Me Before You

‘No bottom wiping required, as far as I can tell.’ He scanned the screen. ‘He’s a … a quadriplegic. He needs someone in the daylight hours to help feed and assist. Often in these jobs it’s a case of being there when they want to go out somewhere, helping with basic stuff that they can’t do themselves. Oh. It’s good money. Quite a lot more than the minimum wage.’

‘That’s probably because it involves bottom wiping.’

‘I’ll ring them to confirm the absence of bottom wiping. But if that’s the case, you’ll go along for the interview?’

He said it like it was a question.

But we both knew the answer.

I sighed, and gathered up my bag ready for the trip home.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said my father. ‘Can you imagine? If it wasn’t punishment enough ending up in a ruddy wheelchair, then you get our Lou turning up to keep you company.’

‘Bernard!’ my mother scolded.

Behind me, Granddad was laughing into his mug of tea.

2

I am not thick. I’d just like to get that out of the way at this point. But it’s quite hard not to feel a bit deficient in the Department of Brain Cells, growing up next to a younger sister who was not just moved up a year into my class, but then to the year above.

Everything that is sensible, or smart, Katrina did first, despite being eighteen months younger than me. Every book I ever read she had read first, every fact I mentioned at the dinner table she already knew. She is the only person I know who actually likes exams. Sometimes I think I dress the way I do because the one thing Treena can’t do is put clothes together. She’s a pullover and jeans kind of a girl. Her idea of smart is ironing the jeans first.

My father calls me a ‘character’, because I tend to say the first thing that pops into my head. He says I’m like my Aunt Lily, who I never knew. It’s a bit weird, constantly being compared to someone you’ve never met. I would come downstairs in purple boots, and Dad would nod at Mum and say, ‘D’you remember Aunt Lily and her purple boots, eh?’ and Mum would cluck and start laughing as if at some secret joke. My mother calls me ‘individual’, which is her polite way of not quite understanding the way I dress.

But apart from a brief period in my teens, I never wanted to look like Treena, or any of the girls at school; I preferred boys’ clothes till I was about fourteen, and now tend to please myself – depending on what mood I am in on the day. There’s no point me trying to look conventional. I am small, dark-haired and, according to my dad, have the face of an elf. That’s not as in ‘elfin beauty’. I am not plain, but I don’t think anyone is ever going to call me beautiful. I don’t have that graceful thing going on. Patrick calls me gorgeous when he wants to get his leg over, but he’s fairly transparent like that. We’ve known each other for coming up to seven years.

I was twenty-six years old and I wasn’t really sure what I was. Up until I lost my job I hadn’t even given it any thought. I supposed I would probably marry Patrick, knock out a few kids, live a few streets away from where I had always lived. Apart from an exotic taste in clothes, and the fact that I’m a bit short, there’s not a lot separating me from anyone you might pass in the street. You probably wouldn’t look at me twice. An ordinary girl, leading an ordinary life. It actually suited me fine.

‘You must wear a suit to an interview,’ Mum had insisted. ‘Everyone’s far too casual these days.’

‘Because wearing pinstripes will be vital if I’m spoon-feeding a geriatric.’

‘Don’t be smart.’

‘I can’t afford to buy a suit. What if I don’t get the job?’

‘You can wear mine, and I’ll iron you a nice blouse, and just for once don’t wear your hair up in those –’ she gestured to my hair, which was normally twisted into two dark knots on each side of my head ‘– Princess Leia things. Just try to look like a normal person.’

I knew better than to argue with my mother. And I could tell Dad had been instructed not to comment on my outfit as I walked out of the house, my gait awkward in the too-tight skirt.

‘Bye love,’ he said, the corners of his mouth twitching. ‘Good luck now. You look very … businesslike.’

The embarrassing thing was not that I was wearing my mother’s suit, or that it was in a cut last fashionable in the late 1980s, but that it was actually a tiny bit small for me. I felt the waistband cutting into my midriff, and pulled the double-breasted jacket across. As Dad says of Mum, there’s more fat on a kirby grip.

I sat through the short bus journey feeling faintly sick. I had never had a proper job interview. I had joined The Buttered Bun after Treena bet me that I couldn’t get a job in a day. I had walked in and simply asked Frank if he needed a spare pair of hands. It had been his first day open and he had looked almost blinded by gratitude.

Now, looking back, I couldn’t even remember having a discussion with him about money. He suggested a weekly wage, I agreed, and once a year he told me he’d upped it a bit, usually by a little more than I would have asked for.