Me Before You

On Monday evening, she asked if Camilla and I would come with Nathan into the annexe. She had laid out the table with brochures, printed timetables, insurance documents and other things that she’d printed off the internet. There were copies for each of us, in clear plastic folders. It was all terribly organized.

She wanted, she said, to present us with her plans for a holiday. (She had warned Camilla that she would make it sound like she was the one gleaning all the benefit, but I could still see Camilla’s eyes grow a little steely as she detailed all the things she had booked for them.)

It was an extraordinary trip that seemed to involve all sorts of unusual activities, things I couldn’t imagine Will doing even before his accident. But every time she mentioned something – white-water rafting, or bungee jumping or what have you – she would hold up a document in front of Will, showing other injured young men taking part, and say, ‘If I’m going to try all these things you keep saying I should, then you have to do them with me.’

I have to admit, I was secretly rather impressed by her. She was a resourceful little thing.

Will listened to her, and I could see him reading the documents she laid out in front of him.

‘Where did you find all this information?’ he said, finally.

She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘Knowledge is power, Will,’ she said.

And my son smiled, as if she had said something particularly clever.

‘So … ’ Louisa said, when all the questions had been asked. ‘We will be leaving in eight days’ time. Are you happy, Mrs Traynor?’ There was a faint air of defiance in the way she said it, as if she were daring Camilla to say no.

‘If that’s what you all want to do, then it’s quite all right by me,’ Camilla said.

‘Nathan? Are you still up for it?’

‘You bet.’

‘And … Will?’

We all looked at him. There was a time, not that long ago, when any one of these activities would have been unthinkable. There was a time when Will would have taken pleasure in saying no just to upset his mother. He had always been like that, our son – quite capable of doing the opposite of what was right, simply because he didn’t want to be seen to be complying, in some way. I don’t know where it came from, this urge to subvert. Perhaps it was what made him such a brilliant negotiator.

He looked up at me, his eyes unreadable, and I felt my jaw tense. And then he looked at the girl, and smiled.

‘Why not?’ he said. ‘I’m quite looking forward to seeing Clark throw herself into some rapids.’

The girl seemed to physically deflate a little – with relief – as if she had half expected him to say no.

It’s funny – I admit, when she first wound her way into our lives I was a little suspicious of her. Will, despite all his bluster, had been vulnerable. I was a little afraid that he could be manipulated. He’s a wealthy young man, despite it all, and that wretched Alicia running off with his friend had made him feel about as worthless as anyone in his position could feel.

But I saw the way Louisa looked at him then, a strange mixture of pride and gratitude on her face, and I was suddenly immensely glad that she was there. My son, although we never said as much, was in the most untenable of situations. Whatever it was she was doing, it seemed to be giving him just a small respite from that.

There was, for a few days, a faint but definitely celebratory air in the house. Camilla wore an air of quiet hopefulness, although she refused to admit to me that that was what it was. I knew her subtext: what did we really have to celebrate, when all was said and done? I heard her on the telephone to Georgina late at night, justifying what she had agreed to. Her mother’s daughter, Georgina, she was already looking for any way in which Louisa might have used Will’s situation to advantage herself.

‘She offered to pay for herself, Georgina,’ Camilla said. And, ‘No, darling. I don’t really think we have a choice. We have very little time and Will has agreed to it, so I’m just going to hope for the best. I think you really have to do the same now.’

I knew what it cost her to defend Louisa, to even be nice to her. But she tolerated that girl because she knew, as I did, that Louisa was our only chance of keeping our son even halfway happy.

Louisa Clark had become, although neither of us said it, our only chance of keeping him alive.

I went for a drink with Della last night. Camilla was visiting her sister, so we went for a walk down by the river on the way back.

‘Will’s going to take a holiday,’ I said.

‘How wonderful,’ she replied.

Poor Della. I could see her fighting her instinctive urge to ask me about our future – to consider how this unexpected development might affect it – but I didn’t suppose she ever would. Not until this was all resolved.

We walked, watching the swans, smiling at the tourists splashing around in their boats in the early evening sun, and she chatted away about how this might all be actually rather wonderful for Will, and probably showed that he was really learning to adapt to his situation. It was a sweet thing for her to say as I knew that, in some respects, she might legitimately have hoped for an end to it all. It was Will’s accident that had so curtailed our plans for a life together, after all. She must have secretly hoped that my responsibilities towards Will would one day end so that I could be free.

And I walked along beside her, feeling her hand resting in the crook of my arm, listening to her sing-song voice. I couldn’t tell her the truth – the truth that just a handful of us knew. That if the girl failed with her ranches and her bungee jumping and hot tubs and what have you, she would paradoxically be setting me free. Because the only way I would ever be able to leave my family was if Will decided, after all, that he was still determined to go to this infernal place in Switzerland.

I knew it, and Camilla knew it. Even if neither of us would admit it to ourselves. Only on my son’s death would I be free to live the life of my choosing.

‘Don’t,’ she said, catching my expression.

Dear Della. She could tell what I was thinking, even when I didn’t know myself.

‘It’s good news, Steven. Really. You never know, this might be the start of a whole new independent life for Will.’

I placed my hand over hers. A braver man might have told her what I really thought. A braver man would have let her go long ago – her, and maybe even my wife too.

‘You’re right,’ I said, forcing a smile. ‘Let’s hope he comes back full of tales of bungee ropes or whatever horror it is the young people like to inflict upon each other.’

She nudged me. ‘He might make you put one up in the castle.’

‘White-water rafting in the moat?’ I said. ‘I shall file it away as a possible attraction for next summer’s season.’

Sustained by this unlikely picture, we walked, occasionally chuckling, all the way down to the boathouse.

And then Will got pneumonia.

22

I ran into Accident and Emergency. The sprawling layout of the hospital and my natural lack of any kind of internal compass meant that the critical-care ward took me forever to find. I had to ask three times before someone pointed me in the right direction. I finally swung open the doors to Ward C12, breathless and gasping, and there, in the corridor, was Nathan, sitting reading a newspaper. He looked up as I approached him.

‘How is he?’

‘On oxygen. Stable.’

‘I don’t understand. He was fine on Friday night. He had a bit of a cough Saturday morning, but … but this? What happened?’

My heart was racing. I sat down for a moment, trying to catch my breath. I had been running pretty much since I received Nathan’s text message an hour previously. He sat up, and folded his newspaper.

‘It’s not the first time, Lou. He gets a bit of bacteria in his lungs, his cough mechanism doesn’t work like it should, he goes down pretty fast. I tried to do some clearing techniques on him Saturday afternoon but he was in too much pain. He got a fever out of nowhere, then he got a stabbing pain in his chest. We had to call an ambulance Saturday night.’

‘Shit,’ I said, bending over. ‘Shit, shit, shit. Can I go in?’

‘He’s pretty groggy. Not sure you’ll get much out of him. And Mrs T is with him.’

I left my bag with Nathan, cleaned my hands with antibacterial lotion, then pushed at the door and entered.

Will was in the middle of the hospital bed, his body covered with a blue blanket, wired up to a drip and surrounded by various intermittently bleeping machines. His face was partially obscured by an oxygen mask and his eyes were closed. His skin looked grey, tinged with a blue-whiteness which made something in me constrict. Mrs Traynor sat next to him, one hand resting on his covered arm. She was staring, unseeing, at the wall opposite.

‘Mrs Traynor,’ I said.

She glanced up with a start. ‘Oh. Louisa.’

‘How … how is he doing?’ I wanted to go and take Will’s other hand, but I didn’t feel like I could sit down. I hovered there by the door. There was an expression of such dejection on her face that even to be in the room felt like intruding.

‘A bit better. They have him on some very strong antibiotics.’

‘Is there … anything I can do?’

‘I don’t think so, no. We … we just have to wait. The consultant will be making his rounds in an hour or so. He’ll be able to give us more information, hopefully.’

The world seemed to have stopped. I stood there a little longer, letting the steady beep of the machines burn a rhythm into my consciousness.

‘Would you like me to take over for a while? So you can have a break?’

‘No. I think I’ll stay, actually.’

A bit of me was hoping that Will would hear my voice. A bit of me was hoping his eyes would open above that clear plastic mask, and he would mutter, ‘Clark. Come and sit down for God’s sake. You’re making the place look untidy.’

But he just lay there.

I wiped at my face with a hand. ‘Would … would you like me to get you a drink?’

Mrs Traynor looked up. ‘What time is it?’

‘A quarter to ten.’

‘Is it really?’ She shook her head, as if she found that hard to believe. ‘Thank you, Louisa. That would be … that would be very kind. I seem to have been here rather a long time.’

I had been off on Friday – in part because the Traynors insisted I was owed a day off, but mostly because there was no way I could get a passport other than heading to London on the train and queuing up at Petty France. I had popped by their house on Friday night, on my return, to show Will my spoils and to make sure his own passport was still valid. I thought he had been a little quiet, but there had been nothing particularly unusual in that. Some days he was in more discomfort than others. I had assumed it was one of those days. If I’m honest, my mind was so full of our travel plans that I didn’t have a lot of room to think about anything else.

I spent Saturday morning picking up my belongings from Patrick’s house with Dad, and then I went shopping in the high street with Mum in the afternoon to pick up a swimsuit and some holiday necessities, and I stayed over at my parents’ house Saturday and Sunday nights. It was a tight squeeze, with Treena and Thomas there as well. On Monday morning I got up at 7, ready to be at the Traynors’ by 8am. I arrived there to find the whole place closed up, the front and back doors locked. There was no note. I stood under the front porch and rang Nathan’s phone three times without an answer. Mrs Traynor’s phone was set to voicemail. Finally, as I sat on the steps for forty-five minutes, Nathan’s text arrived.

We are at county hospital. Will has pneumonia. Ward C12.

Nathan left, and I sat outside Will’s room for a further hour. I flicked through the magazines that somebody had apparently left on the table in 1982, and then pulled a paperback from my bag and tried to read that, but it was impossible to concentrate.