Me Before You: A Novel

wrong.
    I greeted Will with a broad smile and a cheery hello, and he didn’t even bother to look round from the window.
    ‘Not a good day,’ Nathan murmured, as he shouldered his way into his coat.
    It was a filthy, low-cloud sort of a morning, where the rain spat meanly against the windows and it was hard to imagine the sun coming out ever again. Even I felt glum on a day like this. It wasn’t really a surprise that Will should be worse. I began to work my way through the morning’s chores, telling myself all the while that it didn’t matter. You didn’t have to like your employer anyway, did you? Lots of people didn’t. I thought of Treena’s boss, a taut-faced serial divorcee who monitored how many times my sister went to the loo and had been known to make barbed comments if she considered her to have exceeded reasonable bladder activity. And besides, I had already done two weeks here. That meant there were only five months and thirteen working days to go.
    The photographs were stacked carefully in the bottom drawer, where I had placed them the previous day, and now, crouched on the floor, I began laying them out and sorting through them, assessing which frames I might be able to fix. I am quite good at fixing things. Besides, I thought it might be quite a useful way of killing time.
    I had been doing this for about ten minutes when the discreet hum of the motorized wheelchair alerted me to Will’s arrival.
    He sat there in the doorway, looking at me. There were dark shadows under his eyes. Sometimes, Nathan told me,he barely slept at all. I didn’t want to think how it would feel, to lie trapped in a bed you couldn’t get out of with only dark thoughts to keep you company through the small hours.
    ‘I thought I’d see if I could fix any of these frames,’ I said, holding one up. It was the picture of him bungee jumping. I tried to look cheerful.
He needs someone upbeat, someone positive
.
    ‘Why?’
    I blinked. ‘Well … I think some of these can be saved. I brought some wood glue with me, if you’re happy for me to have a go at them. Or if you want to replace them I can pop into town during my lunch break and see if I can find some more. Or we could both go, if you fancied a trip out … ’
    ‘Who told you to start fixing them?’
    His stare was unflinching.
    Uh-oh,
I thought. ‘I … I was just trying to help.’
    ‘You wanted to fix what I did yesterday.’
    ‘I –’
    ‘Do you know what, Louisa? It would be nice – just for once – if someone paid attention to what I wanted. Me smashing those photographs was not an accident. It was not an attempt at radical interior design. It was because I actually don’t want to look at them.’
    I got to my feet. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think that –’
    ‘You thought you knew best. Everyone thinks they know what I need.
Let’s put the bloody photos back together. Give the poor invalid something to look at
. I don’t want to have those bloody pictures staring at me every time I’m stuck in my bed until someone comes and bloody well gets meout again. Okay? Do you think you can get your head around that?’
    I swallowed. ‘I wasn’t going to fix the one of Alicia – I’m not that stupid … I just thought that in a while you might feel –’
    ‘Oh Christ … ’ He turned away from me, his voice scathing. ‘Spare me the psychological therapy. Just go and read your bloody gossip magazines or whatever it is you do when you’re not making tea.’
    My cheeks were aflame. I watched him manoeuvre in the narrow hallway, and my voice emerged even before I knew what I was doing.
    ‘You don’t have to behave like an arse.’
    The words rang out in the still air.
    The wheelchair stopped. There was a long pause, and then he reversed and turned slowly, so that he was facing me, his hand on the little joystick.
    ‘What?’
    I faced him, my heart thumping. ‘Your friends got the shitty treatment. Fine. They probably deserved it. But I’m just here day after day trying to do the best job I can. So I would really appreciate it if you didn’t make my life as unpleasant as you do everyone else’s.’
    Will’s eyes widened a little. There was a beat before he spoke again. ‘And what if I told you I didn’t want you here?’
    ‘I’m not employed by you. I’m employed by your mother. And unless she tells me she doesn’t want me here any more I’m staying. Not because I particularly care about you, or like this stupid job or