Me Before You

He didn’t look like a doctor, or consultant. He could have been a financial adviser, but he somehow didn’t have the right air about him. He certainly didn’t look like a physiotherapist, occupational therapist or dietician – or one of the legions of other people employed by the local authority to pop by and assess Will’s ever-changing needs. You could spot those a mile off. They always looked exhausted, but were briskly, determinedly cheerful. They wore woollens in muted colours, with sensible shoes, and drove dusty estate cars full of folders and boxes of equipment. Mr Lawler had a navy-blue BMW. His gleaming 5-series was not a local authority sort of a car.

Finally, Mr Lawler emerged. He closed his briefcase, and his jacket hung over his arm. He no longer looked awkward.

I was in the hallway within seconds.

‘Ah. Would you mind pointing me towards the bathroom?’

I did so, mutely, and stood there, fidgeting, until he emerged.

‘Right. So that’s all for now.’

‘Thank you, Michael.’ Will didn’t look at me. ‘I’ll wait to hear from you.’

‘I should be in touch later this week,’ Mr Lawler said.

‘Email would be preferable to letter – at least, for now.’

‘Yes. Of course.’

I opened the back door to see him out. Then, as Will disappeared back into the living room, I followed him into the courtyard and said lightly, ‘So – do you have far to go?’

His clothes were beautifully cut; they carried the sharp edge of the city in their tailoring, serious money in their thread count.

‘London, unfortunately. Still, hope the traffic won’t be too bad at this time of the afternoon.’

I stepped out after him. The sun was high in the sky and I had to squint to see him. ‘So … um … where in London are you based?’

‘Regent Street.’

‘The Regent Street? Nice.’

‘Yes. Not a bad place to be. Right. Thank you for the coffee, Miss … ’

‘Clark. Louisa Clark.’

He stopped then and looked at me for a moment, and I wondered whether he had sussed my inadequate attempts to work out who he might be.

‘Ah. Miss Clark,’ he said, his professional smile swiftly reinstated. ‘Thank you, anyway.’

He put his briefcase carefully on the back seat, climbed into his car and was gone.

That night, I stopped off at the library on my way home to Patrick’s. I could have used his computer, but I still felt like I should ask, and this just seemed easier. I sat down at the terminal, and typed ‘Michael Lawler’ and ‘Regent Street, London’ into the search engine. Knowledge is power, Will, I told him, silently.

There were 3,290 results, the first three of which revealed a ‘Michael Lawler, practitioner at law, specialist in wills, probate and power of attorney’ based in that same street. I stared at the screen for a few minutes, then I typed in his name again, this time against the search engine of images, and there he was, at some Round Table function, in a dark suit – Michael Lawler, specialist in wills and probate, the same man who had spent an hour with Will.

I moved into Patrick’s that night, in the hour and a half between me finishing work and him heading off to the track. I took everything except my bed and the new blinds. He arrived with his car, and we loaded my belongings into bin bags. Within two trips we had it all – bar my school books in the loft – at his.

Mum cried; she thought she was forcing me out.

‘For goodness’ sake, love. It’s time she moved on. She’s twenty-seven years old,’ my father told her.

‘She’s still my baby,’ she said, pressing two tins of fruit cake and a carrier bag of cleaning products into my arms.

I didn’t know what to say to her. I don’t even like fruit cake.

It was surprisingly easy, fitting my belongings into Patrick’s flat. He had next to nothing, anyway, and I had almost nothing from years spent in the box room. The only thing we fell out over was my CD collection, which apparently could only be combined with his once I had stickered the backs of mine and sorted them into alphabetical order.

‘Make yourself at home,’ he kept saying, as if I were some kind of guest. We were nervous, strangely awkward with each other, like two people on a first date. While I was unpacking, he brought me tea and said, ‘I thought this could be your mug.’ He showed me where everything lived in the kitchen, then said, several times, ‘Of course, put stuff where you want. I don’t mind.’

He had cleared two drawers and the wardrobe in the spare room. The other two drawers were filled with his fitness clothes. I didn’t know there were so many permutations of Lycra and fleece. My wildly colourful clothes left several feet of space still empty, the wire hangers jangling mournfully in the closet space.

‘I’ll have to buy more stuff just to fill it up,’ I said, looking at it.

He laughed nervously. ‘What’s that?’

He looked at my calendar, tacked up on the spare-room wall, with its ideas in green and its actual planned events in black. When something had worked (music, wine tasting), I put a smiley face next to it. When it hadn’t (horse racing, art galleries), it stayed blank. There was little marked in for the next two weeks – Will had become bored of the places nearby, and as yet I could not persuade him to venture further afield. I glanced over at Patrick. I could see him eyeing the 12 August date, which was now underlined with exclamation marks in black.

‘Um … it’s just reminding me about my job.’

‘You don’t think they’re going to renew your contract?’

‘I don’t know, Patrick.’

Patrick took the pen from its clip, looked at the next month, and scribbled under week 28: ‘Time to start job hunting.’

‘That way you’re covered for whatever happens,’ he said. He kissed me and left me to it.

I laid my creams out carefully in the bathroom, tucked my razors, moisturizer and tampons neatly into his mirrored cabinet. I put some books in a neat row along the spare-room floor under the window, including the new titles that Will had ordered from Amazon for me. Patrick promised to put up some shelves when he had a spare moment.

And then, as he left to go running, I sat and looked out over the industrial estate towards the castle, and practised saying the word home, silently under my breath.

I am pretty hopeless at keeping secrets. Treena says I touch my nose as soon as I even think of lying. It’s a pretty straightforward giveaway. My parents still joke about the time I wrote absence notes for myself after bunking off school. ‘Dear Miss Trowbridge,’ they read. ‘Please excuse Louisa Clark from today’s lessons as I am very poorly with women’s problems.’ Dad had struggled to keep a straight face even while he was supposed to be tearing a strip off me.

Keeping Will’s plan from my family had been one thing – I was good at keeping secrets from my parents (it’s one of the things we learn while growing up, after all) – but coping with the anxiety by myself was something else entirely.

I spent the next couple of nights trying to work out what Will was up to, and what I could do to stop him, my thoughts racing even as Patrick and I chatted, cooking together in the little galley kitchen. (I was already discovering new things about him – like, he really did know a hundred different things to do with turkey breast.) At night we made love – it seemed almost obligatory at the moment, as if we should take full advantage of our freedom. It was as if Patrick somehow felt I owed him something, given my constant physical proximity to Will. But as soon as he dropped off to sleep, I was lost in my thoughts again.

There were just over seven weeks left.

And Will was making plans, even if I wasn’t.

The following week, if Will noticed that I was preoccupied, he didn’t say anything. We went through the motions of our daily routine – I took him for short drives into the country, cooked his meals, saw to him when we were in his house. He didn’t make jokes about Running Man any more.

I talked to him about the latest books he had recommended: we had done The English Patient(I loved this), and a Swedish thriller (which I hadn’t). We were solicitous with each other, almost excessively polite. I missed his insults, his crabbiness – their absence just added to the looming sense of threat that hung over me.

Nathan watched us both, as if he were observing some kind of new species.

‘You two had a row?’ he asked me one day in the kitchen, as I unpacked the groceries.

‘You’d better ask him,’ I said.

‘That’s exactly what he said.’

He looked at me sideways, and disappeared into the bathroom to unlock Will’s medical cabinet.

Meanwhile, I’d lasted three days after Michael Lawler’s visit before I rang Mrs Traynor. I asked if we could meet somewhere other than her house, and we agreed on a little cafe that had opened in the grounds of the castle. The same cafe, ironically, that had cost me my job.

It was a much smarter affair than The Buttered Bun – all limed oak and bleached wood tables and chairs. It sold home-made soup full of actual vegetables, and fancy cakes. And you couldn’t buy a normal coffee, only lattes, cappuccinos and macchiatos. There were no builders, or girls from the hairdresser’s. I sat nursing my tea, and wondered about the Dandelion Lady and whether she would feel comfortable enough to sit in here and read a newspaper all morning.

‘Louisa, I’m sorry I’m late.’ Camilla Traynor entered briskly, her handbag tucked under her arm, dressed in a grey silk shirt and navy trousers.

I fought the urge to stand up. There was never a time when I spoke to her that I didn’t still feel like I was engaged in some kind of interview.

‘I was held up in court.’

‘Sorry. To get you out of work, I mean. I just … well, I wasn’t sure it could wait.’

She held up a hand, and mouthed something at the waitress, who within seconds had brought her a cappuccino. Then she sat across from me. I felt her gaze like I was transparent.

‘Will had a lawyer come to the house,’ I said. ‘I found out he is a specialist in wills and probate.’ I couldn’t think of any gentler way to open the conversation.

She looked like I’d just smacked her in the face. I realized, too late, that she might actually have thought I’d have something good to tell her.

‘A lawyer? Are you sure?’

‘I looked him up on the internet. He’s based in Regent Street. In London,’ I added unnecessarily. ‘His name is Michael Lawler.’

She blinked hard, as if trying to take this in. ‘Did Will tell you this?’

‘No. I don’t think he wanted me to know. I … I got his name and looked him up.’

Her coffee arrived. The waitress put it on the table in front of her, but Mrs Traynor didn’t seem to notice.

‘Did you want anything else?’ the girl said.

‘No, thank you.’

‘We have carrot cake on special today. We make it here ourselves. It’s got a lovely buttercream fill–’

‘No.’ Mrs Traynor’s voice was sharp. ‘Thank you.’

The girl stood there just long enough to let us know she was offended and then stalked off, her notepad swinging conspicuously from one hand.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘You told me before that I should let you know anything important. I stayed awake half the night trying to work out whether to say anything.’

Her face looked almost leached of colour.

I knew how she felt.

‘How is he in himself? Have you … have you come up with any other ideas? Outings?’

‘He’s not keen.’ I told her about Paris, and my list of things I had compiled.

All the while I spoke, I could see her mind working ahead of me, calculating, assessing.