Still Me (Me Before You #3) - Jojo Moyes Page 0,109

standing there studying me for some time. She grinned, as if somehow the sight of me in my darkest hour was actually quite amusing, then waited while I pulled myself together.

‘Well, I guess I don’t need to ask what’s going on in your life,’ she said, and punched me hard in the arm.

‘How did you know I was here?’

‘I walked round to your house to say hi as I’ve been home from skiing two days and you haven’t even bothered to call.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s been …’

‘It’s been hard because you got dumped by Sexy Sam. Was it that blonde witch?’

I blew my nose and stared at her.

‘I had a few days in London before Christmas so I went to the ambulance station to say hi and she was there, hanging off him like some kind of human mildew.’

I sniffed. ‘You could tell.’

‘God, yes. I was going to warn you but then I thought, What’s the point? It’s not like you could do anything about it from New York. Ugh. Men are so stupid, though. How could he not see through that?’

‘Oh, Lily, I have missed you.’ I hadn’t known quite how much until that moment. Will’s daughter, in all her mercurial, teenage glory. She sat down beside me and I leant against her, as if she were the adult. We gazed into the distance. I could just make out Will’s home, Grantchester House.

‘I mean just because she’s pretty and has huge tits and one of those porny mouths that look like they’re all about the blowjobs –’

‘Okay, you can stop now.’

‘Anyway, I wouldn’t cry any more if I were you,’ she said sagely. ‘One, no man is worth it. Even Katy Perry will tell you that. But also your eyes go really, really small when you cry. Like, microdot kind of small.’

I couldn’t help but laugh.

She stood up and held out a hand. ‘C’mon. Let’s walk down to yours. There’s nowhere open on Boxing Day and Grandpa and Della and the Baby That Can Do No Wrong are doing my head in. I’ve got a whole twenty-four more hours to kill before Granny comes to pick me up. Ugh. Did you get snail trails on my jacket? You did! You are totally wiping that off.’

Over tea at our house, Lily filled me in on the news her emails hadn’t covered – how she loved her new school but hadn’t quite got to grips with the work as she was meant to. (‘Turns out missing loads of school does have an effect. Which is actually quite irritating on the adult I-told-you-so front.’) She enjoyed living with her grandmother so much that she felt able to bitch about her in the way that Lily did about people she truly loved – with humour and a kind of cheerful sarcasm. Granny was so unreasonable about her painting the walls of her room black. And she wouldn’t let her drive the car, even though Lily totally knew how to drive and just wanted to get ahead before she could start lessons.

It was only when she was talking about her own mother that her upbeat demeanour fell away. Lily’s mother had finally left her stepfather – ‘of course’ – but the architect down the road whom she had planned to make her next husband had not played ball, refusing to leave his wife. Her mother was now living a life of hysterical misery in rented accommodation in Holland Park with the twins and making her way through a succession of Filipina nannies who, despite an astonishing level of tolerance, were rarely tolerant enough to survive Tanya Houghton-Miller for more than a couple of weeks.

‘I never thought I’d feel sorry for the boys, but I do,’ she said. ‘Ugh. I really want a cigarette. I only ever want one when I’m talking about my mum. You don’t have to be Freud to work that out, right?’

‘I’m sorry, Lily.’

‘Don’t be. I’m fine. I’m with Granny and at school. My mother’s drama doesn’t really touch me any more. Well, she leaves long messages on my voicemail, weeping or telling me I’m selfish for not moving back to be with her but I don’t care.’ She shuddered briefly. ‘Sometimes I think if I’d stayed there I would have gone completely mental.’ I thought back to the figure who had appeared on my doorstep all those months ago – drunk, unhappy, isolated – and felt a brief burst of quiet pleasure that by taking her in I had