me before you, 05

5


The thing about being catapulted into a whole new life - or at least, shoved up so
hard against someone else’s life that you might as well have your face pressed
against their window - is that it forces you to rethink your idea of who you are.
Or how you might seem to other people.

To my parents, I had in four short weeks become just a few degrees more
interesting. I was now the conduit to a different world. My mother, in particular,
asked me daily questions about Granta House and its domestic habits in the
manner of a zoologist forensically examining some strange new creature and its
habitat. ‘Does Mrs Traynor use linen napkins at every meal?’ she would ask, or
‘Do you think they vacuum every day, like we do?’ or, ‘What do they do with
their potatoes?’

She sent me off in the mornings with strict instructions to find out what brand
of loo roll they used, or whether the sheets were a polycotton mix. It was a
source of great disappointment to her that most of the time I couldn’t actually
remember. My mother was secretly convinced that posh people lived like pigs -
ever since I had told her, aged six, of a well-spoken school friend whose mother
wouldn’t let us play in their front room ‘because we’d disturb the dust’.

When I came home to report that, yes, the dog was definitely allowed to eat in
the kitchen, or that, no, the Traynors didn’t scrub their front step every day as my
mother did, she would purse her lips, glance sideways at my father and nod with
quiet satisfaction, as if I had just confirmed everything she’d suspected about the
slovenly ways of the upper classes.

Their dependence on my income, or perhaps the fact that they knew I didn’t
really like my job, meant that I also received a little more respect within the
house. This didn’t actually translate to much - in my Dad’s case, it meant that he



had stopped calling me ‘lardarse’ and, in my mother’s, that there was usually a
mug of tea waiting for me when I came home.

To Patrick, and to my sister, I was no different - still the butt of jokes, the
recipient of hugs or kisses or sulks. I felt no different. I still looked the same, still
dressed, according to Treen, like I had had a wrestling match in a charity shop.

I had no idea what most of the inhabitants of Granta House thought of me.

Will was unreadable. To Nathan, I suspected I was just the latest in a long line of
hired carers. He was friendly enough, but a bit semi-detached. I got the feeling
he wasn’t convinced I was going to be there for long. Mr Traynor nodded at me
politely when we passed in the hall, occasionally asking me how the traffic was,
or whether I had settled in all right. I’m not sure he would have recognized me if
he’d been introduced to me in another setting.

But to Mrs Traynor - oh Lord - to Mrs Traynor I was apparently the stupidest
and most irresponsible person on the planet.

It had started with the photo frames. Nothing in that house escaped Mrs
Traynor’s notice, and I should have known that the smashing of the frames
would qualify as a seismic event. She quizzed me as to exactly how long I had
left Will alone, what had prompted it, how swiftly I had cleared the mess up. She
didn’t actually criticize me - she was too genteel even to raise her voice - but
the way she blinked slowly at my responses, her little hmm-hmm, as I spoke, told
me everything I needed to know. It came as no surprise when Nathan told me she
was a magistrate.

She thought it might be a good idea if I didn’t leave Will for so long next time,
no matter how awkward the situation, hmm ? She thought perhaps the next time I
dusted I could make sure things weren’t close enough to the edge so that they
might accidentally get knocked to the floor, hmm ? (She seemed to prefer to
believe that it had been an accident.) She made me feel like a first-class eejit, and
consequently I became a first-class eejit around her. She always arrived just
when I had dropped something on the floor, or was struggling with the cooker
dial, or she would be standing in the hallway looking mildly irritated as I stepped
back in from collecting logs outside, as if I had been gone much longer than I
actually had.

Weirdly, her attitude got to me more than Will’s rudeness. A couple of times I
had even been tempted to ask her outright whether there was something wrong.



You said that you were hiring me for my attitude rather than my professional
skills, I wanted to say. Well, here I am, being cheery every ruddy day. Being
robust, just as you wanted. So what’s your problem?

But Camilla Traynor was not the kind of woman you could have said that to.
And besides, I got the feeling nobody in that house ever said anything direct to
anyone else.

'Lily, our last girl, had rather a clever habit of using that pan for two
vegetables at once,’ meant You’re making too much mess.

‘Perhaps you’d like a cup of tea, Will,’ actually meant I have no idea what to
say to you.

‘I think I’ve got some paperwork that needs sorting out,’ meant You’re being
rude, and I’m going to leave the room.

All pronounced with that slightly pained expression, and the slender fingers
mnning up and down the chain with the crucifix. She was so held in, so
restrained. She made my own mother look like Amy Winehouse. I smiled
politely, pretended I hadn’t noticed, and did the job I was paid to do.

Or at least, I tried.

‘Why the hell are you trying to sneak carrots on to my fork?’

I glanced down at the plate. I had been watching the female television
presenter and wondering what my hair would look like dyed the same colour.

‘Uh? I didn’t.’

‘You did. You mashed them up and tried to hide them in the gravy. I saw you.’

I blushed. He was right. I was sitting feeding Will, while both of us vaguely
watched the lunchtime news. The meal was roast beef with mashed potato. His
mother had told me to put three sorts of vegetables on the plate, even though he
had said quite clearly that he didn’t want vegetables that day. I don’t think there
was a meal that I was instructed to prepare that wasn’t nutritionally balanced to
within an inch of its life.

‘Why are you trying to sneak carrots into me?’

‘I’m not.’

‘So there are no carrots on that?’

I gazed at the tiny pieces of orange. ‘Well ... okay ... ’

He was waiting, eyebrows raised.

‘Um ... I suppose I thought vegetables would be good for you?’



It was part deference to Mrs Traynor, part force of habit. I was so used to
feeding Thomas, whose vegetables had to be mashed to a paste and hidden under
mounds of potato, or secreted in bits of pasta. Every fragment we got past him
felt like a little victory.

'Let me get this straight. You think a teaspoon of carrot would improve my
quality of life?’

It was pretty stupid when he put it like that. But I had learnt it was important
not to look cowed by anything Will said or did.

‘I take your point,’ I said evenly. ‘I won’t do it again.’

And then, out of nowhere, Will Traynor laughed. It exploded out of him in a
gasp, as if it were entirely unexpected.

Tor Christ’s sake,’ he shook his head.

I stared at him.

‘What the hell else have you been sneaking into my food? You’ll be telling me
to open the tunnel so that Mr Train can deliver some mushy Brussel sprouts to
the red bloody station next.’

I considered this for a minute. ‘No,’ I said, straight-faced. ‘I deal only with Mr
Fork. Mr Fork does not look like a train.’

Thomas had told me so, very firmly, some months previously.

‘Did my mother put you up to this?’

‘No. Took, Will, I’m sorry. I just... wasn’t thinking.’

‘Fike that’s unusual.’

‘All right, all right. I’ll take the bloody carrots off, if they really upset you so
much.’

‘It’s not the bloody carrots that upset me. It’s having them sneaked into my
food by a madwoman who addresses the cutlery as Mr and Mrs Fork.’

‘It was a joke. Took, let me take the carrots and -’

He turned away from me. ‘I don’t want anything else. Just do me a cup of tea.’
He called out after me as I left the room, ‘And don’t try and sneak a bloody
courgette into it.’

Nathan walked in as I was finishing the dishes. ‘He’s in a good mood,’ he
said, as I handed him a mug.

‘Is he?’ I was eating my sandwiches in the kitchen. It was bitterly cold
outside, and somehow the house hadn’t felt quite as unfriendly lately.



‘He says you’re trying to poison him. But he said it - you know - in a good
way.’

I felt weirdly pleased by this information.

‘Yes ... well ... ’ I said, trying to hide it. ‘Give me time.’

‘He’s talking a bit more too. We’ve had weeks where he would hardly say a
thing, but he’s definitely up for a bit of a chat the last few days.’

I thought of Will telling me if I didn’t stop bloody whistling he’d be forced to
mn me over. ‘I think his definition of chatty and mine are a bit different.’

‘Well, we had a bit of a chat about the cricket. And I gotta tell you -’ Nathan
dropped his voice ‘- Mrs T asked me a week or so back if I thought you were
doing okay. I said I thought you were very professional, but I knew that wasn’t
what she meant. Then yesterday she came in and told me she’d heard you guys
laughing.’

I thought back to the previous evening. ‘He was laughing at me,’ I said. Will
had found it hilarious that I didn’t know what pesto was. I had told him supper
was ‘the pasta in the green gravy’.

‘Ah, she doesn’t care about that. It’s just been a long time since he laughed at
anything.’

It was true. Will and I seemed to have found an easier way of being around
each other. It revolved mainly around him being rude to me, and me occasionally
being rude back. He told me I did something badly, and I told him if it really
mattered to him then he could ask me nicely. He swore at me, or called me a pain
in the backside, and I told him he should try being without this particular pain in
the backside and see how far it got him. It was a bit forced but it seemed to work
for both of us. Sometimes it even seemed like a relief to him that there was
someone prepared to be rude to him, to contradict him or tell him he was being
horrible. I got the feeling that everyone had tiptoed around him since his
accident - apart from perhaps Nathan, who Will seemed to treat with an
automatic respect, and who was probably impervious to any of his sharper
comments anyway. Nathan was like an armoured vehicle in human form.

‘You just make sure you’re the butt of more of his jokes, okay?’

I put my mug in the sink. ‘I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.’

The other big change, apart from atmospheric conditions inside the house, was
that Will didn’t ask me to leave him alone quite as often, and a couple of



afternoons had even asked me if I wanted to stay and watch a film with him. I
hadn’t minded too much when it was The Terminator - even though I have seen
all the Terminator films - but when he showed me the French film with subtitles,
I took a quick look at the cover and said I thought I’d probably give it a miss.

‘Why?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t like films with subtitles.’

‘That’s like saying you don’t like films with actors in them. Don’t be
ridiculous. What is it you don’t like? The fact that you’re required to read
something as well as watch something?’

‘I just don’t really like foreign films.’

‘Everything after Local Bloody Hero has been a foreign film. D’you think
Hollywood is a suburb of Birmingham?’

‘Funny.’

He couldn’t believe it when I admitted I’d never actually watched a film with
subtitles. But my parents tended to stake ownership of the remote control in the
evenings, and Patrick would be about as likely to watch a foreign film as he
would be to suggest we take night classes in crochet. The multiplex in our
nearest town only showed the latest shoot’em ups or romantic comedies and was
so infested with catcalling kids in hoodies that most people around the town
rarely bothered.

‘You have to watch this film, Louisa. In fact, I order you to watch this film.’
Will moved his chair back, and nodded towards the armchair. ‘There. You sit
there. Don’t move until it’s over. Never watched a foreign film. For Christ’s
sake,’ he muttered.

It was an old film, about a hunchback who inherits a house in the French
countryside, and Will said it was based on a famous book, but I can’t say I’d
ever heard of it. I spent the first twenty minutes feeling a bit fidgety, irritated by
the subtitles and wondering if Will was going to get shirty if I told him I needed
the loo.

And then something happened. I stopped thinking about how hard it was
listening and reading at the same time, forgot Will’s pill timetable, and whether
Mrs Traynor would think I was slacking, and I started to get anxious about the
poor man and his family, who were being tricked by unscrupulous neighbours.



By the time Hunchback Man died, I was sobbing silently, snot running into my
sleeve.

‘So,’ Will said, appearing at my side. He glanced at me slyly. ‘You didn’t
enjoy that at all.’

I looked up and found to my surprise that it was dark outside. ‘You’re going to
gloat now, aren’t you?’ I muttered, reaching for the box of tissues.

‘A bit. I’m just amazed that you can have reached the ripe old age of - what
was it?’

‘Twenty-six.’

‘Twenty-six, and never have watched a film with subtitles.’ He watched me
mop my eyes.

I glanced down at the tissue and realized I had no mascara left. ‘I hadn’t
realized it was compulsory,’ I grumbled.

‘Okay. So what do you do with yourself, Louisa Clark, if you don’t watch
films?’

I balled my tissue in my fist. ‘You want to know what I do when I’m not
here?’

‘You were the one who wanted us to get to know each other. So come on, tell
me about yourself.’

He had this way of talking where you could never quite be sure that he wasn’t
mocking you. I was waiting for the pay-off. ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why do you want to
know all of a sudden?’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. It’s hardly a state secret, your social life, is it?’ He had
begun to look irritated.

‘I don’t know ... ’ I said. ‘I go for a drink at the pub. I watch a bit of telly. I go
and watch my boyfriend when he does his running. Nothing unusual.’

‘You watch your boyfriend running.’

‘Yes.’

‘But you don’t run yourself.’

‘No. I’m not really -’ I glanced down at my chest ‘- built for it.’

That made him smile.

‘And what else?’

‘What do you mean, what else?’

‘Hobbies? Travelling? Places you like to go?’



He was beginning to sound like my old careers teacher.

I tried to think. ‘I don’t really have any hobbies. I read a bit. I like clothes.’

‘Handy,’ he said, dryly.

‘You asked. I’m not really a hobby person.’ My voice had become strangely
defensive. ‘I don’t do much, okay? I work and then I go home.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘On the other side of the castle. Renfrew Road.’

He looked blank. Of course he did. There was little human traffic between the
two sides of the castle. ‘It’s off the dual carriageway. Near the McDonald’s.’

He nodded, although I’m not sure he really knew where I was talking about.

‘Holidays?’

‘I’ve been to Spain, with Patrick. My boyfriend,’ I added. ‘When I was a kid
we only really went to Dorset. Or Tenby. My aunt lives in Tenby.’

‘And what do you want?’

‘What do I want what?’

‘From your life?’

I blinked. ‘That’s a bit deep, isn’t it?’

‘Only generally. I’m not asking you to psychoanalyse yourself. I’m just
asking, what do you want? Get married? Pop out some ankle biters? Dream
career? Travel the world?’

There was a long pause.

I think I knew my answer would disappoint him even before I said the words
aloud. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.’

On Friday we went to the hospital. I’m glad I hadn’t known about Will’s
appointment before I arrived that morning, as I would have lain awake all night
fretting about having to drive him there. I can drive, yes. But I say I can drive in
the same way that I say I can speak French. Yes, I took the relevant exam and
passed. But I haven’t used that particular skill more than once a year since I did
so. The thought of loading Will and his chair into the adapted minivan and
carting him safely to and from the next town filled me with utter terror.

For weeks I had wished that my working day involved some escape from that
house. Now I would have done anything just to stay indoors. I located his
hospital card amongst the folders of stuff to do with his health - great fat binders



divided into ‘transport’, ‘insurance’, ‘living with disability’ and ‘appointments’.

I grabbed the card and checked that it had today’s date. A little bit of me was
hoping that Will had been wrong.

‘Is your mother coming?’

‘No. She doesn’t come to my appointments.’

I couldn’t hide my surprise. I had thought she would want to oversee every
aspect of his treatment.

‘She used to,’ Will said. ‘Now we have an agreement.’

‘Is Nathan coming?’

I was kneeling in front of him. I had been so nervous that I had dropped some
of his lunch down his lap and was now trying in vain to mop it up, so that a good
patch of his trousers was sopping wet. Will hadn’t said anything, except to tell
me to please stop apologizing, but it hadn’t helped my general sense of
jitteriness.

‘Why?’

‘No reason.’ I didn’t want him to know how fearful I felt. I had spent much of
that morning - time I usually spent cleaning - reading and rereading the
instruction manual for the chairlift but I was still dreading the moment when I
was solely responsible for lifting him two feet into the air.

‘Come on, Clark. What’s the problem?’

‘Okay. I just... I just thought it would be easier first time if there was
someone else there who knew the ropes.’

‘As opposed to me,’ he said.

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘Because I can’t possibly be expected to know anything about my own care?’

‘Do you operate the chairlift?’ I said, baldly. ‘You can tell me exactly what to
do, can you?’

He watched me, his gaze level. If he had been spoiling for a fight, he appeared
to change his mind. ‘Fair point. Yes, he’s coming. He’s a useful extra pair of
hands. Plus I thought you’d work yourself into less of a state if you had him
there.’

‘I’m not in a state,’ I protested.

‘Evidently.’ He glanced down at his lap, which I was still mopping with a
cloth. I had got the pasta sauce off, but he was soaked. ‘So, am I going as an



incontinent?’

‘I’m not finished.’ I plugged in the hairdryer and directed the nozzle towards
his crotch.

As the hot air blasted on to his trousers he raised his eyebrows.

‘Yes, well,’ I said. ‘It’s not exactly what I expected to be doing on a Friday
afternoon either.’

‘You really are tense, aren’t you?’

I could feel him studying me.

‘Oh, lighten up, Clark. I’m the one having scalding hot air directed at my
genitals.’

I didn’t respond. I heard his voice over the roar of the hairdryer.

‘Come on, what’s the worst that could happen - I end up in a wheelchair?’

It may sound stupid, but I couldn’t help but laugh. It was the closest Will had
come to actually trying to make me feel better.

The car looked like a normal people carrier from outside, but when the rear
passenger door was unlocked a ramp descended from the side and lowered to the
ground. With Nathan looking on, I guided Will’s outside chair (he had a separate
one for travelling) squarely on to the ramp, checked the electrical lock-down
brake, and programmed it to slowly lift him up into the car. Nathan slid into the
other passenger seat, belted him and secured the wheels. Trying to stop my
hands from trembling, I released the handbrake and drove slowly down the drive
towards the hospital.

Away from home, Will appeared to shrink a little. It was chilly outside, and
Nathan and I had bundled him up into his scarf and thick coat, but still he grew
quieter, his jaw set, somehow diminished by the greater space of his
surroundings. Every time I looked into my rear-view mirror (which was often - I
was terrified even with Nathan there that somehow the chair would break loose
from its moorings) he was gazing out of the window, his expression
impenetrable. Even when I stalled or braked too hard, which I did several times,
he just winced a little and waited while I sorted myself out.

By the time we reached the hospital I had actually broken out into a fine
sweat. I drove around the hospital car park three times, too afraid to reverse into
any but the largest of spaces, until I could sense that the two men were beginning



to lose patience. Then, finally, I lowered the ramp and Nathan helped Will’s
chair out on to the tarmac.

‘Good job,’ Nathan said, clapping me on the back as he let himself out, but I
found it hard to believe it had been.

There are things you don’t notice until you accompany someone with a
wheelchair. One is how rubbish most pavements are, pockmarked with badly
patched holes, or just plain uneven. Walking slowly next to Will as he wheeled
himself along, I noticed how every uneven slab caused him to jolt painfully, or
how often he had to steer carefully round some potential obstacle. Nathan
pretended not to notice, but I saw him watching too. Will just looked grim-faced
and resolute.

The other thing is how inconsiderate most drivers are. They park up against
the cutouts on the pavement, or so close together that there is no way for a
wheelchair to actually cross the road. I was shocked, a couple of times even
tempted to leave some rude note tucked into a windscreen wiper, but Nathan and
Will seemed used to it. Nathan pointed out a suitable crossing place and, each of
us flanking Will, we finally crossed.

Will had not said a single word since leaving the house.

The hospital itself was a gleaming low-rise building, the immaculate reception
area more like that of some modernistic hotel, perhaps testament to private
insurance. I held back as Will told the receptionist his name, and then followed
him and Nathan down a long corridor. Nathan was carrying a huge backpack that
contained anything that Will might be likely to need during his short visit, from
beakers to spare clothes. He had packed it in front of me that morning, detailing
every possible eventuality. ‘I guess it’s a good thing we don’t have to do this too
often,’ he had said, catching my appalled expression.

I didn’t follow him into the appointment. Nathan and I sat on the comfortable
chairs outside the consultant’s room. There was no hospital smell, and there were
fresh flowers in a vase on the windowsill. Not just any old flowers, either. Huge
exotic things that I didn’t know the name of, artfully arranged in minimalist
clumps.

‘What are they doing in there?’ I said after we had been there half an hour.

Nathan looked up from his book. ‘It’s just his six-month check-up.’

‘What, to see if he’s getting any better?’



Nathan put his book down. ‘He’s not getting any better. It’s a spinal cord
injury.’

‘But you do physio and stuff with him.’

‘That’s to try and keep his physical condition up - to stop him atrophying and
his bones demineralizing, his legs pooling, that kind of thing.’

When he spoke again, his voice was gentle, as if he thought he might
disappoint me. ‘He’s not going to walk again, Louisa. That only happens in
Hollywood movies. All we’re doing is trying to keep him out of pain, and keep
up whatever range of movement he has.’

‘Does he do this stuff for you? The physio stuff? He doesn’t seem to want to
do anything that I suggest.’

Nathan wrinkled his nose. ‘He does it, but I don’t think his heart’s in it. When
I first came, he was pretty determined. He’d come pretty far in rehab, but after a
year with no improvement I think he found it pretty tough to keep believing it
was worth it.’

‘Do you think he should keep trying?’

Nathan stared at the floor. ‘Honestly? He’s a C5/6 quadriplegic. That means
nothing works below about here ... ’ He placed a hand on the upper part of his
chest. ‘They haven’t worked out how to fix a spinal cord yet.’

I stared at the door, thinking about Will’s face as we drove along in the winter
sunshine, the beaming face of the man on the skiing holiday. ‘There are all sorts
of medical advances taking place, though, right? I mean ... somewhere like
this ... they must be working on stuff all the time.’

‘It’s a pretty good hospital,’ he said evenly.

‘Where there’s life, and all that?’

Nathan looked at me, then back at his book. ‘Sure,’ he said.

I went to get a coffee at a quarter to three, on Nathan’s say so. He said these
appointments could go on for some time, and that he would hold the fort until I
got back. I dawdled a little in the reception area, flicking through the magazines
in the newsagent’s, lingering over chocolate bars.

Perhaps predictably, I got lost trying to find my way back to the corridor and
had to ask several nurses where I should go, two of whom didn’t even know.
When I got there, the coffee cooling in my hand, the corridor was empty. As I



drew closer, I could see the consultant’s door was ajar. I hesitated outside, but I
could hear Mrs Traynor’s voice in my ears all the time now, criticizing me for
leaving him. I had done it again.

‘So we’ll see you in three months’ time, Mr Traynor,’ a voice was saying.

‘I’ve adjusted those anti-spasm meds and I’ll make sure someone calls you with
the results of the tests. Probably Monday.’

I heard Will’s voice. ‘Can I get these from the pharmacy downstairs?’

‘Yes. Here. They should be able to give you some more of those too.’

A woman’s voice. ‘Shall I take that folder?’

I realized they must be about to leave. I knocked, and someone called for me
to come in. Two sets of eyes swivelled towards me.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the consultant, rising from his chair. ‘I thought you were the
physio.’

‘I’m Will’s ... helper,’ I said, hanging on to the door. Will was braced forward
in his chair as Nathan pulled down his shirt. ‘Sorry - I thought you were done.’

‘Just give us a minute, will you, Louisa?’ Will’s voice cut into the room.

Muttering my apologies I backed out, my face burning.

It wasn’t the sight of Will’s uncovered body that had shocked me, slim and
scarred as it was. It wasn’t the vaguely irritated look of the consultant, the same
sort of look as Mrs Traynor gave me day after day - a look that made me realize
I was still the same blundering eejit, even if I did earn a higher hourly rate.

No, it was the livid red lines scoring Will’s wrists, the long, jagged scars that
couldn’t be disguised, no matter how swiftly Nathan pulled down Will’s sleeves.