Me Before You: A Novel

sure he couldn’t do it.
    So although I looked childish – although I seemed to the cabin staff (as I declined to talk to Will, to look at him, to feed him) as if I were the most heartless of women – I knew that pretending he was not there was about the only way I could cope with these hours of enforced proximity. If I had believed Nathan capable of coping alone I would honestly have changed my flight, perhaps even disappeared until I could make sure that there was between us a whole continent, not just a few impossible inches.
    The two men slept, and it came as something of a relief – a brief respite from the tension. I stared at the television screen and, with every mile that we headed towards home, I felt my heart grow heavier, my anxiety greater. It began to occur to me then that my failure was not just my own; Will’s parents were going to be devastated. They would probably blame me. Will’s sister would probably sue me. And it was my failure for Will too. I had failed to persuade him. I had offered him everything I could, including myself, and nothing I had shown him had convinced him of a reason to keep living.
    Perhaps, I found myself thinking, he had deserved someone better than me. Someone cleverer. Someone like Treena might have thought of better things to do. They might have found some rare piece of medical research or something that could have helped him. They might have changed his mind. The fact that I was going to have to live with this knowledge for the rest of my life made me feel almost dizzy.
    ‘Want a drink, Clark?’ Will’s voice would break into my thoughts.
    ‘No. Thank you.’
    ‘Is my elbow too far over your armrest?’
    ‘No. It’s fine.’
    It was only in those last few hours, in the dark, that I allowed myself to look at him. My gaze slid slowly sideways from my glowing television screen until I gazed at him surreptitiously in the dim light of the little cabin. And as I took in his face, so tanned and handsome, so peaceful in sleep, a solitary tear rolled down my cheek. Perhaps in some way conscious of my scrutiny Will stirred, but didn’twake. And unseen by the cabin staff, by Nathan, I pulled his blanket slowly up around his neck, tucking it in carefully, to make sure, in the chill of the cabin air conditioning, that Will would not feel the cold.
    They were waiting at the Arrivals Gate. I had somehow known they would be. I had felt the faintly sick sensation expanding inside me even as we wheeled Will through passport control, fast-tracked by some well-meaning official even as I prayed that we would be forced to wait, stuck in a queue that lasted hours, preferably days. But no, we crossed the vast expanse of linoleum, me pushing the baggage trolley, Nathan pushing Will, and as the glass doors opened, there they were, standing at the barrier, side by side in some rare semblance of unity. I saw Mrs Traynor’s face briefly light up as she saw Will and I thought, absently,
Of course – he looks so
well
. And, to my shame, I put on my sunglasses – not to hide my exhaustion, but so that she wouldn’t immediately see from my naked expression what it was I was going to have to tell her.
    ‘Look at you!’ she was exclaiming. ‘Will, you look wonderful. Really wonderful.’
    Will’s father had stooped, was patting his son’s chair, his knee, his face wreathed in smiles. ‘We couldn’t believe it when Nathan told us you were down on the beach every day. And swimming! What was the water like, then – lovely and warm? It’s been raining cats and dogs here. Typical August!’
    Of course. Nathan would have been texting them or calling them. As if they would have let us go all that time without some kind of contact.
    ‘It … it was a pretty amazing place,’ said Nathan. He had grown quiet too, but now tried to smile, to seem his normal self.
    I felt frozen, my hand clutching my passport like I was about to go somewhere else. I had to remind myself to breathe.
    ‘Well, we thought you might like a special dinner,’ Will’s father said. ‘There’s a jolly nice restaurant at the Intercontinental. Champagne on us. What do you think? Your mother and I thought it might be a nice treat.’
    ‘Sure,’ said Will. He was smiling at his mother and she was looking back at him as if she wanted to bottle it.
How can you?
I wanted to yell at him.
How can you look at her like that when you already know what you are going to do to her?
    ‘Come on, then. I’ve got the car in