Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

Epilogue
I was just following instructions.
I sat in the shadow of the dark-green cafe awning, staring down the length of
the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, the tepid sun of a Parisian autumn warming the
side of my face. In front of me the waiter had, with Gallic efficiency, deposited a
plate of croissants and a large cup of filter coffee. A hundred yards down the
street two cyclists stopped near the traffic lights and struck up a conversation.
One wore a blue backpack from which two large baguettes poked at odd angles.
The air, still and muggy, held the scents of coffee and patisserie and the acrid
tang of someone’s cigarettes.
I finished Treena’s letter (she would have called, she said, but she couldn’t
afford the overseas charges). She had come top of her year in Accountancy 2 and
had a new boyfriend, Sundeep, who was trying to work out whether to work for
his dad’s import-export business outside Heathrow and had even worse taste in
music than she did. Thomas was dead excited about moving up a class at school.
Dad was still going great guns at his job, and sent his love. She was pretty
confident that Mum would forgive me soon. She definitely got your letter, she
said. I know she read it. Give her time.
I took a sip of my coffee, briefly transported to Renfrew Road, and a home
that seemed a million miles away. I sat and squinted a little against the low sun,
watching a woman in sunglasses adjust her hair in the mirror of a shop window.
She pursed her lips at her reflection, straightened up a little, and then continued
her path down the road.
I put down the cup, took a deep breath, and then picked up the other letter, the
letter that I had carried around with me for almost six weeks now.
On the front of the envelope, in typed capitals, it said, under my name: