Me Before You

‘It’s not going to get any better than this. The odds are I’m only going to get increasingly unwell and my life, reduced as it is, is going to get smaller. The doctors have said as much. There are a host of conditions encroaching on me. I can feel it. I don’t want to be in pain any more, or trapped in this thing, or dependent on everyone, or afraid. So I’m asking you – if you feel the things you say you feel – then do it. Be with me. Give me the end I’m hoping for.’

I looked at him in horror, my blood thumping in my ears. I could barely take it in.

‘How can you ask me that?’

‘I know, it’s –’

‘I tell you I love you and I want to build a future with you, and you ask me to come and watch you kill yourself?’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean it to sound blunt. But I haven’t got the luxury of time.’

‘Wha– what? Why, are you actually booked in? Is there some appointment you’re afraid of missing?’

I could see people at the hotel stopping, perhaps hearing our raised voices, but I didn’t care.

‘Yes,’ Will said, after a pause. ‘Yes, there is. I’ve had the consultations. The clinic agreed that I am a suitable case for them. And my parents agreed to the thirteenth of August. We’re due to fly out the day before.’

My head had begun to spin. It was less than a week away.

‘I don’t believe this.’

‘Louisa –’

‘I thought … I thought I was changing your mind.’

He tilted his head sideways and gazed at me. His voice was soft, his eyes gentle. ‘Louisa, nothing was ever going to change my mind. I promised my parents six months, and that’s what I’ve given them. You have made that time more precious than you can imagine. You stopped it being an endurance test –’

‘Don’t!’

‘What?’

‘Don’t say another word.’ I was choking. ‘You are so selfish, Will. So stupid. Even if there was the remotest possibility of me coming with you to Switzerland … even if you thought I might, after all I’ve done for you, be someone who could do that, is that all you can say to me? I tore my heart out in front of you. And all you can say is, “No, you’re not enough for me. And now I want you to come watch the worst thing you can possibly imagine.” The thing I have dreaded ever since I first found out about it. Do you have any idea what you are asking of me?’

I was raging now. Standing in front of him, shouting like a madwoman. ‘Fuck you, Will Traynor. Fuck you. I wish I’d never taken this stupid job. I wish I’d never met you.’ I burst into tears, ran up the beach and back to my hotel room, away from him.

His voice, calling my name, rang in my ears long after I had closed the door.

24

There is nothing more disconcerting to passers-by than to see a man in a wheelchair pleading with a woman who is meant to be looking after him. It’s apparently not really the done thing to be angry with your disabled charge.

Especially when he is plainly unable to move, and is saying, gently, ‘Clark. Please. Just come over here. Please.’

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t look at him. Nathan had packed up Will’s stuff, and I had met them both in the lobby the following morning – Nathan still groggy from his hangover – and from the moment we had to be in each other’s company again, I refused to have anything to do with him. I was furious and miserable. There was an insistent, raging voice inside my head, which demanded to be as far as possible from Will. To go home. To never see him again.

‘You okay?’ Nathan said, appearing at my shoulder.

As soon as we arrived at the airport, I had marched away from them to the check-in desk.

‘No,’ I said. ‘And I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Hungover?’

‘No.’

There was a short silence.

‘This mean what I think it does?’ He was suddenly sombre.

I couldn’t speak. I nodded, and I watched Nathan’s jaw stiffen briefly. He was stronger than I was, though. He was, after all, a professional. Within minutes he was back with Will, showing him something he had seen in a magazine, wondering aloud about the prospects for some football team they both knew of. Watching them, you would know nothing of the momentousness of the news I had just imparted.

I managed to make myself busy for the entire wait at the airport. I found a thousand small tasks to do – busying myself with luggage labels, buying coffee, perusing newspapers, going to the loo – all of which meant that I didn’t have to look at him. I didn’t have to talk to him. But every now and then Nathan would disappear and we were left alone, sitting beside each other, the short distance between us jangling with unspoken recriminations.

‘Clark –’ he would begin.

‘Don’t,’ I would cut him off. ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’

I surprised myself with how cold I could be. I certainly surprised the air stewardesses. I saw them on the flight, muttering between themselves at the way I turned rigidly away from Will, plugging my earphones in or resolutely staring out of the window.