Me Before You (36 page)

And then it was over. Will was already making his way out towards the exit of the church. I watched the back of his head, upright and curiously dignified, and wanted to ask him if it had been a mistake to come. I wanted to ask him if he still had feelings for her. I wanted to tell him that he was too good for that silly caramel woman, no matter what appearances might suggest, and that … I didn’t know what else I wanted to say.

I just wanted to make it better.

‘You okay?’ I said, as I caught up.

The bottom line was, it should have been him.

He blinked a couple of times. ‘Fine,’ he said. He let out a little breath, as if he had been holding it. Then he looked up at me. ‘Come on, let’s go and get a drink.’

The marquee was situated in a walled garden, the wrought-iron gateway into it intertwined with garlands of pale-pink flowers. The bar, positioned at the far end, was already crowded, so I suggested that Will waited outside while I went and got him a drink. I weaved my way through tables clad in white linen cloths and laden with more cutlery and glassware than I had ever seen. The chairs had gilt backs, like the ones you see at fashion shows, and white lanterns hung above each centrepiece of freesias and lilies. The air was thick with the scent of flowers, to the point where I found it almost stifling.

‘Pimm’s?’ the barman said, when I got to the front. ‘Um … ’ I looked around, seeing that this was actually the only drink on offer. ‘Oh. Okay. Two, please.’

He smiled at me. ‘The other drinks come out later, apparently. But Miss Dewar wanted everyone to start with Pimm’s.’ The look he gave me was slightly conspiratorial. It told me with the faintest lift of an eyebrow what he thought of that.

I stared at the pink lemonade drink. My dad said it was always the richest people who were the tightest, but I was amazed that they wouldn’t even start the wedding with alcohol. ‘I guess that’ll have to do, then,’ I said, and took the glasses from him.

When I found Will, there was a man talking to him. Young, bespectacled, he was half crouching, one arm resting on the arm of Will’s chair. The sun was now high in the sky, and I had to squint to see them properly. I could suddenly see the point of all those wide-brimmed hats.

‘So bloody good to see you out again, Will,’ he was saying. ‘The office isn’t the same without you. I shouldn’t say as much … but it’s not the same. It just isn’t.’

He looked like a young accountant – the kind of man who is only really comfortable in a suit.

‘It’s nice of you to say so.’

‘It was just so odd. Like you fell off a cliff. One day you were there, directing everything, the next we were just supposed to … ’

He glanced up as he noticed me standing there. ‘Oh,’ he said, and I felt his eyes settle on my chest. ‘Hello.’

‘Louisa Clark, meet Freddie Derwent.’

I put Will’s glass in his holder and shook the younger man’s hand.

He adjusted his sightline. ‘Oh,’ he said again. ‘And –’

‘I’m a friend of Will’s,’ I said, and then, not entirely sure why, let my hand rest lightly on Will’s shoulder.

‘Life not all bad, then,’ Freddie Derwent said, with a laugh that was a bit like a cough. He flushed a little as he spoke. ‘Anyway … must mingle. You know these things – apparently, we’re meant to see them as a networking opportunity. But good to see you, Will. Really. And … and you, Miss Clark.’

‘He seemed nice,’ I said, as we moved away. I lifted my hand from Will’s shoulder and took a long sip of my Pimm’s. It was actually tastier than it looked. I had been slightly alarmed by the presence of cucumber.

‘Yes. Yes, he’s a nice kid.’

‘Not too awkward, then.’

‘No.’ Will’s eyes flickered up to meet mine. ‘No, Clark, not too awkward at all.’

As if freed by the sight of Freddie Derwent doing so, over the next hour several more people approached Will to say hello. Some stood a little way back from him, as if this absolved them of the handshake dilemma, while others hoisted the knees of their trousers and crouched down almost at his feet. I stood by Will and said little. I watched him stiffen slightly at the approach of two of them.

One – a big, bluff man with a cigar – seemed not to know what to say when he was actually there in front of Will, and settled for, ‘Bloody nice wedding, wasn’t it? Thought the bride looked splendid.’ I guessed he hadn’t known Alicia’s romantic history.

Another, who seemed to be some business rival of Will’s, hit a more diplomatic note, but there was something in his very direct gaze, his straightforward questions about Will’s condition, that I could see made Will tense. They were like two dogs circling each other, deciding whether to bare their teeth.

‘New CEO of my old company,’ Will said, as the man finally departed with a wave. ‘I think he was just making sure that I wouldn’t be trying to stage a takeover.’

The sun grew fierce, the garden became a fragrant pit, people sheltered under dappled trees. I took Will into the doorway of the marquee, worried about his temperature. Inside the marquee huge fans had been kicked into life, whirring lazily over our heads. In the distance, under the shelter of a summer house, a string quartet played music. It was like a scene from a film.

Alicia, floating around the garden – an ethereal vision, air-kissing and exclaiming – didn’t approach us.

I watched Will drain two glasses of Pimm’s and was secretly glad.

Lunch was served at 4pm. I thought that was a pretty odd time to serve lunch but, as Will pointed out, it was a wedding. Time seemed to have stretched and become meaningless, anyway, its passage blurred by endless drinks and meandering conversations. I don’t know if it was the heat, or the atmosphere, but by the time we arrived at our table I felt almost drunk. When I found myself babbling incoherently to the elderly man on my left, I realized it was actually a possibility.

‘Is there any alcohol in that Pimm’s stuff?’ I said to Will, after I had managed to tip the contents of the salt cellar into my lap.

‘About the same as a glass of wine. In each one.’

I stared at him in horror. Both of him. ‘You’re kidding. It had fruit in it! I thought that meant it was alcohol free. How am I going to drive you home?’

‘Some carer you are,’ he said. He raised an eyebrow. ‘What’s it worth for me not to tell my mother?’

I was stunned by Will’s reaction to the whole day. I had thought I was going to get Taciturn Will, Sarcastic Will. At the very least, Silent Will. But he had been charming to everybody. Even the arrival of soup at lunch didn’t faze him. He just asked politely whether anybody would like to swap his soup for their bread, and the two girls on the far side of the table – who professed themselves ‘wheat intolerant’ – nearly threw their rolls at him.

The more anxious I grew about how I was going to sober up, the more upbeat and carefree Will became. The elderly woman on his right turned out to be a former MP who had campaigned on the rights of the disabled, and she was one of the few people I had seen talk to Will without the slightest discomfort. At one point I watched her feed him a slice of roulade. When she briefly got up to leave the table, he muttered that she had once climbed Kilimanjaro. ‘I love old birds like that,’ he said. ‘I could just picture her with a mule and a pack of sandwiches. Tough as old boots.’

I was less fortunate with the man on my left. He took about four minutes – the briefest of quizzes about who I was, where I lived, who I knew there – to work out that there was nothing I had to say that might be of interest to him. He turned back to the woman on his left, leaving me to plough silently through what remained of my lunch. At one point, when I started to feel properly awkward, I felt Will’s arm slide off the chair beside me, and his hand landed on my arm. I glanced up and he winked at me. I took his hand and squeezed it, grateful that he could see it. And then he moved his chair back six inches, and brought me into the conversation with Mary Rawlinson.

‘So Will tells me you’re in charge of him,’ she said. She had piercing blue eyes, and wrinkles that told of a life impervious to skincare routines.

‘I try,’ I said, glancing at him.

‘And have you always worked in this field?’

‘No. I used to … work in a cafe.’ I’m not sure I would have told anybody else at this wedding that fact, but Mary Rawlinson nodded approvingly.

‘I always thought that might be rather an interesting job. If you like people, and are rather nosy, which I am.’ She beamed.

Will moved his arm back on to his chair. ‘I’m trying to encourage Louisa to do something else, to widen her horizons a bit.’

‘What did you have in mind?’ she asked me.

‘She doesn’t know,’ Will said. ‘Louisa is one of the smartest people I know, but I can’t make her see her own possibilities.’

Mary Rawlinson gave him a sharp look. ‘Don’t patronize her, dear. She’s quite capable of answering for herself.’

I blinked.

‘I rather think that you of all people should know that,’ she added.

Will looked as if he were about to say something, and then closed his mouth. He stared at the table and shook his head a little, but he was smiling.

‘Well, Louisa, I imagine your job at the moment takes up an awful lot of mental energy. And I don’t suppose this young man is the easiest of clients.’

‘You can say that again.’

‘But Will is quite right about seeing possibilities. Here’s my card. I’m on the board of a charitable organization that encourages retraining. Perhaps you would like to consider something different in the future?’

‘I’m very happy working with Will, thank you.’

I took the card that she proffered regardless, a little stunned that this woman would have the slightest interest in what I did with my life. But even as I took it, I felt like an imposter. There was no way I would be able to give up work, even if I knew what I wanted to learn. I wasn’t convinced I was the kind of person who would suit retraining. And besides, keeping Will alive was my priority. I was so lost in my thoughts that I briefly stopped listening to the two of them beside me.

‘ … it’s very good that you’ve got over the hump, so to speak. I know it can be crushing to have to readjust your life so dramatically around new expectations.’

I stared at the remains of my poached salmon. I had never heard anyone speak to Will like that.

He frowned at the table, and then turned back to her. ‘I’m not sure I am over the hump,’ he said, quietly.

She eyed him for a moment, and glanced over at me.

I wondered if my face betrayed me.

‘Everything takes time, Will,’ she said, placing her hand briefly on his arm. ‘And that’s something that your generation find it a lot harder to adjust to. You have all grown up expecting things to go your way almost instantaneously. You all expect to live the lives you chose. Especially a successful young man like yourself. But it takes time.’

‘Mrs Rawlinson – Mary – I’m not expecting to recover,’ he said.

‘I’m not talking about physically,’ she said. ‘I’m talking about learning to embrace a new life.’

And then, just as I waited to hear what Will was going to say next, there was a loud tapping of a spoon on a glass, and the room hushed for the speeches.

I barely heard what they said. It seemed to me to be one puffed-up penguin-suited man after another, referring to people and places I didn’t know, provoking polite laughter. I sat and chewed my way through the dark-chocolate truffles that had arrived in silver baskets on the table, and drank three cups of coffee in quick succession so that as well as feeling drunk I felt jittery and wired. Will, on the other hand, was a picture of stillness. He sat and watched the guests applaud his ex-girlfriend, and listened to Rupert drone on about what a perfectly wonderful woman she was. Nobody acknowledged him. I don’t know if that was because they wanted to spare his feelings, or because his presence there was actually a bit of an embarrassment. Occasionally Mary Rawlinson leant in and muttered something into his ear and he nodded slightly, as if in agreement.

When the speeches finally ended, an army of staff appeared and began clearing the centre of the room for dancing. Will leant in to me. ‘Mary reminded me there is a very good hotel up the road. Ring them and see if we can stay there.’

‘What?’

Mary handed me a name and a telephone number scribbled on a napkin.

‘It’s okay, Clark,’ he said, quietly, so that she couldn’t hear. ‘I’ll pay. Go on, and then you can stop worrying about how much you’ve drunk. Grab my credit card from my bag. They’ll probably want to take the number.’

I took it, reached for my mobile phone and walked off into the further reaches of the garden. They had two rooms available, they said – a single, and a double on the ground floor. Yes, it was suitable for disabled access. ‘Perfect,’ I said, and then had to swallow a small yelp when they told me the price. I gave them Will’s credit card number, feeling slightly sick as I read the numbers.

‘So?’ he said, when I reappeared.

‘I’ve done it, but … ’ I told him how much the two rooms had come to.

‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘Now ring that bloke of yours to tell him you’re staying out all night, then have another drink. In fact, have six. It would please me no end to see you get hammered on Alicia’s father’s bill.’

And so I did.

Something happened that evening. The lights dropped, so that our little table was less conspicuous, the overpowering fragrance of the flowers was tempered by the evening breezes, and the music and the wine and the dancing meant that in the most unlikely of places, we all began to actually enjoy ourselves. Will was the most relaxed I had seen him. Sandwiched between me and Mary, he talked and smiled at her, and there was something about the sight of him being briefly happy that repelled those people who might otherwise have looked at him askance, or offered pitying glances. He made me lose my wrap and sit up straight. I took off his jacket and loosened his tie, and we both tried not to giggle at the sight of the dancing. I cannot tell you how much better I felt once I saw the way posh people danced. The men looked as if they had been electrocuted, the women did little pointy fingers at the stars and looked horribly self-conscious even as they twirled.