Me Before You: After You Part 16

'I thought the spare room could have cream on two, then one grey wall. Do you think they go?' I busied myself with unwrapping the paintbrushes and rollers as I spoke. I changed into an old shirt and some shorts and asked if she could put on some music.

'What sort?'

'You choose.' I hauled a chair off to one side and laid some dust sheets along the wall. 'Your dad said I was a musical Philistine.'She didn't say anything, but I had her attention. I cracked open a paint tin and began to mix it. 'He made me go to my first ever concert. Cla.s.sical, not pop. I only agreed because it meant he would leave the house. He didn't like going out much in the early days. He put on a shirt and a good jacket and it was the first time I had seen him look like ...' I remembered the jolt as I had seen, emerging from the stiff blue collar, the man he had been before his accident. I swallowed. 'Anyway. I went preparing to be bored, and cried my way through the second half like a complete loon. It was the most amazing thing I'd ever heard in my life.'

A short silence.

'What was it? What did you listen to?'

'I can't remember. Sibelius? Does that sound right?'

She shrugged. I started painting, as she came up beside me. She picked up a brush. She said nothing at first, but she seemed to lose herself in the repet.i.tive nature of the task. She was careful, too, adjusting the sheet so that she didn't spill paint on the floor, wiping her brush on the edge of the pot. We didn't speak, except for muttered requests: Can you pa.s.s me the smaller brush? Do you think that will still show through on the second coat? It took us just half an hour to do the first wall between us.

'So what do you think?' I said, admiring it. 'Think we can do another?'

She moved a dust sheet and started on the next wall. She had put on some indie band I had never heard of, light-hearted and agreeable. I started to paint again, ignoring the ache in my shoulder, the urge to yawn.

'You should get some pictures.'

'You're right.'

'I've got this big print at home of a Kandinsky. It doesn't really go in my room. You could have it if you want it.'

'That would be great.'

She was working faster now, speeding across the wall, carefully cutting in around the large window.

'So I was thinking,' I said, 'we should speak to Will's mum. Your grandmother. Are you okay if I write to her?'

She said nothing. She crouched down, apparently absorbed in carefully coating the wall to the skirting- board. Finally, she stood up. 'Is she like him?'

'Like who?'

'Mrs Traynor? Is she like Mr Traynor?'

I stepped down from the box I was using to stand on, and wiped my brush on the edge of the tin. 'She's ... different.'

'That's your way of saying she's a cow.'

'She's not a cow. She's just It takes longer to get to know her is all.'

'That's your way of telling me she's a cow and she's not going to like me.'

'I'm not saying that at all, Lily. But she is someone who doesn't show her emotions easily.'

Lily sighed and put down her paintbrush. 'I'm basically the only person in the world who could discover two grandparents I didn't know I had, then find out that neither of them even likes me.'

We stared at each other. And suddenly, unexpectedly, we started to laugh.

I put the lid on the paint. 'Come on,' I said. 'Let's go out.'

'Where?''You're the one who says I need to have some fun. You tell me.'

I pulled out a series of tops from one of my storage boxes until Lily finally determined which one was acceptable, and I let her take me to a tiny cavernous club in a back-street near the West End where the bouncers knew her by name and n.o.body seemed to consider for a minute that she might be under eighteen.

'It's nineties music. Olden-days stuff!' she said cheerfully, and I tried not to think too hard about the fact that I was, in her eyes, basically geriatric.

We danced until I stopped feeling self-conscious, sweat came through our clothes, our hair stuck out in fronds and my hip hurt so much that I wondered whether I would be able to stand up behind the bar the following week. We danced as if we had nothing to do but dance. Lord, it felt good. I had forgotten the joy of just existing; of losing yourself in music, in a crowd of people, the sensations that came with becoming one communal, organic ma.s.s, alive only to a pulsing beat. For a few dark, thumping hours, I let go of everything, my problems floating away like helium balloons: my awful job, my picky boss, my failure to move on. I became a thing, alive, joyful. I looked over the crowd at Lily, her eyes closed as her hair flew about her face, that peculiar mixture of concentration and freedom in her features that comes when someone loses themselves in rhythm. Then she opened her eyes and I wanted to be angry that her raised arm held a bottle that clearly wasn't cola, but I found myself smiling back at her a broad, euphoric grin and thinking how strange it was that a messed-up child who barely knew herself had so much to teach me about the business of living.

Around us London was shrill and heaving, even though it was two a.m. We paused for Lily to take joint selfies of us in front of a theatre, a Chinese sign and a man dressed as a large bear (apparently every event had to be marked by photographic evidence), then wove our way through crowded streets in search of a night bus, past the late-night kebab shops and the bellowing drunks, the pimps and the gaggles of screeching girls. My hip was throbbing badly, and sweat was cooling unpleasantly under my damp clothes, but I still felt energized, as if I had been snapped back on.

'G.o.d knows how we're going to get home,' Lily said cheerfully.

And then I heard the shout.

'Lou!' There was Sam, leaning out of the driver's window of an ambulance. As I lifted my hand in response, he pulled the truck across the road in a giant U-turn. 'Where you headed?'

'Home. If we can ever find a bus.'

'Hop in. Go on. I won't tell if you won't. We're just finishing our shift.' He looked at the woman beside him. 'Ah come on, Don. She's a patient. Broken hip. Can't leave her to walk home.'

Lily was delighted by this unexpected turn of events. And then the rear door opened and the woman, in a paramedic uniform, eyes rolling, was shepherding us in. 'You're going to get us sacked, Sam,' she said, and motioned for us to sit down on the gurney. 'Hiya. I'm Donna. Oh, no I do remember you. The one who ...'

'... fell off a building. Yup.'

Lily pulled me to her for an 'ambulance selfie' and I tried not to look as Donna rolled her eyes again.

'So where have you been?' Sam called through to the rear.

'Dancing,' said Lily. 'I've been trying to persuade Louisa to be less of a boring old fart. Can we put the siren on?''Nope. Where'd you go? That's from another boring old fart, by the way. I won't have a clue whatever you say.'

'The Twenty-two,' said Lily. 'Down the back of Tottenham Court Road?'

'That's where we had the emergency tracheotomy, Sam.'

'I remember. You look like you've had a good night.' He met my eye in the mirror and I coloured a little. I was suddenly glad to have been out dancing. It made me seem like I might be someone else altogether. Not just a tragic airport barmaid whose idea of a night out was falling off a roof.

'It was great,' I said, beaming.

Then he looked down at the computer screen on the dashboard. 'Oh, great. Got a Green One over at Spencer's.'

'But we're headed back in,' said Donna. 'Why does Lennie always do this to us? That man's a s.a.d.i.s.t.'

'No one else available.'

'What's going on?'

'A job's come up. I might have to drop you. It's not far from yours, though. Okay?'

'Spencer's,' said Donna, and let out a deep sigh. 'Oh, marvellous. Hold on tight, girls.'

The siren went on. And we were off, lurching through the London traffic with the blue light screaming above our head, Lily squealing with delight.

On any given week-night, Donna told us, as we clutched the handrails, the station would get calls from Spencer's, summoned to fix those who hadn't made it upright to closing time, or to st.i.tch up the faces of young men for whom six pints in an evening left them combative and without any accompanying sense.

'These youngsters should be feeling great about life, but instead they're just knocking themselves out with every spare pound they earn. Every b.l.o.o.d.y week.'

We were there in minutes, the ambulance slowing outside to avoid the drunks spilling out onto the pavement. The signs in Spencer's nightclub's smoked windows advertised 'Free drinks for girls before 10 p.m.' Despite the stag and hen nights, the catcalling and gaudy clothes, the packed streets of the drinking zone had less of a carnival atmosphere than something tense and explosive. I found myself gazing out of the window warily.

Sam opened the rear doors and picked up his bag. 'Stay in the rig,' he said, and climbed out.

A police officer headed over to him, muttered something, and we watched as they walked over to a young man who was sitting in the gutter, blood streaming from a wound to his temple. Sam squatted beside him, while the officer attempted to keep back the drunken gawkers, the 'helpful' friends, the wailing girlfriends. He seemed to be surrounded by a bunch of well-dressed extras from The Walking Dead, swaying mindlessly and grunting, occasionally bloodied and toppling.

'I hate these jobs,' said Donna, checking briskly through her pack of plastic-wrapped medical supplies as we watched. 'Give me a woman in labour or a nice old granny with cardiomyopathy any day. Oh, flipping heck, he's off.'

Sam was tilting the young lad's face to examine it when another boy, his hair thick with gel and the collar of his shirt soaked in blood, grabbed at his shoulder. 'Oi! I need to go in the ambulance!'

Sam turned slowly towards the young drunk, who was spraying blood and saliva as he spoke. 'Back away now, mate. All right? Let me do my job.'Drink had made the boy stupid. He glanced at his mates, and then he was in Sam's face, snarling, 'Don't you tell me to back away.'

Sam ignored him, and continued attending to the other boy's face.

'Hey! Hey you! I need to get to the hospital.' He pushed Sam's shoulder. 'Hey!'

Sam stayed crouched for a moment, very still. Then he straightened slowly, and turned, so that he was nose to nose with the drunk. 'I'll explain something in terms you might be able to understand, son. You're not getting in the truck, okay? That's it. So save your energy, go finish your night with your mates, put a bit of ice on it, and see your GP in the morning.'

'You don't get to tell me nothing. I pay your wages. My effing nose is broke.'

As Sam gazed steadily back at him, the boy swung out a hand and pushed at Sam's chest. Sam looked down at it.

'Uh-oh,' said Donna, beside me.

Sam's voice, when it emerged, was a growl: 'Okay. I'm warning you now '

'You don't warn me!' The boy's face was scornful. 'You don't warn me! Who do you think you are?'

Donna was out of the truck and jogging towards a cop. She murmured something in his ear and I saw them both look over. Donna's face was pleading. The boy was still yelling and swearing, now pushing at Sam's chest. 'So you sort me out before you deal with that w.a.n.ker.'

Sam adjusted his collar. His face had become dangerously still.

And just as I realized I was holding my breath, the policeman was there, between them. Donna's hand was on Sam's sleeve and she was steering him back to the young lad on the kerb. The policeman muttered something into his radio, his hand on the drunk's shoulder. The boy swung round and spat on Sam's jacket.

'f.u.c.k you.'

There was a brief, shocked silence. Sam stiffened.

'Sam! Come on, give me a hand, yes? I need you.' Donna propelled him forwards. When I caught sight of Sam's face, his eyes glittered as cold and hard as diamonds.

'Come on,' said Donna, as they loaded the semi-comatose lad into the back of the truck. 'Let's get out of here.'

He drove silently, Lily and I wedged into the front seat beside him. Donna cleaned the back of his jacket as he stared ahead, stubbly jaw jutting.

'Could be worse,' Donna said cheerfully. 'I had one throw up in my hair last month. And the little monster did it on purpose. Shoved his fingers down the back of his throat and ran up behind me, just because I wouldn't take him home, like I was some kind of b.l.o.o.d.y minicab.'

She stood up and motioned for the energy drink she kept in the front. 'It's a waste of resources. When you think what we could be doing, instead of scooping up a load of little ...' She took a swig, then looked down at the barely conscious young boy. 'I don't know. You have to wonder what goes on in their heads.'

'Not much,' said Sam.

'Yeah. Well, we have to keep this one on a tight leash.' Donna patted Sam's shoulder. 'He got a caution last year.'

Sam glanced sideways at me, suddenly sheepish. 'We went to pick up a girl from the top of Commercial Street. Face smashed to a pulp. Domestic. As I went to lift her onto the gurney, her boyfriend came flying out of the pub and went for her again. Couldn't help myself.''You took a swing at him?'

'More than one,' Donna scoffed.

'Yeah. Well. It wasn't a good time.'

Donna shifted to grimace at me. 'Well, this one can't afford to get in trouble again. Or he's out of the service.'

'Thanks,' I said, as he let us out. 'For the lift, I mean.'

'Couldn't leave you in that open-air asylum,' he said.

His eyes briefly met mine. Then Donna shut the door and they were gone, heading for the hospital with their battered human cargo.

'You totally fancy him,' said Lily, as we watched the ambulance disappear.

I had forgotten she was even there. I sighed as I reached into my pockets for the keys. 'He's a s.h.a.gger.'

'So? I would totally s.h.a.g that,' Lily said, as I opened the door to let her in. 'I mean, if I was old. And a bit desperate. Like you.'

'I don't think I'm ready for a relationship, Lily.'

She was walking behind me, so there was no way I could actually prove it, but I swear I could feel her pulling faces at me the whole way up the stairs.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

I wrote to Mrs Traynor. I didn't tell her about Lily, just that I hoped she was well, that I was back from my travels and would be in her area in a few weeks with a friend, and would like to say h.e.l.lo if possible. I sent it first cla.s.s, and felt oddly excited as it plopped into the post-box.

Dad had told me over the phone that she had left Granta House within weeks of Will's death. He said the estate workers had been shocked, but I thought back to the time I had spotted Mr Traynor out with Della, the woman he was now about to have a baby with, and I wondered how many genuinely had been.

There were few secrets in a small town.

'She took it all terrible hard,' Dad said. 'And once she was gone your redheaded woman there was in like Flynn. She saw her chance, all right. Nice auld fella, own hair, big house, he's not going to be single for long, eh? Speaking of which, Lou. You you wouldn't have a word with your mother about her armpits, would you? She's going to be after plaiting it if she lets it all grow any longer.'

I kept thinking about Mrs Traynor, trying to imagine how she would react to the news about Lily. I remembered the joy and disbelief on Mr Traynor's face at their first meeting. Would Lily help to heal her pain a little? Sometimes I watched Lily laughing at something on television, or simply gazing steadily out of the window lost in thought, and I saw Will so clearly in her features the precise angles of her nose, those almost Slavic cheekbones that I forgot to breathe. (At this point she would usually grumble, 'Stop staring at me like a weirdo, Clark. You're freaking me out.') Lily had come to stay for two weeks. Tanya Houghton-Miller had called to say they were off on a family holiday to Tuscany and Lily didn't want to go with them. 'Frankly, the way she's behaving right now, as far as I'm concerned, that's fine. She's exhausting me.'