Me Before You

I walked up the hill, dodging this season’s hovering early few as they clutched their neoprene bumbags and well-thumbed tourist guides, their cameras already poised to capture mementoes of the castle in spring. I smiled at a few, paused to take photographs of others with proffered cameras. Some locals complained about the tourist season – the traffic jams, the overwhelmed public toilets, the demands for strange comestibles in The Buttered Bun cafe (‘You don’t do sushi? Not even hand roll?’). But I didn’t. I liked the breath of foreign air, the close-up glimpses of lives far removed from my own. I liked to hear the accents and work out where their owners came from, to study the clothes of people who had never seen a Next catalogue or bought a five-pack of knickers at Marks and Spencer’s.

‘You look cheerful,’ Will said, as I dropped my bag in the hallway. He said it as if it were almost an affront.

‘That’s because it’s today.’

‘What is?’

‘Our outing. We’re taking Nathan to see the horse racing.’

Will and Nathan looked at each other. I almost laughed. I had been so relieved at the sight of the weather; once I saw the sun, I knew everything was going to be all right.

‘Horse racing?’

‘Yup. Flat racing at –’ I pulled my notepad from my pocket ‘– Longfield. If we leave now we can be there in time for the third race. And I have five pounds each way on Man Oh Man, so we’d better get a move on.’

‘Horse racing.’

‘Yes. Nathan’s never been.’

In honour of the occasion I was wearing my blue quilted minidress, with the scarf with horse bits around the edge knotted at my neck, and a pair of leather riding boots.

Will studied me carefully, then reversed his chair and swerved so that he could better see his male carer. ‘This is a long-held desire of yours, is it, Nathan?’

I gave Nathan a warning glare.

‘Yiss,’ he said, and broke out a smile. ‘Yes, it is. Let’s head for the gee-gees.’

I had primed him, of course. I had rung him on Friday and asked him which day I could borrow him for. The Traynors had agreed to pay his extra hours (Will’s sister had left for Australia, and I think they wanted to be sure that someone ‘sensible’ was going to accompany me) but I hadn’t been sure until Sunday what it actually was we were going to do. This seemed the ideal start – a nice day out, less than half an hour’s drive away.

‘And what if I say I don’t want to go?’

‘Then you owe me forty pounds,’ I said.

‘Forty pounds? How do you work that out?’

‘My winnings. Five pounds each way at eight to one.’ I shrugged. ‘Man Oh Man’s a sure thing.’

I seemed to have got him off balance.

Nathan clapped his hands on to his knees. ‘Sounds great. Nice day for it too,’ he said. ‘You want me to pack some lunch?’

‘Nah,’ I said. ‘There’s a nice restaurant. When my horse comes in, lunch is on me.’

‘You’ve been racing often, then?’ Will said.

And then before he could say anything else, we had bundled him into his coat and I ran outside to reverse the car.

I had it all planned, you see. We would arrive at the racecourse on a beautiful sunny day. There would be burnished, stick-legged thoroughbreds, their jockeys in billowing bright silks, careening past. Perhaps a brass band or two. The stands would be full of cheering people, and we would find a space from which to wave our winning betting slips. Will’s competitive streak would kick in and he would be unable to resist calculating the odds and making sure he won more than either Nathan or me. I had worked it all out. And then, when we had had enough of watching the horses, we would go to the well-reviewed racecourse restaurant and have a slap-up meal.

I should have listened to my father. ‘Want to know the true definition of the triumph of hope over experience?’ he would say. ‘Plan a fun family day out.’

It started with the car park. We drove there without incident, me now a little more confident that I wasn’t going to tip Will over if I went faster than 15 mph. I had looked up the directions at the library, and kept up a cheerful banter almost the whole way there, commenting on the beautiful blue sky, the countryside, the lack of traffic. There were no queues to enter the racecourse, which was, admittedly, a little less grand than I had expected, and the car park was clearly marked.

But nobody had warned me it was on grass, and grass that had been driven over for much of a wet winter at that. We backed into a space (not hard, as it was only half full) and almost as soon as the ramp was down Nathan looked worried.

‘It’s too soft,’ he said. ‘He’s going to sink.’

I glanced over at the stands. ‘Surely, if we can get him on to that pathway we’ll be okay?’

‘It weighs a ton, this chair,’ he said. ‘And that’s forty feet away.’

‘Oh, come on. They must build these chairs to withstand a bit of soft ground.’

I backed Will’s chair down carefully and then watched as the wheels sank several inches into the mud.