Me Before You: A Novel

standing here on the brow of the aptly named Windy Hill for almost forty minutes, and I could no longer feel my feet.
    ‘I’ve looked up what’s local and, if you didn’t want to drive too far, there’s a match at the sports centre in a couple of weeks. He could even have a bet on the result.’
    ‘Betting?’
    ‘That way he could get a bit involved without even having to play. Oh look, there they are. How long do you think they’ll take to get to us?’
    We stood by the finish. Above our heads a tarpaulin banner announcing the ‘Spring Triathlon Finish Line’ flapped wanly in the stiff breeze.
    ‘Dunno. Twenty minutes? Longer? I’ve got an emergency Mars Bar if you want to share.’ I reached into my pocket. It was impossible to stop the list flapping with only one hand. ‘So what else did you come up with?’
    ‘You said you wanted to go further afield, right?’ She pointed at my fingers. ‘You’ve given yourself the bigger bit.’
    ‘Take this bit then. I think the family think I’m free-loading.’
    ‘What, because you want to take him on a few crummy days out? Jesus. They should be grateful someone’s making the effort. It’s not like they are.’
    Treena took the other piece of Mars Bar. ‘Anyway.Number five, I think it is. There’s a computer course that he could do. They put a thing on their head with, like, a stick on it, and they nod their head to touch the keyboard. There are loads of quadriplegic groups online. He could make lots of new friends that way. It would mean he doesn’t always have to actually leave the house. I even spoke to a couple on the chatrooms. They seemed nice. Quite –’ she shrugged ‘–
normal
.’
    We ate our Mars Bar halves in silence, watching as the group of miserable-looking runners drew closer. I couldn’t see Patrick. I never could. He had the kind of face that became instantly invisible in crowds.
    She pointed at the bit of paper.
    ‘Anyway, head for the cultural section. There’s a concert specially for people with disabilities here. You said he’s cultured, right? Well, he could just sit there and be transported by the music. That’s meant to take you out of yourself, right? Derek with the moustache, at work, told me about it. He said it can get noisy because of the really disabled people who yell a bit, but I’m sure he’d still enjoy it.’
    I wrinkled my nose. ‘I don’t know, Treen –’
    ‘You’re just frightened because I said “culture”. You only have to sit there with him. And not rustle your crisp packet. Or, if you fancied something a bit saucier … ’ She grinned at me. ‘There’s a strip club. You could take him to London for that.’
    ‘Take my employer to watch a stripper?’
    ‘Well, you say you do everything else for him – all the cleaning and feeding and stuff. I can’t see why you wouldn’t just sit by him while he gets a stiffy.’
    ‘Treena!’
    ‘Well, he must miss it. You could even buy him a lap dance.’
    Several people around us in the crowd swivelled their heads. My sister was laughing. She could talk about sex like that. Like it was some kind of recreational activity. Like it didn’t matter.
    ‘And then on the other side, there are the bigger trips. Don’t know what you fancied, but you could do wine tasting in the Loire … that’s not too far for starters.’
    ‘Can quadriplegics get drunk?’
    ‘I don’t know. Ask him.’
    I frowned at the list. ‘So … I’ll go back and tell the Traynors that I’m going to get their suicidal quadriplegic son drunk, spend their money on strippers and lap dancers, and then trundle him off to the Disability Olympics –’
    Treena snatched the list back from me. ‘Well, I don’t see
you
coming up with anything more bloody inspirational.’
    ‘I just thought … I don’t know.’ I rubbed at my nose. ‘I’m feeling a bit daunted, to be honest. I have trouble even persuading him to go into the garden.’
    ‘Well, that’s hardly the attitude, is it? Oh, look. Here they come. We’d better smile.’
    We pushed our way through to the front of the crowd and began to cheer. It was quite hard coming up with the required amount of motivating noise when you could barely move your lips with cold.
    I saw Patrick then, his head down in a sea of straining bodies, his face glistening with sweat, every sinew of his neck stretched and his face anguished as if he were enduring some kind of torture. That same face would be completelyilluminated as