After You (Me Before You #2)(67)

‘I know you were knocked by what happened. We all were. But you’ve got to move on.’

‘Don’t say it’s what he would have wanted.’

‘Okay,’ he said. We both listened, as he said it silently.

I tried to gather my thoughts. ‘Would I have to go to New York for an interview?’

‘They’re in the Hamptons for the summer, so he’s looking for someone to start in September. Basically, in six weeks. If you say you’re interested, he’ll interview you on Skype, sort out the paperwork to get you over, and then we go from there. There will be other candidates. It’s too good a position. But Mr G trusts me, Lou. If I say someone’s a good bet, they’re in with a chance. So shall I throw your hat in the ring? Yes? It is a yes, right?’

I spoke almost before I could think. ‘Uh … yes. Yes.’

‘Great! Email me if you’ve got questions. I’ll send you some pics.’

‘Nathan?’

‘Gotta go, Lou. The old man has just buzzed me.’

‘Thank you. Thanks for thinking of me.’

There was a slight pause before he responded. ‘No one I’d rather work with, mate.’

I couldn’t sleep after he rang off, wondering whether I had imagined the whole conversation, my mind humming with the enormity of what might lie in front of me if I hadn’t. At four, I sat up and emailed Nathan a handful of questions, and the answers came straight back.

The family is okay. The rich are never normal (!) but these are good people. Minimal drama.

You’d have your own room and bathroom. We’d share a kitchen with the housekeeper. She’s all right. Bit older. Keeps herself to herself.

Hours regular. Eight – at worst ten – a day. You get time off in lieu. You might want to learn a bit of Polish!



I finally fell asleep as it grew light, my mind full of Manhattan duplexes and bustling streets. And when I woke up, an email was waiting for me.

Dear Ms Clark,

Nathan tells me you might be interested in coming to work in our household. Would you be available for a Skype interview on Tuesday evening at 5 p.m. GMT (midday EST)?

Yours sincerely,

Leonard M. Gopnik



I stared at it for a full twenty minutes, proof that I hadn’t dreamed the whole thing. And then I got up and showered, made myself a strong mug of coffee and typed my reply. It wouldn’t hurt to have the interview, I told myself. I wouldn’t get the job, if there were lots of highly professional New York candidates. But it was good practice, if nothing else. And it would make me feel as if I were finally doing something, moving forward.

Before I left for work, I took Will’s letter carefully from the bedside table. I pressed my lips to it, then folded it carefully and put it back in the drawer.

Thank you, I told him silently.

It was a slightly thinned-out version of the Moving On Circle that week. Natasha was on holiday, as was Jake, for which I was mostly relieved and a tiny bit put out in a way I couldn’t reconcile. The evening’s topic was ‘If I could turn back time’, which meant that William and Sunil hummed or whistled the Cher song unconsciously at intervals for the entire hour and a half.

I listened to Fred wishing he had spent less time at work, then Sunil wishing he’d got to know his brother better (‘You just think they’re always going to be there, you know? And then one day they’re not’), and wondered if it really had been worth coming.

There had been a couple of times when I’d thought the group might actually be helping. But for an awful lot of the time I was sitting among people I felt I had nothing in common with, droning on for the few hours they had company. I felt grumpy and tired, my hip ached on the hard plastic chair, and I thought I might have got just as much enlightenment about my mental state if I had been watching EastEnders. Plus the biscuits were rubbish.

Leanne, a single mother, was talking about how she and her older sister had argued about a pair of tracksuit bottoms two days before her sister had died. ‘I accused her of taking them, because she was always nicking my stuff. She said she hadn’t, but then she always said she hadn’t.’

Marc waited. I wondered if I had any painkillers in my handbag.

‘And then, you know, she got hit by the bus and the next time I got to see her was at the morgue. And when I was looking for dark clothes to wear to her funeral, you know what was in my wardrobe?’

‘The tracksuit bottoms,’ said Fred.

‘It’s difficult when things are unresolved,’ said Marc. ‘Sometimes for our own sanity we just have to look at the bigger picture.’

‘You can love someone and also call them a prat for nicking your tracksuit bottoms,’ said William.

That day I didn’t want to speak. I was only there because I couldn’t face the silence of my little flat. I had a sudden sneaking suspicion I could easily become one of those people who so crave human contact that they talk inappropriately to other passengers on trains or spend ten minutes picking things in a shop so they can chat to the assistant. I was so busy wondering whether it was symptomatic that I had just discussed my new physio support bandage with Samir at the mini-mart that I tuned out Daphne wishing she’d come back from work an hour earlier that particular day, then found she had dissolved, quietly, into tears.

‘Daphne?’