Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

And I had ideas. Things I wanted to do. One of the boys I knew at school had
taken a round-the-world trip and come back somehow removed and unknowable,
like he wasn’t the same scuffed eleven-year-old who used to blow spit bubbles
during double French. I had booked a cheap flight to Australia on a whim, and
was trying to find someone who might come with me. I liked the exoticism his
travels gave him, the unknownness. He had blown in with the soft breezes of a
wider world, and it was weirdly seductive. Everyone here knew everything about
me, after all. And with a sister like mine, I was never allowed to forget any of it.
It was a Friday, and I had spent the day working as a car park attendant with a
group of girls I had known at school, steering visitors to a craft fair held in the
grounds of the castle. The whole day was punctuated with laughter, with fizzy
drinks guzzled under a hot sun, the sky blue, light glinting off the battlements. I
don’t think there was a single tourist who didn’t smile at me that day. People find
it very hard not to smile at a group of cheerful, giggling girls. We were paid £30,
and the organizers were so pleased with the turnout that they gave us an extra
fiver each. We celebrated by getting drunk with some boys who had been
working on the far car park by the visitor centre. They were well spoken,
sporting rugby shirts and floppy hair. One was called Ed, two of them were at
university – I still can’t remember where – and they were working for holiday
money too. They were flush with cash at the end of a whole week of stewarding,
and when our money ran out they were happy to buy drinks for giddy local girls
who flicked their hair and sat on each other’s laps and shrieked and joked and
called them posh. They spoke a different language; they talked of gap years and
summers spent in South America, and the backpacker trail in Thailand and who
was going to try for an internship abroad. While we listened, and drank, I
remember my sister stopping by the beer garden where we lay sprawled on the
grass. She was wearing the world’s oldest hoody and no make-up, and I’d
forgotten I was meant to be meeting her. I told her to tell Mum and Dad I’d be
back sometime after I was thirty. For some reason I found this hysterically funny.
She had lifted her eyebrows, and stalked off like I was the most irritating person
ever born.
When the Red Lion closed we all went and sat in the centre of the castle maze.
Someone managed to scramble over the gates and, after much colliding and
giggling, we all found our way to the middle and drank strong cider while