Me Before You: A Novel

and knickers and then opened the bathroom door and pottered over to the sofa with my pillow under my arm. I felt Will’s eyes on me, and felt oddly self-conscious for someone who had spent most of the previous week walking around in front of him in a bikini. I plumped my pillow down on the sofa arm.
    ‘Clark?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘You really don’t have to sleep over there. This bed is large enough for an entire football team as it is.’
    The thing is, I didn’t really even think about it. That was how it was, by then. Perhaps the days spent near-naked on the beach had loosened us all up a little. Perhaps it was the thought of Nathan and Karen on the other side of the wall, wrapped up in each other, a cocoon of exclusion.Perhaps I did just want to be near him. I began to walk towards the bed, then flinched at a sudden crash of thunder. The lights stuttered, someone shouted outside. From next door we heard Nathan and Karen burst out laughing.
    I walked to the window and pulled back the curtain, feeling the sudden breeze, the abrupt drop in temperature. Out at sea a storm had exploded into life. Dramatic flashes of forked lightning briefly illuminated the sky, and then, as if in afterthought, the heavy drumbeat roll of a deluge hit the roof of our little bungalow, so fierce that at first it drowned out sound.
    ‘I’d better close the shutters,’ I said.
    ‘No, don’t.’
    I turned.
    ‘Throw the doors open.’ Will nodded towards the outside. ‘I want to see it.’
    I hesitated, then slowly opened the glass doors out on to the terrace. The rain hammered down on to the hotel complex, dripping from our roof, sending rivers running away from our terrace and out towards the sea. I felt the moisture on my face, the electricity in the air. The hairs on my arms stood bolt upright.
    ‘Can you feel it?’ he said, from behind me.
    ‘It’s like the end of the world.’
    I stood there, letting the charge flow through me, the white flashes imprinting themselves on my eyelids. It caused my breath to catch in my throat.
    I turned back, and walked over to the bed, seating myself on its edge. As he watched, I leant forwards and gently pulled his sun-browned neck towards me. I knew just how to move him now, how I could make his weight, his solidity,work with me. Holding him close to me, I leant across and placed a fat white pillow behind his shoulders before releasing him back into its soft embrace. He smelt of the sun, as if it had seeped deep into his skin, and I found myself inhaling silently, as if he were something delicious.
    Then, still a little damp, I climbed in beside him, so close that my legs touched his, and together we gazed out at the blue-white scorch as the lightning hit the waves, at the silvered stair rods of rain, the gently shifting mass of turquoise that lay only a hundred feet away.
    The world around us shrank, until it was just the sound of the storm, the mauve blue-black sea, and the gently billowing gauze curtains. I smelt the lotus flowers on the night breeze, heard the distant sounds of clinking glasses and hastily drawn-back chairs, of music from some far-off celebration, felt the charge of nature unleashed. I reached across for Will’s hand, and took it in my own. I thought, briefly, that I would never feel as intensely connected to the world, to another human being, as I did at that moment.
    ‘Not bad, eh, Clark?’ Will said into the silence. In the face of the storm, his face was still and calm. He turned briefly and smiled at me, and there was something in his eyes then, something triumphant.
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not bad at all.’
    I lay still, listening to his breathing slow and deepen, the sound of the rain below it, felt his warm fingers entwined with mine. I did not want to go home. I thought I might never go home. Here Will and I were safe, locked in our little paradise. Every time I thought about heading back to England, a great claw of fear gripped my stomach and began to tighten its hold.
    It’s going to be okay
. I tried to repeat Nathan’s words to myself.
It’s going to be okay
.
    Finally, I turned on to my side, away from the sea, and gazed at Will. He turned his head to look back at me in the dim light, and I felt he was telling me the same thing.
It’s going to be okay
. For the first time in my life I tried not to think about the future. I tried to just be, to simply let the evening’s sensations travel through me. I can’t say how long we stayed like that, just