Me Before You Read online

  maze didn’t have to be the thing that defined me. You said I could choose what it was that defined me. Well, you don’t have to let that … that chair define you.’

  ‘But it does define me, Clark. You don’t know me, not really. You never saw me before this thing. I loved my life, Clark. Really loved it. I loved my job, my travels, the things I was. I loved being a physical person. I liked riding my motorbike, hurling myself off buildings. I liked crushing people in business deals. I liked having sex. Lots of sex. I led a big life.’ His voice had lifted now. ‘I am not designed to exist in this thing – and yet for all intents and purposes it is now the thing that defines me. It is the only thing that defines me.’

  ‘But you’re not even giving it a chance,’ I whispered. My voice didn’t seem to want to emerge from my chest. ‘You’re not giving me a chance.’

  ‘It’s not a matter of giving you a chance. I’ve watched you these six months becoming a whole different person, someone who is only just beginning to see her possibilities. You have no idea how happy that has made me. I don’t want you to be tied to me, to my hospital appointments, to the restrictions on my life. I don’t want you to miss out on all the things someone else could give you. And, selfishly, I don’t want you to look at me one day and feel even the tiniest bit of regret or pity that –’

  ‘I would never think that!’

  ‘You don’t know that, Clark. You have no idea how this would play out. You have no idea how you’re going to feel even six months from now. And I don’t want to look at you every day, to see you naked, to watch you wandering around the annexe in your crazy dresses and not … not be able to do what I want with you. Oh, Clark, if you had any idea what I want to do to you right now. And I … I can’t live with that knowledge. I can’t. It’s not who I am. I can’t be the kind of man who just … accepts.’

  He glanced down at his chair, his voice breaking. ‘I will never accept this.’

  I had begun to cry. ‘Please, Will. Please don’t say this. Just give me a chance. Give us a chance.’

  ‘Sshhh. Just listen. You, of all people. Listen to what I’m saying. This … tonight … is the most wonderful thing you could have done for me. What you have told me, what you have done in bringing me here … knowing that, somehow, from that complete arse I was at the start of this, you managed to salvage something to love is astonishing to me. But –’ I felt his fingers close on mine ‘– I need it to end here. No more chair. No more pneumonia. No more burning limbs. No more pain and tiredness and waking up every morning already wishing it was over. When we get back, I am still going to go to Switzerland. And if you do love me, Clark, as you say you do, the thing that would make me happier than anything is if you would come with me.’

  My head whipped back.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s not going to get any better than this. The odds are I’m only going to get increasingly unwell and my life, reduced as it is, is going to get smaller. The doctors have said as much. There are a host of conditions encroaching on me. I can feel it. I don’t want to be in pain any more, or trapped in this thing, or dependent on everyone, or afraid. So I’m asking you – if you feel the things you say you feel – then do it. Be with me. Give me the end I’m hoping for.’

  I looked at him in horror, my blood thumping in my ears. I could barely take it in.

  ‘How can you ask me that?’

  ‘I know, it’s –’

  ‘I tell you I love you and I want to build a future with you, and you ask me to come and watch you kill yourself?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean it to sound blunt. But I haven’t got the luxury of time.’

  ‘Wha– what? Why, are you actually booked in? Is there some appointment you’re afraid of missing?’

  I could see people at the hotel stopping, perhaps hearing our raised voices, but I didn’t care.

  ‘Yes,’ Will said, after a pause. ‘Yes, there is. I’ve had the consultations. The clinic agreed that I am a suitable case for them. And my parents agreed to the thirteenth of August. We’re due to fly out the day before.’

  My head had begun to spin. It was less than a week away.

  ‘I don’t believe this.’

  ‘Louisa –’

  ‘I thought … I thought I was changing your mind.’

  He tilted his head sideways and gazed at me. His voice was soft, his eyes gentle. ‘Louisa, nothing was ever going to change my mind. I promised my parents six months, and that’s what I’ve given them. You have made that time more precious than you can imagine. You stopped it being an endurance test –’

  ‘Don’t!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t say another word.’ I was choking. ‘You are so selfish, Will. So stupid. Even if there was the remotest possibility of me coming with you to Switzerland … even if you thought I might, after all I’ve done for you, be someone who could do that, is that all you can say to me? I tore my heart out in front of you. And all you can say is, “No, you’re not enough for me. And now I want you to come watch the worst thing you can possibly imagine.” The thing I have dreaded ever since I first found out about it. Do you have any idea what you are asking of me?’

  I was raging now. Standing in front of him, shouting like a madwoman. ‘Fuck you, Will Traynor. Fuck you. I wish I’d never taken this stupid job. I wish I’d never met you.’ I burst into tears, ran up the beach and back to my hotel room, away from him.

  His voice, calling my name, rang in my ears long after I had closed the door.

  24

  There is nothing more disconcerting to passers-by than to see a man in a wheelchair pleading with a woman who is meant to be looking after him. It’s apparently not really the done thing to be angry with your disabled charge.

  Especially when he is plainly unable to move, and is saying, gently, ‘Clark. Please. Just come over here. Please.’

  But I couldn’t. I couldn’t look at him. Nathan had packed up Will’s stuff, and I had met them both in the lobby the following morning – Nathan still groggy from his hangover – and from the moment we had to be in each other’s company again, I refused to have anything to do with him. I was furious and miserable. There was an insistent, raging voice inside my head, which demanded to be as far as possible from Will. To go home. To never see him again.

  ‘You okay?’ Nathan said, appearing at my shoulder.

  As soon as we arrived at the airport, I had marched away from them to the check-in desk.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘And I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Hungover?’

  ‘No.’

  There was a short silence.

  ‘This mean what I think it does?’ He was suddenly sombre.

  I couldn’t speak. I nodded, and I watched Nathan’s jaw stiffen briefly. He was stronger than I was, though. He was, after all, a professional. Within minutes he was back with Will, showing him something he had seen in a magazine, wondering aloud about the prospects for some football team they both knew of. Watching them, you would know nothing of the momentousness of the news I had just imparted.

  I managed to make myself busy for the entire wait at the airport. I found a thousand small tasks to do – busying myself with luggage labels, buying coffee, perusing newspapers, going to the loo – all of which meant that I didn’t have to look at him. I didn’t have to talk to him. But every now and then Nathan would disappear and we were left alone, sitting beside each other, the short distance between us jangling with unspoken recriminations.

  ‘Clark –’ he would begin.

  ‘Don’t,’ I would cut him off. ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’

  I surprised myself with how cold I could be. I certainly surprised the air stewardesses. I saw them on the flight, muttering between themselves at the way I turned rigidly away from Will, plugging my earphones in or resolutely staring out of the window.

  For once, he didn’t get angry. That was almost the worst of it. He didn’t get angry, and he didn’t get sarcastic
, and he simply grew quieter until he barely spoke. It was left to poor Nathan to bounce the conversation along, to ask questions about tea or coffee or spare packets of dry-roasted peanuts or whether anyone minded if he climbed past us to go to the loo.

  It probably sounds childish now, but it was not just a matter of pride. I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear the thought that I would lose him, that he was so stubborn, and determined not to see what was good, what could be good, that he would not change his mind. I couldn’t believe that he would stick to that one date, as if it were cast in stone. A million silent arguments rattled around my head. Why is this not enough for you? Why am I not enough for you? Why could you not have confided in me? If we’d had more time, would this have been different? Every now and then I would catch myself staring down at his tanned hands, those squared-off fingers, just inches from my own, and I would remember how our fingers felt entwined – the warmth of him, the illusion, even in stillness, of a kind of strength – and a lump would rise in my throat until I thought I could barely breathe and I had to retreat to the WC where I would lean over the sink and sob silently under the strip lighting. There were a few occasions, when I thought about what Will still intended to do, where I actually had to fight the urge to scream; I felt overcome by a kind of madness and thought I might just sit down in the aisle and howl and howl until someone else stepped in. Until someone else made sure he couldn’t do it.

  So although I looked childish – although I seemed to the cabin staff (as I declined to talk to Will, to look at him, to feed him) as if I were the most heartless of women – I knew that pretending he was not there was about the only way I could cope with these hours of enforced proximity. If I had believed Nathan capable of coping alone I would honestly have changed my flight, perhaps even disappeared until I could make sure that there was between us a whole continent, not just a few impossible inches.

  The two men slept, and it came as something of a relief – a brief respite from the tension. I stared at the television screen and, with every mile that we headed towards home, I felt my heart grow heavier, my anxiety greater. It began to occur to me then that my failure was not just my own; Will’s parents were going to be devastated. They would probably blame me. Will’s sister would probably sue me. And it was my failure for Will too. I had failed to persuade him. I had offered him everything I could, including myself, and nothing I had shown him had convinced him of a reason to keep living.

  Perhaps, I found myself thinking, he had deserved someone better than me. Someone cleverer. Someone like Treena might have thought of better things to do. They might have found some rare piece of medical research or something that could have helped him. They might have changed his mind. The fact that I was going to have to live with this knowledge for the rest of my life made me feel almost dizzy.

  ‘Want a drink, Clark?’ Will’s voice would break into my thoughts.

  ‘No. Thank you.’

  ‘Is my elbow too far over your armrest?’

  ‘No. It’s fine.’

  It was only in those last few hours, in the dark, that I allowed myself to look at him. My gaze slid slowly sideways from my glowing television screen until I gazed at him surreptitiously in the dim light of the little cabin. And as I took in his face, so tanned and handsome, so peaceful in sleep, a solitary tear rolled down my cheek. Perhaps in some way conscious of my scrutiny Will stirred, but didn’t wake. And unseen by the cabin staff, by Nathan, I pulled his blanket slowly up around his neck, tucking it in carefully, to make sure, in the chill of the cabin air conditioning, that Will would not feel the cold.

  They were waiting at the Arrivals Gate. I had somehow known they would be. I had felt the faintly sick sensation expanding inside me even as we wheeled Will through passport control, fast-tracked by some well-meaning official even as I prayed that we would be forced to wait, stuck in a queue that lasted hours, preferably days. But no, we crossed the vast expanse of linoleum, me pushing the baggage trolley, Nathan pushing Will, and as the glass doors opened, there they were, standing at the barrier, side by side in some rare semblance of unity. I saw Mrs Traynor’s face briefly light up as she saw Will and I thought, absently, Of course – he looks so well. And, to my shame, I put on my sunglasses – not to hide my exhaustion, but so that she wouldn’t immediately see from my naked expression what it was I was going to have to tell her.

  ‘Look at you!’ she was exclaiming. ‘Will, you look wonderful. Really wonderful.’

  Will’s father had stooped, was patting his son’s chair, his knee, his face wreathed in smiles. ‘We couldn’t believe it when Nathan told us you were down on the beach every day. And swimming! What was the water like, then – lovely and warm? It’s been raining cats and dogs here. Typical August!’

  Of course. Nathan would have been texting them or calling them. As if they would have let us go all that time without some kind of contact.

  ‘It … it was a pretty amazing place,’ said Nathan. He had grown quiet too, but now tried to smile, to seem his normal self.

  I felt frozen, my hand clutching my passport like I was about to go somewhere else. I had to remind myself to breathe.

  ‘Well, we thought you might like a special dinner,’ Will’s father said. ‘There’s a jolly nice restaurant at the Intercontinental. Champagne on us. What do you think? Your mother and I thought it might be a nice treat.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Will. He was smiling at his mother and she was looking back at him as if she wanted to bottle it. How can you? I wanted to yell at him. How can you look at her like that when you already know what you are going to do to her?

  ‘Come on, then. I’ve got the car in disabled parking. It’s only a short ride from here. I was pretty sure you’d all be a bit jet-lagged. Nathan, do you want me to take any of those bags?’

  My voice broke into the conversation. ‘Actually,’ I said – I was already pulling my luggage from the trolley – ‘I think I’m going to head off. Thank you, anyway.’

  I was focused on my bag, deliberately not looking at them, but even above the hubbub of the airport I could detect the brief silence my words provoked.

  Mr Traynor’s voice was the first to break it. ‘Come on, Louisa. Let’s have a little celebration. We want to hear all about your adventures. I want to know all about the island. And I promise you don’t have to tell us everything.’ He almost chuckled.

  ‘Yes.’ Mrs Traynor’s voice had a faint edge to it. ‘Do come, Louisa.’

  ‘No.’ I swallowed, tried to raise a bland smile. My sunglasses were a shield. ‘Thank you. I’d really rather get back.’

  ‘To where?’ said Will.

  I realized what he was saying. I didn’t really have anywhere to go.

  ‘I’ll go to my parents’ house. It will be fine.’

  ‘Come with us,’ he said. His voice was gentle. ‘Don’t go, Clark. Please.’

  I wanted to cry then. But I knew with utter certainty that I couldn’t be anywhere near him. ‘No. Thank you. I hope you have a lovely meal.’ I hoisted my bag over my shoulder and, before anyone could say anything else, I was walking away from them, swallowed up by the crowds in the terminal.

  I was almost at the bus stop when I heard her. Camilla Traynor, her heels clipping on the pavement, half walked, half ran towards me.

  ‘Stop. Louisa. Please stop.’

  I turned, and she was forcing her way through a coach party, casting the backpacking teenagers aside like Moses parting the waves. The airport lights were bright on her hair, turning it a kind of copper colour. She was wearing a fine grey pashmina, which draped artistically over one shoulder. I remember thinking absently how beautiful she must have been, only a few years earlier.

  ‘Please. Please stop.’

  I stopped, glancing behind me at the road, wishing that the bus would appear now, that it would scoop me up and take me away. That anything would happen. A small earthquake, maybe.

  ‘Louisa?’

  ‘He had a good time.’ My voice sounded cl
ipped. Oddly like her own, I found myself thinking.

  ‘He does look well. Very well.’ She stared at me, standing there on the pavement. She was suddenly acutely still, despite the sea of people moving around her.

  We didn’t speak.

  And then I said, ‘Mrs Traynor, I’d like to hand in my notice. I can’t … I can’t do these last few days. I’ll forfeit any money owed to me. In fact, I don’t want this month’s money. I don’t want anything. I just –’

  She went pale then. I saw the colour drain from her face, the way she swayed a little in the morning sunshine. I saw Mr Traynor coming up behind her, his stride brisk, one hand holding his panama hat firmly on his head. He was muttering his apologies as he pushed through the crowds, his eyes fixed on me and his wife as we stood rigidly a few feet apart.

  ‘You … you said you thought he was happy. You said you thought this might change his mind.’ She sounded desperate, as if she were pleading with me to say something else, to give her some different result.

  I couldn’t speak. I stared at her, and the most I could manage was a small shake of my head.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered, so quietly that she could not have heard me.

  He was almost there as she fell. It was as if her legs just gave way under her, and Mr Traynor’s left arm shot out and caught her as she went down, her mouth a great O, her body slumped against his.

  His hat fell to the pavement. He glanced up at me, his face confused, not yet registering what had just taken place.

  And I couldn’t look. I turned, numb, and I began to walk, one foot in front of the other, my legs moving almost before I knew what they were doing, away from the airport, not yet even knowing where it was I was going to go.

  25

  Katrina

  Louisa didn’t come out of her room for a whole thirty-six hours after she got back from her holiday. She arrived back from the airport late evening on the Sunday, pale as a ghost under her suntan – and we couldn’t work that out for a start, as she had definitely said she’d see us first thing Monday morning. I just need to sleep, she had said, then shut herself in her room and gone straight to bed. We had thought it a little odd, but what did we know? Lou has been peculiar since birth, after all.

  Mum had taken up a mug of tea in the morning, and Lou had not stirred. By supper, Mum had become worried and shaken her, checking she was alive. (She can be a bit melodramatic, Mum – although, to be fair, she had made fish pie and she probably just wanted to make sure Lou wasn’t going to miss it.) But Lou wouldn’t eat, and she wouldn’t talk and she wouldn’t come downstairs. I just want to stay here for a bit, Mum, she said, into her pillow. Finally, Mum left her alone.

  ‘She’s not herself,’ said Mum. ‘Do you think it’s some kind of delayed reaction to the thing with Patrick?’

  ‘She couldn’t give a stuff about Patrick,’ Dad said. ‘I told her he rang to tell us he came 157th in the Viking thing, and she couldn’t have looked less interested.’ He sipped his tea. ‘Mind you, to be fair on her, even I found it pretty hard to get excited about 157th.’

  ‘Do you think she’s ill? She’s awful pale under that tan. And all that sleeping. It’s just not like her. She might have some terrible tropical disease.’

  ‘She’s just jet-lagged,’ I said. I said it with some authority, knowing that Mum and Dad tended to treat me as an expert on all sorts of matters that none of us really knew anything about.

  ‘Jet lag! Well, if that’s what long-haul travel does to you, I think I’ll stick with Tenby. What do you think, Josie, love?’

  ‘I don’t know … who would have thought a holiday could make you look so ill?’ Mum shook her head.

  I went upstairs after supper. I didn’t knock. (It was still, strictly speaking, my room, after all.) The air was thick and stale, and I pulled the blind up and opened a window, so that Lou turned groggily from under the duvet, shielding her eyes from the light, dust motes swirling around her.

  ‘You going to tell me what happened?’ I put a mug of tea on the bedside table.

  She blinked at me.

  ‘Mum thinks you’ve got Ebola virus. She’s busy warning all the neighbours who have booked on to the Bingo Club trip to PortAventura.’

  She didn’t say anything.

  ‘Lou?’

  ‘I quit,’ she said, quietly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why do you think?’ She pushed herself upright, and reached clumsily for the mug, taking a long sip of tea.

  For someone who had just spent almost two weeks in Mauritius, she looked bloody awful. Her eyes were tiny and red-rimmed, and her skin, without the tan, would have been even blotchier. Her hair stuck up on one side. She looked like she’d been awake for several years. But most of all she looked sad. I had never seen my sister look so sad.

  ‘You think he’s really going to go through with it?’

  She nodded. Then she swallowed, hard.

  ‘Shit. Oh, Lou. I’m really sorry.’

  I motioned to her to shove over, and I climbed into bed beside her. She took