Me Before You: a novel

Ritchie. Are you there?
Morning, Bee. You’re early today.
I hesitated for just a moment before typing:
I am about to begin the strangest day of my life. I am in Switzerland.
He knew what it meant. They all knew what it meant. The clinic
had been the subject of many heated debates. I typed:
I’m frightened.
Then why are you there?
Because I can’t not be here. He asked me. Am in hotel waiting to go see him.
I hesitated, then typed:
I have no idea how this day is going to end.
Oh, Bee.
What do I say to him? How do I change his mind?
There was a delay before he typed again. His words appeared on
the screen more slowly than usual, as if he were taking great care.

---

If he’s in Switzerland, Bee, I’m not sure he’s going to change his mind.
I felt a huge lump in my throat, and swallowed it. Ritchie was still
typing.
It’s not my choice. It’s not the choice of most of us on this board. I love my life, even
if I wish it was different. But I understand why your friend might well have had
enough. It’s tiring, leading this life, tiring in a way the AB can never truly understand.
If he is determined, if he really can’t see a way of things being better for him, then I
guess the best thing you can do is just be there. You don’t have to think he’s right.
But you do have to be there.
I realized I was holding my breath.
Good luck, Bee. And come see me after. Things may get a little bumpy for you
afterward. Either way, I could do with a friend like you.
My fingers stilled on the keyboard. I typed:
I will.
And then the receptionist told me that my car had arrived outside.
I don’t know what I expected—maybe some white building next to a
lake, or snow-capped mountains. Perhaps some medical-looking
marble frontage with a gold-plated plaque on the wall. What I didn’t
expect was to be driven through an industrial estate until I arrived at
what looked remarkably like an ordinary house, surrounded by
factories and, weirdly, a football pitch. I walked across decking, past
a goldfish pond, and then I was in.
The woman who opened the door knew immediately who I was
looking for. “He is here. Would you like me to show you?”
I stalled then. I stared at the closed door, oddly similar to the one
I had stood outside in Will’s annex all those months ago, and I took a
breath. And nodded.
I saw the bed before I saw him; it dominated the room with its
mahogany wood, its quaintly flowered quilt and pillows out of place in
that setting. Mr. Traynor sat on one side of it, Mrs. Traynor on the
other.
She looked ghostly pale, and stood up when she saw me.
“Louisa.”

---

Georgina was seated on a wooden chair in the corner, bent over
her knees, her hands pressed together as if in prayer. She lifted her
gaze as I walked in, revealing shadowed eyes, reddened with grief,
and I felt a brief spasm of sympathy for her.
What would I have done if Katrina had insisted on her right to do
the same?
The room itself was light and airy, like an upmarket holiday home.
There was a tiled floor and expensive rugs, and a sofa at the end
that looked out onto a little garden. I didn’t know what to say. It was
such a ridiculous, mundane sight, the three of them sitting there, as if
they were a family trying to work out where to go sightseeing that
day.
I turned toward the bed. “So,” I said, my bag over my shoulder,
“I’m guessing the room service isn’t up to much?”
Will’s eyes locked onto mine and despite everything, despite all
my fears, the fact that I had thrown up twice, that I felt like I hadn’t
slept for a year, I was suddenly glad I had come. Not glad, relieved.
Like I had excised some painful, nagging part of myself, and given it
over.
And then he smiled. It was lovely, his smile—a slow thing, full of
recognition.
Weirdly, I found myself smiling back. “Nice room,” I said, and
immediately realized the idiocy of the remark. I saw Georgina
Traynor close her eyes, and I blushed.
Will turned toward his mother. “I want to talk to Lou. Is that okay?”
She tried to smile. I saw a million things in the way she looked at
me then—relief, gratitude, a faint resentment at being shut out of
these few minutes, perhaps even a distant hope that my appearance
meant something, that this fate might yet be twisted from its tracks.
“Of course.”
She moved past me into the corridor, and as I stood back from
the doorway to let her pass, she reached out a hand and touched my
upper arm, just lightly. Our eyes met, and hers softened, so that
briefly she looked like someone else entirely, and then she turned
away from me.

---

“Come, Georgina,” she said, when her daughter made no attempt
to move.
Georgina stood slowly and walked out silently, her very back
broadcasting her reluctance. Mr. Traynor placed his hand on her
back as they passed.
And then it was just us.
Will was half propped up in the bed, able to see out of the
window to his left, where the water feature in the little garden merrily
trickled a thin stream of clear water below the decking. On the wall
was a badly framed print picture of dahlias. I remember thinking that
was a really crummy print to have to look at in your last hours.
“So…”
“You’re not going to—”
“I’m not going to try and change your mind.”
“If you’re here, you accept it’s my choice. This is the first thing
I’ve been in control of since the accident.”
“I know.”
And there it was. He knew it, and I knew it. There was nothing left
for me to do.
Do you know how hard it is to say nothing? When every atom of
you strains to do the opposite? I had practiced not saying anything
the whole way from the airport, and it was still nearly killing me. I
nodded. When I finally spoke, my voice was a small, broken thing.
What emerged was the only thing I could safely say.
“I missed you.”
He seemed to relax then. “Come over here.” And then, when I
hesitated. “Please. Come on. Right here, on the bed. Right next to
me.”
I realized then that there was actual relief in his expression. That
he was pleased to see me in a way he wasn’t actually going to be
able to say. And I told myself that it was going to have to be enough.
I would do the thing he had asked for. That would have to be
enough.
I lay down on the bed beside him and I placed my arm across
him. I rested my head on his chest, letting my body absorb the gentle
rise and fall of it. I could feel the faint pressure of Will’s fingertips on

---

my back, his warm breath in my hair. I closed my eyes, breathing in
the scent of him, still the same expensive cedar-wood smell, despite
the bland freshness of the room, the slightly disturbing scent of
disinfectant underneath. I tried not to think of anything at all. I just
tried to be, tried to absorb the man I loved through osmosis, tried to
imprint what I had left of him on myself. I did not speak. And then I
heard his voice. I was so close to him that when he spoke it seemed
to vibrate gently through me.
“Hey, Clark,” he said. “Tell me something good.”
I stared out the window at the bright-blue Swiss sky and I told him
a story of two people. Two people who shouldn’t have met, and who
didn’t like each other much when they did, but who found they were
the only two people in the world who could possibly have understood
each other. And I told him of the adventures they had, the places
they had gone, and the things they had seen that they had never
expected to. I conjured for him electric skies and iridescent seas and
evenings full of laughter and silly jokes. I drew a world for him, a
world far from a Swiss industrial estate, a world in which he was still
somehow the person he had wanted to be. I drew the world he had
created for me, full of wonder and possibility. I let him know a hurt
had been mended in a way that he couldn’t have known, and for that
alone there would always be a piece of me indebted to him. And as I
spoke I knew these would be the most important words I would ever
say and that it was important that they were the right words, that they
were not propaganda, an attempt to change his mind, but respectful
of what Will had said.
I told him something good.
Time slowed, and stilled. It was just the two of us, me murmuring
in the empty, sunlit room. Will didn’t say much. He didn’t answer
back, or add a dry comment, or scoff. He nodded occasionally, his
head pressed against mine, and murmured, or let out a small sound
that could have been satisfaction at another good memory.
“It has been,” I told him, “the best six months of my entire life.”
There was a long silence.
“Funnily enough, Clark, mine too.”

---

And then, just like that, my heart broke. My face crumpled, my
composure went and I held him tightly and I stopped caring that he
could feel the shudder of my sobbing body because grief swamped
me. It overwhelmed me and tore at my heart and my stomach and
my head and it pulled me under, and I couldn’t bear it. I honestly
thought I couldn’t bear it.
“Don’t, Clark,” he murmured. I felt his lips on my hair. “Oh,
please. Don’t. Look at me.”
I screwed my eyes shut and shook my head.
“Look at me. Please.”
I couldn’t.
“You’re angry. Please. I don’t want to hurt you or make you—”
“No…” I shook my head again. “It’s not that. I don’t want…” My
cheek was pressed to his chest. “I don’t want the last thing you see
to be my miserable, blotchy face.”
“You still don’t get it, Clark, do you?” I could hear the smile in his
voice. “It’s not your choice.”
It took some time to regain my composure. I blew my nose, took
a long, deep breath. Finally, I raised myself on my elbow, and I
looked back at him. His eyes, so long strained and unhappy, looked
oddly clear and relaxed.
“You look absolutely beautiful.”
“Funny.”
“Come here,” he said. “Right up close to me.”
I lay down again, facing him. I saw the clock above the door and
had a sudden sense of time running out. I took his arm and wrapped
it tightly around me, threading my own arms and legs around him so
that we were tightly entwined. I took his hand—the good one—and
wrapped my fingers in his, kissing the knuckles as I felt him squeeze
mine. His body was so familiar to me now. I knew it in a way I had
never known Patrick’s—its strengths and vulnerabilities, its scars
and scents. I placed my face so close to his that his features became
indistinct, and I began to lose myself in them. I stroked his hair, his
skin, his brow with my fingertips, tears sliding unchecked down my
cheeks, my nose against his, and all the time he watched me silently,
studying me intently as if he were storing each molecule of me away.

---

He was already retreating, withdrawing to somewhere I couldn’t
reach him.
I kissed him, trying to bring him back. I kissed him and let my lips
rest against his so that our breath mingled and the tears from my
eyes became salt on his skin, and I told myself that, somewhere, tiny