Me Before You: A Novel

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.
    ‘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 stillprepared 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 agood 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