Me Before You: A Novel

swamped me. I had to make sure that I didn’t lose sight of the rest of me.
    I began to feel guilty about the conversation I had had earlier with my sister. Patrick wouldn’t let me get up, not even to help him clear the dishes. At a quarter past eleven he rose and moved the plates and bowls to the kitchenette and began to load the dishwasher. I sat, listening to him as he talked to me through the little doorway. I was rubbing at the point where my neck met my shoulder, trying to release some of the knots that seemed to be firmly embedded there. I closed my eyes, trying to relax into it, so thatit was a few minutes before I realized the conversation had stopped.
    I opened my eyes. Patrick was standing in the doorway, holding my holiday folder. He held up several pieces of paper. ‘What’s all this?’
    ‘It’s … the trip. The one I told you about.’
    I watched him flick through the paperwork I had shown my sister, taking in the itinerary, the pictures, the Californian beach.
    ‘I thought … ’ His voice, when it emerged, sounded strangely strangled. ‘I thought you were talking about Lourdes.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Or … I don’t know … Stoke Mandeville … or somewhere. I thought, when you said you couldn’t come because you had to help him, it was actual work. Physio, or faith healing, or something. This looks like … ’ He shook his head disbelievingly. ‘This looks like the holiday of a lifetime.’
    ‘Well … it kind of is. But not for me. For him.’
    Patrick grimaced. ‘No … ’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You wouldn’t enjoy this
at all
. Hot tubs under the stars, swimming with dolphins … Oh, look, “five-star luxury” and “twenty-four-hour room service”.’ He looked up at me. ‘This isn’t a work trip. This is a bloody honeymoon.’
    ‘That’s not fair!’
    ‘But this is? You … you really expect me to just sit here while you swan off with another man on a holiday like
this
?’
    ‘His carer is coming too.’
    ‘Oh. Oh yes,
Nathan
. That makes it all right, then.’
    ‘Patrick, come on – it’s complicated.’
    ‘So explain it to me.’ He thrust the papers towards me. ‘Explain this to me, Lou. Explain it in a way that I can possibly understand.’
    ‘It matters to me that Will wants to live, that he sees good things in his future.’
    ‘And those good things would include you?’
    ‘That’s not fair. Look, have I ever asked you to stop doing the job you love?’
    ‘My job doesn’t involve hot tubs with strange men.’
    ‘Well, I don’t mind if it does. You can have hot tubs with strange men! As often as you like! There!’ I tried to smile, hoping he would too.
    But he wasn’t having any of it. ‘How would you feel, Lou? How would you feel if I said I was going on some keep-fit convention with – I don’t know – Leanne from the Terrors because she needed cheering up?’
    ‘Cheering up?’ I thought of Leanne, with her flicky blonde hair and her perfect legs, and I wondered absently why he had thought of her name first.
    ‘And then how would you feel if I said she and I were going to eat out together all the time, and maybe sit in a hot tub or go on days out together. In some destination six thousand miles away, just because she had been a bit down. That really wouldn’t bother you?’
    ‘He’s not “a bit down”, Pat. He wants to kill himself. He wants to take himself off to Dignitas, and end his own bloody life.’ I could hear my blood thumping in my ears. ‘And you can’t turn it around like this. You were the one who called Will a cripple. You were the one who made out he couldn’t possibly be a threat to you. “The perfect boss,” you said. Someone not even worth worrying about.’
    He put the folder back down on the worktop.
    ‘Well, Lou … I’m worrying now.’
    I sank my face into my hands and let it rest there for a minute. Out in the corridor I heard a fire door swing, and the voices of people swallowed up as a door was unlocked and closed behind them.
    Patrick slid his hand slowly backwards and forwards along the edge of the kitchen cabinets. A little muscle worked in his jaw. ‘You know how this feels, Lou? It feels like I might be running, but I feel like I’m permanently just a little bit behind the rest of the field. I feel like … ’ He took a deep breath, as if he were trying to compose himself. ‘I feel like there’s something bad on the bend around the corner, and everyone else