Me Before You: A Novel

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. Iwound 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 atthe 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