Me Before You (44 page)

James turned his back on the two men, tapped me on the shoulder and gestured towards the open water. ‘Some people actually find it easier out there,’ he said quietly.

‘In the sea?’

‘Some people are better thrown in at the deep end. Come on. Let’s go out on the boat.’

Three-quarters of an hour later, I was gazing underwater at the brightly coloured landscape that had been
hidden from view, forgetting to be afraid that my oxygen might fail, that against all evidence I would sink to the bottom and die a watery death, even that I was afraid at all. I was distracted by the secrets of a new world. In the silence, broken only by the exaggerated
oosh shoo
of my own breath, I watched shoals of tiny iridescent fish, and larger black and white fish that stared at me with blank, inquisitive faces, with gently swaying anemones filtering the gentle currents of their tiny, unseen haul. I saw distant landscapes, twice as brightly coloured and varied as they were above land. I saw caves and hollows where unknown creatures lurked, distant shapes that shimmered in the rays of the sun. I didn’t want to come up. I could have stayed there forever, in that silent world. It was only when James started gesticulating towards the dial of his oxygen tank that I realized I didn’t have a choice.

I could barely speak when I finally walked up the beach towards Will and Nathan, beaming. My mind was still humming with the images I had seen, my limbs somehow still propelling me under the water.

‘Good, eh?’ said Nathan.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I exclaimed to Will, throwing my flippers down on the sand in front of him. ‘Why didn’t you make me do that earlier? All that! It was all there, all the time! Just right under my nose!’

Will gazed at me steadily. He said nothing, but his smile was slow and wide. ‘I don’t know, Clark. Some people just won’t be told.’

I let myself get drunk that last night. It wasn’t just that we were leaving the next day. It was the first time I had felt
truly that Will was well and that I could let go. I wore a white cotton dress (my skin had coloured now, so that wearing white didn’t automatically make me resemble a corpse wearing a shroud) and a pair of silvery strappy sandals, and when Nadil gave me a scarlet flower and instructed me to put it in my hair I didn’t scoff at him as I might have done a week earlier.

‘Well, hello, Carmen Miranda,’ Will said, when I met them at the bar. ‘Don’t you look glamorous.’

I was about to make some sarcastic reply, and then I realized he was looking at me with genuine pleasure.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You’re not looking too shabby yourself.’

There was a disco at the main hotel complex, so shortly before 10pm – when Nathan left to be with Karen – we headed down to the beach with the music in our ears and the pleasant buzz of three cocktails sweetening my movements.

Oh, but it was so beautiful down there. The night was warm, carrying on its breezes the scents of distant barbecues, of warm oils on skin, of the faint salt tang of the sea. Will and I stopped near our favourite tree. Someone had built a fire on the beach, perhaps for cooking, and all that was left was a pile of glowing embers.

‘I don’t want to go home,’ I said, into the darkness.

‘It’s a hard place to leave.’

‘I didn’t think places like this existed outside films,’ I said, turning so that I faced him. ‘It has actually made me wonder if you might have been telling the truth about all the other stuff.’

He was smiling. His whole face seemed relaxed and happy, his eyes crinkling as he looked at me. I looked at
him, and for the first time it wasn’t with a faint fear gnawing away at my insides.

‘You’re glad you came, right?’ I said, tentatively.

He nodded. ‘Oh yes.’

‘Hah!’ I punched the air.

And then, as someone turned the music up by the bar, I kicked off my shoes and I began to dance. It sounds stupid – the kind of behaviour that on another day you might be embarrassed by. But there, in the inky dark, half drunk from lack of sleep, with the fire and the endless sea and infinite sky, with the sounds of the music in our ears and Will smiling and my heart bursting with something I couldn’t quite identify, I just needed to dance. I danced, laughing, not self-conscious, not worrying about whether anybody could see us. I felt Will’s eyes on me and I knew he knew – that this was the only possible response to the last ten days. Hell, to the last six months.

The song ended, and I flopped, breathless, at his feet.

‘You … ’ he said.

‘What?’ My smile was mischievous. I felt fluid, electrified. I barely felt responsible for myself.

He shook his head.

I rose, slowly, on to my bare feet, walked right up to his chair and then slid on to his lap so that my face was inches from his. After the previous evening, it somehow didn’t seem like such a leap to make.

‘You . … ’ His blue eyes, glinting with the light of the fire, locked on to mine. He smelt of the sun, and the bonfire, and something sharp and citrussy.

I felt something give, deep inside me.

‘You … are something else, Clark.’

I did the only thing I could think of. I leant forward, and I placed my lips on his. He hesitated, just for a moment, and then he kissed me. And just for a moment I forgot everything – the million and one reasons I shouldn’t, my fears, the reason we were here. I kissed him, breathing in the scent of his skin, feeling his soft hair under my fingertips, and when he kissed me back all of this vanished and it was just Will and me, on an island in the middle of nowhere, under a thousand twinkling stars.

And then he pulled back. ‘I … I’m sorry. No –’

My eyes opened. I lifted a hand to his face and let it trace his beautiful bones. I felt the faint grit of salt under my fingertips. ‘Will … ’ I began. ‘You can. You –’

‘No.’ It held a hint of metal, that word. ‘I can’t.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I don’t want to go into it.’

‘Um … I think you have to go into it.’

‘I can’t do this because I can’t … ’ he swallowed. ‘I can’t be the man I want to be with you. And that means that this –’ he looked up into my face ‘– this just becomes … another reminder of what I am not.’

I didn’t let go of his face. I tipped my forehead forward so that it touched his, so that our breath mingled, and I said, quietly, so that only he could have heard me, ‘I don’t care what you … what you think you can and can’t do. It’s not black and white. Honestly … I’ve talked to other people in the same situation and … and there are things that are possible. Ways that we can both be happy … ’ I had begun to stammer a little. I felt weird even having this conversation. I looked up and into his eyes. ‘Will Traynor,’ I said, softly. ‘Here’s the thing. I think we can do –’

‘No, Clark –’ he began.

‘I think we can do all sorts of things. I know this isn’t a conventional love story. I know there are all sorts of reasons I shouldn’t even be saying what I am. But I love you. I do. I knew it when I left Patrick. And I think you might even love me a little bit.’

He didn’t speak. His eyes searched my own, and there was this huge weight of sadness within them. I stroked the hair away from his temples, as if I could somehow lift his sorrow, and he tilted his head to meet the palm of my hand, so that it rested there.

He swallowed. ‘I have to tell you something.’

‘I know,’ I whispered. ‘I know everything.’

Will’s mouth closed on his words. The air seemed to still around us.

‘I know about Switzerland. I know … why I was employed on a six-month contract.’

He lifted his head away from my hand. He looked at me, then gazed upwards at the skies. His shoulders sagged.

‘I know it all, Will. I’ve known for months. And, Will, please listen to me …’ I took his right hand in mine, and I brought it up close to my chest. ‘I know we can do this. I know it’s not how you would have chosen it, but I know I can make you happy. And all I can say is that you make me … you make me into someone I couldn’t even imagine. You make me happy, even when you’re awful. I would rather be with you – even the you that you seem to think is diminished – than with anyone else in the world.’

I felt his fingers tighten a fraction around mine, and it gave me courage.

‘If you think it’s too weird with me being employed by you, then I’ll leave and I’ll work somewhere else. I wanted to tell you – I’ve applied for a college course. I’ve done loads of research on the internet, talking to other quads and carers of quads, and I have learnt so much, so much about how to make this work. So I can do that, and just be with you. You see? I’ve thought of everything, researched everything. This is how I am now. This is your fault. You changed me.’ I was half laughing. ‘You’ve turned me into my sister. But with better dress sense.’

He had closed his eyes. I placed both my hands around his, lifted his knuckles to my mouth, and I kissed them. I felt his skin against mine, and knew as I had never known anything that I could not let him go.

‘What do you say?’ I whispered.

I could have looked into his eyes forever.

He said it so quietly, that for a minute I could not be sure I had heard him correctly.

‘What?’

‘No, Clark.’

‘No?’

‘I’m sorry. It’s not enough.’

I lowered his hand. ‘I don’t understand.’

He waited before he spoke, as if he were struggling, for once, to find the right words. ‘It’s not enough for me. This – my world – even with you in it. And believe me, Clark, my whole life has changed for the better since you came. But it’s not enough for me. It’s not the life I want.’

Now it was my turn to pull away.

‘The thing is, I get that this could be a good life. I get that with you around, perhaps it could even be a very
good life. But it’s not
my
life. I am not the same as these people you speak to. It’s nothing like the life I want. Not even close.’ His voice was halting, broken. His expression frightened me.

I swallowed, shaking my head. ‘You … you once told me that the night in the maze didn’t have to be the thing that defined me. You said I could choose what it was that defined me. Well, you don’t have to let that … that chair define you.’

‘But it does define me, Clark. You don’t know me, not really. You never saw me before this thing. I loved my life, Clark. Really loved it. I loved my job, my travels, the things I was. I loved being a physical person. I liked riding my motorbike, hurling myself off buildings. I liked crushing people in business deals. I liked having sex. Lots of sex. I led a
big life
.’ His voice had lifted now. ‘I am not designed to exist in this thing – and yet for all intents and purposes it is now the thing that defines me. It is the only thing that defines me.’

‘But you’re not even giving it a chance,’ I whispered. My voice didn’t seem to want to emerge from my chest. ‘You’re not giving
me
a chance.’

‘It’s not a matter of giving you a chance. I’ve watched you these six months becoming a whole different person, someone who is only just beginning to see her possibilities. You have no idea how happy that has made me. I don’t want you to be tied to me, to my hospital appointments, to the restrictions on my life. I don’t want you to miss out on all the things someone else could give you. And, selfishly, I don’t want you to look at me one day and feel even the tiniest bit of regret or pity that –’

‘I would
never
think that!’

‘You don’t know that, Clark. You have no idea how this would play out. You have no idea how you’re going to feel even six months from now. And I don’t want to look at you every day, to see you naked, to watch you wandering around the annexe in your crazy dresses and not … not be able to do what I want with you. Oh, Clark, if you had any idea what I want to do to you right now. And I … I can’t live with that knowledge. I can’t. It’s not who I am. I can’t be the kind of man who just … 
accepts
.’

He glanced down at his chair, his voice breaking. ‘I will never accept this.’

I had begun to cry. ‘Please, Will. Please don’t say this. Just give me a chance. Give us a chance.’

‘Sshhh. Just listen. You, of all people. Listen to what I’m saying. This … tonight … is the most wonderful thing you could have done for me. What you have told me, what you have done in bringing me here … knowing that, somehow, from that complete arse I was at the start of this, you managed to salvage something to love is astonishing to me. But –’ I felt his fingers close on mine ‘– I need it to end here. No more chair. No more pneumonia. No more burning limbs. No more pain and tiredness and waking up every morning already wishing it was over. When we get back, I am still going to go to Switzerland. And if you do love me, Clark, as you say you do, the thing that would make me happier than anything is if you would come with me.’

My head whipped back.

‘What?’

‘It’s not going to get any better than this. The odds are
I’m only going to get increasingly unwell and my life, reduced as it is, is going to get smaller. The doctors have said as much. There are a host of conditions encroaching on me. I can feel it. I don’t want to be in pain any more, or trapped in this thing, or dependent on everyone, or afraid. So I’m asking you – if you feel the things you say you feel – then do it. Be with me. Give me the end I’m hoping for.’

I looked at him in horror, my blood thumping in my ears. I could barely take it in.

‘How can you ask me that?’

‘I know, it’s –’

‘I tell you I love you and I want to build a future with you, and you ask me to come and watch you kill yourself?’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean it to sound blunt. But I haven’t got the luxury of time.’

‘Wha– what? Why, are you actually booked in? Is there some appointment you’re afraid of missing?’

I could see people at the hotel stopping, perhaps hearing our raised voices, but I didn’t care.

‘Yes,’ Will said, after a pause. ‘Yes, there is. I’ve had the consultations. The clinic agreed that I am a suitable case for them. And my parents agreed to the thirteenth of August. We’re due to fly out the day before.’

My head had begun to spin. It was less than a week away.