Me Before You

‘Chloroformed. I remembered Papa had a bottle in his study, from his butterfly-collecting days. I think it will wake up. But we’re going to have to find somewhere else to keep it for when they return. And you know they will return.’

Aurélien smiled then, a rare, slow smile of delight. Hélène stooped to show Mimi the little pink comatose pig, and they both grinned. Hélène kept touching its snout, clamping a hand over her face, as if she couldn’t believe what she was holding.

‘You held the pig before them? They came here and you held it out in front of their noses? And then you told them off for coming here?’ Her voice was incredulous.

‘In front of their snouts,’ said Aurélien, who seemed suddenly to have recovered some of his swagger. ‘Hah! You held it in front of their snouts!’

I sat down on the cobbles and began to laugh. I laughed until my skin grew chilled and I didn’t know whether I was laughing or weeping. My brother, perhaps afraid that I was becoming hysterical, took my hand and rested against me. He was fourteen, sometimes bristling like a man, sometimes childlike in his need for reassurance.

Hélène was still deep in thought. ‘If I had known …’ she said. ‘If I had known … How did you become this brave, Sophie? My little sister! Who did this to you? You were a mouse when we were children. A mouse!’

I wasn’t sure I knew the answer to that.

And then, as we finally walked back into the house, as Hélène busied herself with the milk pan and Aurélien began to wash his poor, battered face, I stood before the portrait.

That girl, the girl you married, looked back with an expression I no longer recognized. You saw it in me long before anyone else did: it speaks of knowledge, that smile, of satisfaction gained and given. It speaks of pride. When your Parisian friends found your love of me – a shop girl – inexplicable, you just smiled because you could already see this in me.

I never knew if you understood that it was only there because of you.

I stood and gazed at her and, for a few seconds, I remembered how it had felt to be that girl, free of hunger, of fear, consumed only by idle thoughts of what private moments I might spend with you, Édouard. You reminded me that the world is capable of beauty, and that there were once things – art, joy, love – that filled my world, instead of fear and nettle soup and curfews. I saw you in my expression. And then I realized what I had just done. You had reminded me of my own strength, of how much I had left in me with which to fight.

When you return, Édouard, I swear I will once again be the girl you painted.

Be safe, and may God watch over you as he did us this night.

Your loving wife

Sophie

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

www.penguin.com

First published 2012

Copyright © Jojo Moyes, 2012

Cover illustration © Sarah Gibb

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk, Stirlingshire

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without hthe publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978–0–141–96918–3