[English Novel] Me Before You

Me Before You
Me Before You Page 40



‘Are you sure I can’t get you something, love?’ Mum appeared at my side with a cup of tea. There was nothing in our family that couldn’t be improved by a cup of tea, allegedly.

‘No. Not hungry, thanks.’

I saw the way she glanced at Dad. I knew that later on there would be private mutterings that the Traynors were working me too hard, that the strain of looking after such an invalid was proving too much. I knew they would blame themselves for encouraging me to take the job.

I would have to let them think they were right.

Paradoxically, the following day Will was on good form – unusually talkative, opinionated, belligerent. He talked, possibly more than he had talked on any previous day. It was as if he wanted to spar with me, and was disappointed when I wouldn’t play.

‘So when are you going to finish this hatchet job, then?’

I had been tidying the living room. I looked up from plumping the sofa cushions. ‘What?’

‘My hair. I’m only half done. I look like one of those Victorian orphans. Or some Hoxton eejit.’ He turned his head so that I could better see my handiwork. ‘Unless this is one of your alternative style statements.’

‘You want me to keep cutting?’

‘Well, it seemed to keep you happy. And it would be nice not to look like I belong in an asylum.’

I fetched a towel and scissors in silence.

‘Nathan is definitely happier now I apparently look like a bloke,’ he said. ‘Although he did point out that, having restored my face to its former state, I will now need shaving every day.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘You don’t mind, do you? Weekends I’ll just have to put up with designer stubble.’

I couldn’t talk to him. I found it difficult even to meet his eye. It was like finding out your boyfriend had been unfaithful. I felt, weirdly, as if he had betrayed me.

‘Clark?’

‘Hmm?’

‘You’re having another unnervingly quiet day. What happened to “chatty to the point of vaguely irritating?”’

‘Sorry,’ I said.

‘Running Man again? What’s he done now? He hasn’t gone and run off, has he?’

‘No.’ I took a soft slice of Will’s hair between my index and middle fingers and lifted the blades of the scissors to trim what lay exposed above them. They stilled in my hand. How would they do it? Would they give him an injection? Was it medicine? Or did they just leave you in a room with a load of razors?

‘You look tired. I wasn’t going to say anything when you came in, but – hell – you look terrible.’

‘Oh.’

How did they assist someone who couldn’t move their own limbs? I found myself gazing down at his wrists, which were always covered by long sleeves. I had assumed for weeks that this was because he felt the cold more than we did. Another lie.

‘Clark?’

‘Yes?’

I was glad I was behind him. I didn’t want him to see my face.

He hesitated. Where the back of his neck had been covered by hair, it was even paler than the rest of his skin. It looked soft and white and oddly vulnerable.

‘Look, I’m sorry about my sister. She was … she was very upset, but it didn’t give her the right to be rude. She’s a bit direct sometimes. Doesn’t know how much she rubs people up the wrong way.’ He paused. ‘It’s why she likes living in Australia, I think.’

‘You mean, they tell each other the truth?’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. Lift your head up, please.’

I snipped and combed, working my way methodically around his head until every single hair was chopped or trimmed and all that remained was a fine sprinkling around his feet.

It all became clear to me by the end of the day. While Will was watching television with his father, I took a sheet of A4 paper from the printer and a pen from the jar by the kitchen window and wrote down what I wanted to say. I folded the paper, found an envelope, and left it on the kitchen table, addressed to his mother.

When I left for the evening, Will and his father were talking. Actually, Will was laughing. I paused in the hallway, my bag over my shoulder, listening. Why would he laugh? What could possibly provoke mirth given that he had just a matter of weeks before he took his own life?

‘I’m off,’ I called through the doorway, and started walking.

‘Hey, Clark –’ he began, but I had already closed the door behind me.

I spent the short bus ride trying to work out what I was going to tell my parents. They would be furious that I had left what they would see as a perfectly suitable and well-paid job. After her initial shock my mother would look pained and defend me, suggesting that it had all been too much. My father would probably ask why I couldn’t be more like my sister. He often did, even though I was not the one who ruined her life by getting pregnant and having to rely on the rest of the family for financial support and babysitting. You weren’t allowed to say anything like that in our house because, according to my mother, it was like implying that Thomas wasn’t a blessing. And all babies were God’s blessing, even those who said bugger quite a lot, and whose presence meant that half the potential wage earners in our family couldn’t actually go and get a decent job.

I would not be able to tell them the truth. I knew I owed Will and his family nothing, but I wouldn’t inflict the curious gaze of the neighbourhood on him.

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All these thoughts tumbled around my head as I got off the bus and walked down the hill. And then I got to the corner of our road and heard the shouting, felt the slight vibration in the air, and it was all briefly forgotten.

A small crowd had gathered around our house. I picked up my pace, afraid that something had happened, but then I saw my parents on the porch, peering up, and realized it wasn’t our house at all. It was just the latest in a long series of small wars that characterized our neighbours’ marriage.

That Richard Grisham was not the most faithful of husbands was hardly news in our street. But judging by the scene in his front garden, it might have been to his wife.

‘You must have thought I was bloody stupid. She was wearing your T-shirt! The one I had made for you for your birthday!’

‘Baby … Dympna … it’s not what you think.’

‘I went in for your bloody Scotch eggs! And there she was, wearing it! Bold as brass! And I don’t even like Scotch eggs!’

I slowed my pace, pushing my way through the small crowd until I was able to get to our gate, watching as Richard ducked to avoid a DVD player. Next came a pair of shoes.

‘How long have they been at it?’

My mother, her apron tucked neatly around her waist, unfolded her arms and glanced down at her watch. ‘It’s a good three-quarters of an hour. Bernard, would you say it’s a good three-quarters of an hour?’

‘Depends if you time it from when she threw the clothes out or when he came back and found them.’

‘I’d say when he came home.’

Dad considered this. ‘Then it’s really closer to half an hour. She got a good lot out of the window in the first fifteen minutes, though.’

‘Your dad says if she really does kick him out this time he’s going to put in a bid for Richard’s Black and Decker.’

The crowd had grown, and Dympna Grisham showed no sign of letting up. If anything, she seemed encouraged by the increasing size of her audience.

‘You can take her your filthy books,’ she yelled, hurling a shower of magazines out of the window.

These prompted a small cheer among the crowd.

‘See if she likes you sitting in the loo with those for half of Sunday afternoon, eh?’ She disappeared inside, and then reappeared at the window, hauling the contents of a laundry basket down on to what remained of the lawn. ‘And your filthy undercrackers. See if she thinks you’re such a – what was it? – hot stud when she’s washing those for you every day!’

Richard was vainly scooping up armfuls of his stuff as it landed on the grass. He was yelling something up at the window, but against the general noise and catcalls it was hard to make it out. As if briefly admitting defeat, he pushed his way through the crowd, unlocked his car, hauled an armful of his belongings on to the rear seat, and shoved the car door shut. Oddly, whereas his CD collection and video games had been quite popular, no one made a move on his dirty laundry.

Crash. There was a brief hush as his stereo met the path.

He looked up in disbelief. ‘You crazy bitch!’

‘You’re shagging that disease-ridden cross-eyed troll from the garage, and I’m the crazy bitch?’

My mother turned to my father. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Bernard? I think it’s turning a little chilly.’

My dad didn’t take his eyes off next door. ‘That would be great, love. Thank you.’

It was as my mother went indoors that I noticed the car. It was so unexpected that at first I didn’t recognize it – Mrs Traynor’s Mercedes, navy blue, low-slung and discreet. She pulled up, peering out at the scene on the pavement, and hesitated a moment before she climbed out. She stood, staring at the various houses, perhaps checking the numbers. And then she saw me.

I slid out from the porch and was down the path before Dad could ask where I was going. Mrs Traynor stood to the side of the crowd, gazing at the chaos like Marie Antoinette viewing a load of rioting peasants.

‘Domestic dispute,’ I said.

She looked away, as if almost embarrassed to have been caught looking. ‘I see.’

‘It’s a fairly constructive one by their standards. They’ve been going to marriage guidance.’

Her elegant wool suit, pearls and expensive hair were enough to mark her out in our street, among the sweatpants and cheap fabrics in bright, chain-store colours. She appeared rigid, worse than the morning she had come home to find me sleeping in Will’s room. I registered in some distant part of my mind that I was not going to miss Camilla Traynor.

‘I was wondering if you and I could have a little talk.’ She had to lift her voice to be heard over the cheering.

Mrs Grisham was now throwing out Richard’s fine wines. Every exploding bottle was greeted with squeals of delight and another heartfelt outburst of pleading from Mr Grisham. A river of red wine ran through the feet of the crowd and into the gutter.

I glanced over at the crowd and then behind me at the house. I could not imagine bringing Mrs Traynor into our front room, with its litter of toy trains, Granddad snoring mutely in front of the television, Mum spraying air-freshener around to hide the smell of Dad’s socks, and Thomas popping by to murmur bugger at the new guest.

‘Um … it’s not a great time.’

‘Perhaps we could talk in my car? Look, just five minutes, Louisa. Surely you owe us that.’

A couple of my neighbours glanced in my direction as I climbed into the car. I was lucky that the Grishams were the hot news of the evening, or I might have been the topic of conversation. In our street, if you climbed into an expensive car it meant you had either pulled a footballer or were being arrested by plain-clothes police.

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The doors closed with an expensive, muted clunk and suddenly there was silence. The car smelt of leather, and there was nothing in it apart from me and Mrs Traynor. No sweet wrappers, mud, lost toys or perfumed dangly things to disguise the smell of the carton of milk that had been dropped in there three months earlier.

‘I thought you and Will got on well.’ She spoke as if addressing someone straight ahead of her. When I didn’t speak, she said, ‘Is there a problem with the money?’

‘No.’

‘Do you need a longer lunch break? I am conscious that it’s rather short. I could ask Nathan if he would –’

‘It’s not the hours. Or the money.’

‘Then –’

‘I don’t really want to –’

‘Look, you cannot hand in your notice with immediate effect and expect me not even to ask what on earth’s the matter.’

I took a deep breath. ‘I overheard you. You and your daughter. Last night. And I don’t want to … I don’t want to be part of it.’

‘Ah.’

We sat in silence. Mr Grisham was now trying to bash his way in through the front door, and Mrs Grisham was busy hurling anything she could locate through the window down on to his head. The choice of projectile missiles – loo roll, tampon boxes, toilet brush, shampoo bottles – suggested she was now in the bathroom.

‘Please, don’t leave,’ Mrs Traynor said, quietly. ‘Will is comfortable with you. More so than he’s been for some time. I … it would be very hard for us to replicate that with someone else.’

‘But you’re … you’re going to take him to that place where people commit suicide. Dignitas.’

‘No. I am going to do everything I can to ensure he doesn’t do that.’

‘Like what – praying?’

She gave me what my mother would have termed an ‘old-fashioned’ look. ‘You must know by now that if Will decides to make himself unreachable, there is little anybody can do about it.’

‘I worked it all out,’ I said. ‘I’m basically there just to make sure he doesn’t cheat and do it before his six months are up. That’s it, isn’t it?’

‘No. That’s not it.’

‘Which is why you didn’t care about my qualifications.’

‘I thought you were bright and cheerful and different. You didn’t look like a nurse. You didn’t behave … like any of the others. I thought … I thought you might cheer him up. And you do – you do cheer him up, Louisa. Seeing him without that awful beard yesterday … you seem to be one of the few people who are able to get through to him.’

The bedding came out of the window. It came down in a ball, the sheets extending themselves briefly and gracefully before they hit the ground. Two children picked one up and began running around the little garden with it over their heads.

‘Don’t you think it would have been fair to mention that I was basically on suicide watch?’

The sigh Camilla Traynor gave was the sound of someone forced to explain something politely to an imbecile. I wondered if she knew that everything she said made the other person feel like an idiot. I wondered if it was something she’d actually cultivated deliberately. I didn’t think I could ever manage to make someone feel inferior.

‘That might have been the case when we first met you … but I’m confident Will is going to stick to his word. He has promised me six months, and that’s what I’ll get. We need this time, Louisa. We need this time to give him the idea of there being some possibility. I was hoping it might plant the idea that there is a life he could enjoy, even if it wasn’t the life he had planned.’

‘But it’s all lies. You’ve lied to me and you’re all lying to each other.’

She didn’t seem to hear me. She turned to face me, pulling a chequebook from her handbag, a pen ready in her hand.

‘Look, what do you want? I will double your money. Tell me how much you want.’

‘I don’t want your money.’

‘A car. Some benefits. Bonuses –’

‘No –’

‘Then … what can I do that might change your mind?’

‘I’m sorry. I just don’t –’

I made to get out of the car. Her hand shot out. It sat there on my arm, strange and radioactive. We both stared at it.

‘You signed a contract, Miss Clark,’ she said. ‘You signed a contract where you promised to work for us for six months. By my calculations you have only done two. I am simply requiring you to fulfil your contractual obligations.’

Her voice had become brittle. I looked down at Mrs Traynor’s hand and saw that it was trembling.

She swallowed. ‘Please.’

My parents were watching from the porch. I could see them, mugs poised in their hands, the only two people facing away from the theatre next door. They turned away awkwardly when they saw that I had noticed them. Dad, I realized, was wearing the tartan slippers with the paint splodges.

I pushed the handle of the door. ‘Mrs Traynor, I really can’t sit by and watch … it’s too weird. I don’t want to be part of this.’

‘Just think about it. Tomorrow is Good Friday – I’ll tell Will you have a family commitment if you really just need some time. Take the Bank Holiday weekend to think about it. But please. Come back. Come back and help him.’

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I walked back into the house without looking back. I sat in the living room, staring at the television while my parents followed me in, exchanged glances and pretended not to be watching me.

It was almost eleven minutes before I finally heard Mrs Traynor’s car start up and drive away.

My sister confronted me within five minutes of arriving home, thundering up the stairs and throwing open the door of my room.

‘Yes, do come in,’ I said. I was lying on the bed, my legs stretched up the wall, staring at the ceiling. I was wearing tights and blue sequinned shorts, which now looped unattractively around the tops of my legs.

Katrina stood in the doorway. ‘Is it true?’

‘That Dympna Grisham has finally thrown out her cheating no-good philandering husband and –’

‘Don’t be smart. About your job.’

I traced the pattern of the wallpaper with my big toe. ‘Yes, I handed in my notice. Yes, I know Mum and Dad are not too happy about it. Yes, yes, yes to whatever it is you’re going to throw at me.’

She closed the door carefully behind her, then sat down heavily on the end of my bed and swore lustily. ‘I don’t bloody believe you.’

She shoved my legs so that I slid down the wall, ending up almost lying on the bed. I pushed myself upright. ‘Ow.’

Her face was puce. ‘I don’t believe you. Mum’s in bits downstairs. Dad’s pretending not to be, but he is too. What are they supposed to do about money? You know Dad’s already panicking about work. Why the hell would you throw away a perfectly good job?’

‘Don’t lecture me, Treen.’

‘Well, someone’s got to! You’re never going to get anything like that money anywhere else. And how’s it going to look on your CV?’

‘Oh, don’t pretend this is about anything other than you and what you want.’

‘What?’

‘You don’t care what I do, as long as you can still go and resurrect your high-flying career. You just need me there propping up the family funds and providing the bloody childcare. Sod everyone else.’ I knew I sounded mean and nasty but I couldn’t help myself. It was my sister’s plight that had got us into this mess, after all. Years of resentment began to ooze out of me. ‘We’ve all got to stick at jobs we hate just so that little Katrina can fulfil her bloody ambitions.’

‘It is not about me.’

‘No?’

‘No, it’s about you not being able to stick at the one decent job you’ve been offered in months.’

‘You know nothing about my job, okay?’

‘I know it paid well above the minimum wage. Which is all I need to know about it.’

‘Not everything in life is about the money, you know.’

‘Yes? You go downstairs and tell Mum and Dad that.’

‘Don’t you dare bloody lecture me about money when you haven’t paid a sodding thing towards this house for years.’

‘You know I can’t afford much because of Thomas.’

I began to shove my sister out of the door. I can’t remember the last time I actually laid a hand on her, but right then I wanted to punch someone quite badly and I was afraid of what I would do if she stayed there in front of me. ‘Just piss off, Treen. Okay? Just piss off and leave me alone.’

I slammed the door in my sister’s face. And when I finally heard her walking slowly back down the stairs, I chose not to think about what she would say to my parents, about the way they would all treat this as further evidence of my catastrophic inability to do anything of any worth. I chose not to think about Syed at the Job Centre and how I would explain my reasons for leaving this most well paid of menial jobs. I chose not to think about the chicken factory and how somewhere, deep within its bowels, there was probably a set of plastic overalls, and a hygiene cap with my name still on it.

I lay back and I thought about Will. I thought about his anger and his sadness. I thought about what his mother had said – that I was one of the only people able to get through to him. I thought about him trying not to laugh at the ‘Molahonkey Song’ on a night when the snow drifted gold past the window. I thought about the warm skin and soft hair and hands of someone living, someone who was far cleverer and funnier than I would ever be and who still couldn’t see a better future than to obliterate himself. And finally, my head pressed into the pillow, I cried, because my life suddenly seemed so much darker and more complicated than I could ever have imagined, and I wished I could go back, back to when my biggest worry was whether Frank and I had ordered in enough Chelsea buns.

There was a knock on the door.

I blew my nose. ‘Piss off, Katrina.’

‘I’m sorry.’

I stared at the door.

Her voice was muffled, as if her lips were close up to the keyhole. ‘I’ve got wine. Look, let me in for God’s sake, or Mum will hear me. I’ve got two Bob the Builder mugs stuck up my jumper, and you know how she gets about us drinking upstairs.’

I climbed off the bed and opened the door.

She glanced up at my tear-stained face, and swiftly closed the bedroom door behind her. ‘Okay,’ she said, wrenching off the screw top and pouring me a mug of wine, ‘what really happened?’

I looked at my sister hard. ‘You mustn’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you. Not Dad. Especially not Mum.’

Then I told her.

I had to tell someone

There were many ways in which I disliked my sister. A few years ago I could have shown you whole scribbled lists I had written on that very topic. I hated her for the fact that she got thick, straight hair, while mine breaks off if it grows beyond my shoulders. I hated her for the fact that you can never tell her anything that she doesn’t already know. I hated the fact that for my whole school career teachers insisted on telling me in hushed tones how bright she was, as if her brilliance wouldn’t mean that by default I lived in a permanent shadow. I hated her for the fact that at the age of twenty-six I lived in a box room in a semi-detached house just so she could have her illegitimate son in with her in the bigger bedroom. But every now and then I was very glad indeed that she was my sister.

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Because Katrina didn’t shriek in horror. She didn’t look shocked, or insist that I tell Mum and Dad. She didn’t once tell me I’d done the wrong thing by walking away.

She took a huge swig of her drink. ‘Jeez.’

‘Exactly.’

‘It’s legal as well. It’s not as if they can stop him.’

‘I know.’

‘****. I can’t even get my head around it.’

We had downed two glasses just in the telling of it, and I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. ‘I hate the thought of leaving him. But I can’t be part of this, Treen. I can’t.’

‘Mmm.’ She was thinking. My sister actually has a ‘thinking face’. It makes people wait before speaking to her. Dad says my thinking face makes it look like I want to go to the loo.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ I said.

She looked up at me, her face suddenly brightening. ‘It’s simple.’

‘Simple.’

She poured us another glass each. ‘Oops. We seem to have finished this already. Yes. Simple. They’ve got money, right?’

‘I don’t want their money. She offered me a raise. It’s not the point.’

‘Shut up. Not for you, idiot girl. They’ll have their own money. And he’s probably got a shedload of insurance from the accident. Well, you tell them that you want a budget and then you use that money, and you use the – what was it? – four months you’ve got left. And you change Will Traynor’s mind.’

‘What?’

‘You change his mind. You said he spends most of his time indoors, right? Well, start with something small, then once you’ve got him out and about again, you think of every fabulous thing you could do for him, everything that might make him want to live – adventures, foreign travel, swimming with dolphins, whatever – and then you do it. I can help you. I’ll look things up on the internet at the library. I bet we could come up with some brilliant things for him to do. Things that would really make him happy.’

I stared at her.

‘Katrina –’

‘Yeah. I know.’ She grinned, as I started to smile. ‘I’m a f**king genius.’

10

They looked a bit surprised. Actually, that’s an understatement. Mrs Traynor looked stunned, and then a bit disconcerted, and then her whole face closed off. Her daughter, curled up next to her on the sofa, just glowered – the kind of face Mum used to warn me would stick in place if the wind changed. It wasn’t quite the enthusiastic response I’d been hoping for.

‘But what is it you actually want to do?’

‘I don’t know yet. My sister is good at researching stuff. She’s trying to find out what’s possible for quadriplegics. But I really wanted to find out from you whether you would be willing to go with it.’

We were in their drawing room. It was the same room I had been interviewed in, except this time Mrs Traynor and her daughter were perched on the sofa, their slobbery old dog between them. Mr Traynor was standing by the fire. I was wearing my French peasant’s jacket in indigo denim, a minidress and a pair of army boots. With hindsight, I realized, I could have picked a more professional-looking uniform in which to outline my plan.

‘Let me get this straight.’ Camilla Traynor leant forward. ‘You want to take Will away from this house.’

‘Yes.’

‘And take him on a series of “adventures”.’ She said it like I was suggesting performing amateur keyhole surgery on him.

‘Yes. Like I said, I’m not sure what’s possible yet. But it’s about just getting him out and about, widening his horizons. There may be some local things we could do at first, and then hopefully something further afield before too long.’

‘Are you talking about going abroad?’

‘Abroad … ?’ I blinked. ‘I was thinking more about maybe getting him to the pub. Or to a show, just for starters.’

‘Will has barely left this house in two years, apart from hospital appointments.’

‘Well, yes … I thought I’d try and persuade him otherwise.’

‘And you would, of course, go on all these adventures with him,’ Georgina Traynor said.

‘Look. It’s nothing extraordinary. I’m really talking about just getting him out of the house, to start with. A walk around the castle, or a visit to the pub. If we end up swimming with dolphins in Florida, then that’s lovely. But really I just wanted to get him out of the house and thinking about something else.’ I didn’t add that the mere thought of driving to the hospital in sole charge of Will was still enough to bring me out in a cold sweat. The thought of taking him abroad felt as likely as me running a marathon.

‘I think it’s a splendid idea,’ Mr Traynor said. ‘I think it would be marvellous to get Will out and about. You know it can’t have been good for him staring at the four walls day in and day out.’

‘We have tried to get him out, Steven,’ Mrs Traynor said. ‘It’s not as if we’ve left him in there to rot. I’ve tried again and again.’

‘I know that, darling, but we haven’t been terribly successful, have we? If Louisa here can think up things that Will is prepared to try, then that can only be a good thing, surely?’

‘Yes, well, “prepared to try” being the operative phrase.’

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‘It’s just an idea,’ I said. I felt suddenly irritated. I could see what she was thinking. ‘If you don’t want me to do it … ’

‘ … you’ll leave?’ She looked straight at me.

I didn’t look away. She didn’t frighten me any more. Because I knew now she was no better than me. She was a woman who could sit back and let her son die right in front of her.

‘Yes, I probably will.’

‘So it’s blackmail.’

‘Georgina!’

‘Well, let’s not beat around the bush here, Daddy.’

I sat up a little straighter. ‘No. Not blackmail. It’s about what I’m prepared to be part of. I can’t sit by and just quietly wait out the time until … Will … well … ’ My voice tailed off.

We all stared at our cups of tea.

‘Like I said,’ Mr Traynor said firmly. ‘I think it’s a very good idea. If you can get Will to agree to it, I can’t see that there’s any harm at all. I’d love the idea of him going on holiday. Just … just let us know what you need us to do.’

‘I’ve got an idea.’ Mrs Traynor put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. ‘Perhaps you could go on holiday with them, Georgina.’

‘Fine by me,’ I said. It was. Because my chances of getting Will away on holiday were about the same as me competing on Mastermind.

Georgina Traynor shifted uncomfortably in her seat. ‘I can’t. You know I start my new job in two weeks. I won’t be able to come over to England again for a bit once I’ve started.’

‘You’re going back to Australia?’

‘Don’t sound so surprised. I did tell you this was just a visit.’

‘I just thought that … given … given recent events, you might want to stay here a bit longer.’ Camilla Traynor stared at her daughter in a way she never stared at Will, no matter how rude he was to her.

‘It’s a really good job, Mummy. It’s the one I’ve been working towards for the last two years.’ She glanced over at her father. ‘I can’t put my whole life on hold just because of Will’s mental state.’

There was a long silence.

‘This isn’t fair. If it was me in the chair, would you have asked Will to put all his plans on hold?’

Mrs Traynor didn’t look at her daughter. I glanced down at my list, reading and rereading the first paragraph.

‘I have a life too, you know.’ It came out like a protest.

‘Let’s discuss this some other time.’ Mr Traynor’s hand landed on his daughter’s shoulder and squeezed it gently.

‘Yes, let’s.’ Mrs Traynor began to shuffle the papers in front of her. ‘Right, then. I propose we do it like this. I want to know everything you are planning,’ she said, looking up at me. ‘I want to do the costings and, if possible, I’d like a schedule so that I can try and plan some time off to come along with you. I have some unused holiday entitlement left that I can –’

‘No.’

We all turned to look at Mr Traynor. He was stroking the dog’s head and his expression was gentle, but his voice was firm. ‘No. I don’t think you should go, Camilla. Will should be allowed to do this by himself.’

‘Will can’t do it by himself, Steven. There is an awful lot that needs to be considered when Will goes anywhere. It’s complicated. I don’t think we can really leave it to –’

‘No, darling,’ he repeated. ‘Nathan can help, and Louisa can manage just fine.’

‘But –’

‘Will needs to be allowed to feel like a man. That is not going to be possible if his mother – or his sister, for that matter – is always on hand.’

I felt briefly sorry for Mrs Traynor then. She still wore that haughty look of hers, but I could see underneath that she seemed a little lost, as if she couldn’t quite understand what her husband was doing. Her hand went to her necklace.

‘I will make sure he’s safe,’ I said. ‘And I will let you know everything we’re planning on doing, well in advance.’

Her jaw was so rigid that a little muscle was visible just underneath her cheekbone. I wondered if she actually hated me then.

‘I want Will to want to live too,’ I said, finally.

‘We do understand that,’ Mr Traynor said. ‘And we do appreciate your determination. And discretion.’ I wondered whether that word was in relation to Will, or something else entirely, and then he stood up and I realized that it was my signal to leave. Georgina and her mother still sat on the sofa, saying nothing. I got the feeling there was going to be a whole lot more conversation once I was out of the room.

‘Right, then,’ I said. ‘I’ll draw you up the paperwork as soon as I’ve worked it all out in my head. It will be soon. We haven’t much … ’

Mr Traynor patted my shoulder.

‘I know. Just let us know what you come up with,’ he said.

Treena was blowing on her hands, her feet moving involuntarily up and down, as if marching on the spot. She was wearing my dark-green beret, which, annoyingly, looked much better on her than it did on me. She leant over and pointed at the list she had just pulled from her pocket, and handed it to me.

‘You’re probably going to have to scratch number three, or at least put that off until it gets warmer.’

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I checked the list. ‘Quadriplegic basketball? I’m not even sure if he likes basketball.’

‘That’s not the point. Bloody hell, it’s cold up here.’ She pulled the beret lower over her ears. ‘The point is, it will give him a chance to see what’s possible. He can see that there are other people just as badly off as him who are doing sports and things.’

‘I’m not sure. He can’t even lift a cup. I think these people must be paraplegic. I can’t see that you could throw a ball without the use of your arms.’

‘You’re missing the point. He doesn’t have to actually do anything, but it’s about widening his horizons, right? We’re letting him see what other handicapped people are doing.’

‘If you say so.’

A low murmur rose in the crowd. The runners had been sighted, some distance away. If I went on to tiptoes, I could just make them out, probably two miles away, down in the valley, a small block of bobbing white dots forcing their way through the cold along a damp, grey road. I glanced at my watch. We had been standing here on the brow of the aptly named Windy Hill for almost forty minutes, and I could no longer feel my feet.

‘I’ve looked up what’s local and, if you didn’t want to drive too far, there’s a match at the sports centre in a couple of weeks. He could even have a bet on the result.’

‘Betting?’

‘That way he could get a bit involved without even having to play. Oh look, there they are. How long do you think they’ll take to get to us?’

We stood by the finish. Above our heads a tarpaulin banner announcing the ‘Spring Triathlon Finish Line’ flapped wanly in the stiff breeze.

‘Dunno. Twenty minutes? Longer? I’ve got an emergency Mars Bar if you want to share.’ I reached into my pocket. It was impossible to stop the list flapping with only one hand. ‘So what else did you come up with?’

‘You said you wanted to go further afield, right?’ She pointed at my fingers. ‘You’ve given yourself the bigger bit.’

‘Take this bit then. I think the family think I’m free-loading.’

‘What, because you want to take him on a few crummy days out? Jesus. They should be grateful someone’s making the effort. It’s not like they are.’

Treena took the other piece of Mars Bar. ‘Anyway. Number five, I think it is. There’s a computer course that he could do. They put a thing on their head with, like, a stick on it, and they nod their head to touch the keyboard. There are loads of quadriplegic groups online. He could make lots of new friends that way. It would mean he doesn’t always have to actually leave the house. I even spoke to a couple on the chatrooms. They seemed nice. Quite –’ she shrugged ‘– normal.’

We ate our Mars Bar halves in silence, watching as the group of miserable-looking runners drew closer. I couldn’t see Patrick. I never could. He had the kind of face that became instantly invisible in crowds.

She pointed at the bit of paper.

‘Anyway, head for the cultural section. There’s a concert specially for people with disabilities here. You said he’s cultured, right? Well, he could just sit there and be transported by the music. That’s meant to take you out of yourself, right? Derek with the moustache, at work, told me about it. He said it can get noisy because of the really disabled people who yell a bit, but I’m sure he’d still enjoy it.’

I wrinkled my nose. ‘I don’t know, Treen –’

‘You’re just frightened because I said “culture”. You only have to sit there with him. And not rustle your crisp packet. Or, if you fancied something a bit saucier … ’ She grinned at me. ‘There’s a strip club. You could take him to London for that.’

‘Take my employer to watch a stripper?’

‘Well, you say you do everything else for him – all the cleaning and feeding and stuff. I can’t see why you wouldn’t just sit by him while he gets a stiffy.’

‘Treena!’

‘Well, he must miss it. You could even buy him a lap dance.’

Several people around us in the crowd swivelled their heads. My sister was laughing. She could talk about *** like that. Like it was some kind of recreational activity. Like it didn’t matter.

‘And then on the other side, there are the bigger trips. Don’t know what you fancied, but you could do wine tasting in the Loire … that’s not too far for starters.’

‘Can quadriplegics get drunk?’

‘I don’t know. Ask him.’

I frowned at the list. ‘So … I’ll go back and tell the Traynors that I’m going to get their suicidal quadriplegic son drunk, spend their money on strippers and lap dancers, and then trundle him off to the Disability Olympics –’

Treena snatched the list back from me. ‘Well, I don’t see you coming up with anything more bloody inspirational.’

‘I just thought … I don’t know.’ I rubbed at my nose. ‘I’m feeling a bit daunted, to be honest. I have trouble even persuading him to go into the garden.’

‘Well, that’s hardly the attitude, is it? Oh, look. Here they come. We’d better smile.’

We pushed our way through to the front of the crowd and began to cheer. It was quite hard coming up with the required amount of motivating noise when you could barely move your lips with cold.

I saw Patrick then, his head down in a sea of straining bodies, his face glistening with sweat, every sinew of his neck stretched and his face anguished as if he were enduring some kind of torture. That same face would be completely illuminated as soon as he crossed the finish, as if it were only by plumbing some personal depths that he could achieve a high. He didn’t see me.

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‘Go, Patrick!’ I yelled, weakly.

And he flashed by, towards the finishing line.

Treena didn’t talk to me for two days after I failed to show the required enthusiasm for her ‘To Do’ list. My parents didn’t notice; they were just overjoyed to hear that I had decided not to leave my job. Management had called a series of meetings at the furniture factory for the end of that week, and Dad was convinced that he would be among those made redundant. Nobody had yet survived the cull over the age of forty.

‘We’re very grateful for your housekeeping, love,’ Mum said, so often that it made me feel a bit uncomfortable.

It was a funny week. Treena began packing for her course, and each day I had to sneak upstairs to go through the bags she had already packed to see which of my possessions she planned to take with her. Most of my clothes were safe, but so far I had recovered a hairdryer, my fake Prada sunglasses and my favourite washbag with the lemons on it. If I confronted her over any of it, she would just shrug and say, ‘Well, you never use it,’ as if that were entirely the point.

That was Treena all over. She felt entitled. Even though Thomas had come along, she had never quite lost that sense of being the baby of the family – the deep-rooted feeling that the whole world actually did revolve around her. When we had been little and she had thrown a huge strop because she wanted something of mine, Mum would plead with me to ‘just let her have it’, if only for some peace in the house. Nearly twenty years on, nothing had really changed. We had to babysit Thomas so that Treena could still go out, feed him so that Treena didn’t have to worry, buy her extra-nice presents at birthdays and Christmas ‘because Thomas means she often goes without’. Well, she could go without my bloody lemons washbag. I stuck a note on my door which read: ‘My stuff is MINE. GO AWAY.’ Treena ripped it off and told Mum I was the biggest child she had ever met and that Thomas had more maturity in his little finger than I did.

But it got me thinking. One evening, after Treena had gone out to her night class, I sat in the kitchen while Mum sorted Dad’s shirts ready for ironing.

‘Mum … ’

‘Yes, love.’

‘Do you think I could move into Treena’s room once she’s gone?’

Mum paused, a half-folded shirt pressed to her chest. ‘I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it.’

‘I mean, if she and Thomas are not going to be here, it’s only fair that I should be allowed a proper-sized bedroom. It seems silly, it sitting empty, if they’re going off to college.’

Mum nodded, and placed the shirt carefully in the laundry basket. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

‘And by rights, that room should have been mine, what with me being the elder and all. It’s only because she had Thomas that she got it at all.’

She could see the sense in it. ‘That’s true. I’ll talk to Treena about it,’ she said.

I suppose with hindsight it would have been a good idea to mention it to my sister first.

Three hours later she came bursting into the living room with a face like thunder.

‘Would you jump in my grave so quickly?’

Granddad jerked awake in his chair, his hand reflexively clasped to his chest.

I looked up from the television. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Where are me and Thomas supposed to go at weekends? We can’t both fit in the box room. There’s not even enough room in there for two beds.’

‘Exactly. And I’ve been stuck in there for five years.’ The knowledge that I was ever so slightly in the wrong made me sound pricklier than I had intended.

‘You can’t take my room. It’s not fair.’

‘You’re not even going to be in it!’

‘But I need it! There’s no way me and Thomas can fit in the box room. Dad, tell her!’

Dad’s chin descended to somewhere deep in his collar, his arms folded across his chest. He hated it when we fought, and tended to leave it to Mum to sort out. ‘Turn it down a bit, girls,’ he said.

Granddad shook his head, as if we were all incomprehensible to him. Granddad shook his head at an awful lot these days.

‘I don’t believe you. No wonder you were so keen to help me leave.’

‘What? So you begging me to keep my job so that I can help you out financially is now part of my sinister plan, is it?’

‘You’re so two-faced.’

‘Katrina, calm down.’ Mum appeared in the doorway, her rubber gloves dripping foamy water on to the living-room carpet. ‘We can talk about this calmly. I don’t want you getting Granddad all wound up.’

Katrina’s face had gone blotchy, the way it did when she was small and she didn’t get what she wanted. ‘She actually wants me to go. That’s what this is. She can’t wait for me to go, because she’s jealous that I’m actually doing something with my life. So she just wants to make it difficult for me to come home again.’

‘There’s no guarantee you’re even going to be coming home at the weekends,’ I yelled, stung. ‘I need a bedroom, not a cupboard, and you’ve had the best room the whole time, just because you were dumb enough to get yourself up the duff.’

‘Louisa!’ said Mum.

‘Yes, well, if you weren’t so thick that you can’t even get a proper job, you could have got your own bloody place. You’re old enough. Or what’s the matter? You’ve finally figured out that Patrick is never going to ask you?’

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‘That’s it!’ Dad’s roar broke into the silence. ‘I’ve heard enough! Treena, go into the kitchen. Lou, sit down and shut up. I’ve got enough stress in my life without having to listen to you caterwauling at each other.’

‘If you think I’m helping you now with your stupid list, you’ve got another thing coming,’ Treena hissed at me, as Mum manhandled her out of the door.

‘Good. I didn’t want your help anyway, freeloader,’ I said, and then ducked as Dad threw a copy of the Radio Times at my head.

On Saturday morning I went to the library. I think I probably hadn’t been in there since I was at school – quite possibly out of fear that they would remember the Judy Blume I had lost in Year 7, and that a clammy, official hand would reach out as I passed through its Victorian pillared doors, demanding £3,853 in fines.

It wasn’t what I remembered. Half the books seemed to have been replaced by CDs and DVDs, great bookshelves full of audiobooks, and even stands of greetings cards. And it was not silent. The sound of singing and clapping filtered through from the children’s book corner, where some kind of mother and baby group was in full swing. People read magazines and chatted quietly. The section where old men used to fall asleep over the free newspapers had disappeared, replaced by a large oval table with computers dotted around the perimeter. I sat down gingerly at one of these, hoping that nobody was watching. Computers, like books, are my sister’s thing. Luckily, they seemed to have anticipated the sheer terror felt by people like me. A librarian stopped by my table, and handed me a card and a laminated sheet with instructions on it. She didn’t stand over my shoulder, just murmured that she would be at the desk if I needed any further help, and then it was just me and a chair with a wonky castor and the blank screen.

The only computer I have had any contact with in years is Patrick’s. He only really uses it to download fitness plans, or to order sports technique books from Amazon. If there is other stuff he does on there, I don’t really want to know about it. But I followed the librarian’s instructions, double-checking every stage as I completed it. And, astonishingly, it worked. It didn’t just work, but it was easy.

Four hours later I had the beginnings of my list.

And nobody mentioned the Judy Blume. Mind you, that was probably because I had used my sister’s library card.

On the way home I nipped in to the stationer’s and bought a calendar. It wasn’t one of the month-to-view kind, the ones you flip over to reveal a fresh picture of Justin Timberlake or mountain ponies. It was a wall calendar – the sort you might find in an office, with staff holiday entitlement marked on it in permanent pen. I bought it with the brisk efficiency of someone who liked nothing better than to immerse herself in administrative tasks.

In my little room at home, I opened it out, pinned it carefully to the back of my door and marked the date when I had started at the Traynors’, way back at the beginning of February. Then I counted forward, and marked the date – 12 August – now barely four months ahead. I took a step back and stared at it for a while, trying to make the little black ring bear some of the weight of what it heralded. And as I stared, I began to realize what I was taking on.

I would have to fill those little white rectangles with a lifetime of things that could generate happiness, contentment, satisfaction or pleasure. I would have to fill them with every good experience I could summon up for a man whose powerless arms and legs meant he could no longer make them happen by himself. I had just under four months’ worth of printed rectangles to pack out with days out, trips away, visitors, lunches and concerts. I had to come up with all the practical ways to make them happen, and do enough research to make sure that they didn’t fail.

And then I had to convince Will to actually do them.

I stared at my calendar, the pen stilled in my hand. This little patch of laminated paper suddenly bore a whole heap of responsibility.

I had a hundred and seventeen days in which to convince Will Traynor that he had a reason to live.

11

There are places where the changing seasons are marked by migrating birds, or the ebb and flow of tides. Here, in our little town, it was the return of the tourists. At first, a tentative trickle, stepping off trains or out of cars in brightly coloured waterproof coats, clutching their guidebooks and National Trust membership; then, as the air warmed, and the season crept forwards, disgorged alongside the belch and hiss of their coaches, clogging up the high street, Americans, Japanese and packs of foreign schoolchildren were dotted around the perimeter of the castle.

In the winter months little stayed open. The wealthier shop owners took advantage of the long bleak months to disappear to holiday homes abroad, while the more determined hosted Christmas events, capitalizing on occasional carol concerts in the grounds, or festive craft fairs. But then as the temperatures slid higher, the castle car parks would become studded with vehicles, the local pubs chalk up an increase in requests for a ploughman’s lunch and, within a few sunny Sundays, we had morphed again from being a sleepy market town into a tra***ional English tourist destination.

I walked up the hill, dodging this season’s hovering early few as they clutched their neoprene bumbags and well-thumbed tourist guides, their cameras already poised to capture mementoes of the castle in spring. I smiled at a few, paused to take photographs of others with proffered cameras. Some locals complained about the tourist season – the traffic jams, the overwhelmed public toilets, the demands for strange comestibles in The Buttered Bun cafe (‘You don’t do sushi? Not even hand roll?’). But I didn’t. I liked the breath of foreign air, the close-up glimpses of lives far removed from my own. I liked to hear the accents and work out where their owners came from, to study the clothes of people who had never seen a Next catalogue or bought a five-pack of knickers at Marks and Spencer’s.

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‘You look cheerful,’ Will said, as I dropped my bag in the hallway. He said it as if it were almost an affront.

‘That’s because it’s today.’

‘What is?’

‘Our outing. We’re taking Nathan to see the horse racing.’

Will and Nathan looked at each other. I almost laughed. I had been so relieved at the sight of the weather; once I saw the sun, I knew everything was going to be all right.

‘Horse racing?’

‘Yup. Flat racing at –’ I pulled my notepad from my pocket ‘– Longfield. If we leave now we can be there in time for the third race. And I have five pounds each way on Man Oh Man, so we’d better get a move on.’

‘Horse racing.’

‘Yes. Nathan’s never been.’

In honour of the occasion I was wearing my blue quilted minidress, with the scarf with horse bits around the edge knotted at my neck, and a pair of leather riding boots.

Will studied me carefully, then reversed his chair and swerved so that he could better see his male carer. ‘This is a long-held desire of yours, is it, Nathan?’

I gave Nathan a warning glare.

‘Yiss,’ he said, and broke out a smile. ‘Yes, it is. Let’s head for the gee-gees.’

I had primed him, of course. I had rung him on Friday and asked him which day I could borrow him for. The Traynors had agreed to pay his extra hours (Will’s sister had left for Australia, and I think they wanted to be sure that someone ‘sensible’ was going to accompany me) but I hadn’t been sure until Sunday what it actually was we were going to do. This seemed the ideal start – a nice day out, less than half an hour’s drive away.

‘And what if I say I don’t want to go?’

‘Then you owe me forty pounds,’ I said.

‘Forty pounds? How do you work that out?’

‘My winnings. Five pounds each way at eight to one.’ I shrugged. ‘Man Oh Man’s a sure thing.’

I seemed to have got him off balance.

Nathan clapped his hands on to his knees. ‘Sounds great. Nice day for it too,’ he said. ‘You want me to pack some lunch?’

‘Nah,’ I said. ‘There’s a nice restaurant. When my horse comes in, lunch is on me.’

‘You’ve been racing often, then?’ Will said.

And then before he could say anything else, we had bundled him into his coat and I ran outside to reverse the car.

I had it all planned, you see. We would arrive at the racecourse on a beautiful sunny day. There would be burnished, stick-legged thoroughbreds, their jockeys in billowing bright silks, careening past. Perhaps a brass band or two. The stands would be full of cheering people, and we would find a space from which to wave our winning betting slips. Will’s competitive streak would kick in and he would be unable to resist calculating the odds and making sure he won more than either Nathan or me. I had worked it all out. And then, when we had had enough of watching the horses, we would go to the well-reviewed racecourse restaurant and have a slap-up meal.

I should have listened to my father. ‘Want to know the true definition of the triumph of hope over experience?’ he would say. ‘Plan a fun family day out.’

It started with the car park. We drove there without incident, me now a little more confident that I wasn’t going to tip Will over if I went faster than 15 mph. I had looked up the directions at the library, and kept up a cheerful banter almost the whole way there, commenting on the beautiful blue sky, the countryside, the lack of traffic. There were no queues to enter the racecourse, which was, admittedly, a little less grand than I had expected, and the car park was clearly marked.

But nobody had warned me it was on grass, and grass that had been driven over for much of a wet winter at that. We backed into a space (not hard, as it was only half full) and almost as soon as the ramp was down Nathan looked worried.

‘It’s too soft,’ he said. ‘He’s going to sink.’

I glanced over at the stands. ‘Surely, if we can get him on to that pathway we’ll be okay?’

‘It weighs a ton, this chair,’ he said. ‘And that’s forty feet away.’

‘Oh, come on. They must build these chairs to withstand a bit of soft ground.’

I backed Will’s chair down carefully and then watched as the wheels sank several inches into the mud.

Will said nothing. He looked uncomfortable, and had been silent for much of the half-hour drive. We stood beside him, fiddling with his controls. A breeze had picked up, and Will’s cheeks grew pink.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We’ll do it manually. I’m sure we can manage to get there between us.’

We tilted Will backwards. I took one handle and Nathan took the other and we dragged the chair towards the path. It was slow progress, not least because I had to keep stopping because my arms hurt and my pristine boots grew thick with dirt. When we finally made it to the pathway, Will’s blanket had half slipped off him and had somehow got caught up in his wheels, leaving one corner torn and muddy.

‘Don’t worry,’ Will said, dryly. ‘It’s only cashmere.’

I ignored him. ‘Right. We’ve made it. Now for the fun bit.’

Ah yes. The fun bit. Who thought it would be a good idea for racecourses to have turnstiles? It was hardly as if they needed crowd control, surely? It’s not as if there were crowds of chanting racehorse fans, threatening riots if Charlie’s Darling didn’t make it back in third, rioting stable-girls who needed penning in and keeping out. We looked at the turnstile, and then back at Will’s chair, and then Nathan and I looked at each other.