Before I Met You Read Online Free PDF

breathed in deeply against encroaching tears. Everyone was going. Everyone had left, three years ago, gone to get their degrees in more inspiring places and then some of them had come back; back to save a bit of money, help out in family businesses, gird their loins, recharge their batteries, consider their positions. But now the returners were leaving again, peeling off one by one. Including Bella. Off to Bristol for a job as a trainee zookeeper at the zoo. She was to be paid five thousand pounds a year plus free accommodation and subsidised meals. She was leaving next month. If it wasn’t for Arlette, Betty would probably be going with her. As it was, she was going nowhere. She wasn’t even in a position to spend a night away from the house, let alone leave the island. Betty felt like the last plum left on the tree, overripe and splitting at the seams.
    ‘I’ll be back, you know?’ Bella reassured. ‘Any time off I get. And then, you know …’ She trailed off. They both knew what that ‘you know’ meant. It meant:
When she’s dead
.
    The longest living resident of Guernsey was currently one hundred and five. The longest living in the island’s history had made it to one hundred and eleven. These statistics filled Betty with cold dread. She was giving away her youth to a woman who often mistook her for a boy.
    ‘How is she? Generally?’ Bella asked delicately.
    ‘Yeah,’ Betty smiled stoically. ‘Healthy. Relatively.’ Her smile faltered. ‘It’s fine. It’s good. I’m fine. It’s the only way.’
    ‘Your time will come,’ said Bella, squeezing Betty’s thigh. ‘You’ll be away from this place without a backward glance and the world won’t know what’s hit it. Seriously.’
    The sun was on the horizon now and the sky was blood red. Already the night chill was fading into the warmth of a hot July morning.
    ‘You know,’ said Bella, ‘nobody would hate you. If you left now. Nobody would blame you.’
    Betty shook her head. ‘I can’t explain it,’ she said, ‘and I know nobody really understands. But I have to stay until the end. Leaving her here is not an option.’
    It was hard sometimes for Betty not to feel secretly disappointed by Arlette’s continuing state of aliveness. It was hard for her to understand why Arlette was still alive when Freddie Mercury, for example, was dead. There was, as far as she could tell, no real advantage to Arlette’s continued existence. If anything, it brought with it numerous disadvantages, not the least of which was the fact that in order to pay for Arlette’s carer and the upkeep of the house, her personal effects and savings were being depleted at an alarmingly fast rate. All her good jewellery had gone. The few pieces of quality furniture, her car and a Wedgwood tea set dating from 1825 were gone. Consequently, Betty had absolutely no financial motivation for caring for Arlette the way she did. She knew the house would go to Jolyon, Arlette had told her that. ‘I suppose there has to be
some
concession to him being my son,’ she’d sighed sadly. There would be trinkets and baubles, she was sure of that, but no, she was not here for the money, she was here because she couldn’t leave until she knew that Arlette no longer needed her, and she knew that Arlette would need her here until she drew her last breath.
    Bella squeezed her thigh again. ‘Saint Betty,’ she said. She yawned widely and then blew air through her lips. ‘I’m going back to bed. Wake me up if I’m still there at eleven. Off to Auntie Jill’s for lunch today; promised Mum I wouldn’t be late.’
    Betty watched her pale, skinny friend head back into the house, heard her deposit her empty mug back on the kitchen table. And then she sat and watched the sun in the sky floating higher and higher like a big orange helium balloon. When it was high enough to turn the sky blue, she too headed back to bed.
    She checked briefly on Arlette before turning in. She lay exactly as she’d