Me Before You (8 page)

‘Say something, Will. Please.’

I could picture his face. I could see that look of his that managed to be both unreadable and to convey a kind of distant contempt.

‘Congratulations,’ he said, finally. ‘I’m sure you’ll both be very happy.’

Alicia started to protest then – something indistinct – but was interrupted by Rupert. ‘Come on, Lissa. I think we should leave. Will, it’s not like we came here expecting your blessing. It was a courtesy. Lissa thought – well, we both just thought – you should know. Sorry, old chap. I … I do hope things improve for you and I hope you do want to stay in touch when things … you know … when things settle down a bit.’

I heard footsteps, and stooped over the basket of logs, as if I had only just come in. I heard them in the corridor and then Alicia appeared in front of me. Her eyes were red-rimmed, as if she were about to cry.

‘Can I use the bathroom?’ she said, her voice thick and choked.

I slowly lifted a finger and pointed mutely in its direction.

She looked at me hard then, and I realized that what I felt probably showed on my face. I have never been much good at hiding my feelings.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said, after a pause. ‘But I did try. I really tried. For months. And he just pushed me away.’ Her jaw was rigid, her expression oddly furious. ‘He actually didn’t want me here. He made that very clear.’

She seemed to be waiting for me to say something.

‘It’s really none of my business,’ I said, eventually.

We both stood facing each other.

‘You know, you can only actually help someone who wants to be helped,’ she said.

And then she was gone.

I waited a couple of minutes, listening for the sound of their car disappearing down the drive, and then I went into the kitchen. I stood there and boiled the kettle even though I didn’t want a cup of tea. I flicked through a magazine that I had already read. Finally, I went back into the corridor and, with a grunt, picked up the log basket and hauled it into the living room, bumping it slightly on the door before I entered so that Will would know I was coming.

‘I was wondering if you wanted me to –’ I began.

But there was nobody there.

The room was empty.

It was then that I heard the crash. I ran out into the corridor just in time to hear another, followed by the sound of splintering glass. It was coming from Will’s bedroom.
Oh God, please don’t let him have hurt himself
. I panicked – Mrs Traynor’s warning drilled through my head. I had left him for more than fifteen minutes.

I ran down the corridor, slid to a halt in the doorway and stood, both hands gripping the door frame. Will was in the middle of the room, upright in his chair, a walking stick balanced across the armrests, so that it jutted eighteen inches to his left – a jousting stick. There was not a single photograph left on the long shelves; the expensive frames lay in pieces all over the floor, the carpet studded with glittering shards of glass. His lap was dusted with bits of glass and splintered wood frames. I took in the scene of destruction, feeling my heart rate slowly subside as I grasped that he was unhurt. Will was breathing hard, as if whatever he had done had cost him some effort.

His chair turned, crunching slightly on the glass. His eyes met mine. They were infinitely weary. They dared me to offer him sympathy.

I looked down at his lap, and then at the floor around him. I could just make out the picture of him and Alicia, her face now obscured by a bent silver frame, amongst the other casualties.

I swallowed, staring at it, and slowly lifted my eyes to his. Those few seconds were the longest I could remember.

‘Can that thing get a puncture?’ I said, finally, nodding at his wheelchair. ‘Because I have no idea where I would put the jack.’

His eyes widened. Just for a moment, I thought I had really blown it. But the faintest flicker of a smile passed across his face.

‘Look, don’t move,’ I said. ‘I’ll get the vacuum cleaner.’

I heard the walking stick drop to the floor. As I left the room, I thought I might have heard him say sorry.

The Kings Head was always busy on a Thursday evening, and in the corner of the snug it was even busier. I sat squashed between Patrick and a man whose name appeared to be the Rutter, staring periodically at the horse brasses pinned to the oak beams above my head and the photographs of the castle that punctuated the joists, and tried to look even vaguely interested in the talk around me, which seemed to revolve chiefly around body fat ratios and carb loading.

I had always thought the fortnightly meetings of the Hailsbury Triathlon Terrors must be a publican’s worst nightmare. I was the only one drinking alcohol, and my solitary packet of crisps sat crumpled and empty on the table. Everyone else sipped at mineral water, or checked the sweetener ratios on their Diet Cokes. When they, finally, ordered food there wouldn’t be a salad that was allowed to brush a leaf against a full-fat dressing, or a piece of chicken that still sported its skin. I often ordered chips, just so that I could watch them all pretend they didn’t want one.

‘Phil hit the wall about forty miles in. He said he actually heard voices. Feet like lead. He had that zombie face, you know?’

‘I got some of those new Japanese balancing trainers fitted. Shaved fifteen minutes off my ten-mile timings.’

‘Don’t travel with a soft bike bag. Nigel arrived at tricamp with it looking like a ruddy coat hanger.’

I couldn’t say I enjoyed the Triathlon Terrors’ gatherings, but what with my increased hours and Patrick’s training timetable it was one of the few times I could be guaranteed to see him. He sat beside me, muscular thighs clad in shorts despite the extreme cold outside. It was a badge of honour among the members of the club to wear as few clothes as possible. The men were wiry, brandishing obscure and expensive sports layers that boasted extra ‘wicking’ properties, or lighter-than-air bodyweights. They were called Scud or Trig, and flexed bits of body at each other, displaying injuries or alleged muscle growth. The girls wore no make-up, and had the ruddy complexions of those who thought nothing of jogging for miles through icy conditions. They looked at me with faint distaste – or perhaps even incomprehension – no doubt weighing up my fat to muscle ratio and finding it wanting.

‘It was awful,’ I told Patrick, wondering whether I could order cheesecake without them all giving me the Death Stare. ‘His girlfriend and his best friend.’

‘You can’t blame her,’ he said. ‘Are you really telling me you’d stick around if I was paralysed from the neck down?’

‘Of course I would.’

‘No, you wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t expect you to.’

‘Well, I would.’

‘But I wouldn’t want you there. I wouldn’t want someone staying with me out of pity.’

‘Who says it would be pity? You’d still be the same person underneath.’

‘No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t be anything like the same person.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘I wouldn’t want to live. Relying on other people for every little thing. Having strangers wipe your arse –’

A man with a shaved head thrust his head between us. ‘Pat,’ he said, ‘have you tried that new gel drink? Had one explode in my backpack last week. Never seen anything like it.’

‘Can’t say I have, Trig. Give me a banana and a Lucozade any day.’

‘Dazzer had a Diet Coke when he was doing Norseman. Sicked it all up at three thousand feet. God, we laughed.’

I raised a weak smile.

Shaven-headed man disappeared and Patrick turned back to me, apparently still pondering Will’s fate. ‘Jesus. Think of all the things you couldn’t do … ’ He shook his head. ‘No more running, no more cycling.’ He looked at me as if it had just occurred to him. ‘No more
sex
.’

‘Of course you could have sex. It’s just that the woman would have to get on top.’

‘We’d be stuffed, then.’

‘Funny.’

‘Besides, if you’re paralysed from the neck down I’m guessing the … um … equipment doesn’t work as it should.’

I thought of Alicia.
I did try
, she said.
I really tried. For months
.

‘I’m sure it does with some people. Anyway, there must be a way around these things if you … think imaginatively.’

‘Hah.’ Patrick took a sip of his water. ‘You’ll have to ask him tomorrow. Look, you said he’s horrible. Perhaps he was horrible before his accident. Perhaps that’s the real reason she dumped him. Have you thought of that?’

‘I don’t know … ’ I thought of the photograph. ‘They looked like they were really happy together.’ Then again, what did a photograph prove? I had a framed photograph at home where I was beaming at Patrick like he had just pulled me from a burning building, yet in reality I had just called him an ‘utter dick’ and he had responded with a hearty, ‘Oh, piss off!’

Patrick had lost interest. ‘Hey, Jim … Jim, did you take a look at that new lightweight bike? Any good?’

I let him change the subject, thinking about what Alicia had said. I could well imagine Will pushing her away. But surely if you loved someone it was your job to stick with them? To help them through the depression? In sickness and in health, and all that?

‘Another drink?’

‘Vodka tonic.
Slimline
tonic,’ I said, as he raised an eyebrow.

Patrick shrugged and headed to the bar.

I had started to feel a little guilty about the way we were discussing my employer. Especially when I realized that he probably endured it all the time. It was almost impossible not to speculate about the more intimate aspects of his life. I tuned out. There was talk of a training weekend in Spain. I was only listening with half an ear, until Patrick reappeared at my side and nudged me.

‘Fancy it?’

‘What?’

‘Weekend in Spain. Instead of the Greek holiday. You could put your feet up by the pool if you don’t fancy the forty-mile bike ride. We could get cheap flights. Six weeks’ time. Now you’re rolling in it … ’

I thought of Mrs Traynor. ‘I don’t know … I’m not sure they’re going to be keen on me taking time off so soon.’

‘You mind if I go, then? I really fancy getting some altitude training in. I’m thinking about doing the big one.’

‘The big what?’

‘Triathlon. The Xtreme Viking. Sixty miles on a bike, thirty miles on foot, and a nice long swim in sub-zero Nordic seas.’

The Viking was spoken about with reverence, those who had competed bearing their injuries like veterans of some distant and particularly brutal war. He was almost smacking his lips with anticipation. I looked at my boyfriend and wondered if he was actually an alien. I thought briefly that I had preferred him when he worked in telesales and couldn’t pass a petrol station without stocking up on Mars Bars.

‘You’re going to do it?’

‘Why not? I’ve never been fitter.’

I thought of all that extra training – the endless conversations about weight and distance, fitness and endurance. It was hard enough getting Patrick’s attention these days at the best of times.

‘You could do it with me,’ he said, although we both knew he didn’t believe it.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ I said. ‘Sure. Go for it,’ I said.

And I ordered the cheesecake.

If I had thought the events of the previous day would create a thaw back at Granta House, I was wrong.

I greeted Will with a broad smile and a cheery hello, and he didn’t even bother to look round from the window.

‘Not a good day,’ Nathan murmured, as he shouldered his way into his coat.

It was a filthy, low-cloud sort of a morning, where the rain spat meanly against the windows and it was hard to imagine the sun coming out ever again. Even I felt glum on a day like this. It wasn’t really a surprise that Will should be worse. I began to work my way through the morning’s chores, telling myself all the while that it didn’t matter. You didn’t have to like your employer anyway, did you? Lots of people didn’t. I thought of Treena’s boss, a taut-faced serial divorcee who monitored how many times my sister went to the loo and had been known to make barbed comments if she considered her to have exceeded reasonable bladder activity. And besides, I had already done two weeks here. That meant there were only five months and thirteen working days to go.

The photographs were stacked carefully in the bottom drawer, where I had placed them the previous day, and now, crouched on the floor, I began laying them out and sorting through them, assessing which frames I might be able to fix. I am quite good at fixing things. Besides, I thought it might be quite a useful way of killing time.

I had been doing this for about ten minutes when the discreet hum of the motorized wheelchair alerted me to Will’s arrival.

He sat there in the doorway, looking at me. There were dark shadows under his eyes. Sometimes, Nathan told me, he barely slept at all. I didn’t want to think how it would feel, to lie trapped in a bed you couldn’t get out of with only dark thoughts to keep you company through the small hours.

‘I thought I’d see if I could fix any of these frames,’ I said, holding one up. It was the picture of him bungee jumping. I tried to look cheerful.
He needs someone upbeat, someone positive
.

‘Why?’

I blinked. ‘Well … I think some of these can be saved. I brought some wood glue with me, if you’re happy for me to have a go at them. Or if you want to replace them I can pop into town during my lunch break and see if I can find some more. Or we could both go, if you fancied a trip out … ’

‘Who told you to start fixing them?’

His stare was unflinching.

Uh-oh,
I thought. ‘I … I was just trying to help.’

‘You wanted to fix what I did yesterday.’

‘I –’

‘Do you know what, Louisa? It would be nice – just for once – if someone paid attention to what I wanted. Me smashing those photographs was not an accident. It was not an attempt at radical interior design. It was because I actually don’t want to look at them.’

I got to my feet. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think that –’

‘You thought you knew best. Everyone thinks they know what I need.
Let’s put the bloody photos back together. Give the poor invalid something to look at
. I don’t want to have those bloody pictures staring at me every time I’m stuck in my bed until someone comes and bloody well gets me out again. Okay? Do you think you can get your head around that?’