Me Before You (37 page)

Mary Rawlinson muttered, ‘Dear God,’ several times. She glanced over at me. Her language had got fruitier with every drink. ‘You don’t want to go and strut your stuff, Louisa?’

‘God, no.’

‘Jolly sensible of you. I’ve seen better dancing at a bloody Young Farmers Club disco.’

At nine, I got a text from Nathan.

All okay?

Yes. Lovely, believe it or not. Will having great time.

And he was. I watched him laughing hard at something Mary had said, and something in me grew strange and tight. This had shown me it could work. He could be happy, if surrounded by the right people, if allowed to be Will, instead of The Man in the Wheelchair, the list of symptoms, the object of pity.

And then, at 10pm, the slow dances began. We watched Rupert wheel Alicia around the dance floor, applauded politely by onlookers. Her hair had begun to droop, and she wrapped her arms around his neck as if she needed the support. Rupert’s arms linked around her, resting on the small of her back. Beautiful and wealthy as she was, I felt a little sorry for her. I thought she probably wouldn’t realize what she had lost until it was much too late.

Halfway through the song, other couples joined them so that they were partially obscured from view, and I got distracted by Mary talking about carers’ allowances, until suddenly I looked up and there she was, standing right in front of us, the supermodel in her white silk dress. My heart lodged in my throat.

Alicia nodded a greeting to Mary, and dipped a little from her waist so that Will could hear her over the music. Her face was a little tense, as if she had had to prime herself to come over.

‘Thank you for coming, Will. Really.’ She glanced sideways at me but said nothing.

‘Pleasure,’ Will said, smoothly. ‘You look lovely, Alicia. It was a great day.’

A flicker of surprise passed across her face. And then a faint wistfulness. ‘Really? You really think so? I do think … I mean, there’s so much I want to say –’

‘Really,’ Will said. ‘There’s no need. You remember Louisa?’

‘I do.’

There was a brief silence.

I could see Rupert hovering in the background, eyeing us all warily. She glanced back at him, and then held out a hand in a half-wave. ‘Well, thank you anyway, Will. You are a superstar for coming. And thank you for the … ’

‘Mirror.’

‘Of course. I absolutely loved the mirror.’ She stood up and walked back to her husband, who turned away, already clasping her arm.

We watched them cross the dance floor.

‘You didn’t buy her a mirror.’

‘I know.’

They were still talking, Rupert’s gaze flickering back to us. It was as if he couldn’t believe Will had simply been nice. Mind you, neither could I.

‘Does it … did it bother you?’ I said to him.

He looked away from them. ‘No,’ he said, and he smiled at me. His smile had gone a bit lopsided with drink and his eyes were sad and contemplative at the same time.

And then, as the dance floor briefly emptied for the next dance, I found myself saying, ‘What do you say, Will? Going to give me a whirl?’

‘What?’

‘Come on. Let’s give these fuckers something to talk about.’

‘Oh good,’ Mary said, raising a glass. ‘Fucking marvellous.’

‘Come on. While the music is slow. Because I don’t think you can pogo in that thing.’

I didn’t give him any choice. I sat down carefully on Will’s lap, draped my arms around his neck to hold myself in place. He looked into my eyes for a minute, as if working out whether he could refuse me. Then, astonishingly, Will wheeled us out on to the dance floor, and began moving in small circles under the sparkling lights of the mirrorballs.

I felt simultaneously acutely self-conscious and mildly hysterical. I was sitting at an angle that meant my dress had risen halfway up my thighs.

‘Leave it,’ Will murmured into my ear.

‘This is … ’

‘Come on, Clark. Don’t let me down now.’

I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around his neck, letting my cheek rest against his, breathing in the citrus smell of his aftershave. I could feel him humming along with the music.

‘Are they all appalled yet?’ he said. I opened one eye, and glanced out into the dim light.

A couple of people were smiling encouragingly, but most seemed not to know what to make of it. Mary saluted me with her drink. And then I saw Alicia staring at us, her face briefly falling. When she saw me looking, she turned away and muttered something to Rupert. He shook his head, as if we were doing something disgraceful.

I felt a mischievous smile creeping across my face. ‘Oh yes,’ I said.

‘Hah. Move in closer. You smell fantastic.’

‘So do you. Although, if you keep turning in left-hand circles I may throw up.’

Will changed direction. My arms looped around his neck, I pulled back a little to look at him, no longer self-conscious. He glanced down at my chest. To be fair, with me positioned where I was, there wasn’t anywhere else he could really look. He lifted his gaze from my cleavage and raised an eyebrow. ‘You know, you would never have let those breasts so close to me if I weren’t in a wheelchair,’ he murmured.

I looked back at him steadily. ‘You would never have looked at my breasts if you hadn’t been in a wheelchair.’

‘What? Of course I would.’

‘Nope. You would have been far too busy looking at the tall blonde girls with the endless legs and the big hair, the ones who can smell an expense account at forty paces. And anyway, I wouldn’t have been here. I would have been serving the drinks over there. One of the invisibles.’

He blinked.

‘Well? I’m right, aren’t I?’

Will glanced over at the bar, then back at me. ‘Yes. But in my defence, Clark, I was an arse.’

I burst out laughing so hard that even more people looked over in our direction.

I tried to straighten my face. ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘I think I’m getting hysterical.’

‘Do you know something?’

I could have looked at his face all night. The way his eyes wrinkled at the corners. That place where his neck met his shoulder. ‘What?’

‘Sometimes, Clark, you are pretty much the only thing that makes me want to get up in the morning.’

‘Then let’s go somewhere.’ The words were out almost before I knew what I wanted to say.

‘What?’

‘Let’s go somewhere. Let’s have a week where we just have fun. You and me. None of these … ’

He waited. ‘Arses?’

‘… arses. Say yes, Will. Go on.’

His eyes didn’t leave mine.

I don’t know what I was telling him. I don’t know where it all came from. I just knew if I didn’t get him to say yes tonight, with the stars and the freesias and the laughter and Mary, then I had no chance at all.

‘Please.’

The seconds before he answered me seemed to take forever.

‘Okay,’ he said.

They thought we couldn’t tell. They finally got back from the wedding around lunchtime the following day and Mrs Traynor was so mad she could barely even speak.

‘You could have rung,’ she said.

She had stayed in just to make sure they arrived back okay. I had listened to her pacing up and down the tiled corridor next door since I got there at 8am.

‘I must have called or texted you both eighteen times. It was only when I managed to call the Dewars’ house and somebody told me “the man in the wheelchair” had gone to a hotel that I could be sure you hadn’t both had some terrible accident on the motorway.’

‘“The man in the wheelchair”. Nice,’ Will observed.

But you could see he wasn’t bothered. He was all loose and relaxed, carried his hangover with humour, even though I had the feeling he was in some pain. It was only when his mum started to have a go at Louisa that he stopped smiling. He jumped in and just said that if she had anything to say she should say it to him, as it had been his decision to stay overnight, and Louisa had simply gone along with it.

‘And as far as I can see, Mother, as a 35-year-old man I’m not strictly answerable to anybody when it comes to choosing to spend a night at a hotel. Even to my parents.’

She had stared at them both, muttered something about ‘common courtesy’ and then left the room.

Louisa looked a bit shaken but he had gone over and murmured something to her, and that was the point at which I saw it. She went kind of pink and laughed, the kind of laugh you do when you know you shouldn’t be laughing. The kind of laugh that spoke of a conspiracy. And then Will turned to her and told her to take it easy for the rest of the day. Go home, get changed, maybe catch forty winks.

‘I can’t be walking around the castle with someone who has so clearly just done the walk of shame,’ he said.

‘Walk of shame?’ I couldn’t keep the surprise from my voice.

‘Not
that
walk of shame,’ Louisa said, flicking me with her scarf, and grabbed her coat to leave.

‘Take the car,’ he called out. ‘It’ll be easier for you to get back.’

I watched Will’s eyes follow her all the way to the back door.

I would have offered you seven to four just on the basis of that look alone.

He deflated a little after she left. It was as if he had been holding on until both his mum and Louisa had left the annexe. I had been watching him carefully now, and once his smile left his face I realized I didn’t like the look of him. His skin held a faint blotchiness, he had winced twice when he thought no one was looking, and I could see even from here that he had goosebumps. A little alarm bell had started to sound, distant but shrill, inside my head.

‘You feeling okay, Will?’

‘I’m fine. Don’t fuss.’

‘You want to tell me where it hurts?’

He looked a bit resigned then, as if he knew I saw straight through him. We had worked together a long time.

‘Okay. Bit of a headache. And … um … I need my tubes changed. Probably quite sharpish.’

I had transferred him from his chair on to his bed and now I began getting the equipment together. ‘What time did Lou do them this morning?’

‘She didn’t.’ He winced. And he looked a little guilty. ‘Or last night.’

‘What?’

I took his pulse, and grabbed the blood pressure equipment. Sure enough, it was sky high. When I put my hand on his forehead it came away with a faint sheen of sweat. I went for the medicine cabinet, and crushed some vasodilator drugs. I gave them to him in water, making sure he drank every last bit. Then I propped him up, placing his legs over the side of the bed, and I changed his tubes swiftly, watching him all the while.

‘AD?’

‘Yeah. Not your most sensible move, Will.’

Autonomic dysreflexia was pretty much our worst nightmare. It was Will’s body’s massive overreaction against pain, discomfort – or, say, an un-emptied catheter – his damaged nervous system’s vain and misguided attempt to stay in control. It could come out of nowhere and send his body into meltdown. He looked pale, his breathing laboured.

‘How’s your skin?’

‘Bit prickly.’

‘Sight?’

‘Fine.’

‘Aw, man. You think we need help?’

‘Give me ten minutes, Nathan. I’m sure you’ve done everything we need. Give me ten minutes.’

He closed his eyes. I checked his blood pressure again, wondering how long I should leave it before calling an ambulance. AD scared the hell out of me because you never knew which way it was going to go. He had had it once before, when I had first started working with him, and he had ended up in hospital for two days.

‘Really, Nathan. I’ll tell you if I think we’re in trouble.’

He sighed, and I helped him backwards so that he was leaning against his bedhead.

He told me Louisa had been so drunk he hadn’t wanted to risk letting her loose on his equipment. ‘God knows where she might have stuck the ruddy tubes.’ He half laughed as he said it. It had taken Louisa almost half an hour just to get him out of his chair and into bed, he said. They had both ended up on the floor twice. ‘Luckily we were both so drunk by then I don’t think either of us felt a thing.’ She had had the presence of mind to call down to reception, and they had asked a porter to help lift him. ‘Nice chap. I have a vague memory of insisting Louisa give him a fifty-pound tip. I knew she was properly drunk because she agreed to it.’

Will had been afraid when she finally left his room that she wouldn’t actually make it to hers. He’d had visions of her curled up in a little red ball on the stairs.

My own view of Louisa Clark was a little less generous just at that moment. ‘Will, mate, I think maybe next time you should worry a little more about yourself, yeah?’

‘I’m all right, Nathan. I’m fine. Feeling better already.’

I felt his eyes on me as I checked his pulse.

‘Really. It wasn’t her fault.’

His blood pressure was down. His colour was returning to normal in front of me. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I had been holding.

We chatted a bit, passing the time while everything settled down, discussing the previous day’s events. He didn’t seem a bit bothered about his ex. He didn’t say much, but for all he was obviously exhausted, he looked okay.

I let go of his wrist. ‘Nice tattoo, by the way.’

He gave me a wry look.

‘Make sure you don’t graduate to an “End by”, yeah?’

Despite the sweats and the pain and the infection, he looked for once like there was something else on his mind other than the thing that consumed him. I couldn’t help thinking that if Mrs Traynor had known this, she might not have kicked off as hard as she did.

We didn’t tell her anything of the lunchtime events – Will made me promise not to – but when Lou came back later that afternoon she was pretty quiet. She looked pale, with her hair washed and pulled back like she was trying to look sensible. I kind of guessed how she felt; sometimes when you get hammered till the small hours you feel pretty good in the morning, but really it’s just because you’re still a bit drunk. That old hangover is just toying with you, working out when to bite. I figured it must have bitten her around lunchtime.