Me Before You (35 page)

‘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 towards 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 towards the path.

‘Disneyland is good.’

‘I told you, no theme parks.’

‘I know you said that, but it’s not just roller coasters and whirling teacups. At Florida you’ve got the film studios and the science centre. It’s actually quite educational.’

‘I don’t think a 35-year-old former company head needs educating.’

‘There are disabled loos on every corner. And the members of staff are incredibly caring. Nothing is too much trouble.’

‘You’re going to say there are rides specially 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.’

Afterwards, 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 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 tailed 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 really like, but I had worked out within weeks of being employed by the Traynors that they had different ideas about money. They wrote four-figure cheques without giving it a thought. I had seen Will’s bank statement once, when it had been left on the kitchen table for him to look at. It contained enough money to buy our house twice over – and that was only his current account.

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 which 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 sure-fire 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 got 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.’

Her mind was only half on our phone call. She was preparing for a week’s residential course for ‘potential future business leaders’, and needed Mum and me to look after Thomas. It was going to be fantastic, she said. Some of the top names in industry would be there. Her tutor had put her forward and she was the only person on the whole course who didn’t have to pay her own fees. I could tell that, as she spoke to me, she was also doing something on a computer. I could hear her fingers on the keyboard.

‘Nice for you,’ I said.

‘It’s in some college at Oxford. Not even the ex-poly. The actual “dreaming spires” Oxford.’

‘Great.’

She paused for a moment. ‘He’s not suicidal, is he?’

‘Will? No more than usual.’

‘Well, that’s something.’ I heard the ping of an email.

‘I’d better go, Treen.’

‘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 own way. Someone had probably put in a good word with the weather gods.

‘That’s remarkably bitter of you, Clark,’ Will said, when I told him.

‘Yes, well, I’ve learnt 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 make-up 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 and a cornflower-blue shirt with 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 heavenwards. ‘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 further 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 blonde 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. Look, I’ll go just there.’

They 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.’

I parked, climbed out, adjusted my wrap around myself, and clicked the controls that would lower the ramp. ‘Okay,’ I said, as Will’s wheels met the ground. Across the road from us in the field, people were climbing out of huge, Germanic cars, women in fuchsia dresses muttering to their husbands as their heels sank into the grass. They were all leggy and streamlined in pale muted colours. I fiddled with my hair, wondering if I had put on too much lipstick. I suspected I looked like one of those plastic tomatoes you squeeze ketchup out of.

‘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 ribcage. I began to speak, but he interrupted me.

‘Look, we’ll just do whatever it takes to make it fun,’ he said.

Fun
. Like 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 towards 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 in airbrushed posters. I wondered if a team of professionals had done her hair and make-up. 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, boxed shoulders with silk linings in contrasting colours, 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 you. 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 business colleagues
, I thought, remembering my interviews at the Job Centre.

The weddings I went to usually had to separate the bride and groom’s families for fear of someone breaching the terms of their parole.

Will and I had positioned ourselves at the rear of the church, Will’s chair just to the right of my end of the pew. He looked up briefly as Alicia walked down the aisle, but apart from that he faced straight ahead, his expression unreadable. Forty-eight choristers (I counted) sang something in Latin. Rupert sweated into his penguin suit and raised an eyebrow as if he felt pleased and a bit daft at the same time. Nobody clapped or cheered as they were pronounced man and wife. Rupert looked a bit awkward, dived in towards his bride like somebody apple bobbing and slightly missed her mouth. I wondered if the upper classes felt it was a bit ‘off’ to really get stuck in at the altar.