Me Before You: A Novel
nice house, if you go to good schools and nice restaurants as a matter of course, you probably just have this sense that good things will fall into place, that your position in the world is naturally an elevated one.
Will had escaped into the empty grounds of the castle his whole childhood, he said. His dad let him roam the place, trusting him not to touch anything. After 5.30pm, when the last of the tourists had gone, as the gardeners began to trim and tidy, as the cleaners emptied the bins and swept up the empty cartons of drink and commemorative toffee fudge, it had become his private playground. As he told me this, I mused that if Treena and I had been given the freedom of the castle, all to ourselves, we would have been air punching with disbelief and getting giddy all over the place.
‘First girl I ever kissed was in front of the drawbridge,’ he said, slowing to look towards it as we walked along the gravel path.
‘Did you tell her it was your place?’
‘No. Perhaps I should have done. She dumped me a week later for the boy who worked in the minimart.’
I turned and stared at him in shock. ‘Not Terry Rowlands? Dark slicked-back hair, tattoos up to his elbows?’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s him.’
‘He still works there, you know. In the minimart. If that makes you feel any better.’
‘I’m not sure he’d feel entirely envious of where I ended up,’ Will said, and I stopped talking again.
It was strange seeing the castle like this, in silence, the two of us the only people there apart from the odd gardener in the distance. Instead of gazing at the tourists, being distracted by their accents and their alien lives, I found myself looking at the castle for perhaps the first time, beginning to absorb some of its history. Its flinted walls had stood there for more than 800 years. People had been born and died there, hearts filled and broken. Now, in the silence, you could almost hear their voices, their own footsteps on the path.
‘Okay, confession time,’ I said. ‘Did you ever walk around here and pretend secretly that you were some kind of warrior prince?’
Will looked sideways at me. ‘Honestly?’
‘Of course.’
‘Yes. I even borrowed one of the swords off the walls of the Great Hall once. It weighed a ton. I remember being petrified that I wouldn’t be able to lift it back on to its stand.’
We had reached the swell of the hill, and from here, at the front of the moat, we could look down the long sweep of grass to the ruined wall that had marked the boundary.Beyond it lay the town, the neon signs and queues of traffic, the bustle that marked the small town’s rush hour. Up here it was silent apart from the birds and the soft hum of Will’s chair.
He stopped the chair briefly and swivelled it so that we looked down at the grounds. ‘I’m surprised we never met each other,’ he said. ‘When I was growing up, I mean. Our paths must have crossed.’
‘Why would they? We didn’t exactly move in the same circles. And I would just have been the baby you passed in the pram, while swinging your sword.’
‘Ah. I forgot – I am positively ancient compared to you.’
‘Eight years would definitely have qualified you as an “older man”,’ I said. ‘Even when I was a teenager my dad would never have let me go out with an older man.’
‘Not even if he had his own castle?’
‘Well, that would change things, obviously.’
The sweet smell of the grass rose up around us as we walked, Will’s wheels hissing through the clear puddles on the path. I felt relieved. Our conversation wasn’t quite as it had been, but perhaps that was only to be expected. Mrs Traynor had been right – it would always be hard for Will to watch other people moving on with their lives. I made a mental note to think more carefully about how my actions might make an impact on his life. I didn’t want to be angry any more.
‘Let’s do the maze. I haven’t done it for ages.’
I was pulled back from my thoughts. ‘Oh. No, thanks.’ I glanced over, noticing suddenly where we were.
‘Why, are you afraid of getting lost? C’mon, Clark. It’llbe a challenge for you. See if you can memorize the route you take in, then take the reverse one out. I’ll time you. I used to do it all the time.’
I glanced back towards the house. ‘I’d really rather not.’ Even the thought of it had brought a knot to my stomach.
‘Ah. Playing safe again.’
‘That’s not it.’
‘No
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