Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

This is the thing about growing up in a small town. Every part of your life is
up for grabs. Nothing is secret – not the time I was caught smoking at the out-oftown
supermarket car park when I was fourteen, nor the fact that my father had
re-tiled the downstairs loo. The minutiae of everyday lives were currency for
women like Deirdre.
‘It’s good, yes.’
‘And well paid.’
‘Yes.’
‘I was so relieved for you after the whole Buttered Bun thing. Such a shame
they shut the cafe. We’re losing all the useful shops in this town. I remember
when we had a grocer, a baker and a butcher on the high street. All we needed
was a candlestick maker!’
‘Mmm.’ I saw her glance at my list and closed my notepad. ‘Still. At least we
do have somewhere to buy curtains. How’s the shop?’
‘Oh, fine … yes … What’s that, then? Something to do with work?’
‘I’m just working on things that Will might like to do.’
‘Is that your disabled man?’
‘Yes. My boss.’
‘Your boss. That’s a nice way of putting it.’ She nudged me. ‘And how’s your
clever old sister getting on at university?’
‘She’s good. And Thomas.’
‘She’ll end up running the country, that one. I have to say, though, Louisa, I
was always surprised you didn’t leave before her. We always thought you were
such a bright little thing. Not that we still don’t, of course.’
I raised a polite smile. I wasn’t sure what else I could do.
‘But still. Someone’s got to do it, eh? And it’s nice for your mum that one of
you is happy to stay so close to home.’
I wanted to contradict her, and then I realized that nothing I had done in the
last seven years suggested I had either any ambition or any desire to move
further than the end of my street. I sat there, as the bus’s tired old engine snarled
and juddered beneath us, and had a sudden sense of time racing, of losing whole
chunks of it in my small journeys backwards and forwards along the same
stretch. Round and round the castle. Watching Patrick go round and round the
track. The same petty concerns. The same routines.