me before you, 09.1

me before you, 09
9


I didn’t sleep that night. I lay awake in the little box room, gazing up at the
ceiling and carefully reconstructing the last two months based on what I now
knew. It was as if everything had shifted, fragmented and settled in some other
place, into a pattern I barely recognized.

I felt duped, the dim-witted accessory who hadn’t known what was going on. I
felt they must have laughed privately at my attempts to feed Will vegetables, or
cut his hair - little things to make him feel better. What had been the point, after
all?

I ran over and over the conversation I had heard, trying to interpret it in some
alternative way, trying to convince myself that I had misunderstood what they
had said. But Dignitas wasn’t exactly somewhere you went for a mini-break. I
couldn’t believe Camilla Traynor could contemplate doing that to her son. Yes, I
had thought her cold, and yes, awkward around him. It was hard to imagine her
cuddling him, as my mother had cuddled us - fiercely, joyously - until we
wriggled away, begging to be let go. If I’m honest, I just thought it was how the
upper classes were with their children. I had just read Will’s copy of Love in a
Cold Climate, after all. But to actively, to voluntarily play a part in her own son’s
death?

With hindsight her behaviour seemed even colder, her actions imbued with
some sinister intent. I was angry with her and angry with Will. Angry with them
for letting me engage in a facade. I was angry for all the times I had sat and
thought about how to make things better for him, how to make him comfortable,
or happy. When I was not angry, I was sad. I would recall the slight break in her
voice as she tried to comfort Georgina, and feel a great sadness for her. She was,

I knew, in an impossible position.



But mostly I felt filled with horror. I was haunted by what I now knew. How
could you live each day knowing that you were simply whiling away the days
until your own death? How could this man whose skin I had felt that morning
under my fingers - warm, and alive - choose to just extinguish himself? How
could it be that, with everyone’s consent, in six months’ time that same skin
would be decaying under the ground?

I couldn’t tell anyone. That was almost the worst bit. I was now complicit in
the Traynors’ secret. Sick and listless, I rang Patrick to say I wasn’t feeling well
and was going to stay home. No problem, he was doing a 10k, he said. He
probably wouldn’t be through at the athletics club until after nine anyway. I’d
see him on Saturday. He sounded distracted, as if his mind were already
elsewhere, further along some mythical track.

I refused supper. I lay in bed until my thoughts darkened and solidified to the
point where I couldn’t bear the weight of them, and at eight thirty I came back
downstairs and sat silently watching television, perched on the other side of
Granddad, who was the only person in our family guaranteed not to ask me a
question. He sat in his favourite armchair and stared at the screen with glassy¬
eyed intensity. I was never sure whether he was watching, or whether his mind
was somewhere else entirely.

‘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.

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.

‘Urn ... 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.

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.