Me Before You: a novel

this not enough for you? Why am I not enough for you? Why could
you not have confided in me? If we’d had more time, would this have
been different? Every now and then I would catch myself staring
down at his tanned hands, those squared-off fingers, just inches
from my own, and I would remember how our fingers felt entwined—
the warmth of him, the illusion, even in stillness, of a kind of strength
—and a lump would rise in my throat until I thought I could barely
breathe and I had to retreat to the WC, where I would lean over the
sink and sob silently under the strip lighting. There were a few
occasions when I thought about what Will still intended to do that I
actually had to fight the urge to scream; I felt overcome by a kind of
madness and thought I might just sit down in the aisle and howl and
howl until someone else stepped in. Until someone else made sure
he couldn’t do it.

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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 handling
everything alone I would honestly have changed my flight, perhaps
even disappeared until I could make sure that there was a whole
continent between us, 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 flew toward 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 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’t wake.
And unseen by the cabin staff, by Nathan, I pulled his blanket slowly

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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, his face wreathed in smiles; he was
patting his son’s chair, his knee. “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

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wanted to yell at him. How can you look at her like that when you