I could see from the set of his jaw that he would not be budged. I couldn’t blame him. I remembered how his former workmates had looked at him that day – that mixture of pity, revulsion and, somewhere, deep relief that they themselves had somehow escaped this particular stroke of fate. I suspected there were only so many of those sorts of meetings he could stomach.

We waited until the auditorium was empty, then I wheeled him out, down to the car park in the lift, and loaded Will up without incident. I didn’t say much; my head was still ringing with the music, and I didn’t want it to fade. I kept thinking back to it, the way that Will’s friend had been so lost in what he was playing. I hadn’t realized that music could unlock things in you, could transport you to somewhere even the composer hadn’t predicted. It left an imprint in the air around you, as if you carried its remnants with you when you went. For some time, as we sat there in the audience, I had completely forgotten Will was even beside me.

We pulled up outside the annexe. In front of us, just visible above the wall, the castle sat, floodlit under the full moon, gazing serenely down from its position on the top of the hill.

‘So you’re not a classical music person.’

I looked into the rear-view mirror. Will was smiling.

‘I didn’t enjoy that in the slightest.’

‘I could tell.’

‘I especially didn’t enjoy that bit near the end, the bit where the violin was singing by itself.’

‘I could see you didn’t like that bit. In fact, I think you had tears in your eyes you hated it so much.’