Me Before You: A Novel

can’t sit by and watch … it’s too weird. I don’t want to be part of this.’
    ‘Just think about it. Tomorrow is Good Friday – I’ll tell Will you have a family commitment if you really just need some time. Take the Bank Holiday weekend to think about it. But please. Come back. Come back and help him.’
    I walked back into the house without looking back. I sat in the living room, staring at the television while my parents followed me in, exchanged glances and pretended not to be watching me.
    It was almost eleven minutes before I finally heard Mrs Traynor’s car start up and drive away.
    My sister confronted me within five minutes of arriving home, thundering up the stairs and throwing open the door of my room.
    ‘Yes, do come in,’ I said. I was lying on the bed, my legs stretched up the wall, staring at the ceiling. I was wearing tights and blue sequinned shorts, which now looped unattractively around the tops of my legs.
    Katrina stood in the doorway. ‘Is it true?’
    ‘That Dympna Grisham has finally thrown out her cheating no-good philandering husband and –’
    ‘Don’t be smart. About your job.’
    I traced the pattern of the wallpaper with my big toe. ‘Yes, I handed in my notice. Yes, I know Mum and Dad are not too happy about it. Yes, yes, yes to whatever it is you’re going to throw at me.’
    She closed the door carefully behind her, then sat down heavily on the end of my bed and swore lustily. ‘I don’t bloody believe you.’
    She shoved my legs so that I slid down the wall, ending up almost lying on the bed. I pushed myself upright. ‘Ow.’
    Her face was puce. ‘I don’t believe you. Mum’s in bits downstairs. Dad’s pretending not to be, but he is too. What are they supposed to do about money? You know Dad’s already panicking about work. Why the hell would you throw away a perfectly good job?’
    ‘Don’t lecture me, Treen.’
    ‘Well, someone’s got to! You’re never going to getanything like that money anywhere else. And how’s it going to look on your CV?’
    ‘Oh, don’t pretend this is about anything other than you and what you want.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘You don’t care what I do, as long as you can still go and resurrect your high-flying career. You just need me there propping up the family funds and providing the bloody childcare. Sod everyone else.’ I knew I sounded mean and nasty but I couldn’t help myself. It was my sister’s plight that had got us into this mess, after all. Years of resentment began to ooze out of me. ‘We’ve all got to stick at jobs we hate just so that little Katrina can fulfil her bloody ambitions.’
    ‘It is not
about
me.’
    ‘No?’
    ‘No, it’s about you not being able to stick at the one decent job you’ve been offered in months.’
    ‘You know
nothing
about my job, okay?’
    ‘I know it paid well above the minimum wage. Which is all I need to know about it.’
    ‘Not everything in life is about the money, you know.’
    ‘Yes? You go downstairs and tell Mum and Dad that.’
    ‘Don’t you dare bloody lecture me about money when you haven’t paid a sodding thing towards this house for years.’
    ‘You know I can’t afford much because of Thomas.’
    I began to shove my sister out of the door. I can’t remember the last time I actually laid a hand on her, but right then I wanted to punch someone quite badly and I was afraid of what I would do if she stayed there in frontof me. ‘Just piss off, Treen. Okay? Just piss off and leave me alone.’
    I slammed the door in my sister’s face. And when I finally heard her walking slowly back down the stairs, I chose not to think about what she would say to my parents, about the way they would all treat this as further evidence of my catastrophic inability to do anything of any worth. I chose not to think about Syed at the Job Centre and how I would explain my reasons for leaving this most well paid of menial jobs. I chose not to think about the chicken factory and how somewhere, deep within its bowels, there was probably a set of plastic overalls, and a hygiene cap with my name still on it.
    I lay back and I thought about Will. I thought about his anger and his sadness. I thought about what his mother had said – that I was one of the only people able to get through to him. I thought about him trying not to laugh at the ‘Molahonkey Song’ on a night when the snow drifted gold past the window. I thought about the warm skin and soft hair and hands of someone