[English Novel] Me Before You

Me Before You
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Nathan stepped over to the ticket office and explained our plight to the woman inside. She tilted her head to look at Will, then pointed us towards the far end of the stand.

‘The disabled entrance is over there,’ she said.

She said disabled like someone entering a diction contest. It was a good 200 yards away. By the time we finally made it over there the blue skies had disappeared abruptly, replaced by a sudden squall. Naturally, I hadn’t brought an umbrella. I kept up a relentless, cheerful commentary about how funny this was and how ridiculous, and even to my ears I had begun to sound brittle and irritating.

‘Clark,’ said Will, finally. ‘Just chill out, okay? You’re being exhausting.’

We bought tickets for the stands, and then, almost faint with relief at finally having got there, I wheeled Will out to a sheltered area just to the side of the main stand. While Nathan sorted out Will’s drink, I had some time to look at our fellow racegoers.

It was actually quite pleasant at the base of the stands, despite the occasional spit of rain. Above us, on a glass-fronted balcony, men in suits proffered champagne glasses to women in wedding outfits. They looked warm and cosy, and I suspected that was the Premier Area, listed next to some stratospheric price on the board in the ticket kiosk. They wore little badges on red thread, marking them out as special. I wondered briefly if it was possible to colour our blue ones a different shade, but decided that being the only people with a wheelchair would probably make us a little conspicuous.

Beside us, dotted along the stands and clutching polystyrene cups of coffee and hip flasks, were men in tweedy suits and women in smart padded coats. They looked a little more everyday, and their little badges were blue too. I suspected that many of them were trainers and grooms, or horsey people of some sort. Down at the front, by little whiteboards, stood the tic-tac men, their arms waving in some strange semaphore that I couldn’t understand. They scribbled up new combinations of figures, and scrubbed them out again with the base of their sleeves.

And then, like some parody of a class system, around the parade ring stood a group of men in striped polo shirts, who clutched beer cans and who seemed to be on some kind of outing. Their shaved heads suggested some kind of military service. Periodically they would break out into song, or begin some noisy, physical altercation, ramming each other with blunt heads or wrapping their arms around each other’s necks. As I passed to go to the loo, they catcalled me in my short skirt (I appeared to be the only person in the whole of the stands in a skirt) and I flipped them the finger behind my back. And then they lost interest as seven or eight horses began skirting around each other, eased into the stands with workmanlike skill, all preparing for the next race.

And then I jumped as around us the small crowd roared into life and the horses bolted from the starting gate. I stood and watched them go, suddenly transfixed, unable *****ppress a flurry of excitement at the tails suddenly streaming out behind them, the frantic efforts of the brightly coloured men atop them, all jostling for position. When the winner crossed the finishing line it was almost impossible not to cheer.

We watched the Sisterwood Cup, and then the Maiden Stakes, and Nathan won six pounds on a small each-way bet. Will declined to bet. He watched each race, but he was silent, his head retracted into the high collar of his jacket. I thought perhaps he had been indoors so long that it was bound to all feel a little weird for him, and I decided I was simply not going to acknowledge it.

‘I think that’s your race, the Hempworth Cup,’ Nathan said, glancing up at the screen. ‘Who did you say your money was on? Man Oh Man?’ He grinned. ‘I never knew how much more fun betting is when you’re actually watching the horses.’

‘You know, I didn’t tell you this, but I’ve never been racing before either,’ I told Nathan.

‘You’re kidding me.’

‘I’ve never even been on a horse. My mum is terrified of them. Wouldn’t even take me to the stables.’

‘My sister’s got two, just outside Christchurch. She treats them like babies. All her money goes on them.’ He shrugged. ‘And she isn’t even going to eat them at the end of it.’

Will’s voice filtered up towards us. ‘So how many races will it take to ensure we’ve fulfilled your long-held ambitions?’

‘Don’t be grumpy. They say you should try everything once,’ I said.

‘I think horse racing falls into the “except incest and morris dancing” category.’

‘You’re the one always telling me to widen my horizons. You’re loving it,’ I said. ‘And don’t pretend otherwise.’

And then they were off. Man Oh Man was in purple silks with a yellow diamond. I watched him flatten out around the white rail, the horse’s head extended, the jockey’s legs pumping, arms flailing backwards and forwards up the horse’s neck.

‘Go on, mate!’ Nathan had got into it, despite himself. His fists were clenched, his eyes fixed on the blurred group of animals speeding around the far side of the track.

‘Go on, Man Oh Man!’ I yelled. ‘We’ve got a steak dinner riding on you!’ I watched him vainly trying to make ground, his nostrils dilated, his ears back against his head. My own heart lurched into my mouth. And then, as they reached the final furlong, my yelling began to die away. ‘All right, a coffee,’ I said. ‘I’ll settle for a coffee?’

Around me the stands had erupted into shouting and screaming. A girl was bouncing up and down two seats along from us, her voice hoarse with screeching. I found I was bouncing on my toes. And then I looked down and saw that Will’s eyes were closed, a faint furrow separating his brows. I tore my attention from the track, and knelt down.

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‘Are you okay, Will?’ I said, moving close to him. ‘Do you need something?’ I had to yell to make myself heard over the din.

‘Scotch,’ he said. ‘Large one.’

I stared at him, and he lifted his eyes to mine. He looked utterly fed up.

‘Let’s get some lunch,’ I said to Nathan.

Man Oh Man, that four-legged imposter, flashed past the finishing line a miserable sixth. There was another cheer, and the announcer’s voice came over the tannoy: Ladies and gentlemen, an emphatic win there from Love Be A Lady, there in first place, followed by Winter Sun, and Barney Rubble two lengths behind in third place.

I pushed Will’s chair through the oblivious groups of people, deliberately bashing into heels when they failed to react to my second request.

We were just at the lift when I heard Will’s voice. ‘So, Clark, does this mean you owe me forty pounds?’

The restaurant had been refurbished, the food now under the auspices of a television chef whose face appeared on posters around the racecourse. I had looked up the menu beforehand.

‘The signature dish is duck in orange sauce,’ I told the two men. ‘It’s Seventies retro, apparently.’

‘Like your outfit,’ said Will.

Out of the cold, and away from the crowds, he appeared to have cheered up a little. He had begun to look around him, instead of retreating back into his solitary world. My stomach began to rumble, already anticipating a good, hot lunch. Will’s mother had given us eighty pounds as a ‘float’. I had decided I would pay for my food myself, and show her the receipt, and as a result had no fears at all that I was going to order myself whatever I fancied on the menu – retro roast duck, or otherwise.

‘You like going out to eat, Nathan?’ I said.

‘I’m more of a beer and takeaway man myself,’ Nathan said. ‘Happy to come today, though.’

‘When did you last go out for a meal, Will?’ I said.

He and Nathan looked at each other. ‘Not while I’ve been there,’ Nathan said.

‘Strangely, I’m not overly fond of being spoon-fed in front of strangers.’

‘Then we’ll get a table where we can face you away from the room,’ I said. I had anticipated this one. ‘And if there are any celebrities there, that will be your loss.’

‘Because celebrities are thick on the ground at a muddy minor racecourse in March.’

‘You’re not going to spoil this for me, Will Traynor,’ I said, as the lift doors opened. ‘The last time I ate out anywhere was a birthday party for four-year-olds at Hailsbury’s only indoor bowling alley, and there wasn’t a thing there that wasn’t covered in batter. Including the children.’

We wheeled our way along the carpeted corridor. The restaurant ran along one side, behind a glass wall, and I could see there were plenty of free tables. My stomach began to rumble in anticipation.

‘Hello,’ I said, stepping up to the reception area. ‘I’d like a table for three, please.’ Please don’t look at Will, I told the woman silently. Don’t make him feel awkward. It’s important that he enjoys this.

‘Badge, please,’ she said.

‘Sorry?’

‘Your Premier Area badge?’

I looked at her blankly.

‘This restaurant is for Premier badge holders only.’

I glanced behind me at Will and Nathan. They couldn’t hear me, but stood, expectantly, waiting. Nathan was helping remove Will’s coat.

‘Um … I didn’t know we couldn’t eat anywhere we wanted. We have the blue badges.’

She smiled. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Only Premier badge holders. It does say so on all our promotional material.’

I took a deep breath. ‘Okay. Are there any other restaurants?’

‘I’m afraid the Weighing Room, our relaxed dining area, is being refurbished right now, but there are stalls along the stands where you can get something to eat.’ She saw my face fall, and added, ‘The Pig In A Poke is pretty good. You get a hog roast in a bun. They do apple sauce too.’

‘A stall.’

‘Yes.’

I leant in towards her. ‘Please,’ I said. ‘We’ve come a long way, and my friend there isn’t good in the cold. Is there any way at all that we could get a table in here? We just really need to get him into the warm. It’s really important that he has a good day.’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s more than my job’s worth to override the rules. But there is a disabled seating area downstairs that you can shut the doors on. You can’t see the course from there, but it’s quite snug. It’s got heaters and everything. You could eat in there.’

I stared at her. I could feel the tension creeping upwards from my shins. I thought I might have gone completely rigid.

I studied her name badge. ‘Sharon,’ I said. ‘You haven’t even begun to fill your tables. Surely it would be better to have more people eating than leaving half these tables empty? Just because of some arcane class-based regulation in a rule book?’

Her smile glinted under the recessed lighting. ‘Madam, I have explained the situation to you. If we relaxed the rules for you, we’d have to do it for everyone.’

‘But it makes no sense,’ I said. ‘It’s a wet Monday lunchtime. You have empty tables. We want to buy a meal. A properly expensive meal, with napkins and everything. We don’t want to eat pork rolls and sit in a cloakroom with no view, no matter how snug.’

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Other diners had begun to turn in their seats, curious about the altercation by the door. I could see Will looking embarrassed now. He and Nathan had worked out something was going wrong.

‘Then I’m afraid you should have bought a Premier Area badge.’

‘Okay.’ I reached for my handbag, and began to rifle through, searching for my purse. ‘How much is a Premier Area badge?’ Tissues, old bus tickets and one of Thomas’s Hot Wheels toy cars flew out. I no longer cared. I was going to get Will his posh lunch in a restaurant. ‘Here. How much? Another ten? Twenty?’ I thrust a fistful of notes at her.

She looked down at my hand. ‘I’m sorry, Madam, we don’t sell badges here. This is a restaurant. You’ll have to go back to the ticket office.’

‘The one that’s all the way over the other side of the racecourse.’

‘Yes.’

We stared at each other.

Will’s voice broke in. ‘Louisa, let’s go.’

I felt my eyes suddenly brim with tears. ‘No,’ I said. ‘This is ridiculous. We’ve come all this way. You stay here and I’ll go and get us all Premier Area badges. And then we will have our meal.’

‘Louisa, I’m not hungry.’

‘We’ll be fine once we’ve eaten. We can watch the horses and everything. It will be fine.’

Nathan stepped forward and laid a hand on my arm. ‘Louisa, I think Will really just wants to go home.’

We were now the focus of the whole restaurant. The gaze of the diners swept over us and travelled past me to Will, where they clouded with faint pity or distaste. I felt that for him. I felt like an utter failure. I looked up at the woman, who did at least have the grace to look slightly embarrassed now that Will had actually spoken.

‘Well, thank you,’ I said to her. ‘Thanks for being so f**king accommodating.’

‘Clark –’ Will’s voice carried a warning.

‘So glad that you are so flexible. I’ll certainly recommend you to everyone I know.’

‘Louisa!’

I grabbed my bag and thrust it under my arm.

‘You’ve forgotten your little car,’ she called, as I swept through the door that Nathan held open for me.

‘Why, does that need a bloody badge too?’ I said, and followed them into the lift.

We descended in silence. I spent most of the short lift journey trying to stop my hands from shaking with rage.

When we reached the bottom concourse, Nathan murmured, ‘I think we should probably get something from one of these stalls, you know. It’s been a few hours now since we ate anything.’ He glanced down at Will, so I knew who it was he was really referring to.

‘Fine,’ I said, brightly. I took a little breath. ‘I love a bit of crackling. Let’s go to the old hog roast.’

We ordered three buns with pork, crackling and apple sauce, and sheltered under the striped awning while we ate them. I sat down on a small dustbin, so that I could be at the same level as Will, and helped him to manageable bites of meat, shredding it with my fingers where necessary. The two women who served behind the counter pretended not to look at us. I could see them monitoring Will out of the corners of their eyes, periodically muttering to each other when they thought we weren’t looking. Poor man, I could practically hear them saying. What a terrible way to live. I gave them a hard stare, daring them to look at him like that. I tried not to think too hard about what Will must be feeling.

The rain had stopped, but the windswept course felt suddenly bleak, its brown and green surface littered with discarded betting slips, its horizon flat and empty. The car park had thinned out with the rain, and in the distance we could just hear the distorted sound of the tannoy as some other race thundered past.

‘I think maybe we should head back,’ Nathan said, wiping his mouth. ‘I mean, it was nice and all, but best to miss the traffic, eh?’

‘Fine,’ I said. I screwed up my paper napkin, and threw it into the bin. Will waved away the last third of his roll.

‘Didn’t he like it?’ said the woman, as Nathan began to wheel him away across the grass.

‘I don’t know. Perhaps he would have liked it better if it hadn’t come with a side order of rubberneck,’ I said, and chucked the remnants hard into the bin.

But getting to the car and back up the ramp was easier said than done. In the few hours that we had spent at the racecourse, the arrivals and departures meant that the car park had turned into a sea of mud. Even with Nathan’s impressive might, and my best shoulder, we couldn’t get the chair even halfway across the grass to the car. His wheels skidded and whined, unable to get the purchase to make it up that last couple of inches. Mine and Nathan’s feet slithered in the mud, which worked its way up the sides of our shoes.

‘It’s not going to happen,’ said Will.

I had refused to listen to him. I couldn’t bear the idea that this was how our day was going to end.

‘I think we’re going to need some help,’ Nathan said. ‘I can’t even get the chair back on to the path. It’s stuck.’

Will let out an audible sigh. He looked about as fed up as I had ever seen him.

‘I could lift you into the front seat, Will, if I tilt it back a little. And then Louisa and I could see if we could get the chair in afterwards.’

Will’s voice emerged through gritted teeth. ‘I am not ending today with a fireman’s lift.’

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‘Sorry, mate,’ Nathan said. ‘But Lou and I are not going to manage this alone. Here, Lou, you’re prettier than I am. Go and collar a few extra pairs of arms, will you?’

Will closed his eyes, set his jaw and I ran towards the stands.

I would not have believed so many people could turn down a cry for help when it involved a wheelchair stuck in mud, especially as the cry did come from a girl in a miniskirt and flashing her most endearing smile. I am not usually good with strangers, but desperation made me fearless. I walked from group to group of racegoers in the grandstand, asking if they could just spare me a few minutes’ help. They looked at me and my clothes as if I were plotting some kind of trap.

‘It’s for a man in a wheelchair,’ I said. ‘He’s a bit stuck.’

‘We’re just waiting on the next race,’ they said. Or, ‘Sorry.’ Or, ‘It’ll have to wait till after the two thirty. We have a monkey on this one.’

I even thought about collaring a jockey or two. But as I got close to the enclosure, I saw that they were even smaller than I was.

By the time I got to the parade ring I was incandescent with suppressed rage. I suspect I was snarling at people then, not smiling. And there, finally, joy of joys, were the lads in striped polo shirts. The back of their shirts referred to ‘Marky’s Last Stand’ and they clutched cans of Pilsner and Tennent’s Extra. Their accents suggested they were from somewhere in the north-east, and I was pretty sure that they had not had any significant break from alcohol for the last twenty-four hours. They cheered as I approached, and I fought the urge to give them the finger again.

‘Gissa smile, sweetheart. It’s Marky’s stag weekend,’ one slurred, slamming a ham-sized hand on to my shoulder.

‘It’s Monday.’ I tried not to flinch as I peeled it off.

‘You’re joking. Monday already?’ He reeled backwards. ‘Well, you should give him a kiss, like.’

‘Actually,’ I said. ‘I’ve come over to ask you for help.’

‘Ah’ll give you any help you need, pet.’ This was accompanied by a lascivious wink.

His mates swayed gently around him like aquatic plants.

‘No, really. I need you to help my friend. Over in the car park.’

‘Ah’m sorry, ah’m not sure ah’m in any fit state to help youse, pet.’

‘Hey up. Next race is up, Marky. You got money on this? I think I’ve got money on this.’

They turned back towards the track, already losing interest. I looked over my shoulder at the car park, seeing the hunched figure of Will, Nathan pulling vainly at the handles of his chair. I pictured myself returning home to tell Will’s parents that we had left Will’s super-expensive chair in a car park. And then I saw the tattoo.

‘He’s a soldier,’ I said, loudly. ‘Ex-soldier.’

One by one they turned round.

‘He was injured. In Iraq. All we wanted to do was get him a nice day out. But nobody will help us.’ As I spoke the words, I felt my eyes welling up with tears.

‘A vet? You’re kidding us. Where is he?’

‘In the car park. I’ve asked lots of people, but they just don’t want to help.’

It seemed to take a minute or two for them to digest what I’d said. But then they looked at each other in amazement.

‘C’mon, lads. We’re not having that.’ They swayed after me in a wayward trail. I could hear them exclaiming between themselves, muttering. ‘Bloody civvies … no idea what it’s like … ’

When we reached them, Nathan was standing by Will, whose head had sunk deep into the collar of his coat with cold, even as Nathan covered his shoulders with another blanket.

‘These very nice gentlemen have offered to help us,’ I said.

Nathan was staring at the cans of lager. I had to admit that you’d have had to look quite hard to see a suit of armour in any of them.

‘Where do youse want to get him to?’ said one.

The others stood around Will, nodding their hellos. One offered him a beer, apparently unable to grasp that Will could not pick it up.

Nathan motioned to our car. ‘Back in the car, ultimately. But to do that we need to get him over to the stand, and then reverse the car back to him.’

‘You don’t need to do that,’ said one, clapping Nathan on the back. ‘We can take him to your car, can’t we, lads?’

There was a chorus of agreement. They began to position themselves around Will’s chair.

I shifted uncomfortably. ‘I don’t know … that’s a long way for you to carry him,’ I ventured. ‘And the chair’s very heavy.’

They were howlingly drunk. Some of them could barely hang on to their cans of drink. One thrust his can of Tennent’s into my hand.

‘Don’t you worry, pet. Anything for a fellow soldier, isn’t that right, lads?’

‘We wouldn’t leave you there, mate. We never leave a man down, do we?’

I saw Nathan’s face and shook my head furiously at his quizzical expression. Will seemed unlikely to say anything. He just looked grim, and then, as the men clustered around his chair, and with a shout, hoisted it up between them, vaguely alarmed.

‘What regiment, pet?’

I tried to smile, trawling my memory for names. ‘Rifles … ’ I said. ‘Eleventh rifles.’

‘I don’t know the eleventh rifles,’ said another.

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‘It’s a new regiment,’ I stuttered. ‘Top secret. Based in Iraq.’

Their trainers slid in the mud, and I felt my heart lurch. Will’s chair was hoisted several inches off the ground, like some kind of sedan. Nathan was running for Will’s bag, unlocking the car ahead of us.

‘Did those boys train over in Catterick?’

‘That’s the one,’ I said, and then changed the subject. ‘So – which one of you is getting married?’

We had exchanged numbers by the time I finally got rid of Marky and his mates. They had a whip-round, offering us almost forty pounds towards Will’s rehabilitation fund, and only stopped insisting when I told them we would be happiest if they would have a drink on us instead. I had to kiss each and every one of them. I was nearly dizzy with fumes by the time I had finished. I continued to wave at them as they disappeared back to the stand, and Nathan sounded the horn to get me into the car.

‘They were helpful, weren’t they?’ I said, brightly, as I turned the ignition.

‘The tall one dropped his entire beer down my right leg,’ said Will. ‘I smell like a brewery.’

‘I don’t believe this,’ said Nathan, as I finally pulled out towards the main entrance. ‘Look. There’s a whole disabled parking section right there, by the stand. And it’s all on tarmac.’

Will didn’t say much of anything for the rest of the day. He bid Nathan goodbye when we dropped him home, and then grew silent as I negotiated the road up to the castle, which had thinned out now the temperature had dropped again, and finally I parked up outside the annexe.

I lowered Will’s chair, got him inside, and made him a warm drink. I changed his shoes and trousers, put the beer-stained ones in the washing machine, and got the fire going so that he would warm up. I put the television on, and drew the curtains so that the room grew cosy around us – perhaps cosier for the time spent out in the cold air. But it was only when I sat in the living room with him, sipping my tea, that I realized he wasn’t talking – not out of exhaustion, or because he wanted to watch the television. He just wasn’t talking to me.

‘Is … something the matter?’ I said, when he failed to respond to my third comment about the local news.

‘You tell me, Clark.’

‘What?’

‘Well, you know everything else there is to know about me. You tell me.’

I stared at him. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, finally. ‘I know today didn’t turn out quite like I planned. But it was just meant to be a nice outing. I actually thought you’d enjoy it.’

I didn’t add that he was being determinedly grumpy, that he had no idea what I had gone through just to get him to try to enjoy himself, that he hadn’t even tried to have a good time. I didn’t tell him that if he’d let me buy the stupid badges we might have had a nice lunch and all the other stuff might have been forgotten.

‘That’s my point.’

‘What?’

‘Oh, you’re no different from the rest of them.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘If you’d bothered to ask me, Clark. If you’d bothered to consult me just once about this so-called fun outing of ours, I could have told you. I hate horses, and horse racing. Always have. But you didn’t bother to ask me. You decided what you thought you’d like me to do, and you went ahead and did it. You did what everyone else did. You decided for me.’

I swallowed.

‘I didn’t mean to –’

‘But you did.’

He turned his chair away from me and, after a couple more minutes of silence, I realized I had been dismissed.

12

I can tell you the exact day I stopped being fearless.

It was almost seven years ago, in the last lazy, heat-slurred days of July, when the narrow streets around the castle were thick with tourists, and the air filled with the sound of their meandering footsteps and the chimes of the ever-present ice cream vans that lined the top of the hill.

My grandmother had died a month previously after a long illness, and that summer was veiled in a thin layer of sadness; it gently smothered everything we did, muting mine and my sister’s tendencies to the dramatic, and cancelling our usual summer routines of brief holidays and days out. My mother stood most days at her washing-up bowl, her back rigid with the effort of trying *****ppress her tears, while Dad disappeared to work each morning with a grimly determined expression, returning hours later shiny-faced from the heat and unable to speak before he had cracked open a beer. My sister was home from her first year at university, her head already somewhere far from our small town. I was twenty and would meet Patrick in less than three months. We were enjoying one of those rare summers of utter freedom – no financial responsibility, no debts, no time owing to anybody. I had a seasonal job and all the hours in the world to practise my make-up, put on heels that made my father wince, and just generally work out who I was.

I dressed normally, in those days. Or, I should say, I dressed like the other girls in town – long hair, flicked over the shoulder, indigo jeans, T-shirts tight enough to show off our tiny waists and high br**sts. We spent hours perfecting our lipgloss, and the exact shade of a smokey eye. We looked good in anything, but spent hours complaining about non-existent cellulite and invisible flaws in our skin.

And I had ideas. Things I wanted to do. One of the boys I knew at school had taken a round-the-world trip and come back somehow removed and unknowable, like he wasn’t the same scuffed eleven-year-old who used to blow spit bubbles during double French. I had booked a cheap flight to Australia on a whim, and was trying to find someone who might come with me. I liked the exoticism his travels gave him, the unknownness. He had blown in with the soft breezes of a wider world, and it was weirdly seductive. Everyone here knew everything about me, after all. And with a sister like mine, I was never allowed to forget any of it.

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It was a Friday, and I had spent the day working as a car park attendant with a group of girls I had known at school, steering visitors to a craft fair held in the grounds of the castle. The whole day was punctuated with laughter, with fizzy drinks guzzled under a hot sun, the sky blue, light glinting off the battlements. I don’t think there was a single tourist who didn’t smile at me that day. People find it very hard not to smile at a group of cheerful, giggling girls. We were paid £30, and the organizers were so pleased with the turnout that they gave us an extra fiver each. We celebrated by getting drunk with some boys who had been working on the far car park by the visitor centre. They were well spoken, sporting rugby shirts and floppy hair. One was called Ed, two of them were at university – I still can’t remember where – and they were working for holiday money too. They were flush with cash at the end of a whole week of stewarding, and when our money ran out they were happy to buy drinks for giddy local girls who flicked their hair and sat on each other’s laps and shrieked and joked and called them posh. They spoke a different language; they talked of gap years and summers spent in South America, and the backpacker trail in Thailand and who was going to try for an internship abroad. While we listened, and drank, I remember my sister stopping by the beer garden where we lay sprawled on the grass. She was wearing the world’s oldest hoody and no make-up, and I’d forgotten I was meant to be meeting her. I told her to tell Mum and Dad I’d be back sometime after I was thirty. For some reason I found this hysterically funny. She had lifted her eyebrows, and stalked off like I was the most irritating person ever born.

When the Red Lion closed we all went and sat in the centre of the castle maze. Someone managed to scramble over the gates and, after much colliding and giggling, we all found our way to the middle and drank strong cider while someone passed around a joint. I remember staring up at the stars, feeling myself disappear into their infinite depths, as the ground gently swayed and lurched around me like the deck of a huge ship. Someone was playing a guitar, and I had a pair of pink satin high heels on which I kicked into the long grass and never went back for. I thought I probably ruled the universe.

It was about half an hour before I realized the other girls had gone.

My sister found me, there in the centre of the maze, sometime later, long after the stars had been obscured by the night clouds. As I said, she’s pretty smart. Smarter than me, anyway.

She’s the only person I ever knew who could find her way out of the maze safely.

‘This will make you laugh. I’ve joined the library.’

Will was over by his CD collection. He swivelled the chair round, and waited while I put his drink in his cup holder. ‘Really? What are you reading?’

‘Oh, nothing sensible. You wouldn’t like it. Just boy-meets-girl stuff. But I’m enjoying it.’

‘You were reading my Flannery O’Connor the other day.’ He took a sip of his drink. ‘When I was ill.’

‘The short stories? I can’t believe you noticed that.’

‘I couldn’t help but notice. You left the book out on the side. I can’t pick it up.’

‘Ah.’

‘So don’t read rubbish. Take the O’Connor stories home. Read them instead.’

I was about to say no, and then I realized I didn’t really know why I was refusing. ‘All right. I’ll bring them back as soon as I’ve finished.’

‘Put some music on for me, Clark?’

‘What do you want?’

He told me, nodding at its rough location, and I flicked through until I found it.

‘I have a friend who plays lead violin in the Albert Symphonia. He called to say he’s playing near here next week. This piece of music. Do you know it?’

‘I don’t know anything about classical music. I mean, sometimes my dad accidentally tunes into Classic FM, but –’

‘You’ve never been to a concert?’

‘No.’

He looked genuinely shocked.

‘Well, I did go to see Westlife once. But I’m not sure if that counts. It was my sister’s choice. Oh, and I was meant to go see Robbie Williams on my twenty-second birthday, but I got food poisoning.’

Will gave me one of his looks – the kind of looks that suggest I may actually have been locked up in somebody’s cellar for several years.

‘You should go. He’s offered me tickets. This will be really good. Take your mother.’

I laughed and shook my head. ‘I don’t think so. My mum doesn’t really go out. And it’s not my cup of tea.’

‘Like films with subtitles weren’t your cup of tea?’

I frowned at him. ‘I’m not your project, Will. This isn’t My Fair Lady.’

‘Pygmalion.’

‘What?’

‘The play you’re referring to. It’s Pygmalion. My Fair Lady is just its bastard offspring.’

I glared at him. It didn’t work. I put the CD on. When I turned round he was still shaking his head.

‘You’re the most terrible snob, Clark.’

‘What? Me?’

‘You cut yourself off from all sorts of experiences because you tell yourself you are “not that sort of person”.’

‘But, I’m not.’

‘How do you know? You’ve done nothing, been nowhere. How do you have the faintest idea what kind of person you are?’

How could someone like him have the slightest clue what it felt like to be me? I felt almost cross with him for wilfully not getting it.

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‘Go on. Open your mind.’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’d be uncomfortable. I feel like … I feel like they’d know.’

‘Who? Know what?’

‘Everyone else would know, that I didn’t belong.’

‘How do you think I feel?’

We looked at each other.

‘Clark, every single place I go to now people look at me like I don’t belong.’

We sat in silence as the music started. Will’s father was on the telephone in his hall, and the sound of muffled laughter carried through it into the annexe, as if from a long way away. The disabled entrance is over there, the woman at the racecourse had said. As if he were a different species.

I stared at the CD cover. ‘I’ll go if you come with me.’

‘But you won’t go on your own.’

‘Not a chance.’

We sat there, while he digested this. ‘Jesus, you’re a pain in the arse.’

‘So you keep telling me.’

I made no plans this time. I expected nothing. I was just quietly hopeful that, after the racing debacle, Will was still prepared to leave the annexe. His friend, the violinist, sent us the promised free tickets, with an information leaflet on the venue attached. It was forty minutes’ drive away. I did my homework, checked the location of the disabled parking, rang the venue beforehand to assess the best way to get Will’s chair to his seat. They would seat us at the front, with me on a folding chair beside Will.

‘It’s actually the best place to be,’ the woman in the box office said, cheerfully. ‘You somehow get more of an impact when you’re right in the pit near the orchestra. I’ve often been tempted to sit there myself.’

She even asked if I would like someone to meet us in the car park, to help us to our seats. Afraid that Will would feel too conspicuous, I thanked her and said no.

As the evening approached, I don’t know who grew more nervous about it, Will or me. I felt the failure of our last outing keenly, and Mrs Traynor didn’t help, coming in and out of the annexe fourteen times to confirm where and when it would be taking place and what exactly we would be doing.

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 naked flesh.’

‘I do not fall over at the sight of naked 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 cle**age, applied some matching lipstick, and then stepped into the living room.

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‘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 cle**age 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 ****tail 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 au***orium 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.

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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 au***orium 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 au***orium 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.’

I grinned back at him. ‘I really loved it,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure I’d like all classical music, but I thought that was amazing.’ I rubbed my nose. ‘Thank you. Thank you for taking me.’

We sat in silence, gazing at the castle. Normally, at night, it was bathed in a kind of orange glow from the lights dotted around the fortress wall. But tonight, under a full moon, it seemed flooded in an ethereal blue.

‘What kind of music would they have played there, do you think?’ I said. ‘They must have listened to something.’

‘The castle? Medieval stuff. Lutes, strings. Not my cup of tea, but I’ve got some I can lend you, if you like. You should walk around the castle with it on earphones, if you really wanted the full experience.’

‘Nah. I don’t really go to the castle.’

‘It’s always the way, when you live close by somewhere.’

My answer was non-committal. We sat there a moment longer, listening to the engine tick its way to silence.

‘Right,’ I said, unfastening my belt. ‘We’d better get you in. The evening routine awaits.’

‘Just wait a minute, Clark.’

I turned in my seat. Will’s face was in shadow and I couldn’t quite make it out.

‘Just hold on. Just for a minute.’

‘Are you all right?’ I found my gaze dropping towards his chair, afraid some part of him was pinched, or trapped, that I had got something wrong.

‘I’m fine. I just … ’

I could see his pale collar, his dark suit jacket a contrast against it.

‘I don’t want to go in just yet. I just want to sit and not have to think about … ’ He swallowed.

Even in the half-dark it seemed effortful.

‘I just … want to be a man who has been to a concert with a girl in a red dress. Just for a few minutes more.’

I released the door handle.

‘Sure.’

I closed my eyes and lay my head against the headrest, and we sat there together for a while longer, two people lost in remembered music, half hidden in the shadow of a castle on a moonlit hill.

My sister and I never really talked about what happened that night at the maze. I’m not entirely sure we had the words. She held me for a bit, then spent some time helping me find my clothes, and then searched in vain in the long grass for my shoes until I told her that it really didn’t matter. I wouldn’t have worn them again, anyway. And then we walked home slowly – me in my bare feet, her with her arm linked through mine, even though we hadn’t walked like that since she was in her first year at school and Mum had insisted I never let her go.

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When we got home, we stood on the porch and she wiped at my hair and then at my eyes with a damp tissue, and then we unlocked the front door and walked in as if nothing had happened.

Dad was still up, watching some football match. ‘You girls are a bit late,’ he called out. ‘I know it’s a Friday, but still … ’

‘Okay, Dad,’ we called out, in unison.

Back then, I had the room that is now Granddad’s. I walked swiftly upstairs and, before my sister could say a word, I closed the door behind me.

I chopped all my hair off the following week. I cancelled my plane ticket. I didn’t go out with the girls from my old school again. Mum was too sunk in her own grief to notice, and Dad put any change in mood in our house, and my new habit of locking myself in my bedroom, down to ‘women’s problems’. I had worked out who I was, and it was someone very different from the giggling girl who got drunk with strangers. It was someone who wore nothing that could be construed as suggestive. Clothes that would not appeal to the kind of men who went to the Red Lion, anyway.

Life returned to normal. I took a job at the hairdresser’s, then The Buttered Bun and put it all behind me.

I must have walked past the castle five thousand times since that day.

But I have never been to the maze since.

13

Patrick stood on the edge of the track, jogging on the spot, his new Nike T-shirt and shorts sticking slightly to his damp limbs. I had stopped by to say hello and to tell him that I wouldn’t be at the Triathlon Terrors meeting at the pub that evening. Nathan was off, and I had stepped in to take over the evening routine.

‘That’s three meetings you’ve missed.’

‘Is it?’ I counted back on my fingers. ‘I suppose it is.’

‘You’ll have to come next week. It’s all the travel plans for the Xtreme Viking. And you haven’t told me what you want to do for your birthday.’ He began to do his stretches, lifting his leg high and pressing his chest to his knee. ‘I thought maybe the cinema? I don’t want to do a big meal, not while I’m training.’

‘Ah. Mum and Dad are planning a special dinner.’

He grabbed at his heel, pointing his knee to the ground.

I couldn’t help but notice that his leg was becoming weirdly sinewy.

‘It’s not exactly a night out, is it?’

‘Well, nor is the multiplex. Anyway, I feel like I should, Patrick. Mum’s been a bit down.’

Treena had moved out the previous weekend (minus my lemons washbag – I retrieved that the night before she went). Mum was devastated; it was actually worse than when Treena had gone to university the first time around. She missed Thomas like an amputated limb. His toys, which had littered the living-room floor since babyhood, were boxed up and put away. There were no chocolate fingers or small cartons of drink in the cupboard. She no longer had a reason to walk to the school at 3.15pm, nobody to chat to on the short walk home. It had been the only time Mum ever really spent outside the house. Now she went nowhere at all, apart from the weekly supermarket shop with Dad.

She floated around the house looking a bit lost for three days, then she began spring cleaning with a vigour that frightened even Granddad. He would mouth gummy protests at her as she tried to vacuum under the chair that he was still sitting in, or flick at his shoulders with her duster. Treena had said she wouldn’t come home for the first few weeks, just to give Thomas a chance to settle. When she rang each evening, Mum would speak to them and then cry for a full half-hour in her bedroom afterwards.

‘You’re always working late these days. I feel like I hardly see you.’

‘Well, you’re always training. Anyway, it’s good money, Patrick. I’m hardly going to say no to the overtime.’

He couldn’t argue with that.

I was earning more than I had ever earned in my life. I doubled the amount I gave my parents, put some aside into a savings account every month, and I was still left with more than I could spend. Part of it was, I worked so many hours that I was never away from Granta House when the shops were open. The other was, simply, that I didn’t really have an appetite for spending. The spare hours I did have I had started to spend in the library, looking things up on the internet.

There was a whole world available to me from that PC, layer upon layer of it, and it had begun to exert a siren call.

It had started with the thank-you letter. A couple of days after the concert, I told Will I thought we should write and thank his friend, the violinist.

‘I bought a nice card on the way in,’ I said. ‘You tell me what you want to say, and I’ll write it. I’ve even brought in my good pen.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Will said.

‘What?’

‘You heard me.’

‘You don’t think so? That man gave us front of house seats. You said yourself it was fantastic. The least you could do is thank him.’

Will’s jaw was fixed, immovable.

I put down my pen. ‘Or are you just so used to people giving you stuff that you don’t feel you have to?’

‘You have no idea, Clark, how frustrating it is to rely on someone else to put your words down for you. The phrase “written on behalf of” is … humiliating.’

‘Yeah? Well it’s still better than a great big fat nothing,’ I grumbled. ‘I’m going to thank him, anyway. I won’t mention your name, if you really want to be an arse about it.’