Me Before You: After You Part 20

'I actually preferred the one who used to quiz me about what he was up to. At least she didn't pretend to be my best friend.'

I could barely hear the rest of what he said. A distant ringing had begun in my ears, drowning out all sound. How could I have been so stupid? I suddenly recalled Jake's eye roll the first time he had watched Sam chatting me up. There was my warning, right there, and I had been stupid enough to ignore it.

I felt hot and shaky. I couldn't stay there. I couldn't listen to any more. 'Um ... I just remembered. I have an appointment,' I mumbled, gathering up my bag and bolting from my seat. 'Sorry.'

'Everything all right, Louisa?' said Marc.

'Totally fine. Got to dash.' I ran for the door, my fake smile plastered on my face so tightly that it was painful.

He was there. Of course he was. He had just pulled up on the bike in the car park and was removing his helmet. I emerged from the church hall and stopped at the top of the steps, wondering if there was any way I could get to my car without pa.s.sing him, but it was hopeless. The physical part of my brain registered the shape of him before the remaining synapses caught up: a flush of pleasure, the flash of memory of how his hands had felt on me. And then that blazing anger, the blood pulse of humiliation.

'Hey,' he said, as he caught sight of me, his smile easy, his eyes crinkling with pleasure. The f.e.c.king charmer.

I slowed my step just long enough for him to register the hurt on my face. I didn't care. I felt like Lily suddenly. I was not going to internalize this. This had not been me climbing out of one person's bed and straight into another.

'Nice job, you utter, utter w.a.n.ker,' I spat, then ran past him to my car before the choke in my voice could turn into an actual sob.

The week, as if in response to some unheard malign dog whistle, actually managed to go downhill from there. Richard grew ever pickier, complained that we didn't smile enough and that our lack of 'cheery bantz' with the customers was sending travellers along the way to the Wings in the Air Bar and Grill. The weather turned, sending the skies a gunmetal grey and delaying flights with tropical rainstorms, so the airport was filled with bad-tempered pa.s.sengers, and then, with immaculate timing, the baggage handlers went on strike. 'What can you expect? Mercury is in retrograde,' said Vera, savagely, and growled at a customer who asked for less froth on his cappuccino.

At home, Lily arrived under her own dark cloud. She sat in my living room, glued to her mobile phone, but whatever was on it seemed to give her no pleasure. She would stare out of the window, stony-faced, as her father had, as if she were just as trapped as he had been. I had tried to explain that Will had given me the yellow and black tights, that their significance was not in the colour or the quality, but that they 'Yeah, yeah, tights. Whatever,' she said.

For three nights I barely slept. I stared at my ceiling, fired by a stone-cold fury that lodged in my chest and refused to go away. I was so angry with Sam. But I was angrier with myself. He texted twice, a maddeningly faux-innocent '??', to which I didn't trust myself to respond. I had done the cla.s.sic thing women do of ignoring everything a man says or does, preferring to listen to their own insistent drumbeat: It will be different with me. I had kissed him. I had made the whole thing happen. So I had only myself to blame.

I tried to tell myself I'd probably had a lucky escape. I told myself, with little internal exclamation marks, that it was better to find out now, rather than in six months' time! I tried to view it through Marc's eyes: it was good to have moved on! I could chalk this one up to experience! At least the s.e.x was good!

And then the stupid hot tears would leak out of my stupid eyes and I would screw them up and tell myself that this was what you got for letting anyone close.

Depression, we had learned in the group, loves a vacuum. Far better to be doing, or at least planning.

Sometimes the illusion of happiness could inadvertently create it. Sick of coming home to find Lily prostrate on my sofa every evening, and just as sick of trying not to look irritated by it, on Friday night I told her that we would go to see Mrs Traynor the following day.

'But you said she didn't reply to your letter.'

'Maybe she didn't get it. Whatever. At some point Mr Traynor is going to tell his family about you, so we might as well go and see her before that happens.'

She didn't say anything. I took that as a tacit sign of agreement, and left her to it.

That night I found myself going through the clothes that Lily had pulled out of the packing case, the clothes I had ignored since leaving England for Paris two years previously. There had been no point in wearing them. I hadn't felt like that person since Will died.

Now, though, it felt important to put something on that was neither jeans nor a green Irish-dancing-girl outfit. I found a navy mini-dress I had once loved that seemed sober enough for a slightly formal visit, ironed it and put it to one side. I told Lily we would be leaving at nine the following morning and went to bed, wondering at how exhausting it was to live in a home with someone who believed that any speech more than a grunt was simply a superhuman step too far.

Ten minutes after I had closed my door, a handwritten note was pushed under it.

Dear Louisa I'm sorry I borrowed your clothes. And thanks for everything. I know I'm a pain sometimes.

Sorry.

Lily x.x.x PS You should totally wear those clothes though. They are WAY better than that stuff you wear .

I opened the door, and Lily was standing there, unsmiling. She stepped forwards and gave me a brief, emphatic hug, so tight that my ribs hurt. Then she turned and, without a word, disappeared back into the living room.

The day dawned brighter, and our mood lifted a little with it. We drove several hours to a tiny village in Oxfordshire, a place of walled gardens and mustard-tinted, sun-baked stone walls. I prattled on during the journey, mostly to hide my nerves about seeing Mrs Traynor again. The hardest thing about talking toteenagers, I had discovered, was that whatever you said inevitably came across like someone's elderly aunt at a wedding.

'So what things do you like doing? When you're not at school?'

She shrugged.

'What do you think you might want to do after you leave?'

She gave me the look.

'You must have had hobbies growing up?'

She reeled off a dizzying list: show-jumping, lacrosse, hockey, piano (grade five), cross-country running, county-level tennis.

'All that? And you didn't want to keep any of it up?'

She sniffed and shrugged simultaneously, then put her feet up on the dashboard, as if the conversation were closed.

'Your father loved to travel,' I remarked, a few miles on.

'You said.'

'He once told me he'd been everywhere except North Korea. And Disneyland. He could tell stories about places I'd never even heard of.'

'People my age don't go on adventures. There's nowhere left to discover. And people who backpack in their gap year are unbelievably tedious. Always yakking on about some bar they discovered on Ko Phang Yan, or how they scored amazing drugs in the Burmese rainforest.'

'You don't have to backpack.'

'Yeah, but once you've seen the inside of one Mandarin Oriental you've seen them all.' She yawned. 'I went to school near here once,' she observed later, peering out of the window. 'It was the only school I actually liked.' She paused. 'I had a friend called Holly.'

'What happened?'

'Mum got obsessed with the idea that it wasn't the right sort of school. She said they weren't far enough up the league tables or something. It was just some little boarding-school. Not academic. So they moved me. After that I couldn't be a.r.s.ed making friends. What's the point if they're just going to move you on again?'

'Did you keep in touch with Holly?'

'Not really. There's no point when you can't actually see each other.'

I had a vague memory of the intensity of teenage female relationships, more of a pa.s.sion than a normal friendship. 'What do you think you'll do? I mean if you really aren't going to go back to school.'

'I don't like thinking ahead.'

'But you're going to have to think about something, Lily.'

She closed her eyes for a minute, then put her feet down and peeled some purple varnish off her thumbnail. 'I don't know, Louisa. Perhaps I'll just follow your amazing example and do all the exciting things that you do.'

I took three deep breaths, just to prevent myself stopping the car on the motorway. Nerves, I told myself. It was just her nerves. And then, to annoy her, I turned on Radio 2 really loudly and kept it there the rest of the way.We found Four Acres Lane with help from a local dog-walker, and pulled up outside Fox's Cottage, a modest white-rendered building with a thatched roof. Outside, scarlet roses tumbled around an iron arch at the start of the garden path, and delicately coloured blooms fought for s.p.a.ce in neatly tended beds. A small hatchback sat in the drive.

'She's gone down in the world,' said Lily, peering out.

'It's pretty.'

'It's a s...o...b..x.'

I sat, listening to the engine tick down. 'Listen, Lily. Before we go in. Just don't expect too much,' I said. 'Mrs Traynor's sort of formal. She takes refuge in manners. She'll probably speak to you like she's a teacher. I mean, I don't think she'll hug you, like Mr Traynor did.'

'My grandfather is a hypocrite.' Lily sniffed. 'He makes out like you're the greatest thing ever, but really he's just p.u.s.s.y-whipped.'

'And please don't use the term "p.u.s.s.y-whipped".'

'There's no point pretending to be someone I'm not,' Lily said sulkily.

We sat there for a while. I realized that neither of us wanted to be the one to walk up to the door. 'Shall I try to call her one more time?' I said, holding up my phone. I'd tried twice that morning but it had gone straight to voicemail.

'Don't tell her straight away,' she said suddenly. 'Who I am, I mean. I just ... I just want to see who she is. Before we tell her.'

'Sure,' I said, softening. And before I could say anything else, Lily was out of the car and striding up towards the front gate, her hands bunched into fists, like a boxer about to enter a ring.

Mrs Traynor had gone grey. Her hair, which had been tinted dark brown, was now white and short, making her look much older than she actually was, or like someone recently recovered from a serious illness. She was probably a stone lighter than when I had last seen her, and there were liver-coloured hollows under her eyes. She looked at Lily with a confusion that told me she didn't expect any visitors, at any time. And then she saw me, and her eyes widened. 'Louisa?'

'h.e.l.lo, Mrs Traynor.' I stepped forward and held out a hand. 'We were in the area. I don't know if you got my letter. I just thought I'd stop by and say h.e.l.lo ...'

My voice false and unnaturally cheery tailed away. The last time she had seen me was when I helped clear her dead son's room; the time before that at his last breath. I watched her relive both those facts now. 'We were just admiring your garden.'

'David Austin roses,' said Lily.

Mrs Traynor looked at her as if noticing her for the first time. Her smile was slight and wavering. 'Yes.

Yes, they are. How clever of you. It's I'm very sorry. I don't have many visitors. What did you say your name was?'

'This is Lily,' I said, and watched as Lily took Mrs Traynor's hand and shook it, studying her intently as she did so.

We stood there on her front step for a moment, and finally, as if she thought she had no alternative, Mrs Traynor turned and pushed the door open. 'I suppose you'd better come in.'The cottage was tiny, its ceilings so low that even I had to duck when moving from the hall to the kitchen.

I waited as Mrs Traynor made tea, watching Lily walk restlessly around the tiny living room, navigating her way among the few bits of highly polished antique furniture that I remembered from my days in Granta House, picking things up and putting them down again.

'And ... how have you been?'

Mrs Traynor's voice was flat, as if it were not a question she was really seeking an answer to.

'Oh, quite well, thank you.'

Long silence.

'It's a lovely village.'

'Yes. Well. I couldn't really stay in Stortfold ...' She poured boiling water into the teapot and I couldn't help but be reminded of Della, moving heavily around Mrs Traynor's old kitchen.

'Do you know many people in the area?'

'No.' She said it as if that might have been the sole reason for her moving there. 'Would you mind taking the milk jug? I can't fit everything on this tray.'

There followed a painfully laboured half-hour of conversation. Mrs Traynor, a woman infused with the instinctive upper-middle-cla.s.s skill of being all over any social situation, had apparently lost the ability to communicate. She seemed only half with us when I spoke. She asked a question, then asked it again ten minutes later, as if she had failed to register the answer. I wondered about the use of anti-depressants. Lily watched her surrept.i.tiously, her thoughts ticking across her face, and I sat between them, my stomach in an increasingly tight knot, waiting for something to happen.

I chattered on into the silence, talking of my awful job, things I'd done in France, the fact that my parents were well, thank you anything to end the awful, oppressive stillness that crept across the little room whenever I stopped. But Mrs Traynor's grief hung over the little house, like a fog. If Mr Traynor had seemed exhausted by sadness, Mrs Traynor appeared to be swallowed by it. There was almost nothing left of the brisk, proud woman I had known.

'What brings you to this area?' she said, finally.

'Um ... just visiting friends,' I said.

'How do you two know each other?'

'I ... knew Lily's father.'

'How nice,' said Mrs Traynor, and we smiled awkwardly. I watched Lily, waiting for her to say something, but she had frozen, as if she, too, were overwhelmed, faced with the reality of this woman's pain.

We drank a second cup of tea, and remarked upon her beautiful garden for the third, possibly fourth time, and I fought the sensation that our enduring presence was requiring a sort of superhuman effort on her behalf. She didn't want us there. She was far too polite to say so, but it was obvious that she really just wanted to be on her own. It was in every gesture every forced smile, every attempt to stay on top of the conversation. I suspected that the moment we were gone she would simply retreat into a chair and stay there, or shuffle upstairs and curl up in her bed.

And then I noticed it: the complete absence of photographs. Where Granta House had been filled with silver-framed pictures of her children, of their family, ponies, skiing holidays, distant grandparents, this cottage was bare. A small bronze of a horse, a watercolour of some hyacinths, but no people. I foundmyself shifting in my seat, wondering if I had simply missed them, gathered on some occasional table or windowsill. But no: the cottage was brutally impersonal. I thought of my own flat, my utter failure to personalize it or allow myself to turn it into any kind of a home. And I felt suddenly leaden, and desperately sad.

What have you done to us all, Will?

'It's probably time to go, Louisa,' said Lily, looking pointedly at the clock. 'You did say we wouldn't want to hit traffic.'

I gazed at her. 'But '

'You said we shouldn't stay too long.' Her voice was high and clear.

'Oh. Yes. Traffic can be very tedious.' Mrs Traynor began to rise from her chair.

I was glaring at Lily, about to protest again, when the phone rang. Mrs Traynor flinched, as if the sound were now unfamiliar. She looked at each of us, as if wondering whether to answer it, and then, perhaps realizing she couldn't ignore it while we were there, she excused herself and walked through to the other room, where we heard her answer.

'What are you doing?' I said.

'It just feels all wrong,' said Lily, miserably.

'But we can't go without telling her.'

'I just can't do this today. It's all ...'

'I know it's scary. But look at her, Lily. I really think it might help her if you told her. Don't you?'

Lily's eyes widened.

'Tell me what?'

My head swivelled. Mrs Traynor was standing motionless by the door to the little hallway. 'What is it you need to tell me?'