14-05-2021-091024Me-Before-You - Inglês (2024)

Praise for Me Before You

“Me Before You is a delicious surprise—funny and hopeful and heartbreaking, the kind of

story that will keep you turning pages into the night. Lou Clark and Will Traynor will capture

your heart and linger there long after their story has ended.”

—Eleanor Brown, New York Times bestselling author of The Weird Sisters

“Some books make you stop and think, compel you to examine your own take on life or your

position or stand on an issue. Jojo Moyes’s Me Before You will surprise you—it is

impossible not to put yourself in the characters’ shoes and you will find yourself thinking

about the choices you might make if life changed in an instant. I loved it.”

—Lee Woodruff, New York Times bestselling author of Those We Love Most

“A lovely novel, both nontraditional and enthralling.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Me Before You has every quality a page-turner should have, in spades. . . . This is an

unusual and emotional love story melded with a satisfying coming-of-age tale that is utterly

irresistible.”

—Bookreporter.com

“Moyes’s latest is made heartwarming, thanks to the vibrancy of its main characters, both of

whom will keep readers on their toes with their chemistry and witty repartee. . . . Humorous

and romantic through and through.”

—Romantic Times

“Moyes’s twisting, turning, heartbreaking novel raises provocative moral questions. . . . With

shades of David Nicholls’s beloved One Day, Me Before You is the kind of book you simply

can’t put down—even when you realize you don’t want to see it end. . . . A big-hearted,

beautifully written story that teaches us it is never too late to truly start living.”

—BookPage

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jojo Moyes is also the author of The Girl You Left Behind and The Last Letter from

Your Lover. Moyes writes for a variety of magazines and newspapers. She is married

to Charles Arthur, technology editor of The Guardian. They live with their three

children on a farm in Essex, England.

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com

First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph, an imprint of Penguin Books Ltd, 2012

First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

2012

Published in Penguin Books 2013

electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in

violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

A Pamela Dorman / Penguin Book

the library of congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Moyes, Jojo, date.

Me before you : a novel / Jojo Moyes.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-670-02660-9 (hc.)

ISBN 978-0-14-312454-2 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-1-10-16037-7 (eBook.)

1. Young women—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6113.O94M4 2012

823'.92—dc23 2012029301

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s

imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

TO CHARLES, WITH LOVE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to my agent, Sheila Crowley at Curtis Brown, and to my

editor at Penguin UK, Mari Evans, both of whom immediately saw

this book for what it was—a love story.

Special thanks to Maddy Wickham, who encouraged me at a

point when I was not sure whether I could, or should, actually write it.

At Penguin USA, I would like to thank my fantastic editors

Pamela Dorman and Julie Miesionczek, as well as Clare Ferraro,

president of Viking, who has been such a strong supporter of this

book. At Penguin UK, I would also particularly like to thank Louise

Moore, Clare Ledingham, and Shân Morley Jones.

Thanks to the wonderful team at Curtis Brown, especially Jonny

Geller, Tally Garner, Katie McGowan, Alice Lutyens, and Sarah

Lewis, for enthusiasm and fine agenting.

Huge gratitude to all on the Writersblock board—my own private

Fight Club. Minus the Fighty bit.

Similarly to India Knight, Sam Baker, Emma Beddington, Trish

Deseine, Alex Heminsley, Jess Ruston, Sali Hughes, Tara Manning,

and Fanny Blake.

Thanks to Lizzie and Brian Sanders, and to Jim, Bea, and

Clemmie Moyes. But most of all, as ever, to Charles, Saskia, Harry,

and Lockie.

Table of Contents

Praise for Me Before You

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Epilogue

Special Excerpt from The Girl You Left Behind

A Penguin Readers Guide to Me Before You

Prologue

2007

When he emerges from the bathroom she is awake, propped up

against the pillows and flicking through the travel brochures that

were beside his bed. She is wearing one of his T-shirts, and her long

hair is tousled in a way that prompts reflexive thoughts of the

previous night. He stands there, enjoying the brief flashback, rubbing

the water from his hair with a towel.

She looks up from a brochure and pouts. She is probably slightly

too old to pout, but they’ve been going out a short enough time for it

still to be cute.

“Do we really have to do something that involves trekking up

mountains, or hanging over ravines? It’s our first proper holiday

together, and there is literally not one single trip in these that doesn’t

involve either throwing yourself off something or”—she pretends to

shudder—“wearing fleece.”

She throws the brochures down on the bed, stretches her

caramel-colored arms above her head. Her voice is husky, testament

to their missed hours of sleep. “How about a luxury spa in Bali? We

could lie around on the sand…spend hours being pampered…long,

relaxing nights…”

“I can’t do those sorts of holidays. I need to be doing something.”

“Like throwing yourself out of airplanes.”

“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”

She pulls a face. “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll stick with

knocking it.”

His shirt is faintly damp against his skin. He runs a comb through

his hair and switches on his mobile phone, wincing at the list of

messages that immediately pushes its way through onto the little

screen.

“Right,” he says. “Got to go. Help yourself to breakfast.” He leans

over the bed to kiss her. She smells warm and perfumed and deeply

sexy. He inhales the scent from the back of her hair, and briefly loses

his train of thought as she wraps her arms around his neck, pulling

him down toward the bed.

“Are we still going away this weekend?”

He extricates himself reluctantly. “Depends what happens on this

deal. It’s all a bit up in the air at the moment. There’s still a possibility

I might have to be in New York. Nice dinner somewhere Thursday,

either way? Your choice of restaurant.” His motorbike leathers are on

the back of the door, and he reaches for them.

She narrows her eyes. “Dinner. With or without Mr. BlackBerry?”

“What?”

“Mr. BlackBerry makes me feel like Miss Gooseberry.” The pout

again. “I feel like there’s always a third person vying for your

attention.”

“I’ll turn it on to silent.”

“Will Traynor!” she scolds. “You must have some time when you

can switch it off.”

“I turned it off last night, didn’t I?”

“Only under extreme duress.”

He grins. “Is that what we’re calling it now?” He pulls on his

leathers. And Lissa’s hold on his imagination is finally broken. He

throws his motorbike jacket over his arm, and blows her a kiss as he

leaves.

There are twenty-two messages on his BlackBerry, the first of

“Treen, he hates me. He looks at me like I’m something the cat

dragged in. And he doesn’t even drink tea. I’m hiding from him.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

“What?”

“Just talk to him, for crying out loud. Of course he’s miserable.

He’s stuck in a bloody wheelchair. And you’re probably being

useless. Just talk to him. Get to know him. What’s the worst that can

happen?”

“I don’t know…I don’t know if I can stick it out.”

“I’m not telling Mum you’re giving up your job after half a day.

They won’t give you any benefits, Lou. You can’t do this. We can’t

afford for you to do this.”

She was right. I realized I hated my sister.

There was a brief silence. Treena’s voice turned

uncharacteristically conciliatory. This was really worrying. It meant

she knew I did actually have the worst job in the world. “Look,” she

said, “it’s just six months. Just do the six months, have something

useful on your CV, and you can get a job you actually like. And hey

—look at it this way: at least it’s not working nights at the chicken

factory, right?”

“Nights at the chicken factory would feel like a holiday compared

with—”

“I’m going now, Lou. I’ll see you later.”

“So would you like to go somewhere this afternoon? We could drive

somewhere if you like.”

Nathan had been gone for almost half an hour. I had spun out the

washing of the tea mugs as long as humanly possible, and I thought

that if I spent one more hour in this silent house my head might

explode.

He turned his head toward me. “Where did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know. Just a drive in the country?” I was doing this thing I

sometimes do of pretending I’m Treena. She is one of those people

who are completely calm and competent, and as a result no one

ever messes with her. I sounded, to my own ears, professional and

upbeat.

“The country,” he said, as if considering it. “And what would we

see. Some trees? Some sky?”

“I don’t know. What do you normally do?”

“I don’t do anything, Miss Clark. I can’t do anything anymore. I sit.

I just about exist.”

“Well,” I said, “I was told that you have a car that’s adapted for

wheelchair use.”

“And you’re worried that it will stop working if it doesn’t get used

every day?”

“No, but I—”

“Are you telling me I should go out?”

“I just thought—”

“You thought a little drive would be good for me? A breath of

fresh air?”

“I’m just trying to—”

“Miss Clark, my life is not going to be significantly improved by a

drive around Stortfold’s country lanes.” He turned away.

His head had sunk into his shoulders, and I wondered whether he

was comfortable. It didn’t seem to be the time to ask him. We sat in

silence.

“Do you want me to bring you your computer?”

“Why, have you thought of a good quadriplegic support group I

could join? Quads R Us? The Tin Wheel Club?”

I took a deep breath, trying to make my voice sound confident.

“Okay…well…seeing as we’re going to spend all this time in each

other’s company, perhaps we could get to know something about

each other—”

There was something about his face then that made me falter. He

was staring straight ahead at the wall, a tic moving in his jaw.

“It’s just…it’s quite a long time to spend with someone. All day,” I

continued. “Perhaps if you could tell me a little of what you want to

do, what you like, then I can…make sure things are as you like

them?”

This time the silence was painful. I heard my voice slowly

swallowed by it, and couldn’t work out what to do with my hands.

Treena and her competent manner had evaporated.

Finally, the wheelchair hummed and he turned slowly to face me.

“Here’s what I know about you, Miss Clark. My mother says

you’re chatty.” He said it like it was an affliction. “Can we strike a

deal? Whereby you are very un-chatty around me?”

I swallowed, feeling my face flame.

“Fine,” I said, when I could speak again. “I’ll be in the kitchen. If

you want anything just call me.”

“You can’t give up already.”

I was lying sideways on my bed with my legs stretched up the

wall, like I did when I was a teenager. I had been up here since

supper, which was unusual for me. Since Thomas was born, he and

Treena had moved into the bigger room, and I was in the box room,

which was small enough to make you feel claustrophobic should you

sit in it for more than half an hour at a time.

But I didn’t want to sit downstairs with Mum and Granddad

because Mum kept looking at me anxiously and saying things like “It

will get better, love” and “No job is great on the first day”—as if she’d

had a ruddy job in the last twenty years. It was making me feel guilty.

And I hadn’t even done anything.

“I didn’t say I was giving up. Oh God, Treen. It’s worse than I

thought. He is so miserable.”

“He can’t move. Of course he’s miserable.”

“No, but he’s sarcastic and mean with it. Every time I say

something or suggest something he looks at me like I’m stupid, or

says something that makes me feel about two years old.”

“You probably did say something stupid. You just need to get

used to each other.”

“I really didn’t. I was so careful. I hardly said anything except

‘Would you like to go out for a drive?’ or ‘Would you like a cup of

tea?’”

“Well, maybe he’s like that with everyone at the start, until he

knows whether you’re going to stick around. I bet they go through

loads of helpers.”

“He didn’t even want me in the same room as him. I don’t think I

can stick it out, Katrina. I really don’t. Honest—if you’d been there

you would understand.”

Treena said nothing then, just looked at me for a while. She got

up and glanced out the door, as if checking whether there was

anybody on the landing.

“I’m thinking of going back to college,” she said, finally.

It took my brain a few seconds to register this change of tack.

“Oh my God,” I said. “But—”

“I’m going to take a loan to pay for the fees. But I can get some

special grant too, because of having Thomas, and the university is

offering me reduced rates because they…” She shrugged, a little

embarrassed. “They say they think I could excel. Someone’s

dropped out of the business studies course, so they can take me for

the beginning of the next term.”

“What about Thomas?”

“There’s a nursery on campus. We can stay there in a subsidized

flat in halls during the week, and come back here most weekends.”

“Oh.”

I could feel her watching me. I didn’t know what to do with my

face.

“I’m really desperate to use my brain again. Doing the flowers is

doing my head in. I want to learn. I want to improve myself. And I’m

sick of my hands always being freezing cold from the water.”

We both stared at her hands, which were pink tinged, even in the

tropical warmth of our house.

“But—”

“Yup. I won’t be working, Lou. I won’t be able to give Mum

anything. I might…I might even need a bit of help from them.” This

time she looked quite uncomfortable. Her expression, when she

glanced up at me, was almost apologetic.

Downstairs Mum was laughing at something on the television.

We could hear her exclaiming to Granddad. She often explained the

plot of the show to him, even though we told her all the time she

didn’t need to.

I couldn’t speak. The significance of my sister’s words sank in

slowly but inexorably. I felt the way a Mafia victim must feel,

watching the concrete setting slowly around his ankles.

“I really need to do this, Lou. I want more for Thomas, more for

both of us. The only way I’ll get anywhere is by going back to

college. I haven’t got a Patrick. I’m not sure I’ll ever have a Patrick,

given that nobody’s been remotely interested since I had Thomas. I

need to do the best I can by myself.”

When I didn’t say anything, she added, “For me and Thomas.”

I nodded.

“Lou? Please?”

I had never seen my sister look like that before. It made me feel

really uncomfortable. I lifted my head, and raised a smile. My voice,

when it emerged, didn’t even sound like my own.

“Well, like you say, it’s just a matter of getting used to him. It’s

bound to be difficult in the first few days, isn’t it?”

Two weeks passed and with them emerged a routine of sorts. Every

morning I would arrive at Granta House at eight, call out that I was

there, and then, after Nathan had finished helping Will dress, listen

carefully while he told me what I needed to know about Will’s meds

—or, more important, his mood.

After Nathan had left I would program the radio or television for

Will, dispense his pills, sometimes crushing them with the little

marble pestle and mortar. Usually, after ten minutes or so he would

make it clear that he was weary of my presence. At this point I would

eke out the little annex’s domestic tasks, washing tea towels that

weren’t dirty, or using random vacuum attachments to clean tiny bits

of skirting or windowsill, religiously popping my head around the door

every fifteen minutes as Mrs. Traynor had instructed. When I did, he

would be sitting in his chair looking out into the bleak garden.

Later I might take him a drink of water, or one of the calorie-filled

drinks that were supposed to keep his weight up and looked like

pastel-colored wallpaper paste, or give him his food. He could move

his hands a little, but not his arm, so he had to be fed forkful by

forkful. This was the worst part of the day; it seemed wrong,

somehow, spoon-feeding a grown man, and my embarrassment

made me clumsy and awkward. Will hated it so much he wouldn’t

even meet my eye while I was doing it.

And then shortly before one, Nathan would arrive and I would

grab my coat and disappear to walk the streets, sometimes eating

my lunch in the bus shelter outside the castle. It was cold, and I

probably looked pathetic perched there eating my sandwiches, but I

didn’t care. I couldn’t spend a whole day in that house.

In the afternoon I would put a film on—Will had a membership in

a DVD club and new films arrived by post every day—but he never

invited me to watch with him, so I’d usually go and sit in the kitchen

or in the spare room. I started bringing in a book or magazine, but I

felt oddly guilty not actually working, and I could never quite

concentrate on the words. Occasionally, at the end of the day, Mrs.

Traynor would pop in—although she never said much to me, other

than “Everything all right?” to which the only acceptable answer

seemed to be “Yes.”

She would ask Will if he wanted anything, occasionally suggest

something he might like to do the next day—some outing, or visit

some friend who had asked after him—and he would almost always

answer dismissively, if not with downright rudeness. She would look

pained, run her fingers up and down that little gold chain, and

disappear again.

His father, a well-padded, gentle-looking man, usually came in as

I was leaving. He was the kind of man you might see watching

cricket in a Panama hat, and he had apparently overseen the

management of the castle since retiring from his well-paid job in the

city. I suspected this was like a benign landowner planting the odd

potato just “to keep his hand in.” He finished every day at 5 P.M.

promptly and would sit and watch television with Will. Sometimes I

heard him making some remark about whatever was on the news as

I left.

I got to study Will Traynor up close, in those first couple of weeks.

I saw that he seemed determined not to look anything like the man

he had been; he had let his light-brown hair grow into a shapeless

mess, his stubble crawl across his jaw. His gray eyes were lined with

exhaustion, or the effect of constant discomfort (Nathan said he was

rarely comfortable). They bore the hollow look of someone who was

always a few steps removed from the world around him. Sometimes

I wondered if it was a defense mechanism, whether the only way to

cope with his life was to pretend it wasn’t him it was happening to.

I wanted to feel sorry for him. I really did. I thought he was the

saddest person I had ever met, in those moments when I glimpsed

him staring out the window. And as the days went by and I realized

that his condition was not just a matter of being stuck in that chair, of

the loss of physical freedom, but a never-ending litany of indignities

and health problems, of risks and discomforts, I decided that if I were

Will, I would probably be pretty miserable too.

But, oh Lord, he was vile to me. Everything I said, he had a sharp

answer for. If I asked him if he was warm enough, he would retort

that he was quite capable of letting me know if he needed another

blanket. If I asked if the vacuum cleaner was too noisy for him—I

hadn’t wanted to interrupt his film—he asked me, Why, had I worked

out a way to make it run silently? When I fed him, he complained that

the food was too hot or too cold, or that I had brought the next forkful

up to his mouth before he had finished the last. He had the ability to

twist almost anything I said or did so that I seemed stupid.

During those first two weeks, I got quite good at keeping my face

completely blank, and I would turn away and disappear into the other

room and just say as little to him as I possibly could. I started to hate

him, and I’m sure he knew it.

I hadn’t realized it was possible to miss my old job more than I

already did. I missed Frank, and the way he actually looked pleased

to see me when I arrived in the morning. I missed the customers,

their company, and the easy chatter that swelled and dipped gently

like a benign sea around me. This house, beautiful and expensive as

it was, was as still and silent as a morgue. Six months, I repeated

under my breath, when it felt unbearable. Six months.

And then on Thursday, just as I was mixing Will’s midmorning,

high-calorie drink, I heard Mrs. Traynor’s voice in the hall. Except

this time there were other voices too. I waited, the spoon stilled in my

hand. I could just make out a woman’s voice, young, well-spoken,

and a man’s.

Mrs. Traynor appeared in the kitchen doorway, and I tried to look

busy, whisking briskly at the beaker.

“Is that made up with sixty-forty water and milk?” she asked,

peering at the drink.

“Yes. It’s the strawberry one.”

“Will’s friends have come to see him. It would probably be best if

you—”

“I’ve got lots of things I should be doing in here,” I said. I was

actually quite relieved that I would be spared his company for an

hour or so. I screwed the lid onto the beaker. “Would your guests like

some tea or coffee?”

She looked almost surprised. “Yes. That would be very kind.

Coffee. I think I’ll…”

She seemed even more tense than usual, her eyes darting

toward the corridor, from where we could hear the low murmur of

voices. I guessed that Will didn’t get many visitors.

“I think…I’ll leave them all to it.” She gazed out into the corridor,

her thoughts apparently far away. “Rupert. It’s Rupert, his old friend

from work,” she said, suddenly turning toward me.

I got the feeling that this was in some way momentous, and that

she needed to share it with someone, even if it was just me.

“And Alicia. They were…very close…for a bit. Coffee would be

lovely. Thank you, Miss Clark.”

I hesitated a moment before I opened the door, leaning against it

with my hip so that I could balance the tray in my hands.

“Mrs. Traynor said you might like some coffee,” I said as I

entered, placing the tray on the low table. As I put Will’s beaker in

the holder of his chair, turning the straw so that he needed to adjust

only his head position to reach it, I sneaked a look at his visitors.

It was the woman I noticed first. Long-legged and blond, with pale

caramel skin, she was the kind of woman who makes me wonder if

all humans really are the same species. She looked like a human

racehorse. I had seen these women occasionally; they were usually

bouncing up the hill to the castle, clutching small Boden-clad

children, and when they came into the café their voices would carry,

crystal clear and unself-conscious, as they asked, “Harry, darling,

would you like a coffee? Shall I see if they can do you a macchiato?”

This was definitely a macchiato woman. Everything about her

smelled of money, of entitlement, and a life lived as if through the

pages of a glossy magazine.

Then I looked at her

more closely and realized with a jolt that (a)

she was the woman in Will’s skiing photograph, and (b) she looked

really, really uncomfortable.

She had kissed Will on the cheek and was now stepping

backward, smiling awkwardly. She was wearing a brown shearling

gilet, the kind of thing that would have made me look like a yeti, and

a pale-gray cashmere scarf around her neck, which she began to

fiddle with, as if she couldn’t decide whether to unwrap herself or

not.

“You look well,” she said to him. “Really. You’ve…grown your hair

a bit.”

Will didn’t say a thing. He was just looking at her, his expression

as unreadable as ever. I felt a fleeting gratitude that it wasn’t just me

he looked at like that.

“New chair, eh?” The man tapped the back of Will’s chair, chin

compressed, nodding in approval as if he were admiring a top-of-the-

line sports car. “Looks…pretty smart. Very…high-tech.”

I didn’t know what to do. I stood there for a moment, shifting from

one foot to the other, until Will’s voice broke into the silence.

“Louisa, would you mind putting some more logs on the fire? I

think it needs building up a bit.”

It was the first time he had used my Christian name.

“Sure,” I said.

I busied myself by the log burner, stoking the fire and sorting

through the basket for logs of the right size.

“Gosh, it’s cold outside,” the woman said. “Nice to have a proper

fire.”

I opened the door of the wood burner, prodding at the glowing

logs with the poker.

“It’s a good few degrees colder here than London.”

“Yes, definitely,” the man agreed.

“I was thinking of getting a wood burner at home. Apparently

they’re much more efficient than an open fire.” Alicia stooped a little

to inspect this one, as if she’d never actually seen one before.

“Yes, I’ve heard that,” said the man.

“I must look into it. One of those things you mean to do and

then…” After a pause she added, “Lovely coffee.”

“So—what have you been up to, Will?” The man’s voice held a

kind of forced joviality to it.

“Not very much, funnily enough.”

“But the physio and stuff. Is it all coming on? Any…

improvement?”

“I don’t think I’ll be skiing anytime soon, Rupert,” Will said, his

voice dripping with sarcasm.

I almost smiled to myself. This was the Will I knew. I began

brushing ash from the hearth. I had the feeling that they were all

watching me. The silence felt loaded. I wondered briefly whether the

label was sticking out of my sweater and fought the urge to check.

“So…,” Will said finally. “To what do I owe this pleasure? It’s

been…eight months?”

“Oh, I know. I’m sorry. It’s been…I’ve been awfully busy. I have a

new job over in Chelsea. Managing Sasha Goldstein’s boutique. Do

you remember Sasha? I’ve been doing a lot of weekend work too. It

gets terribly busy on Saturdays. Very hard to get time off.” Alicia’s

voice had become brittle. “I did ring a couple of times. Did your

mother tell you?”

“Things have been pretty manic at Lewins. You…you know what

it’s like, Will. We’ve got a new partner. Chap from New York. Bains.

Dan Bains. You come up against him at all?”

“No.”

“Bloody man seems to work twenty-four hours a day and expects

everyone else to do the same.” You could hear the man’s palpable

relief at having found a topic he was comfortable with. “You know the

old Yank work ethic—no more long lunches, no smutty jokes—Will, I

tell you. The whole atmosphere of the place has changed.”

“Really.”

“Oh God, yes. Presenteeism writ large. Sometimes I feel like I

daren’t leave my chair.”

All the air seemed to disappear from the room in a vacuumed

rush. Someone coughed.

I stood up, and wiped my hands on my jeans. “I’ll…I’m just going

to fetch some more logs,” I muttered, in Will’s general direction.

And I picked up the basket and fled.

It was freezing outside, but I lingered out there, killing time while I

selected pieces of wood. I was trying to calculate whether it was

preferable to lose the odd finger to frostbite rather than put myself

back into that room. But it was just too cold and my index finger,

which I use for sewing stuff, went blue first and finally I had to admit

defeat. As I approached the living room I heard the woman’s voice,

weaving its way through the slightly open door.

“Actually, Will, there is another reason for us coming here,” she

was saying. “We…have some news.”

I hesitated by the door, the log basket braced between my hands.

“I thought—well, we thought—that it would only be right to let you

know…but, well, here’s the thing. Rupert and I are getting married.”

I stood very still, calculating whether I could turn around without

being heard.

The woman continued, lamely. “Look, I know this is probably a bit

of a shock to you. Actually, it was rather a shock to me. We—it—

well, it only really started a long time after…”

My arms had begun to ache. I glanced down at the basket, trying

to work out what to do.

“Well, you know you and I…we…”

Another weighty silence.

“Will, please say something.”

“Congratulations,” he said finally.

“I know what you’re thinking. But neither of us meant for this to

happen. Really. For an awfully long time we were just friends.

Friends who were concerned about you. It’s just that Rupert was the

most terrific support to me after your accident—”

“Big of him.”

“Please don’t be like this. This is so awful. I have absolutely

dreaded telling you. We both have.”

“Evidently,” Will said flatly.

Rupert’s voice broke in. “Look, we’re only telling you because we

both care about you. We didn’t want you to hear it from someone

else. But, you know, life goes on. You must know that. It’s been two

years, after all.”

There was silence. I realized I did not want to listen to any more,

and started to move softly away from the door, grunting slightly with

the effort. But Rupert’s voice, when it came again, had grown in

volume so that I could still hear him.

“Come on, man. I know it must be terribly hard…all this. But if

you care for Lissa at all, you must want her to have a good life.”

“Say something, Will. Please.”

I could picture his face. I could see that look of his that managed

both to be unreadable and to convey a kind of distant contempt.

“Congratulations,” he said again. “I’m sure you’ll both be very

happy.”

Alicia started to protest then—something indistinct—but was

interrupted by Rupert. “Come on, Lissa. I think we should leave. Will,

it’s not like we came here expecting your blessing. It was a courtesy.

Lissa thought—well, we both just thought—you should know. Sorry,

old chap. I…I do hope things improve for you and I hope you do

want to stay in touch when things…you know…when things settle

down a bit.”

I heard footsteps, and stooped over the basket of logs, as if I had

only just come in. I heard them in the corridor, and then Alicia

appeared in front of me. Her eyes were red-rimmed, as if she were

about to cry.

“Can I use the bathroom?” she said, her voice thick and choked.

I slowly lifted a finger and pointed mutely in its direction.

She looked at me hard then, and I realized that what I felt

probably showed on my face. I have never been much good at

hiding my feelings.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, after a pause. “But I did

try. I really tried. For months. And he just pushed me away.” Her jaw

was rigid, her expression oddly furious. “He actually didn’t want me

here. He made that very clear.”

She seemed to be waiting for me to say something.

“It’s really none of my business,” I said, eventually.

We both stood facing each other.

“You know, you can only actually help someone who wants to be

helped,” she said.

And then she was gone.

I waited a few minutes, listening for the sound of their car

disappearing down the drive, and then I went into the kitchen. I stood

there and boiled the kettle even though I didn’t want a cup of tea. I

flicked through a magazine that I had already read. Finally, I went

back into the corridor and, with a grunt, picked up the log basket and

hauled it into the living room, bumping it slightly on the door before I

entered so that Will would

know I was coming.

“I was wondering if you wanted me to—” I began.

But there was nobody there.

The room was empty.

It was then that I heard the crash. I ran out into the corridor just in

time to hear another, followed by the sound of shattering glass. It

was coming from Will’s bedroom. Oh God, please don’t let him have

hurt himself. I panicked—Mrs. Traynor’s warning drilled through my

head. I had left him for more than fifteen minutes.

I ran down the corridor, slid to a halt in the doorway, and stood,

both hands gripping the door frame. Will was in the middle of the

room, upright in his chair, a walking stick balanced across the

armrests, so that it jutted eighteen inches to his left—a jousting stick.

There was not a single photograph left on the long shelves; the

expensive frames lay in pieces all over the floor, the carpet studded

with glittering shards of glass. His lap was dusted with bits of glass

and splintered wood frames. I took in the scene of destruction,

feeling my heart rate slowly subside as I grasped that he was unhurt.

Will was breathing hard, as if whatever he had done had cost him

some effort.

His chair turned, crunching slightly on the glass. His eyes met

mine. They were infinitely weary. They dared me to offer him

sympathy.

I looked down at his lap, and then at the floor around him. I could

just make out the picture of him and Alicia, her face now obscured by

a bent silver frame, among the other casualties.

I swallowed, staring at it, and slowly lifted my eyes to his. Those

few seconds were the longest I could remember.

“Can that thing get a puncture?” I said, finally, nodding at his

wheelchair. “Because I have no idea where I would put the jack.”

His eyes widened. Just for a moment, I thought I had really blown

it. But the faintest flicker of a smile passed across his face.

“Look, don’t move,” I said. “I’ll get the vacuum cleaner.”

I heard the walking stick drop to the floor. As I left the room, I

thought I might have heard him say sorry.

The Kings Head was always busy on a Thursday evening, and in the

corner of the rear bar area it was even busier. I sat squashed

between Patrick and a man whose name appeared to be the Rutter,

staring periodically at the horse brasses pinned to the oak beams

above my head and the photographs of the castle that punctuated

the joists, and tried to look even vaguely interested in the talk around

me, which seemed to revolve chiefly around body-fat ratios and carb

I had always thought the fortnightly meetings of the Hailsbury

Triathlon Terrors must be a publican’s worst nightmare. I was the

only one drinking alcohol, and my solitary packet of crisps sat

crumpled and empty on the table. Everyone else sipped at mineral

water, or checked the sweetener ratios on their Diet Cokes. When,

finally, they ordered food, there wouldn’t be a salad that was allowed

to brush a leaf against a full-fat dressing, or a piece of chicken that

still sported its skin. I often ordered chips, just so that I could watch

them all pretend they didn’t want one.

I couldn’t say I enjoyed the Triathlon Terrors’ gatherings, but what

with my increased hours and Patrick’s training timetable it was one

of the few times I could be guaranteed to see him. He sat beside me,

muscular thighs clad in shorts despite the extreme cold outside. It

was a badge of honor among the members of the club to wear as

few clothes as possible. The men were wiry, brandishing obscure

and expensive sports layers that boasted extra “wicking” properties,

or lighter-than-air body weights. They were called Scud or Trig, and

flexed bits of body at one another, displaying injuries or alleged

muscle growth. The girls wore no makeup, and had the ruddy

complexions of those who thought nothing of jogging for miles

through icy conditions. They looked at me with faint distaste—or

perhaps even incomprehension—no doubt weighing up my fat-to-

muscle ratio and finding it wanting.

“It was awful,” I told Patrick, wondering whether I could order

cheesecake without them all giving me the Death Stare. “His

girlfriend and his best friend.”

“You can’t blame her,” he said. “Are you really telling me you’d

stick around if I was paralyzed from the neck down?”

“Of course I would.”

“No, you wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t expect you to.”

“Well, I would.”

“But I wouldn’t want you there. I wouldn’t want someone staying

with me out of pity.”

“Who says it would be pity? You’d still be the same person

underneath.”

“No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t be anything like the same person.” He

wrinkled his nose. “I wouldn’t want to live. Relying on other people

for every little thing. Having strangers wipe your arse—Jesus. Think

of all the things you couldn’t do…” He shook his head. “No more

running, no more cycling.” He looked at me as if it had just occurred

to him. “No more sex.”

“Of course you could have sex. It’s just that the woman would

have to get on top.”

“We’d be doomed, then.”

“Funny.”

“Besides, if you’re paralyzed from the neck down I’m guessing

the…um…equipment doesn’t work as it should.”

I thought of Alicia. I did try, she said. I really tried. For months.

“I’m sure it does with some people. Anyway, there must be a way

around these things if you…think imaginatively.”

“Hah.” Patrick took a sip of his water. “You’ll have to ask him

tomorrow. Look, you said he’s horrible. Perhaps he was horrible

before his accident. Perhaps that’s the real reason she dumped him.

Have you thought of that?”

“I don’t know…” I thought of the photograph. “They looked like

they were really happy together.” Then again, what did a photograph

prove? I had a framed photograph at home where I was beaming at

Patrick like he had just pulled me from a burning building, yet in

reality I had just called him an “utter dick” and he had responded with

a hearty “Oh, piss off!”

Patrick had lost interest. “Hey, Jim…Jim, did you take a look at

that new lightweight bike? Any good?”

I let him change the subject, thinking about what Alicia had said. I

could well imagine Will pushing her away. But surely if you loved

someone it was your job to stick with him? To help him through the

depression? In sickness and in health, and all that?

I had started to feel a little guilty about the way we were

discussing my employer. Especially when I realized that he probably

endured it all the time. It was almost impossible not to speculate

about the more intimate aspects of his life. Patrick nudged me.

“I’m thinking about doing the big one.”

“The big what?”

“Triathlon. The Xtreme Viking. Sixty miles on a bike, thirty miles

on foot, and a nice long swim in subzero Nordic seas.”

The Viking was spoken about with reverence, those who had

competed bearing their injuries like veterans of some distant and

particularly brutal war. He was almost smacking his lips with

anticipation. I looked at my boyfriend and wondered if he was

actually an alien. I thought briefly that I had preferred him when he

worked in telesales and couldn’t pass a petrol station without

stocking up on Mars bars.

“You’re going to do it?”

“Why not? I’ve never been fitter.”

I thought of all that extra training—the endless conversations

about weight and distance, fitness and endurance. It was hard

enough getting Patrick’s attention these days at the best of times.

“You could do it with me,” he said, although we both knew he

didn’t believe it.

“I’ll leave you to it,” I said. “Sure. Go for it.”

And I ordered the cheesecake.

If I had thought the events of the previous day would create a thaw

back at Granta House, I was wrong.

I greeted Will with a broad smile and a cheery hello, and he didn’t

even bother to look around 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. 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 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 me out 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 maneuver 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 anymore, I’m staying.

Not because I particularly care about you, or like this stupid job, or

want to change your life one way or another, but because I need the

money. Okay? I really need the money.”

Will Traynor’s expression hadn’t outwardly changed much but I

thought I saw astonishment in there, as if he were unused to anyone

disagreeing with him.

Oh hell, I thought, as the reality of what I had just done began to

sink in. I’ve really blown it this time.

But Will just stared at me for a bit and, when I didn’t look away,

let out a small breath, as if about to say something unpleasant.

“Fair enough,” he said, and he turned the wheelchair around.

“Just put the photographs in the bottom drawer, will you? All of

them.”

And with a low hum, he was gone.

The thing about being catapulted into a whole new life—or at least,

shoved up so hard against someone else’s life that you might as well

have your face pressed against their window—is that it forces you to

rethink your idea of who you are. Or how you might seem to other

people.

To my parents, I had in four short weeks become just a few

degrees more interesting. I was now the conduit to a different world.

My mother, in particular, asked me daily questions about Granta

House and its domestic habits in the manner of a zoologist

forensically examining some strange new creature and its habitat.

“Does Mrs. Traynor use linen napkins at every meal?” she would

ask, or “Do you think they vacuum every day, like we do?” or “What

do they do with their potatoes?”

She sent me off in the mornings with strict instructions to find out

what brand of loo roll they used, or whether the sheets were a poly-

cotton mix. It was a source of great disappointment to her that most

of the time I couldn’t actually remember. My mother was secretly

convinced that posh people lived like pigs—ever since I had told her,

at age six, of a well-spoken school friend whose mother wouldn’t let

us play in their front room “because we’d disturb the dust.”

When I came home to report that, yes, the dog was definitely

allowed to eat in the kitchen, or that, no, the Traynors didn’t scrub

their front step every day as my mother did, she would purse her

lips, glance sideways at my father, and nod with quiet satisfaction, as

if I had just confirmed everything she’d suspected about the slovenly

ways of the upper classes.

Their dependence on my income, or perhaps the fact that they

knew I didn’t really like my job, meant that I also received a little

more respect within the house. This didn’t actually translate into

much—in my dad’s case, it meant that he had stopped calling me

“lardarse,” and, in my mother’s, that there was usually a mug of tea

waiting for me when I came home.

To Patrick, and to my sister, I was no different—still the butt of

jokes, the recipient of hugs or kisses or sulks. I felt no different. I still

looked the same, still dressed, according to Treena, like I had had a

wrestling match in a charity shop.

I had no idea what most of the inhabitants of Granta House

thought of me. Will was unreadable. To Nathan, I was, I suspected,

just the latest in a long line of hired caregivers. He was friendly

enough but a bit detached. I got the feeling he wasn’t convinced I

was going to be there for long. Mr. Traynor nodded at me politely

when we passed in the hall, occasionally asking me how the traffic

was, or whether I had settled in all right. I’m not sure he would have

recognized me if he’d been introduced to me in another setting.

But to Mrs. Traynor—oh Lord—to Mrs. Traynor I was apparently

the stupidest and most irresponsible person on the planet.

It had started with the photo frames. Nothing in that house

escaped Mrs. Traynor’s notice, and I should have known that the

smashing of the frames would qualify as a seismic event. She

quizzed me as to exactly how long I had left Will alone, what had

prompted it, how swiftly I had cleared up the mess. She didn’t

actually criticize me—she was too genteel even to raise her voice—

but the way she blinked slowly at my responses, her little “hmm-

hmm” as I spoke, told me everything I needed to know. It came as no

surprise when Nathan told me she was a magistrate.

She thought it might be a good idea if I didn’t leave Will for so

long next time, no matter how awkward the situation, hmm? She

thought perhaps the next time I dusted I could make sure things

weren’t so close to the edge that they might accidentally get knocked

to the floor, hmm? (She seemed to prefer to believe that it had been

an accident.) She made me feel like a first-class idiot, and

consequently I became a first-class idiot around her. She always

arrived

just when I had dropped something on the floor, or was

struggling with the cooker dial, or she would be standing in the

hallway looking mildly irritated as I stepped back in from collecting

logs outside, as if I had been gone much longer than I actually had.

Weirdly, her attitude got to me more than Will’s rudeness. A

couple of times I had even been tempted to ask her outright whether

there was something wrong. You said that you were hiring me for my

attitude rather than my professional skills, I wanted to say. Well, here

I am, being cheery every ruddy day. Being robust, just as you

wanted. So what’s your problem?

But Camilla Traynor was not the kind of woman you could have

said that to. And besides, I got the feeling nobody in that house ever

said anything direct to anyone else.

“Lily, our last girl, had rather a clever habit of using that pan for

two vegetables at once” meant You’re making too much mess.

“Perhaps you’d like a cup of tea, Will” actually meant I have no

idea what to say to you.

“I think I’ve got some paperwork that needs sorting out” meant

You’re being rude, and I’m going to leave the room.

All pronounced with that slightly pained expression, and the

slender fingers running up and down the chain with the crucifix. She

was so held in, so restrained. She made my own mother look like

Ozzy Osbourne. I smiled politely, pretended I hadn’t noticed, and did

the job I was paid to do.

Or, at least I tried.

“Why the hell are you trying to sneak carrots onto my fork?”

I glanced down at the plate. I had been watching the female

television presenter and wondering what my hair would look like

dyed the same color.

“Uh? I didn’t.”

“You did. You mashed them up and tried to hide them in the

gravy. I saw you.”

I blushed. He was right. I was sitting feeding Will, while both of us

vaguely watched the lunchtime news. The meal was roast beef with

mashed potato. His mother had told me to put three sorts of

vegetables on the plate, even though he had said quite clearly that

he didn’t want vegetables that day. I don’t think there was a meal

that I was instructed to prepare that wasn’t nutritionally balanced to

within an inch of its life.

“Why are you trying to sneak carrots into me?”

“I’m not.”

“So there are no carrots in that?”

I gazed at the tiny pieces of orange. “Well…okay…”

He was waiting, eyebrows raised.

“Um…I suppose I thought vegetables would be good for you?”

It was part deference to Mrs. Traynor, part force of habit. I was so

used to feeding Thomas, whose vegetables had to be mashed to a

paste and hidden under mounds of potato, or secreted in bits of

pasta. Every fragment we got past him felt like a little victory.

“Let me get this straight. You think a teaspoon of carrot would

improve my quality of life?”

It was pretty stupid when he put it like that. But I had learned it

was important not to look cowed by anything Will said or did.

“I take your point,” I said evenly. “I won’t do it again.”

And then, out of nowhere, Will Traynor laughed. It exploded out

of him in a gasp, as if it were entirely unexpected.

“For Christ’s sake.” He shook his head.

I stared at him.

“What the hell else have you been sneaking into my food? You’ll

be telling me to open the tunnel so that Mr. Train can deliver some

mushy Brussels sprouts to the red bloody station next.”

I considered this for a minute. “No,” I said, straight-faced. “I deal

only with Mr. Fork. Mr. Fork does not look like a train.”

Thomas had told me so, very firmly, some months previously.

“Did my mother put you up to this?”

“No. Look, Will, I’m sorry. I just…wasn’t thinking.”

“Like that’s unusual.”

“All right, all right. I’ll take the bloody carrots off, if they really

upset you so much.”

“It’s not the bloody carrots that upset me. It’s having them

sneaked into my food by a madwoman who addresses the cutlery as

Mr. and Mrs. Fork.”

“It was a joke. Look, let me take the carrots and—”

He turned away from me. “I don’t want anything else. Just do me

a cup of tea.” He called out after me as I left the room, “And don’t try

and sneak a bloody zucchini into it.”

Nathan walked in as I was finishing the dishes. “He’s in a good

mood,” he said, as I handed him a mug.

“Is he?” I was eating my sandwiches in the kitchen. It was bitterly

cold outside, and somehow the house hadn’t felt quite as unfriendly

lately.

“He says you’re trying to poison him. But he said it—you know—

in a good way.”

I felt weirdly pleased by this information.

“Yes…well…,” I said, trying to hide it. “Give me time.”

“He’s talking a bit more too. We’ve had weeks where he would

hardly say a thing, but he’s definitely up for a bit of a chat the last

few days.”

I thought of Will telling me if I didn’t stop bloody whistling he’d be

forced to run me over. “I think your definition of chatty and mine are a

bit different.”

“Well, we had a bit of a chat about the cricket. And I gotta tell

you”—Nathan dropped his voice—“Mrs. T asked me a week or so

back if I thought you were doing okay. I said I thought you were very

professional, but I knew that wasn’t what she meant. Then yesterday

she came in and told me she’d heard you guys laughing.”

I thought back to the previous evening. “He was laughing at me,”

I said. Will had found it hilarious that I didn’t know what pesto was. I

had told him supper was “the pasta in the green gravy.”

“Ah, she doesn’t care about that. It’s just been a long time since

he laughed at anything.”

It was true. Will and I seemed to have found an easier way of

being around each other. It involved mainly him being rude to me,

and me occasionally being rude back. He told me I did something

badly, and I told him if it really mattered to him then he could ask me

nicely. He swore at me, or called me a pain in the backside, and I

told him he should try being without this particular pain in the

backside and see how far it got him. It was a bit forced but it seemed

to work for both of us. Sometimes it even seemed like a relief to him

that there was someone prepared to be rude to him, to contradict

him or tell him he was being horrible. I got the feeling that everyone

had tiptoed around him since his accident—apart from perhaps

Nathan, who Will seemed to treat with an automatic respect, and

who was probably impervious to any of his sharper comments

anyway. Nathan was like an armored vehicle in human form.

“You just make sure you’re the butt of more of his jokes, okay?”

I put my mug in the sink. “I don’t think that’s going to be a

problem.”

The other big change, apart from atmospheric conditions inside

the house, was that Will didn’t ask me to leave him alone quite as

often, and a couple of afternoons had even asked me if I wanted to

stay and watch a film with him. I hadn’t minded too much when it

was The Terminator—even though I have seen all the Terminator

films—but when he showed me the French film with subtitles, I took

a quick look at the cover and said I thought I’d probably give it a

miss.

“Why?”

I shrugged. “I don’t like films with subtitles.”

“That’s like saying you don’t like films with actors in them. Don’t

be ridiculous. What is it you don’t like? The fact that you’re required

to read something as well as watch something?”

“I just don’t really like foreign films.”

“Everything after Local bloody Hero has been a foreign film.

D’you think Hollywood is a suburb of Birmingham?”

“Funny.”

He couldn’t believe it when I admitted I’d never actually watched

a film with subtitles. But my parents tended to stake ownership of the

remote control in the evenings, and Patrick would be about as likely

to watch a foreign film as he would be to suggest we take night

classes in crochet. The multiplex in our nearest town showed only

the latest shoot-’em-ups or romantic comedies and was so infested

with catcalling kids in hoodies that most people around the town

rarely bothered.

“You have to watch this film, Louisa. In fact, I order you to watch

this film.” Will moved his chair back, and nodded toward the

armchair. “There. You sit there. Don’t move until

it’s over. Never

watched a foreign film. For Christ’s sake,” he muttered.

It was an old film, about a hunchback who inherits a house in the

French countryside, and Will said it was based on a famous book,

but I can’t say I’d ever heard of it. I spent the first twenty minutes

feeling a bit fidgety, irritated by the subtitles and wondering if Will

was going to get grouchy if I told him I needed the loo.

And then something happened. I stopped thinking about how

hard it was listening and reading at the same time, forgot Will’s pill

timetable, and whether Mrs. Traynor would think I was slacking, and

I started to get anxious about the poor man and his family, who were

being tricked by unscrupulous neighbors. By the time Hunchback

Man died, I was sobbing silently, snot running into my sleeve.

“So,” Will said, appearing at my side. He glanced at me slyly.

“You didn’t enjoy that at all.”

I looked up and found to my surprise that it was dark outside.

“You’re going to gloat now, aren’t you?” I muttered, reaching for the

box of tissues.

“A bit. I’m just amazed that you can have reached the ripe old

age of—what was it?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Twenty-six, and never have watched a film with subtitles.” He

watched me mop my eyes.

I glanced down at the tissue and realized I had no mascara left. “I

hadn’t realized it was compulsory,” I grumbled.

“Okay. So what do you do with yourself, Louisa Clark, if you don’t

watch films?”

I balled my tissue in my fist. “You want to know what I do when

I’m not here?”

“You were the one who wanted us to get to know each other. So

come on, tell me about yourself.”

He had this way of talking where you could never quite be sure

that he wasn’t mocking you. I was waiting for the payoff. “Why?” I

said. “Why do you want to know all of a sudden?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. It’s hardly a state secret, your social life, is

it?” He had begun to look irritated.

“I don’t know…,” I said. “I go for a drink at the pub. I watch a bit of

telly. I go and watch my boyfriend when he does his running. Nothing

unusual.”

“You watch your boyfriend running.”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t run yourself.”

“No. I’m not really”—I glanced down at my chest—“built for it.”

That made him smile.

“And what else?”

“What do you mean, what else?”

“Hobbies? Traveling? Places you like to go?”

He was beginning to sound like my old careers teacher.

I tried to think. “I don’t really have any hobbies. I read a bit. I like

clothes.”

“Handy,” he said, drily.

“You asked. I’m not really a hobby person.” My voice had become

strangely defensive. “I don’t do much, okay? I work and then I go

home.”

“Where do you live?”

“On the other side of the castle. Renfrew Road.”

He looked blank. Of course he did. There was little human traffic

between the two sides of the castle. “It’s off the dual carriageway.

Near the McDonald’s.”

He nodded, although I wasn’t sure he really knew where I was

talking about.

“Holidays?”

“I’ve been to Spain, with Patrick. My boyfriend,” I added. “When I

was a kid we only really went to Dorset. Or Tenby. My aunt lives in

Tenby.”

“And what do you want?”

“What do I want what?”

“From your life?”

I blinked. “That’s a bit deep, isn’t it?”

“Only generally. I’m not asking you to psychoanalyze yourself. I’m

just asking, what do you want? Get married? Pop out some ankle

biters? Dream career? Travel the world?”

There was a long pause.

I think I knew my answer would disappoint him even before I said

the words aloud. “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.”

On Friday we went to the hospital. I’m glad I hadn’t known about

Will’s appointment before I arrived that morning, as I would have lain

awake all night fretting about having to drive him there. I can drive,

yes. But I say I can drive in the same way that I say I can speak

French. Yes, I took the relevant exam and passed. But I haven’t

used that particular skill more than once a year since I did so. The

thought of loading Will and his chair into the adapted minivan and

carting him safely to and from the next town filled me with utter

terror.

For weeks I had wished that my working day involved some

escape from that house. Now I would have done anything just to stay

indoors. I located his hospital card among the folders of stuff to do

with his health—great fat binders divided into “transport,”

“insurance,” “living with disability,” and “appointments.” I grabbed the

card and checked that it had today’s date. A little bit of me was

hoping that Will had been wrong.

“Is your mother coming?”

“No. She doesn’t come to my appointments.”

I couldn’t hide my surprise. I had thought she would want to

oversee every aspect of his treatment.

“She used to,” Will said. “Now we have an agreement.”

“Is Nathan coming?”

I was kneeling in front of him. I had been so nervous that I had

dropped some of his lunch down his lap and was now trying in vain

to mop it up, so that a good patch of his trousers was sopping wet.

Will hadn’t said anything, except to tell me to please stop

apologizing, but it hadn’t helped my general sense of jitteriness.

“Why?”

“No reason.” I didn’t want him to know how fearful I felt. I had

spent much of that morning—time I usually spent cleaning—reading

and rereading the instruction manual for the chairlift but I was still

dreading the moment when I was solely responsible for lifting him

two feet into the air.

“Come on, Clark. What’s the problem?”

“Okay. I just…I just thought it would be easier the first time if

there was someone else there who knew the ropes.”

“As opposed to me,” he said.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Because I can’t possibly be expected to know anything about my

own care?”

“Do you operate the chairlift?” I said, baldly. “You can tell me

exactly what to do, can you?”

He watched me, his gaze level. If he had been spoiling for a fight,

he appeared to change his mind. “Fair point. Yes, he’s coming. He’s

a useful extra pair of hands. Plus I thought you’d work yourself into

less of a state if you had him there.”

“I’m not in a state,” I protested.

“Evidently.” He glanced down at his lap, which I was still mopping

with a cloth. I had got the pasta sauce off, but he was soaked. “So,

am I going as an incontinent?”

“I’m not finished.” I plugged in the hair dryer and directed the

nozzle toward his crotch.

As the hot air blasted onto his trousers he raised his eyebrows.

“Yes, well,” I said. “It’s not exactly what I expected to be doing on

a Friday afternoon either.”

“You really are tense, aren’t you?”

I could feel him studying me.

“Oh, lighten up, Clark. I’m the one having scalding hot air directed

at my genitals.”

I didn’t respond. I heard his voice over the roar of the hair dryer.

“Come on, what’s the worst that could happen—I end up in a

wheelchair?”

It may sound stupid, but I couldn’t help but laugh. It was the

closest Will had come to actually trying to make me feel better.

The car looked like a normal people carrier from the outside, but

when the rear passenger door was unlocked a ramp descended from

the side and lowered to the ground. With Nathan looking on, I guided

Will’s outside chair (he had a separate one for traveling) squarely

onto the ramp, checked the electrical lock-down brake, and

programmed it to slowly lift him up into the car. Nathan slid into the

other passenger seat, belted him, and secured the wheels. Trying to

stop my hands from trembling, I got into the driver’s seat, released

the hand brake, and drove slowly down the drive toward the hospital.

Away from home, Will appeared to shrink a little. It was chilly

outside, and Nathan and I had bundled him up into his scarf and

thick coat, but still he grew quieter, his jaw set, somehow diminished

by the greater space of his surroundings. Every time I looked into my

rearview mirror (which was often—I was terrified even with Nathan

there that somehow the chair would break loose from its moorings)

he was gazing out the window, his expression impenetrable. Even

when I stalled or braked too hard, which I did several times, he just

winced a little and waited

while I sorted myself out.

By the time we reached the hospital I had actually broken out in a

fine sweat. I drove around the hospital car park three times, too

afraid to reverse into any but the largest of spaces, until I could

sense that the two men were beginning to lose patience. Then,

finally, I lowered the ramp and Nathan helped roll Will’s chair out

onto the tarmac.

“Good job,” Nathan said, clapping me on the back as he let

himself out, but I found it hard to believe it had been.

There are things you don’t notice until you accompany someone

with a wheelchair. One is how rubbish most pavements are,

pockmarked with badly patched holes, or just plain uneven. Walking

slowly next to Will as he wheeled himself along, I saw how every

uneven slab caused him to jolt painfully, or how often he had to steer

carefully around some potential obstacle. Nathan pretended not to

notice, but I saw him watching too. Will just looked grim-faced and

resolute.

The other thing is how inconsiderate most drivers are. They park

up against the sloped cutouts on the sidewalks, or so close together

that there is no way for a wheelchair to actually cross the road. I was

shocked, and a couple of times even tempted to leave some rude

note tucked into a windscreen wiper, but Nathan and Will seemed

used to it. Nathan pointed out a suitable crossing place and, each of

us flanking Will, we finally crossed.

Will had not said a single word since leaving the house.

The hospital itself was a gleaming low-rise building, the

immaculate reception area more like that of some modernistic hotel,

perhaps testament to private insurance. I held back as Will told the

receptionist his name, and then followed him and Nathan down a

long corridor. Nathan was carrying a huge backpack that contained

anything that Will might be likely to need during his short visit, from

beakers to spare clothes. He had packed it in front of me that

morning, detailing every possible eventuality. “I guess it’s a good

thing we don’t have to do this too often,” he had said, catching my

appalled expression.

I didn’t follow Will into the appointment. Nathan and I sat on the

comfortable chairs outside the consultant’s room. There was no

hospital smell, and there were fresh flowers in a vase on the

windowsill. Not just any old flowers, either. Huge exotic things that I

didn’t know the names of, artfully arranged in minimalist clumps.

“What are they doing in there?” I said after we had been there

half an hour.

Nathan looked up from his book. “It’s just his six-month checkup.”

“What, to see if he’s getting any better?”

Nathan put his book down. “He’s not getting any better. It’s a

spinal cord injury.”

“But you do physio and stuff with him.”

“That’s to try and keep his physical condition up—to stop him

atrophying and his bones demineralizing, his legs pooling, that kind

of thing.”

When he spoke again, his voice was gentle, as if he thought he

might disappoint me. “He’s not going to walk again, Louisa. That only

happens in Hollywood movies. All we’re doing is trying to keep him

out of pain, and keep up whatever range of movement he has.”

“Does he do this stuff for you? The physio stuff? He doesn’t seem

to want to do anything that I suggest.”

Nathan wrinkled his nose. “He does it, but I don’t think his heart’s

in it. When I first came, he was determined. He’d come pretty far in

rehab, but after a year with no improvement I think he found it tough

to keep believing it was worth it.”

“Do you think he should keep trying?”

Nathan stared at the floor. “Honestly? He’s a C5-6 quadriplegic.

That means nothing works below about here…” He placed a hand on

the upper part of his chest. “They haven’t worked out how to fix a

spinal cord yet.”

I stared at the door, thinking about Will’s face as we drove along

in the winter sunshine, the beaming face of the man on the skiing

holiday. “There are all sorts of medical advances taking place,

though, right? I mean…somewhere like this…they must be working

on stuff all the time.”

“It’s a pretty good hospital,” he said evenly.

“Where there’s life, and all that?”

Nathan looked at me, then back at his book. “Sure,” he said.

I went to get a coffee at a quarter to three, on Nathan’s say-so. He

said these appointments could go on for some time, and that he

would hold the fort until I got back. I dawdled a little in the reception

area, flicking through the magazines in the newsagent’s, lingering

over chocolate bars.

Perhaps predictably, I got lost trying to find my way back to the

corridor and had to ask several nurses where I should go, two of

whom didn’t even know. When I got there, the coffee cooling in my

hand, the corridor was empty. As I drew closer, I could see that the

consultant’s door was ajar. I hesitated outside, but I could hear Mrs.

Traynor’s voice in my ears all the time now, criticizing me for leaving

him. I had done it again.

“So we’ll see you in three months’ time, Mr. Traynor,” a voice was

saying. “I’ve adjusted those antispasm meds and I’ll make sure

someone calls you with the results of the tests. Probably Monday.”

I heard Will’s voice. “Can I get these from the pharmacy

downstairs?”

“Yes. Here. They should be able to give you some more of those

too.”

A woman’s voice. “Shall I take that folder?”

I realized they must have been about to leave. I knocked, and

someone called for me to come in. Two sets of eyes swiveled toward

me.

“I’m sorry,” said the consultant, rising from his chair. “I thought

you were the physio.”

“I’m Will’s…helper,” I said, hanging on to the door. Will was

braced forward in his chair as Nathan pulled down his shirt. “Sorry—I

thought you were done.”

“Just give us a minute, will you, Louisa?” Will’s voice cut into the

room.

Muttering my apologies, I backed out, my face burning.

It wasn’t the sight of Will’s uncovered body that had shocked me,

slim and scarred as it was. It wasn’t the vaguely irritated look of the

consultant, the same sort of look that Mrs. Traynor gave me day after

day—a look that made me realize I was still the same blundering

idiot, even if I did earn a higher hourly rate.

No, it was the livid red lines scoring Will’s wrists, the long, jagged

scars that couldn’t be disguised, no matter how swiftly Nathan pulled

down Will’s sleeves.

The snow came so suddenly that I left home under a bright blue sky

and not half an hour later I was headed past a castle that looked like

a cake decoration, surrounded by a layer of thick white icing.

I trudged up the drive, my footsteps muffled and my toes already

numb, shivering under my too-thin Chinese silk coat. A whirl of thick

white flakes emerged from an iron-gray infinity, almost obscuring

Granta House, blotting out sound, and slowing the world to an

unnatural pace. Beyond the neatly trimmed hedge, cars drove past

with a newfound caution, pedestrians slipped and squealed on the

sidewalks. I pulled my scarf up over my nose and wished I had worn

something more suitable than ballet pumps and a velvet minidress.

To my surprise, it wasn’t Nathan who opened the door but Will’s

father.

“He’s in bed,” he said, glancing up at the sky from the doorway.

“He’s not too good. I was just wondering whether to call the doctor.”

“Where’s Nathan?”

“Morning off. Of course, it would be today. Bloody agency nurse

came and went in six seconds flat. If this snow keeps on I’m not sure

what we’ll do later.” He shrugged, as if these things couldn’t be

helped, and disappeared back down the corridor, apparently relieved

that he no longer had to be responsible. “You know what he needs,

yes?” he called over his shoulder.

I took off my coat and shoes and, as I knew Mrs. Traynor was in

court (she marked her dates on a diary in Will’s kitchen), put my wet

socks over a radiator to dry. A pair of Will’s were in the clean-

washing basket, so I put them on. They looked comically large on

me but it was heaven to have warm, dry feet. Will didn’t respond

when I called out, so after a while I made him a drink, knocked

quietly, and poked my head around the

door. In the dim light I could

just make out the shape under the duvet. He was fast asleep.

I took a step backward, closed the door behind me, and began

working my way through the morning’s tasks.

My mother seemed to glean an almost physical satisfaction from

a well-ordered house. I had been vacuuming and cleaning daily for a

month now, and I still couldn’t see the attraction. I suspected there

would never be a point in my life when I wouldn’t prefer somebody

else to do it.

But on a day like today, when Will was confined to bed, and the

world seemed to have stilled outside, I could also see there was a

kind of meditative pleasure in working my way from one end of the

annex to the other. While I dusted and polished, I took the radio from

room to room with me, keeping the volume low so that I didn’t disturb

Will. Periodically I poked my head around the door, just to see that

he was breathing, and it was only when it got to one o’clock and he

still hadn’t woken up that I started to feel a little anxious.

I filled the log basket, noting that several inches of snow had now

settled. I made Will a fresh drink, and then knocked. When I knocked

again, I did so loudly.

“Yes?” His voice was hoarse, as if I had woken him.

“It’s me.” When he didn’t respond, I said, “Louisa. Am I okay to

come in?”

“I’m hardly doing the Dance of the Seven Veils.”

The room was shadowed, the curtains still drawn. I walked in,

letting my eyes adjust to the light. Will was on one side, one arm

bent in front of him as if to prop himself up, as he had been before

when I looked in. Sometimes it was easy to forget he would not be

able to turn over by himself. His hair stuck up on one side, and a

duvet was tucked neatly around him. The smell of warm, unwashed

male filled the room—not unpleasant, but still a little startling as part

of a working day.

“What can I do? Do you want your drink?”

“I need to change position.”

I put the drink down on a chest of drawers, and walked over to

the bed. “What…what do you want me to do?”

He swallowed carefully, as if it were painful. “Lift and turn me,

then raise the back of the bed. Here…” He nodded for me to come

closer. “Put your arms under mine, link your hands behind my back,

and then pull back. Keep your backside on the bed and that way you

shouldn’t strain your lower back.”

I couldn’t pretend this wasn’t a bit weird. I reached around him,

the scent of him filling my nostrils, his skin warm against mine. I

could not have been in any closer unless I had begun nibbling on his

ear. The thought made me mildly hysterical, and I struggled to keep

myself together.

“What?”

“Nothing.” I took a breath, linked my hands, and adjusted my

position until I felt I had him securely. He was broader than I had

expected, somehow heavier. And then, on a count of three, I pulled

back.

“Jesus,” he exclaimed, into my shoulder.

“What?” I nearly dropped him.

“Your hands are bloody freezing.”

“Yes. Well, if you bothered to get out of bed, you’d know that it’s

actually snowing outside.”

I was half joking, but now I realized his skin was hot under his T-

shirt—an intense heat that seemed to come from deep within him.

He groaned slightly as I adjusted him against the pillow, and I tried to

make my movements as slow and gentle as possible. He pointed out

the remote control device that would bring his head and shoulders

up. “Not too much, though,” he murmured. “A bit dizzy.”

I turned on the bedside light, ignoring his vague protest, so that I

could see his face. “Will—are you okay?” I had to say it twice before

he answered me.

“Not my best day.”

“Do you need painkillers?”

“Yes…strong ones.”

“Maybe some paracetamol?”

He lay back against the cool pillow with a sigh.

I gave him the beaker, watched him swallow.

“Thank you,” he said afterward, and I felt suddenly uneasy.

Will never thanked me for anything.

He closed his eyes, and for a while I just stood in the doorway

and watched him, his chest rising and falling under his T-shirt, his

mouth slightly open. His breathing was shallow, and perhaps a little

more labored than on other days. But I had never seen him out of his

chair, and I wasn’t sure whether it was something to do with the

pressure of lying down.

“Go,” he muttered.

I left.

Mum sent me a text message at 12:30 P.M., telling me that my father

couldn’t get the car down the road. “Don’t set out for home without

ringing us first,” she instructed. I wasn’t sure what she thought she

was going to do—send Dad out with a sledge and a St. Bernard?

I listened to the local news on the radio—the motorway snarl-ups,

train stoppages, and temporary school closures that the unexpected

blizzard had brought with it. I went back into Will’s room and looked

at him again. I didn’t like his color. He was pale, high points of

something bright on each cheek.

“Will?” I said softly.

He didn’t stir.

“Will?”

I began to feel the faint stirrings of panic. I said his name twice

more, loudly. There was no response. Finally, I leaned over him.

There was no obvious movement in his face, nothing I could see in

his chest. His breath—I should be able to feel his breath. I put my

face down close to his, trying to detect an out breath. When I

couldn’t, I reached out and touched his face gently.

He flinched, his eyes snapping open, just inches from my own.

“I’m sorry,” I said, jumping back.

He blinked, glancing around the room, as if he had been

somewhere far from home.

“It’s Lou,” I said, when I wasn’t sure if he had recognized me.

His expression was one of mild exasperation. “I know.”

“Do you want some soup?”

“No. Thank you.” He closed his eyes.

“More painkillers?”

There was a faint sheen of sweat on his cheekbone. His duvet

felt vaguely hot and sweaty. It made me nervous.

“Is there something I should be doing? I mean, if Nathan can’t get

here?”

“No…I’m fine,” he murmured, and closed his eyes again.

I went through the folder, trying to work out if I was missing

something. I opened the medical cabinet, the boxes of rubber

gloves, and gauze dressings, and realized I had no idea at all what I

should do with any of it. I rang the intercom to speak to Will’s father,

but the ringing sound disappeared into an empty house. I could hear

it echoing beyond the annex door.

I was about to ring Mrs. Traynor when the back door opened, and

Nathan stepped in, wrapped in layers of bulky clothing, a woolen

scarf and hat almost obscuring his head. He brought with him a

whoosh of cold air and a light flurry of snow.

It felt like the house had suddenly woken from a dreamlike state.

“Oh, thank God you’re here,” I said. “He’s not well. He’s been

asleep most of the morning and he’s hardly drunk anything. I didn’t

know what to do.”

Nathan shrugged off his coat. “Had to walk all the way here. The

buses have stopped running.”

I set about making him some tea as he went to check on Will.

He reappeared before the kettle had even finished boiling. “He’s

burning up,” he said. “How long has he been like this?”

“All morning. I did think he was hot, but he said he just wanted to

sleep.”

“Jesus. All morning? Didn’t you know he can’t regulate his own

temperature?” He pushed past me and began rummaging around in

the medicine cabinet. “Antibiotics. The strong ones.” He held up a jar

and emptied one into the pestle and mortar, grinding it furiously.

I hovered behind him. “I gave him a paracetamol.”

“Might as well have given him an M&M.”

“I didn’t know. Nobody said. I’ve been wrapping him up.”

“It’s in the bloody folder. Look, Will doesn’t sweat like we do. In

fact he doesn’t sweat at all from the point of his injury downward. It

means if he gets a slight chill his temperature gauge goes haywire.

Go find the fan. We’ll move that in there until he cools down. And a

damp towel, to put around the back of his neck. We won’t be able to

get him to a doctor until the snow stops. Bloody agency nurse. They

should have picked this up in the morning.”

Nathan was crosser than I’d ever seen him. He was no longer

really even talking to me.

I ran for the fan.

took almost forty minutes for Will’s temperature to return to an

acceptable level. While we waited for the extra-strong fever

medication to take effect, I placed a towel over his forehead and

another around his neck, as Nathan instructed. We stripped him

down, covered his chest with a fine cotton sheet, and set the fan to

play over it. Without sleeves, the scars on his arms were clearly

exposed. We all pretended I couldn’t see them.

Will endured all this attention in near silence, answering Nathan’s

questions with a yes or no, so indistinct sometimes that I wasn’t sure

if he knew what he was saying. I realized, now that I could see him in

the light, that he looked really, properly ill, and I felt terrible for having

failed to grasp it. I said I was sorry until Nathan told me it had

become irritating.

“Right,” he said. “You need to watch what I’m doing. It’s possible

you may need to do this alone later.”

I didn’t feel I could protest. But I found it hard not to feel

squeamish as Nathan peeled down the waist of Will’s pajama

bottoms, revealing a pale strip of bare stomach, and carefully

removed the gauze dressing around the little tube in his abdomen,

cleaning it gently and replacing the dressing. He showed me how to

change the bag on the bed, explained why it must always be lower

than Will’s body, and I was surprised at how matter-of-fact I was

about walking out of the room with the pouch of warm fluid. I was

glad that Will wasn’t really watching me—not just because he would

have made some sharp comment, but because I felt that me

witnessing some part of this intimate routine would in some way

have embarrassed him too.

“And that’s it,” Nathan said. Finally, an hour later, Will lay dozing,

lying on fresh cotton sheets and looking, if not exactly well, then not

scarily ill.

“Let him sleep. But wake him after a couple of hours and make

sure you get the best part of a beaker of fluids into him. More fever

meds at five, okay? His temperature will probably shoot up again in

the last hour, but nothing more before five.”

I scribbled everything down on a notepad. I was afraid of getting

anything wrong.

“Now, you’re going to need to repeat what we just did this

evening. You’re okay with that?” Nathan wrapped himself up like an

Inuit and headed out into the snow. “Just read the folder. And don’t

panic. Any problems, you just call me. I’ll talk you through it all. I’ll

get back here again if I really have to.”

I stayed in Will’s room after Nathan left. I was too afraid not to. In the

corner was an old leather armchair with a reading light, perhaps

dating from Will’s previous life, and I curled up on it with a book of

short stories that I had pulled from the bookcase.

It was strangely peaceful in that room. Through the crack in the

curtains I could see the outside world, blanketed in white, still and

beautiful. Inside it was warm and silent, only the odd tick and hiss of

the central heating to interrupt my thoughts. I read, and occasionally

I glanced up and checked Will sleeping peacefully, and I realized that

there had never been a point in my life before when I had just sat in

silence and done nothing. You don’t grow up used to silence in a

house like mine, with its never-ending vacuuming, television blaring,

and shrieking. During the rare moments that the television was off,

Dad would put on his old Elvis records and play them at full blast. A

café too is a constant buzz of noise and clatter.

Here, I could hear my thoughts. I could almost hear my

heartbeat. I realized, to my surprise, that I quite liked it.

At five, my mobile phone signaled a text message. Will stirred,

and I leaped out of the chair, anxious to get it before it disturbed him.

No trains. Is there any chance you could stay over tonight?

Nathan cannot do it. Camilla Traynor.

I didn’t really think about it before I typed back.

No problem.

I rang my parents and told them that I would stay over. My

mother sounded relieved. When I told her I was going to get paid for

sleeping over, she sounded overjoyed.

“Did you hear that, Bernard?” she said, her hand half over the

phone. “They’re paying her to sleep now.”

I could hear my father’s exclamation. “Praise the Lord. She’s

found her dream career.”

I sent a text message to Patrick, telling him that I had been asked

to stay at work and I would ring him later. The message came back

within seconds.

Going cross-country snow running tonight.

Good practice for Norway! X P.

I wondered how it was possible for someone to get so excited at

the thought of jogging through subzero temperatures in a vest and

pants.

Will slept. I cooked myself some food, and defrosted some soup

in case he wanted some later. I got the log fire going in case he felt

well enough to go into the living room. I read another of the short

stories and wondered how long it had been since I had bought

myself a book. I had loved reading as a child, but I couldn’t

remember reading anything except magazines since. Treena was

the reader. It was almost as if by picking up a book I felt like I was

invading her patch. I thought about her and Thomas disappearing to

the university and realized I still didn’t know whether it made me feel

happy or sad—or something a bit complicated in between.

Nathan rang at seven. He seemed relieved that I was staying

over.

“I couldn’t reach Mr. Traynor,” I told him. “I even rang their

landline number, but it went straight through to answerphone.”

“Yeah. Well. He’ll be gone.”

“Gone?”

I felt a sudden instinctive panic at the idea that it would be just

Will and me in the house all night. I was afraid of getting something

fundamental wrong again, of jeopardizing Will’s health. “Should I call

Mrs. Traynor, then?”

There was a short silence on the other end of the phone. “No.

Best not.”

“But—”

“Look, Lou, he often…he often goes somewhere else when Mrs.

T stays over in town.”

It took me a minute or two to grasp what he was saying.

“Oh.”

“It’s just good that you’re there, that’s all. If you’re sure Will’s

looking better, I’ll be back first thing in the morning.”

There are normal hours, and then there are invalid hours, when time

stalls and slips, when life—real life—seems to exist at one remove. I

watched some television, ate, and cleared up the kitchen, drifting

around the annex in silence. Finally, I let myself back into Will’s

room.

He stirred as I closed the door, half lifting his head. “What time is

it, Clark?” His voice was slightly muffled by the pillow.

“Quarter past eight.”

He let his head drop, and digested this. “Can I have a drink?”

There was no sharpness to him now, no edge. It was as if being

ill had finally made him vulnerable. I gave him a drink and turned on

the bedside light. I perched on the side of his bed and felt his

forehead, as my mother might have done when I was a child. He

was still a little warm, but nothing like he had been.

“Cool hands.”

“You complained about them earlier.”

“Did I?” He sounded genuinely surprised.

“Would you like some soup?”

“No.”

“Are you comfortable?”

I never knew how much discomfort he was in, but I suspected it

was more than he let on.

“The other side would be good. Just roll me. I don’t need to sit

up.”

I climbed across the bed and moved him over, as gently as I

could. He no longer radiated a sinister heat, just the ordinary warmth

of a body that had spent time under a duvet.

“Can I do anything else?”

“Shouldn’t you be heading home?”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m staying over.”

Outside, the last of the light had long been extinguished. The

snow was still falling. Where it caught the porch glow through the

window it was bathed in a pale-gold, melancholy light. We sat there

in peaceful silence, watching its hypnotic descent.

“Can I ask you something?” I said, finally. I could see his hands

on top of the sheet. It seemed so strange that they should look so

ordinary, so strong, and yet be so useless.

“I suspect you’re going to.”

“What happened?” I kept wondering about the marks on his

wrists. It was the one question I couldn’t ask directly.

which came in from New York at 3:42 A.M. Some legal problem. He

takes the lift down to the underground car park, trying to update

himself with the night’s events.

“Morning, Mr. Traynor.”

The security guard steps out of his cubicle. It’s weatherproof,

even though down here there is no weather to be protected from.

Will sometimes wonders what he does down here in the small hours,

staring at the closed-circuit television and the glossy bumpers of

£60,000 cars that never get dirty.

He shoulders his way into his leather jacket. “What’s it like out

there, Mick?”

“Terrible. Raining cats and dogs.”

Will stops. “Really? Not weather for the bike?”

Mick shakes his head. “No, sir. Not unless you’ve got an

inflatable attachment. Or a death wish.”

Will stares at his bike, then peels himself out of his leathers. No

matter what Lissa thinks, he is not a man who believes in taking

unnecessary risks. He unlocks the top box of his bike and places the

leathers inside, locking it and throwing the keys at Mick, who catches

them neatly with one hand. “Stick those through my door, will you?”

“No problem. You want me to call a taxi for you?”

“No. No point both of us getting wet.”

Mick presses the button to open the automatic barrier and Will

steps out, lifting a hand in thanks. The early morning is dark and

thunderous around him, the Central London traffic already dense

and slow despite the fact that it is barely half past seven. He pulls his

collar up around his neck and strides down the street toward the

junction, from where he is most likely to hail a taxi. The roads are

slick with water, the gray light shining on the mirrored pavement.

He curses inwardly as he spies the other suited people standing

on the edge of the curb. Since when did the whole of London begin

getting up so early? Everyone has had the same idea.

He is wondering where best to position himself when his phone

rings. It is Rupert.

“I’m on my way in. Just trying to get a cab.” He catches sight of a

taxi with an orange light approaching on the other side of the road,

and begins to stride toward it, hoping nobody else has seen. A bus

roars past, followed by a lorry whose brakes squeal, deafening him

to Rupert’s words. “Can’t hear you, Rupe,” he yells against the noise

of the traffic. “You’ll have to say that again.” Briefly marooned on the

island, the traffic flowing past him like a current, he can see the

orange light glowing, holds up his free hand, hoping that the driver

can see him through the heavy rain.

“You need to call Jeff in New York. He’s still up, waiting for you.

We were trying to get you last night.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Legal hitch. Two clauses they’re stalling on under section…

signature…papers…” His voice is drowned out by a passing car, its

tires hissing in the wet.

“I didn’t catch that.”

The taxi has seen him. It is slowing, sending a fine spray of water

as it slows on the opposite side of the road. He spies the man farther

along whose brief sprint slows in disappointment as he sees Will will

get there before him. He feels a sneaking sense of triumph. “Look,

get Cally to have the paperwork on my desk,” he yells. “I’ll be there

in ten minutes.”

He glances both ways, then ducks his head as he runs the last

few steps across the road toward the cab, the word “Blackfriars”

already on his lips. The rain is seeping down the gap between his

collar and his shirt. He will be soaked by the time he reaches the

office, even walking this short distance. He may have to send his

secretary out for another shirt.

“And we need to get this due diligence thing worked out before

Martin gets in—”

He glances up at the screeching sound, the rude blare of a horn.

He sees the side of the glossy black taxi in front of him, the driver

already winding down his window, and at the edge of his field of

vision something he can’t quite make out, something coming toward

him at an impossible speed.

He turns toward it, and in that split second he realizes that he is

in its path, that there is no way he is going to be able to get out of its

way. His hand opens in surprise, letting the BlackBerry fall to the

ground. He hears a shout, which may be his own. The last thing he

sees is a leather glove, a face under a helmet, the shock in the

man’s eyes mirroring his own. There is an explosion as everything

fragments.

And then there is nothing.

2009

There are 158 footsteps between the bus stop and home, but it can

stretch to 180 if you aren’t in a hurry, like maybe if you’re wearing

platform shoes. I turned the corner onto our street (68 steps), and

could just see the house—a four-bedroom semi in a row of other

three- and four-bedroom semis. Dad’s car was outside, which meant

he had not yet left for work.

Behind me, the sun was setting behind Stortfold Castle, its dark

shadow sliding down the hill like melting wax to overtake me. On a

different sort of day, I could have told you all the things that had

happened to me on this route: where Dad taught me to ride a bike

without stabilizers; where Mrs. Doherty with the lopsided wig used to

make us Welsh cakes; the hedge where Treena knocked a wasp’s

nest and we ran screaming all the way back to the castle.

Thomas’s tricycle was upturned on the path and, closing the gate

behind me, I dragged it under the porch and opened the door. The

warmth hit me with the force of an air bag; Mum is a martyr to the

cold and keeps the heating on all year round. Dad is always opening

windows, complaining that she’d bankrupt the lot of us. He says our

heating bills are larger than the GDP of a small African country.

“That you, love?”

“Yup.” I hung my jacket on the peg, where it fought for space

among the others.

“Which you? Lou? Treena?”

“Lou.”

I peered around the living-room door. Dad was facedown on the

sofa, his arm thrust deep between the cushions, as if they had

swallowed his limb whole. Thomas, my five-year-old nephew, was on

his haunches, watching him intently.

“Lego.” Dad turned his face toward me, puce from exertion. “Why

they have to make the damned pieces so small I don’t know.”

“Where’s Mum?”

“Upstairs. How about that? A two-pound piece!”

I looked up, just able to hear the familiar creak of the ironing

board. Josie Clark, my mother, never sat down. It was a point of

honor. She had been known to stand on an outside ladder painting

the windows, occasionally pausing to wave, while the rest of us ate a

roast dinner.

“Will you have a go at finding this bloody arm for me? He’s had

me looking for half an hour and I’ve got to get ready for work.”

“Are you on nights?”

“Yeah. It’s half past five.”

I glanced at the clock. “Actually, it’s half past four.”

He extracted his arm from the cushions and squinted at his

watch. “Then what are you doing home so early?”

I shook my head vaguely, as if I might have misunderstood the

question, and walked into the kitchen.

Granddad was sitting in his chair by the kitchen window, studying

a Sudoku. The health visitor had told us it would be good for his

concentration, help his focus after the strokes. I suspected I was the

only one to notice he simply filled out all the boxes with whatever

number came to mind.

“Hey, Granddad.”

He looked up and smiled.

“You want a cup of tea?”

He shook his head, and partially opened his mouth.

“Cold drink?”

He nodded.

I opened the fridge door. “There’s no apple juice.” Apple juice, I

remembered now, was too expensive. “Water?”

He nodded, murmured something that could have been a thank-

you as I handed him the glass.

My mother walked into the room, bearing a huge basket of neatly

folded laundry. “Are these yours?” She brandished a pair of socks.

“Treena’s, I think.”

“I thought so. Odd color. I think they must have got in with

Daddy’s plum pajamas. You’re back early. Are you going

somewhere?”

“No.” I filled a glass with tap water and drank it.

“Is Patrick coming around later? He rang here earlier. Did you

have your mobile off?”

“Mm.”

“He said he’s after booking your holiday. Your father says he saw

something on the television about

He opened one eye. “How did I get like this?”

When I nodded, he closed his eyes again. “Motorbike accident.

Not mine. I was an innocent pedestrian.”

“I thought it would be skiing or bungee jumping or something.”

“Everyone does. God’s little joke. I was crossing the road outside

my home. Not this place,” he said. “My London home.”

I stared at the books in his bookshelf. Among the novels, the

well-thumbed Penguin paperbacks, were business titles: Corporate

Law, TakeOver, directories of names I did not recognize.

“And there was no way you could carry on with your job?”

“No. Nor the apartment, the holidays, the life…I believe you met

my ex-girlfriend.” The break in his voice couldn’t disguise the

bitterness. “But I should apparently be grateful, as for some time

they didn’t think I was going to live at all.”

“Do you hate it? Living here, I mean?”

“Yes.”

“Is there any way you might be able to live in London again?”

“Not like this, no.”

“But you might improve. I mean, there are loads of advances in

this kind of injury.”

Will closed his eyes again.

I waited, and then I adjusted the pillow behind his head and the

duvet around his chest. “Sorry,” I said, sitting upright. “If I ask too

many questions. Do you want me to leave?”

“No. Stay for a bit. Talk to me.” He swallowed. His eyes opened

again and his gaze slid up to mine. He looked unbearably tired. “Tell

me something good.”

I hesitated a moment, then I leaned back against the pillows

beside him. We sat there in the near dark, watching the briefly

illuminated flakes of snow disappear into the black night.

“You know…I used to say that to my dad,” I said, finally. “But if I

told you what he used to say back, you’d think I was insane.”

“More than I do?”

“When I had a nightmare or was sad or frightened about

something, he used to sing…” I started to laugh. “Oh…I can’t.”

“Go on.”

“He used to sing me the ‘Molahonkey Song.’”

“The what?”

“The ‘Molahonkey Song.’ I used to think everyone knew it.”

“Trust me, Clark,” he murmured, “I am a Molahonkey virgin.”

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and began to sing.

I wi-li-lished I li-li-lived in Molahonkey la-la-land

The la-la-land where I-li-li was bo-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-lorn

So I-li-li could play-la-lay my o-lo-lold banjo-lo-lo

My o-lo-lold ban-jo-lo-lo won’t go-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo.

“Jesus Christ.”

I took another breath.

I too-lo-look it to-lo-lo the me-le-lender’s sho-lo-lop to

See-lee-lee what they-le-ley could do-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo

They sai-lai-laid to me-le-le your stri-li-lings are sho-lo-lot

They’re no-lo-lo more u-lu-luse to you-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-loo.

There was a short silence.

“You are insane. Your whole family is insane.”

“But it worked.”

“And you are a God-awful singer. I hope your dad was better.”

“I think what you meant to say was, ‘Thank you, Miss Clark, for

attempting to entertain me.’”

“I suppose it makes about as much sense as most of the

psychotherapeutic help I’ve received. Okay, Clark,” he said, “tell me

something else. Something that doesn’t involve singing.”

I thought for a bit.

“Um…okay, well…you were looking at my shoes the other day.”

“Hard not to.”

“Well, my mum can date my unusual shoe thing back to when I

was three. She bought me a pair of bright turquoise glittery wellies;

they were quite unusual back then—kids used to just have those

green ones, or maybe red if you were lucky. And she said from the

day she brought them home I refused to take them off. I wore them

to bed, in the bath, to nursery school, all through the summer. My

favorite outfit was those glitter boots and my bumblebee tights.”

“Bumblebee tights?”

“Black and yellow stripes.”

“Gorgeous.”

“That’s a bit harsh.”

“Well, it’s true. They sound revolting.”

“They might sound revolting to you, but astonishingly, Will

Traynor, not all girls get dressed just to please men.”

“Bullshit.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Everything women do is with men in mind. Everything anyone

does is with sex in mind. Haven’t you read The Red Queen?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. But I can assure you

I’m not sitting on your bed singing the ‘Molahonkey Song’ because

I’m trying to get my leg over. And when I was three, I just really,

really liked having stripy legs.”

I realized that the anxiety that had held me in its grip all day was

slowly ebbing away with every one of Will’s comments. I was no

longer in sole charge of a poorly quadriplegic. It was just me, sitting

next to a particularly sarcastic bloke, having a chat.

“So come on, then, what happened to these gorgeous glittery

wellies?”

“She had to throw them away. I got terrible athlete’s foot.”

“Delightful.”

“And she threw the tights away too.”

“Why?”

“I never found out. But it broke my heart. I have never found a

pair of tights I loved like that again. They don’t do them anymore. Or

if they do, they don’t make them for grown women.”

“Strange, that.”

“Oh, you can mock. Didn’t you ever love anything that much?”

I could barely see him now, the room shrouded in the near dark. I

could have turned on the overhead light, but something stopped me.

And almost as soon as I realized what I had said, I wished I hadn’t.

“Yes,” he said, quietly. “Yes, I did.”

We talked a bit longer, and then Will nodded off. I lay there,

watching him breathe, and occasionally wondering what he would

say if he woke up and found me staring at him, at his too-long hair

and tired eyes and scraggly beginnings of a beard. But I couldn’t

move. The hours had become surreal, an island out of time. I was

the only other person in the house, and I was still afraid to leave him.

Shortly after eleven, I saw he had begun to sweat again, his

breathing becoming shallower, and I woke him and made him take

some fever medication. He didn’t talk, except to murmur his thanks. I

changed his top sheet and his pillowcase, and then, when he finally

slept again, I lay down a foot away from him and, a long time later, I

slept too.

I woke to the sound of my name. I was in a classroom, asleep on my

desk, and the teacher was rapping a blackboard, repeating my name

again and again. I knew I should be paying attention, knew that the

teacher would see this slumber as an act of subversion, but I could

not raise my head from the desk.

“Louisa.”

“Mmmhghh.”

“Louisa.”

The desk was awfully soft. I opened my eyes. The words were

being spoken over my head, hissed, but with great emphasis.

Louisa.

I was in bed. I blinked, letting my eyes focus, then looked up to

find Camilla Traynor standing over me. She wore a heavy wool coat

and her handbag was slung over her shoulder.

“Louisa.”

I pushed myself upright with a start. Beside me, Will was asleep

under the covers, his mouth slightly open, his elbow bent at a right

angle in front of him. Light seeped in through the window, telling of a

cold, bright morning.

“Uh.”

“What are you doing?”

I felt as if I had been caught doing something awful. I rubbed at

my face, trying to gather my thoughts. Why was I in here? What

could I tell her?

“What are you doing in Will’s bed?”

“Will…,” I said, quietly. “Will wasn’t well…I just thought I should

keep an eye—”

“What do you mean, he wasn’t well? Look, come out into the

hall.” She strode out of the room, evidently waiting for me to catch

up.

I followed, trying to straighten my clothes. I had a horrible feeling

my makeup was smeared all over my face.

She closed Will’s bedroom door behind me.

I stood in front of her, trying to smooth my hair as I gathered my

thoughts. “Will had a temperature. Nathan got it down when he

came, but I didn’t know about this regulating thing and I wanted to

keep an eye on him…he said I should keep an eye on him…” My

voice sounded thick, unformed. I wasn’t entirely sure I was making

coherent sentences.

“Why didn’t you call me? If he was ill you should have called me

immediately. Or Mr. Traynor.”

It was as if my synapses had suddenly snapped together. Mr.

Traynor. Oh Lord. I glanced up at the clock. It was a quarter to eight.

“I didn’t…Nathan seemed to…”

“Look, Louisa. It’s really not rocket science. If Will was

ill enough

for you to sleep in his room then that is something you should have

contacted me about.”

“Yes.”

I blinked, staring at the ground.

“I don’t understand why you didn’t call. Did you attempt to call Mr.

Traynor?”

Nathan said not to say anything.

“I—”

At that moment the door to the annex opened, and Mr. Traynor

stood there, a newspaper folded under his arm. “You made it back!”

he said to his wife, brushing snowflakes from his shoulders. “I’ve just

fought my way up the road to get a newspaper and some milk.

Roads are absolutely treacherous. I had to go the long way to

Hansford Corner, to avoid the ice patches.”

She looked at him, and I wondered for a moment whether she

was registering the fact that he was wearing the same shirt and

sweater he’d worn the previous day.

“Did you know Will had been ill in the night?”

He looked straight at me. I dropped my gaze to my feet. I wasn’t

sure I had ever felt more uncomfortable.

“Did you try to call me, Louisa? I’m sorry—I didn’t hear a thing. I

suspect that intercom’s on the blink. There have been a few

occasions lately where I’ve missed it. And I wasn’t feeling too good

myself last night. Out like a light.”

I was still wearing Will’s socks. I stared at them, wondering if Mrs.

Traynor was going to judge me for that too.

But she seemed distracted. “It’s been a long journey home. I

think…I’ll leave you to it. But if anything like this happens again, you

call me immediately. Do you understand?”

I didn’t want to look at Mr. Traynor. “Yes,” I said, and disappeared

into the kitchen.

Spring arrived overnight, as if winter, like some unwanted guest, had

abruptly shrugged its way into its coat and vanished, without saying

good-bye. Everything became greener, the roads bathed in watery

sunshine, the air suddenly balmy. There were hints of something

floral and welcoming in the air, birdsong the gentle backdrop to the

day.

I didn’t notice any of it. I had stayed at Patrick’s house the

evening before. It was the first time I had seen him for almost a week

due to his enhanced training schedule, but having spent forty

minutes in the bath with half a pack of bath salts, he was so

exhausted he could barely talk to me. I had begun stroking his back,

in a rare attempt at seduction, and he had murmured that he was

really too tired, his hand flicking as if he were swatting me away. I

was still awake and staring at his ceiling discontentedly four hours

later.

Patrick and I had met while I was doing the only other job I had

ever held, that of trainee at the Cutting Edge, Hailsbury’s only unisex

hairdresser. He walked in while Samantha, the proprietor, was busy,

asking for a number four. I gave him what he described afterward as

not only the worst haircut that he had ever had, but the worst haircut

in the history of mankind. Three months later, realizing that a love of

fiddling with my own hair did not necessarily mean that I was cut out

to do anyone else’s, I left and got the job at the café with Frank.

When we started going out, Patrick had been working in sales

and his favorite things could have been listed as beer, candy bars

from the gas station, talking about sports, and sex (doing, not talking

about), in that order. A good night out for us would probably

comprise all four. He was ordinary-looking rather than handsome,

and his bum was podgier than mine, but I liked it. I liked the solidity

of him, the way he felt when I wrapped myself around him. His dad

was dead and I liked the way he acted toward his mother, protective

and solicitous. And his four brothers and sisters were like the

Waltons. They actually seemed to like one another. The first time we

went out on a date, a little voice in my head said: This man will never

hurt you, and nothing he had done in the seven years since had led

me to doubt it.

And then he turned into Marathon Man.

Patrick’s stomach no longer gave when I nestled into him; it was

a hard, unforgiving thing, like a sideboard, and he was prone to

pulling up his shirt and hitting it with things, to prove quite how hard it

was. His face was planed, and weathered from his time spent

constantly outdoors. His thighs were solid muscle. That would have

been sexy in itself, had he actually wanted to have sex. But we were

down to about twice a month, and I wasn’t the kind to ask.

It was as if the fitter he got, the more obsessed by his own shape

he became and the less interested he was in mine. I asked him a

couple of times if he didn’t fancy me anymore, but he seemed pretty

definite. “You’re gorgeous,” he would say. “I’m just shattered.

Anyway, I don’t want you to lose weight. The girls at the club—you

couldn’t make one decent boob out of all of theirs put together.” I

wanted to ask how exactly he had come to work out this complex

equation, but it was basically a nice thing to say so I let it go.

I wanted to be interested in what he did, I really did. I went to the

triathlon club nights, I tried to chat with the other girls. But I soon

realized I was an anomaly—there were no girlfriends like me;

everyone else in the club was single, or involved with someone

equally physically impressive. The couples pushed each other in

workouts, planned weekends in spandex shorts, and carried pictures

of each other in their wallets completing triathlons hand in hand, or

smugly comparing joint medals. It was unspeakable.

It’s not that I was some kind of sex maniac—we’d been together

a long time, after all. It’s just that some perverse bit of me had begun

to question my own attractiveness.

Patrick had never minded the fact that I dressed “inventively,” as

he put it. But what if he hadn’t been entirely truthful? Patrick’s job,

his whole social life, now revolved around the control of flesh—

taming it, reducing it, honing it. What if, faced with those tight little

track-suited bottoms, my own suddenly seemed wanting? What if my

curves, which I had always thought of as pleasantly voluptuous, now

seemed doughy to his exacting eyes?

These were the thoughts that were still humming messily around

my head as Mrs. Traynor came in and pretty much ordered Will and

me to go outside. “I’ve asked the cleaners to come and do a special

spring clean, so I thought perhaps you could enjoy the nice weather

while they’re all in there.”

Will’s eyes met mine with the faintest lift of his eyebrows. “It’s not

really a request, is it, Mother?”

“I just think it would be good if you took some air,” she said. “The

ramp is in place. Perhaps, Louisa, you might take some tea out there

with you?”

It wasn’t an entirely unreasonable suggestion. The garden was

beautiful. It was as if with the slight lifting of temperatures everything

had suddenly decided to look a little bit greener. Daffodils had

emerged as if from nowhere, their yellowing bulbs hinting at the

flowers to come. Buds burst from brown branches, perennials forcing

their way tentatively through the dark, claggy soil. I opened the doors

and we went outside, Will keeping his chair on the York stone path.

He gestured toward a cast-iron bench with a cushion on it, and I sat

there for some time, our faces lifted to the weak sunshine, listening

to the sparrows squabbling in the hedgerow.

“What’s up with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re quiet.”

“You said you wanted me to be quiet.”

“Not this quiet. It alarms me.”

“I’m all right,” I said. And then, “It’s just boyfriend stuff, if you

really want to know.”

“Ah,” he said. “Running Man.”

I opened my eyes, just to see if he was mocking me.

“What’s the matter?” he said. “Come on, tell Uncle Will.”

“No.”

“My mother is going to have the cleaners running around like

lunatics in there for at least another hour. You’re going to have to talk

about something.”

I pushed myself upright, and turned to face him. His house chair

had a control button that elevated his seat so that he could address

people at head height. He didn’t often use it, as it frequently made

him dizzy, but it was working now. I actually had to look up at him.

I pulled my coat around me, and squinted at

him. “Go on, then,

what do you want to know?”

“How long have you two been together?” he said.

“Bit over six years.”

He looked surprised. “That’s a long time.”

“Yes,” I said. “Well.”

I leaned over and adjusted a rug across him. It was deceptive,

the sunshine—it promised more than it could actually deliver.

“What does he do?”

“He’s a personal trainer.”

“Hence the running.”

“What’s he like? In three words, if it makes you uncomfortable.”

I thought about it. “Positive. Loyal. Obsessed with body-fat

ratios.”

“That’s seven words.”

“Then you got four for free. So what was she like?”

“Who?”

“Alicia?” I looked at him the way he had looked at me, directly. He

took a deep breath and gazed upward to a large plane tree. His hair

fell down into his eyes and I fought the urge to push it to one side for

him.

“Gorgeous. Sexy. High maintenance. Surprisingly insecure.”

“What does she have to be insecure about?” The words left my

mouth before I could help myself.

He looked almost amused. “You’d be surprised,” he said. “Girls

like Lissa trade on their looks for so long they don’t think they have

anything else. Actually, I’m being unfair. She’s good with stuff. Things

—clothes, interiors. She can make things look beautiful.”

I fought the urge to say anyone could make things look beautiful

if they had a wallet as deep as a diamond mine.

“She could move a few things around in a room, and it would look

completely different. I never could work out how she did it.” He

nodded toward the house. “She did this annex, when I first moved

in.”

I found myself reviewing the perfectly designed living room. I

realized my admiration of it was suddenly slightly less uncomplicated

than it had been.

“How long were you with her?”

“Eight, nine months.”

“Not that long.”

“Long for me.”

“How did you meet?”

“Dinner party. A really awful dinner party. You?”

“Hairdresser’s. I was one. He was my client.”

“Hah. You were his something extra for the weekend.”

I must have looked blank because he shook his head and said

softly, “Never mind.”

Inside, we could hear the dull drone of the vacuum cleaner. There

were four women in the cleaning company, all wearing matching

housecoats. I had wondered what they would find to do for two hours

in the little annex.

“Do you miss her?”

Will seemed to be watching something in the distance. “I used

to.” He turned to me, his voice matter-of-fact. “But I’ve been thinking

about it, and I’ve decided that she and Rupert are a good match.”

I nodded. “They’ll have a ridiculous wedding, pop out an ankle

biter or two, as you put it, buy a place in the country, and he’ll be

shagging his secretary within five years,” I said.

“You’re probably right.”

I was warming to my theme now. “And she will be a little bit cross

with him all the time without really knowing why and bitch about him

at really awful dinner parties to the embarrassment of their friends,

and he won’t want to leave because he’ll be scared of all the

alimony.”

Will turned to look at me.

“And they will have sex once every six weeks and he will adore

his children while doing absolutely nothing to actually help look after

them. And she will have perfect hair but get this kind of pinched

face”—I narrowed my mouth—“through never saying what she

actually means, and start an insane Pilates habit or maybe buy a

dog or a horse and develop a crush on her riding instructor. And he

will take up jogging when he hits forty, and maybe buy a Harley-

Davidson, which she will despise, and every day he will go to work

and look at all the young men in his office and listen in bars to who

they pulled on the weekend or where they went on a jolly and feel

like somehow—and he will never be quite sure how—he got

suckered.”

I turned.

Will was staring at me.

“Sorry,” I said, after a moment. “I don’t really know where that

came from.”

“I’m starting to feel just the tiniest bit sorry for Running Man.”

“Oh, it’s not him,” I said. “It’s working at a café for years. You see

and hear everything. Patterns, in people’s behavior. You’d be

amazed at what goes on.”

“Is that why you’ve never gotten married?”

I blinked. “I suppose so.”

I didn’t want to say I had never actually been asked.

It may sound as though we didn’t do much. But, in truth, the days

with Will were subtly different—depending on his mood and, more

important, how much pain he was in. Some days I would arrive and I

could see from the set of his jaw that he didn’t want to talk to me—or

to anyone—and, noting this, I would busy myself around the annex,

trying to anticipate his needs so that I didn’t have to bother him by

asking.

There were all sorts of things that caused him pain. There were

the general aches that came with loss of muscle—there was so

much less holding him up, despite Nathan’s best attempts at physio.

There was stomach pain from digestive problems, shoulder pain,

pain from bladder infections—an inevitability, apparently, despite

everyone’s best efforts. He had a stomach ulcer from taking too

many painkillers early on in his recovery, when he apparently

popped them like Tic Tacs.

Occasionally, there were pressure sores, from being seated in

the same position for too long. A couple of times Will was confined to

bed just to let them heal, but he hated being prone. He would lie

there listening to the radio, his eyes glittering with barely suppressed

rage. Will also got headaches—a side effect, I thought, of his anger

and frustration. He had so much mental energy, and nothing to take

it out on. It had to build up somewhere.

But the most debilitating was a burning sensation in his hands

and feet; relentless, pulsing, it would leave him unable to focus on

anything else. I would prepare a bowl of cold water and soak them,

or wrap cold flannels around them, hoping to ease his discomfort. A

stringy muscle would flicker in his jaw and occasionally he would just

seem to disappear, as if the only way he could cope with the

sensation was to absent himself from his own body. I had become

surprisingly used to the physical requirements of Will’s life. It seemed

unfair that despite the fact that he could not use them, or feel them,

his extremities should cause him so much discomfort.

Despite all this, Will did not complain. This was why it had taken

me weeks to notice that he suffered at all. Now I could decipher the

strained look around his eyes, the silences, the way he seemed to

retreat inside his own skin. He would ask, simply, “Could you get the

cold water, Louisa?” or “I think it might be time for some painkillers.”

Sometimes he was in so much pain that his face actually leached

color, turning to pale putty. Those were the worst days.

But on other days we tolerated each other quite well. He didn’t

seem mortally offended when I talked to him, as he had at the start.

Today appeared to be a pain-free day. When Mrs. Traynor came out

to tell us that the cleaners would be another twenty minutes, I made

us both another drink and we took a slow stroll around the garden,

Will sticking to the path and me watching my satin pumps darken in

the damp grass.

“Interesting choice of footwear,” Will said.

They were emerald green. I had found them in a thrift shop.

Patrick said they made me look like a leprechaun drag queen.

“You know, you don’t dress like someone from around here. I

quite look forward to seeing what insane combination you’re going to

turn up in next.”

“So how should ‘someone from around here’ dress?”

He steered a little to the left to avoid a bit of branch on the path.

“Fleece. Or, if you’re my mother’s set, something from Jaeger or

Whistles.” He looked at me. “So where did you pick up your exotic

tastes? Where else have you lived?”

“I haven’t.”

“What, you’ve only ever lived here?”

“Only here.” I turned and looked at him, crossing my arms over

my chest defensively. “So? What’s so weird about that?”

“It’s such a small town. So limiting. And it’s all about the castle.”

We paused on the path and stared at it, rising up in the distance on

its weird, domelike hill, as perfect

as if it had been drawn by a child.

“I always think this is the kind of place that people come back to.

When they’ve become tired of everything else. Or when they don’t

have enough imagination to go anywhere else.”

“Thanks.”

“There’s nothing wrong with it per se. But…Christ. It’s not exactly

dynamic, is it? Not exactly full of ideas or interesting people or

opportunities. Around here they think it’s subversive if the tourist

shop starts selling place mats with a different view of the miniature

railway.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. There had been an article in the local

newspaper the previous week on exactly that topic.

“You’re twenty-six years old, Clark. You should be out there,

claiming the world as your own, getting in trouble in bars, showing off

your strange wardrobe to dodgy men…”

“I’m happy here,” I said.

“Well, you shouldn’t be.”

“You like telling people what they should be doing, don’t you?”

“Only when I know I’m right,” he said. “Can you adjust my drink? I

can’t quite reach it.”

I twisted his straw around so that he could reach it more easily

and waited while he took a drink. The faint cold had turned the tips of

his ears pink.

He grimaced. “Jesus, for a girl who made tea for a living you

make a terrible cup.”

“You’re just used to lesbian tea,” I said. “All that lapsang

souchong herbal stuff.”

“Lesbian tea!” He almost choked. “Well, it’s better than this stair

varnish. Christ. You could stand a spoon up in that.”

“So even my tea is wrong.” I sat down on the bench in front of

him. “So how is it okay for you to offer an opinion on every single

thing I say or do, and yet nobody else gets to say anything at all?”

“Go on, then, Louisa Clark. Give me your opinions.”

“On you?”

He gave a theatrical sigh. “Do I have a choice?”

“You could cut your hair. It makes you look like some kind of

vagrant.”

“Now you sound like my mother.”

“Well, you do look bloody awful. You could shave, at least. Isn’t

all that facial hair starting to get itchy?”

He gave me a sideways look.

“It is, isn’t it? I knew it. Okay—this afternoon I am going to take it

all off.”

“Oh no.”

“Yes. You asked me for my opinion. This is my answer. You don’t

have to do anything.”

“What if I say no?”

“I might do it anyway. If it gets any longer I’ll be picking bits of

food out of it. And, frankly, if that happens I’ll have to sue you for

undue distress in the workplace.”

He smiled then, as if I had amused him. It might sound a bit sad,

but Will’s smiles were so rare that prompting one made me feel light-

headed with pride.

“Here, Clark,” he said. “Do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Scratch my ear for me, will you? It’s driving me nuts.”

“If I do you’ll let me cut your hair? Just a bit of a trim?”

“Don’t push your luck.”

“Shush. Don’t make me nervous. I’m not great with scissors.”

I found the razors and some shaving foam in the bathroom cabinet,

tucked well back behind the packets of wipes and cotton wool, as if

they hadn’t been used in some time. I made him come into the

bathroom, filled a sink with warm water, got him to tilt his headrest

back a little, and then placed a hot flannel over his chin.

“What is this? You’re going to be a barbershop? What’s the

flannel for?”

“I don’t know,” I confessed. “It’s what they do in the films. It’s like

the hot water and towels when someone has a baby.”

I couldn’t see his mouth, but his eyes creased with faint mirth. I

wanted to keep them like that. I wanted him to be happy—for his

face to lose that haunted, watchful look. I gabbled. I told jokes. I

started to hum. Anything to prolong the moment before he looked

grim again.

I rolled up my sleeves and began to lather the shaving foam over

his chin, all the way up to his ears. Then I hesitated, the blade over

his chin. “Is this the moment to tell you I’ve only ever done legs

before?”

He closed his eyes, and settled back. I began to scrape gently at

his skin with the blade, the silence broken only by the splash as I

rinsed the razor in the basinful of water. I worked in silence, studying

Will Traynor’s face as I went, the lines that ran to the corners of his

mouth, lines that seemed prematurely deep for his age. I smoothed

his hair from the side of his face and saw the telltale tracks of

stitches, perhaps from his accident. I saw the mauve shadows that

told of nights and nights of lost sleep, the furrow between his brows

that spoke of silent pain. A warm sweetness rose from his skin, the

scent of the shaving cream, and something that was peculiar to Will

himself, discreet and expensive. His face began to emerge and I

could see how easy it must have been for him to attract someone

like Alicia.

I worked slowly and carefully, encouraged by the fact that he

seemed briefly at peace. The thought flashed by that the only time

anyone ever touched Will was for some medical or therapeutic

procedure, and so I let my fingers rest lightly upon his skin, trying as

much as possible to make the movements as far from the

dehumanized briskness that characterized Nathan’s and the doctor’s

interactions with him.

It was a curiously intimate thing, this shaving of Will. I realized as

I continued that I had assumed his wheelchair would be a barrier;

that his disability would prevent any kind of sensual aspect from

creeping in. Weirdly, it wasn’t working like that. It was impossible to

be this close to someone, to feel their skin tauten under your

fingertips, to breathe in the air that they breathed out, to have their

face only inches from yours, without feeling a little unbalanced. By

the time I reached his other ear I had begun to feel awkward, as if I

had overstepped an invisible mark.

Perhaps Will was able to read the subtle changes in my pressure

on his skin; perhaps he was just more attuned to the moods of the

people around him. But he opened his eyes, and I found them

looking into mine.

There was a short pause, and then he said, straight-faced,

“Please don’t tell me you’ve shaved off my eyebrows.”

“Only the one,” I said. I rinsed the blade, hoping that the color

would have drained from my cheeks by the time I turned around.

“Right,” I said, finally. “Have you had enough? Won’t Nathan be here

in a bit?”

“What about my hair?” he said.

“You really want me to cut it?”

“You might as well.”

“I thought you didn’t trust me.”

He shrugged, as far as he could. It was the smallest movement of

his shoulders. “If it will stop you moaning at me for a couple of weeks

I figure it’s a small price to pay.”

“Oh my God, your mum is going to be so delighted,” I said, wiping

a stray dab of shaving cream.

“Yes, well, we won’t let that put us off.”

We cut his hair in the living room. I lit the fire, we put on a film—an

American thriller—and I placed a towel around his shoulders. I had

warned Will that I was a bit rusty, but added that it couldn’t look

worse than it did already.

“Thanks for that,” he said.

I set to work, letting his hair slide through my fingers, trying to

remember the few basics I had learned. Will, watching the film,

seemed relaxed and almost content. Occasionally he told me

something about the film—what else the lead actor had starred in,

where he had first seen it—and I made a vaguely interested noise

(like I do with Thomas when he presents me with his toys), even

though all my attention was actually focused on not mucking up his

hair. Finally, I had the worst of it off, and whipped around in front of

him to see how he looked.

“Well?” Will paused the DVD.

I straightened up. “I’m not sure I like seeing this much of your

face. It’s a bit unnerving.”

“Feels cold,” he observed, moving his head from left to right, as if

testing the feel of it.

“Hold on,” I said. “I’ll get two mirrors. Then you can see it

properly. But don’t move. There’s still a bit of tidying up to be done.

Possibly an ear to slice.”

I was in the bedroom, going through his drawers in search of a

small mirror, when I heard the door. Two sets of brisk footsteps, Mrs.

Traynor’s voice, lifted, anxious.

“Georgina, please don’t.”

The door to the living room was wrenched open.

I grabbed the

mirror and ran out of the room. I had no intention of being found

absent again. Mrs. Traynor was standing in the living-room doorway,

both hands raised to her mouth, apparently witnessing some unseen

confrontation.

“You are the most selfish man I ever met!” a young woman was

shouting. “I can’t believe this, Will. You were selfish then and you’re

worse now.”

“Georgina.” Mrs. Traynor’s gaze flicked toward me as I

approached. “Please, stop.”

I walked into the room behind her. Will, the towel around his

shoulders, soft brown fronds of hair at the wheels of his chair, was

facing a young woman. She had long dark hair pinned into a messy

knot at the back of her head. Her skin was tanned, and she was

wearing expensively distressed jeans and suede boots. Like Alicia,

her features were beautiful and regular, her teeth the astonishing

white of a toothpaste commercial. I knew they were because, her

face puce with anger, she was still hissing at him. “I can’t believe it. I

can’t believe you would even think of it. What do you—”

“Please. Georgina.” Mrs. Traynor’s voice lifted sharply. “This is

not the time.”

Will, his face impassive, was staring straight ahead of him at

some unseen point.

“Um…Will? Do you need any help?” I said, quietly.

“Who are you?” the young woman said, whipping around. It was

then that I saw her eyes were filled with tears.

“Georgina,” Will said. “Meet Louisa Clark, my paid companion

and shockingly inventive hairdresser. Louisa, meet my sister,

Georgina. She appears to have flown all the way from Australia to

shriek at me.”

“Don’t be facile,” Georgina said. “Mummy told me. She’s told me

everything.”

Nobody moved.

“Shall I give you a minute?” I said.

“That would be a good idea.” Mrs. Traynor’s knuckles were white

on the arm of the sofa.

I slid out of the room.

“In fact, Louisa, perhaps now would be a good time to take your

lunch break.”

It was going to be a bus shelter kind of a day. I grabbed my

sandwiches from the kitchen, climbed into my coat, and set off down

the back path.

As I left, I could hear Georgina Traynor’s voice lifting inside the

house. “Has it ever occurred to you, Will, that, believe it or not, this

might not be just about you?”

When I returned, exactly half an hour later, the house was silent.

Nathan was washing a mug in the kitchen sink.

He turned as he saw me. “How you doing?”

“Has she gone?”

“Who?”

“The sister?”

He glanced behind him. “Ah. That who it was? Yeah, she’s gone.

Just skidding off in her car when I got here. Some sort of family row,

was it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I was in the middle of cutting Will’s hair and

this woman came in and just started having a go at him. I assumed it

was another girlfriend.”

Nathan shrugged.

I realized he would not be interested in the personal minutiae of

Will’s life, even if he knew.

“He’s a bit quiet, though. Nice work with the shave, by the way.

Good to get him out from behind all that shrubbery.”

I walked back into the living room. Will was sitting staring at the

television, which was still paused at the exact moment I had left it.

“Do you want me to turn this back on?” I said.

He didn’t seem to hear me for a minute. His head was sunk in his

shoulders, the earlier relaxed expression replaced by a veil. Will was

closed off again, locked behind something I couldn’t penetrate.

He blinked, as if he had only just noticed me there. “Sure,” he

said.

I was carrying a basket of washing down the hall when I heard them.

The annex door was slightly ajar and the voices of Mrs. Traynor and

her daughter carried down the long corridor, the sound coming in

muted waves. Will’s sister was sobbing quietly, all fury gone from her

voice now. She sounded almost childlike.

“There must be something they can do. Some medical advance.

Can’t you take him to America? Things are always improving in

America.”

“Your father keeps a very close eye on all the developments. But

no, darling, there is nothing…concrete.”

“He’s so…different now. It’s like he’s determined not to see the

good in anything.”

“He’s been like that since the start, George. I think it’s just that

you didn’t see him apart from when you flew home. Back then, I think

he was still…determined. Back then, he was sure that something

would change.”

I felt a little uncomfortable listening in on such a private

conversation. But the odd tenor drew me closer. I found myself

walking softly toward the door, my socked feet making no sound on

the floor.

“Look, Daddy and I didn’t tell you. We didn’t want to upset you.

But he tried…” She struggled over the words. “Will tried to…he tried

to kill himself.”

“What?”

“Daddy found him. Back in December. It was…it was terrible.”

Even though this really only confirmed what I had guessed, I felt

all the blood drain from me. I heard a muffled cry, a whispered

reassurance. There was another long silence. And then Georgina,

her voice thick with grief, spoke again.

“The girl…?”

“Yes. Louisa is here to make sure nothing like that happens

again.”

I stopped. At the other end of the corridor, from the bathroom, I

could hear Nathan and Will talking in a low murmur, comfortably

oblivious to the conversation that was going on just a few feet away.

I took a step closer to the door. I suppose I had known it since I

caught sight of the scars on his wrists. It made sense of everything,

after all—Mrs. Traynor’s anxiety that I shouldn’t leave Will alone for

very long, his antipathy to having me there, the fact that for large

stretches of time I didn’t feel like I was doing anything useful at all. I

had been babysitting. I hadn’t known it, but Will had, and he had

hated me for it.

I reached for the handle of the door, preparing to close it gently. I

wondered what Nathan knew. I wondered whether Will was happier

now. I realized I felt, selfishly, a faint relief that it hadn’t been me Will

objected to, just the fact that I—that anyone—had been employed to

watch over him.

“You can’t let him do this, Mum. You have to stop him.”

“It’s not our choice, darling.”

“But it is. It is—if he’s asking you to be part of it,” Georgina

protested.

The handle stilled in my hand.

“I can’t believe you’re even agreeing to it. What about your

religion? What about everything you’ve done? What was the point in

you even bloody saving him the last time?”

Mrs. Traynor’s voice was deliberately calm. “That’s not fair.”

“But you’ve said you’ll take him. What does—”

“Do you think for a moment that if I said I refuse, he wouldn’t ask

someone else?”

“But Dignitas? It’s just wrong. I know it’s hard for him, but it will

destroy you and Daddy. I know it. Think of how you would feel! Think

of the publicity! Your job! Both your reputations! He must know it. It’s

a selfish thing to even ask. How can he? How can he do this? How

can you do this?” She began to sob again.

“George…”

“Don’t look at me like that. I do care about him, Mummy. I do.

He’s my brother and I love him. But I can’t bear it. I can’t bear even

the thought of it. He’s wrong to ask, and you’re wrong to consider it.

And it’s not just his own life he will destroy if you go ahead with this.”

I took a step back from the window. The blood thumped so loudly

in my ears that I almost didn’t hear Mrs. Traynor’s response.

“Six months, George. He promised to give me six months. Now, I

don’t want you to mention this again, and certainly not in front of

anyone else. And we must…” She took a deep breath. “We must just

pray very hard that something happens in that time to change his

mind.”

CAMILLA

I never set out to help kill my son.

Even reading the words seems odd—like something you might

see in a tabloid newspaper.

I was not the kind of person this happened to. Or at least, I

thought I wasn’t. My life was a fairly structured one—an ordinary

one, by modern standards. I had been married for almost thirty-

seven years, I raised two children, I kept my career, helped out at the

school, the PTA, and joined the bench once the children didn’t need

me anymore.

I had been a magistrate for almost eleven

years. I watched the

whole of human life come through my court: the hopeless waifs who

couldn’t get themselves together sufficiently even to make a court

appointment on time; the repeat offenders; the angry, hard-faced

young men and exhausted, debt-ridden mothers. It’s quite hard to

stay calm and understanding when you see the same faces, the

same mistakes made again and again. I could sometimes hear the

impatience in my tone. It could be oddly dispiriting, the blank refusal

of humankind to even attempt to function responsibly.

And our little town, despite the beauty of the castle, our many

Grade II listed buildings, our picturesque country lanes, was far from

immune to it. Our Regency Squares held cider-drinking teenagers;

our thatched cottages muffled the sounds of husbands beating their

wives and children. Sometimes I felt like King Canute, making vain

pronouncements in the face of a tide of chaos and creeping

devastation. But I loved my job. I did it because I believe in order, in

a moral code. I believe that there is a right and a wrong,

unfashionable as that view might be.

I got through the tougher days because of my garden. As the

children grew it had become a bit of an obsession of mine. I could

give you the Latin name of almost any plant you cared to point at.

The funny thing was, I didn’t even do Latin at school—mine was a

rather minor public school for girls where the focus was on cooking

and embroidery, things that would help us become good wives—but

the thing about those plant names is that they do stick in your head. I

only ever needed to hear one once to remember it forever:

Helleborus niger, Eremurus stenophyllus, Athyrium niponicum. I can

repeat those with a fluency I never had at school.

They say you only really appreciate a garden once you reach a

certain age, and I suppose there is a truth in that. It’s probably

something to do with the great circle of life. There seems to be

something miraculous about seeing the relentless optimism of new

growth after the bleakness of winter, a kind of joy in the difference

every year, the way nature chooses to show off different parts of the

garden to its full advantage. There have been times—the times when

my marriage proved to be somewhat more populated than I had

anticipated—when it has been a refuge, times when it has been a

joy.

There have even been times when it was, frankly, a pain. There

is nothing more disappointing than creating a new border only to see

it fail to flourish, or to watch a row of beautiful alliums destroyed

overnight by some slimy culprit. But even when I complained about

the time, the effort involved in caring for it, the way my joints

protested an afternoon spent weeding, or my fingernails never

looking quite clean, I loved it. I loved the sensual pleasures of being

outside, the smell of it, the feel of the earth under my fingers, the

satisfaction of seeing things living, glowing, captivated by their own

temporary beauty.

After Will’s accident I didn’t garden for a year. It wasn’t just the

time, although the endless hours spent at the hospital, the time spent

to-ing and fro-ing in the car, the meetings—oh God, the meetings—

took up so much of it. I took six months’ compassionate leave from

work and there was still not enough of it.

It was that I could suddenly see no point. I paid a gardener to

come and keep the garden tidy, and I don’t think I gave it anything

but the most cursory of looks for the best part of a year.

It was only when we brought Will back home, once the annex

was adapted and ready, that I could see a point in making it beautiful

again. I needed to give my son something to look at. I needed to tell

him, silently, that things might change, grow, or fail, but that life did

go on. That we were all part of some great cycle, some pattern that it

was only God’s purpose to understand. I couldn’t say that to him, of

course—Will and I have never been able to say much to each other

—but I wanted to show him. A silent promise, if you like, that there

was a bigger picture, a brighter future.

Steven was poking at the log fire. He maneuvered the remaining

half-burned logs expertly with a poker, sending glowing sparks up

the chimney, then dropped a new log onto the middle. He stood

back, as he always did, watching with quiet satisfaction as the

flames took hold, and dusted his hands on his corduroy trousers. He

turned as I entered the room. I held out a glass.

“Thank you. Is George coming down?”

“Apparently not.”

“What’s she doing?

“Watching television upstairs. She doesn’t want company. I did

ask.”

“She’ll come around. She’s probably jet-lagged.”

“I hope so, Steven. She’s not very happy with us at the moment.”

We stood in silence, watching the fire. Around us the room was

dark and still, the windowpanes rattling gently as they were buffeted

by the wind and rain.

“Filthy night.”

“Yes.”

The dog padded into the room and, with a sigh, flopped down in

front of the fire, gazing up adoringly at us both from her prone

position.

“So what do you think?” he said. “This haircut business.”

“I don’t know. I’d like to think it’s a good sign.”

“This Louisa’s a bit of a character, isn’t she?”

I saw the way my husband smiled to himself. Not her too, I found

myself thinking, and then squashed the thought.

“Yes. Yes, I suppose she is.”

“Do you think she’s the right one?”

I took a sip of my drink before answering. Two fingers of gin, a

slice of lemon, and a lot of tonic. “Who knows?” I said. “I don’t think I

have the faintest idea what is right and wrong anymore.”

“He likes her. I’m sure he likes her. We were talking while

watching the news the other night, and he mentioned her twice. He

hasn’t done that before.”

“Yes. Well. I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

“Do you have to?”

Steven turned from the fire. I could see him studying me, perhaps

conscious of the new lines around my eyes, the way my mouth

seemed set these days into a thin line of anxiety. He looked at the

little gold cross, now ever present around my neck. I didn’t like it

when he looked at me like that. I could never escape the feeling that

I was being compared to someone else.

“I’m just being realistic.”

“You sound…you sound like you’re already expecting it to

happen.”

“I know my son.”

“Our son.”

“Yes. Our son.” More my son, I found myself thinking. You were

never really there for him. Not emotionally. You were just the

absence he was always striving to impress.

“He’ll change his mind,” Steven said. “There’s still a long way to

go.”

We stood there. I took a long sip of my drink, the ice cold against

the warmth given out by the fire.

“I keep thinking…,” I said, staring into the hearth. “I still keep

thinking that I’m missing something.”

My husband was still watching me. I could feel his gaze on me,

but I couldn’t meet it. Perhaps he might have reached out to me

then. But I think we had probably gone too far for that.

He took a sip of his drink. “You can only do what you can do,

darling.”

“I’m well aware of that. But it’s not really enough, is it?”

He turned back to the fire, poking unnecessarily at a log until I

turned and quietly left the room.

As he had known I would.

When Will first told me what he wanted, he had to tell me twice, as I

was quite sure I could not have heard him correctly the first time. I

stayed quite calm when I realized what it was he was proposing, and

then I told him he was being ridiculous and I walked straight out of

the room. It’s an unfair advantage, being able to walk away from a

man in a wheelchair. There are two steps between the annex and

the main house, and without Nathan’s help he could not traverse

them. I shut the door of the annex and I stood in my own hallway

with the calmly spoken words of my son still ringing in my ears.

I’m not sure I moved for half an hour.

He refused to let it go. Being Will, he always had to have the last

word. He repeated his request every time I went in to see him until I

almost had to persuade myself to go in each day. I don’t want to live

like this, Mother. This is not

the life I chose. There is no prospect of

my recovery, hence it is a perfectly reasonable request to ask to end

it in a manner I see fit. I heard him and could well imagine what he

had been like in those business meetings, the career that had made

him rich and arrogant. He was a man who was used to being heard,

after all. He couldn’t bear it that in some way I had the power to

dictate his future, that I had somehow become Mother again.

It took his attempt to make me agree. It’s not that my religion

forbade it—although the prospect of Will being consigned to hell

through his own desperation was a terrible one. (I chose to believe

that God, a benign God, would understand our sufferings and forgive

us our trespasses.)

It’s just that the thing you never understand about being a

mother, until you are one, is that it is not the grown man—the

galumphing, unshaven, stinking, opinionated offspring—you see

before you, with his parking tickets and unpolished shoes and

complicated love life. You see all the people he has ever been all

rolled up into one.

I looked at Will and I saw the baby I held in my arms, dewily

besotted, unable to believe that I had created another human being.

I saw the toddler, reaching for my hand, the schoolboy weeping tears

of fury after being bullied by some other child. I saw the

vulnerabilities, the love, the history. That’s what he was asking me to

extinguish—the small child as well as the man—all that love, all that

history.

And then on January 22, a day when I was stuck in court with a

relentless roll call of shoplifters and uninsured drivers, of weeping,

angry ex-partners, Steven walked into the annex and found our son

almost unconscious, his head lolling by his armrest, a sea of dark,

sticky blood pooling around his wheels. He had located a rusty nail,

barely half an inch emerging from some hurriedly finished woodwork

in the back lobby, and, pressing his wrist against it, had moved his

wheelchair backward and forward until his flesh was sliced to

ribbons. I cannot to this day imagine the determination that kept him

going, even though he must have been half delirious from the pain.

The doctors said he was less than twenty minutes from death.

It was not, they observed with exquisite understatement, a cry for

help.

When they told me at the hospital that Will would live, I walked

outside into my garden and I raged. I raged at God, at nature, at

whatever fate had brought our family to such depths. Now I look

back and I must have seemed quite mad. I stood in my garden that

cold evening and I hurled my large brandy twenty feet into the

Euonymus compactus and I screamed, so that my voice broke the

air, bouncing off the castle walls and echoing into the distance. I was

so furious, you see, that all around me were things that could move

and bend and grow and reproduce, and my son—my vital,

charismatic, beautiful boy—was just this thing. Immobile, wilted,

bloodied, suffering. Their beauty seemed like an obscenity. I

screamed and I screamed and I swore—words I didn’t know I knew

—until Steven came out and stood, his hand resting on my shoulder,

waiting until he could be sure that I would be silent again.

He didn’t understand, you see. He hadn’t worked it out yet. That

Will would try again. That our lives would have to be spent in a state

of constant vigilance, waiting for the next time, waiting to see what

horror he would inflict upon himself. We would have to see the world

through his eyes—the potential poisons, the sharp objects, the

inventiveness with which he could finish the job that damned

motorcyclist had started. Our lives had to shrink to fit around the

potential for that one act. And he had the advantage—he had

nothing else to think about, you see.

Two weeks later, I told Will, “Yes.”

Of course I did.

What else could I have done?

I didn’t sleep that night. I lay awake in the little box room, gazing up

at the ceiling and carefully reconstructing the last two months based

on what I now knew. It was as if everything had shifted, fragmented

and settled in some other place, into a pattern I barely recognized.

I felt duped, the dim-witted accessory who hadn’t known what

was going on. I felt they must have laughed privately at my attempts

to feed Will vegetables, or cut his hair—little things to make him feel

better. What had been the point?

I ran over and over the conversation I had heard, trying to

interpret it in some alternative way, trying to convince myself that I

had misunderstood what they had said. But Dignitas wasn’t exactly

somewhere you went for a minibreak. I couldn’t believe Camilla

Traynor could contemplate doing that to her son. Yes, I had thought

her cold and, yes, awkward around him. It was hard to imagine her

cuddling him as my mother had cuddled us—fiercely, joyously—until

we wriggled away, begging to be let go. If I’m honest, I just thought it

was how the upper classes were with their children. I had just read

Will’s copy of Love in a Cold Climate, after all. But to actively, to

voluntarily, play a part in her own son’s death?

With hindsight her behavior seemed even colder, her actions

imbued with some sinister intent. I was angry with her and angry with

Will. Angry with them for letting me engage in a façade. I was angry

for all the times I had sat and thought about how to make things

better for him, how to make him comfortable, or happy. When I was

not angry, I was sad. I would recall the slight break in her voice as

she tried to comfort Georgina, and feel a great sadness for her. She

was, I knew, in an impossible position.

But mostly I felt filled with horror. I was haunted by what I now

knew. How could you live each day knowing that you were simply

whiling away the days until your own death? How could this man

whose skin I had felt that morning under my fingers—warm, and

alive—choose to just extinguish himself? How could it be that, with

everyone’s consent, in four months’ time that same skin would be

decaying under the ground?

I couldn’t tell anyone. That was almost the worst bit. I was now

complicit in the Traynors’ secret.

I refused supper. I lay in bed until my thoughts darkened and

solidified to the point where I couldn’t bear the weight of them, and at

eight thirty I came back downstairs and sat silently watching

television, perched on the other side of Granddad, who was the only

person in our family guaranteed not to ask me a question. He sat in

his favorite armchair and stared at the screen with glassy-eyed

intensity. I was never sure whether he was watching, or whether his

mind was somewhere else entirely.

“Are you sure I can’t get you something, love?” Mum appeared at

my side with a cup of tea. There was nothing in our family that

couldn’t be improved by a cup of tea, allegedly.

“No. Not hungry, thanks.”

I saw the way she glanced at Dad. I knew that later on there

would be private mutterings that the Traynors were working me too

hard, that the strain of looking after such an invalid was proving too

much. I knew they would blame themselves for encouraging me to

take the job.

I would have to let them think they were right.

Paradoxically, the following day Will was in good form—unusually

talkative, opinionated, belligerent. He talked, possibly more than he

had talked on any previous day. It was as if he wanted to spar with

me, and was disappointed when I wouldn’t play.

“So when are you going to finish this hatchet job, then?”

I had been tidying the living room. I looked up from plumping the

sofa cushions. “What?”

“My hair. I’m only half done. I look like one of those Victorian

orphans.” He turned his head so that I could better see my

handiwork. “Unless this is one of your alternative-style statements.”

“You want me to keep cutting?”

“Well, it seemed to keep you happy. And it would be nice not to

look like I belong in an asylum.”

I fetched a towel and scissors in silence.

“Nathan is definitely happier now that I apparently look like a

bloke,” he said. “Although he did point out that, having restored my

face to

its former state, I will now need shaving every day.”

“Oh,” I said.

“You don’t mind, do you? Weekends I’ll just have to put up with

designer stubble.”

I couldn’t talk to him. I found it difficult even to meet his eye. It

was like finding out your boyfriend had been unfaithful. I felt, weirdly,

as if he had betrayed me.

“Clark?”

“Hmm?”

“You’re having another unnervingly quiet day. What happened to

‘chatty to the point of vaguely irritating’?”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Running Man again? What’s he done now? He hasn’t gone and

run off, has he?”

“No.” I took a soft slice of Will’s hair between my index and

middle fingers and lifted the blades of the scissors to trim what lay

exposed above them. They stilled in my hand. How would they do it?

Would they give him an injection? Was it medicine? Or did they just

leave you in a room with a load of razors?

“You look tired. I wasn’t going to say anything when you came in,

but—hell—you look terrible.”

“Oh.”

How did they assist someone who couldn’t move their own

limbs? I found myself gazing down at his wrists, which were always

covered by long sleeves. I had assumed for weeks that this was

because he felt the cold more than we did. Another lie.

“Clark?”

“Yes?”

I was glad I was behind him. I didn’t want him to see my face.

He hesitated. Where the back of his neck had been covered by

hair, it was even paler than the rest of his skin. It looked soft and

white and oddly vulnerable.

“Look, I’m sorry about my sister. She was…she was very upset,

but it didn’t give her the right to be rude. She’s a bit direct

sometimes. Doesn’t know how much she rubs people the wrong

way.” He paused. “It’s why she likes living in Australia, I think.”

“You mean, they tell each other the truth?”

“What?”

“Nothing. Lift your head up, please.”

I snipped and combed, working my way methodically around his

head until every single hair was chopped or trimmed and all that

remained was a fine sprinkling on the floor.

It all became clear to me by the end of the day. While Will was

watching television with his father, I took a sheet of paper from the

printer and a pen from the jar by the kitchen window and wrote down

what I wanted to say. I folded the paper, found an envelope, and left

it on the kitchen table, addressed to his mother.

When I left for the evening, Will and his father were talking.

Actually, Will was laughing. I paused in the hallway, my bag over my

shoulder, listening. Why would he laugh? What could possibly

provoke mirth, given that he had just a matter of weeks before he

took his own life?

“I’m off,” I called through the doorway, and started walking.

“Hey, Clark—” he began, but I had already closed the door

behind me.

I spent the short bus ride trying to work out what I was going to

tell my parents. They would be furious that I had left what they would

see as a perfectly suitable and well-paid job. After her initial shock

my mother would look pained and defend me, suggesting that it had

all been too much. My father would probably ask why I couldn’t be

more like my sister. He often did, even though I was not the one who

ruined her life by getting pregnant and having to rely on the rest of

the family for financial support and babysitting. You weren’t allowed

to say anything like that in our house because, according to my

mother, it was like implying that Thomas wasn’t a blessing. And all

babies were God’s blessing, even those who said bugger quite a lot,

and whose presence meant that half the potential wage earners in

our family couldn’t actually go and get a decent job.

I would not be able to tell them the truth. I knew I owed Will and

his family nothing, but I wouldn’t inflict the curious gaze of the

neighborhood on him.

All these thoughts tumbled around my head as I got off the bus

and walked down the hill. And then I got to the corner of our road

and heard the shouting, felt the slight vibration in the air, and it was

all briefly forgotten.

A small crowd had gathered around our house. I picked up my

pace, afraid that something had happened, but then I saw my

parents on the porch, peering up, and realized it wasn’t our house at

all. It was just the latest in a long series of small wars that

characterized our neighbors’ marriage.

That Richard Grisham was not the most faithful of husbands was

hardly news on our street. But judging by the scene in his front

garden, it might have been to his wife.

“You must have thought I was bloody stupid. She was wearing

your T-shirt! The one I had made for you for your birthday!”

“Baby…Dympna…it’s not what you think.”

“I went in for your bloody Scotch eggs! And there she was,

wearing it! Bold as brass! And I don’t even like Scotch eggs!”

I slowed my pace, pushing my way through the small crowd until I

was able to get to our gate, watching as Richard ducked to avoid a

DVD player. Next came a pair of shoes.

“How long have they been at it?”

My mother, her apron tucked neatly around her waist, unfolded

her arms and glanced down at her watch. “It’s a good three-quarters

of an hour. Bernard, would you say it’s a good three-quarters of an

hour?”

“Depends if you time it from when she threw the clothes out or

when he came back and found them.”

“I’d say when he came home.”

Dad considered this. “Then it’s really closer to half an hour. She

got a good lot out the window in the first fifteen minutes, though.”

“Your dad says if she really does kick him out this time he’s going

to put in a bid for Richard’s Black and Decker.”

The crowd had grown, and Dympna Grisham showed no sign of

letting up. If anything, she seemed encouraged by the increasing

size of her audience.

“You can take her your filthy books,” she yelled, hurling a shower

of magazines out the window.

These prompted a small cheer among the crowd.

“See if she likes you sitting in the loo with those for half of

Sunday afternoon, eh?” She disappeared inside, and then

reappeared at the window, hauling the contents of a laundry basket

down onto what remained of the lawn. “And your filthy underwear.

See if she thinks you’re such a—what was it?—hot stud when she’s

washing those for you every day!”

Richard was vainly scooping up armfuls of his stuff as it landed

on the grass. He was yelling something up at the window, but

against the general noise and catcalls it was hard to make it out.

Oddly, whereas his CD collection and video games had been quite

popular, no one made a move on his dirty laundry.

Crash. There was a brief hush as his stereo met the path.

He looked up in disbelief. “You crazy bitch!”

“You’re shagging that disease-ridden cross-eyed troll from the

garage, and I’m the crazy bitch?”

My mother turned to my father. “Would you like a cup of tea,

Bernard? I think it’s turning a little chilly.”

My dad didn’t take his eyes off next door. “That would be great,

love. Thank you.”

It was as my mother went indoors that I noticed the car. It was so

unexpected that at first I didn’t recognize it—Mrs. Traynor’s

Mercedes, navy blue, low-slung, and discreet. She pulled up,

peering out at the scene on the pavement, and hesitated a moment

before she climbed out. She stood, staring at the various houses,

perhaps checking the numbers. And then she saw me.

I slid out from the porch and was down the path before Dad could

ask where I was going. Mrs. Traynor stood to the side of the crowd,

gazing at the chaos like Marie Antoinette viewing a load of rioting

peasants.

“Domestic dispute,” I said.

She looked away, as if almost embarrassed to have been caught

looking. “I see.”

“It’s a fairly constructive one by their standards. They’ve been

going to marriage counseling.”

Her elegant wool suit, pearls, and expensive hair were enough to

mark her out on our street, among the sweatpants and cheap fabrics

in bright, chain-store colors. She appeared rigid, worse than the

morning she had come home to find me sleeping in Will’s room. I

registered in some distant part of my mind that I was not going to

miss Camilla Traynor.

“I was wondering if you and I could have a little talk.”

She had to

lift her voice to be heard over the cheering.

I glanced over at the crowd and then behind me at the house. I

could not imagine bringing Mrs. Traynor into our front room, with its

litter of toy trains, Granddad snoring mutely in front of the television,

Mum spraying air freshener around to hide the smell of Dad’s socks,

and Thomas popping by to murmur bugger at the new guest.

“Um…it’s not a great time.”

“Perhaps we could talk in my car? Look, just five minutes, Louisa.

Surely you owe us that.”

A couple of my neighbors glanced in my direction as I climbed

into the car. I was lucky that the Grishams were the hot news of the

evening, or I might have been the topic of conversation. On our

street, if you climbed into an expensive car it meant you had either

pulled a footballer or were being arrested by plainclothes police.

The doors closed with an expensive, muted clunk and suddenly

there was silence. The car smelled of leather, and there was nothing

in it apart from me and Mrs. Traynor. No candy wrappers, mud, lost

toys, or perfumed dangly things to disguise the smell of the carton of

milk that had been dropped in there three months earlier.

“I thought you and Will got on well.” She spoke as if addressing

someone straight ahead of her. When I didn’t speak, she said, “Is

there a problem with the money?”

“No.”

“Do you need a longer lunch break? I am conscious that it’s

rather short. I could ask Nathan if he would—”

“It’s not the hours. Or the money.”

“Then—”

“I don’t really want to—”

“Look, you cannot hand in your notice with immediate effect and

expect me not even to ask what on earth’s the matter.”

I took a deep breath. “I overheard you. You and your daughter.

Last night. And I don’t want to…I don’t want to be part of it.”

“Ah.”

We sat in silence. Mr. Grisham was now trying to bash his way in

through the front door, and Mrs. Grisham was busy hurling anything

she could locate through the window down onto his head. The

choice of projectile missiles—loo roll, tampon boxes, toilet brush,

shampoo bottles—suggested she was now in the bathroom.

“Please, don’t leave,” Mrs. Traynor said, quietly. “Will is

comfortable with you. More so than he’s been for some time. I…it

would be very hard for us to replicate that with someone else.”

“But you’re…you’re going to take him to that place where people

commit suicide. Dignitas.”

“No. I am going to do everything I can to ensure he doesn’t do

that.”

“Like what—praying?”

Mrs. Traynor gave me what my mother would have termed an

“old-fashioned” look. “You must know by now that if Will decides to

make himself unreachable, there is little anybody can do about it.”

“I worked it all out,” I said. “I’m basically there just to make sure

he doesn’t cheat and do it before his six months are up. That’s it,

isn’t it?”

“No. That’s not it.”

“Which is why you didn’t care about my qualifications.”

“I thought you were bright and cheerful and different. You didn’t

look like a nurse. You didn’t behave…like any of the others. I

thought…I thought you might cheer him up. And you do—you do

cheer him up, Louisa. Seeing him without that awful beard

yesterday…you seem to be one of the few people who are able to

get through to him.”

“Don’t you think it would have been fair to mention that I was

basically on suicide watch?”

The sigh Camilla Traynor gave was the sound of someone forced

to explain something politely to an imbecile. I wondered if she knew

that everything she said made the other person feel like an idiot. I

wondered if it was something she’d actually cultivated deliberately. I

didn’t think I could ever manage to make someone feel inferior.

“That might have been the case when we first met you…but I’m

confident Will is going to stick to his word. He has promised me six

months, and that’s what I’ll get. We need this time, Louisa. We need

this time to give him the idea of there being some possibility. I was

hoping it might plant the idea that there is a life he could enjoy, even

if it wasn’t the life he had planned.”

“But it’s all lies. You’ve lied to me and you’re all lying to each

other.”

She didn’t seem to hear me. She turned to face me, pulling a

checkbook from her handbag, a pen ready in her hand.

“Look, what do you want? I will double your money. Tell me how

much you want.”

“I don’t want your money.”

“A car. Some benefits. Bonuses—”

“No—”

“Then…what can I do that might change your mind?”

“I’m sorry. I just don’t—”

I started to get out of the car. Her hand shot out. It sat there on

my arm, strange and radioactive. We both stared at it.

“You signed a contract, Miss Clark,” she said. “You signed a

contract where you promised to work for us for six months. By my

calculations you have done only two. I am simply requiring you to

fulfill your contractual obligations.”

Her voice had become brittle. I looked down at Mrs. Traynor’s

hand and saw that it was trembling.

She swallowed. “Please.”

My parents were watching from the porch. I could see them,

mugs poised in their hands, the only two people facing away from

the theater next door. They turned away awkwardly when they saw

that I had noticed them. Dad, I realized, was wearing the tartan

slippers with the paint splotches.

I pushed the handle of the door. “Mrs. Traynor, I really can’t sit by

and watch…it’s too weird. I don’t want to be part of this.”

“Just think about it. Tomorrow is Good Friday—I’ll tell Will you

have a family commitment if you really just need some time. Take the

Bank Holiday weekend to think about it. But please. Come back.

Come back and help him.”

I walked back into the house without looking back. I sat down in

the living room and stared at the television while my parents followed

me in, exchanged glances, and pretended not to be watching me.

It was almost eleven minutes before I finally heard Mrs. Traynor’s

car start up and drive away.

My sister confronted me within five minutes of arriving home,

thundering up the stairs and throwing open the door of my room.

“Yes, do come in,” I said. I was lying on the bed, my legs

stretched up the wall, staring at the ceiling. I was wearing tights and

blue sequined shorts, which now looped unattractively around the

tops of my legs.

Katrina stood in the doorway. “Is it true?”

“That Dympna Grisham has finally thrown out her cheating no-

good philandering husband and—”

“Don’t be smart. About your job.”

I traced the pattern of the wallpaper with my big toe. “Yes, I

handed in my notice. Yes, I know Mum and Dad are not too happy

about it. Yes, yes, yes to whatever it is you’re going to throw at me.”

She closed the door carefully behind her, then sat down heavily

on the end of my bed and swore lustily. “I don’t bloody believe you.”

She shoved my legs so that I slid down the wall, ending up

almost lying on the bed. I pushed myself upright. “Ow.”

Her face was puce. “I don’t believe you. Mum’s in bits downstairs.

Dad’s pretending not to be, but he is too. What are they supposed to

do about money? You know Dad’s already panicking about work.

Why the hell would you throw away a perfectly good job?”

“Don’t lecture me, Treen.”

“Well, someone’s got to! You’re never going to get anything like

that money anywhere else. And how’s it going to look on your CV?”

“Oh, don’t pretend this is about anything other than you and what

you want.”

“What?”

“You don’t care what I do, as long as you can still go and

resurrect your high-flying career. You just need me there propping up

the family funds and providing the bloody child care. Sod everyone

else.” I knew I sounded mean and nasty but I couldn’t help myself. It

was my sister’s plight that had got us into this mess, after all. Years

of resentment began to ooze out of me. “We’ve all got to stick at jobs

we hate just so that little Katrina can fulfill her bloody ambitions.”

“It is not about me.”

“No?”

“No, it’s about you not being able to stick at the one decent job

you’ve been offered in months.”

“You know nothing about my job, okay?”

“I know it paid well above the minimum wage. Which is all

I need

to know about it.”

“Not everything in life is about the money, you know.”

“Yes? You go downstairs and tell Mum and Dad that.”

“Don’t you dare bloody lecture me about money when you

haven’t paid a sodding thing toward this house for years.”

“You know I can’t afford much because of Thomas.”

I began to shove my sister out the door. I can’t remember the last

time I actually laid a hand on her, but right then I wanted to punch

someone quite badly and I was afraid of what I would do if she

stayed there in front of me. “Just piss off, Treen. Okay? Just piss off

and leave me alone.”

I slammed the door in my sister’s face. And when I finally heard

her walking slowly back down the stairs, I chose not to think about

what she would say to my parents, about the way they would all treat

this as further evidence of my catastrophic inability to do anything of

any worth. I chose not to think about Syed at the Job Center and

how I would explain my reasons for leaving this most well-paid of

menial jobs. I chose not to think about the chicken factory and how

somewhere, deep within its bowels, there was probably a set of

plastic overalls and a hygiene cap with my name still on them.

I lay back and I thought about Will. I thought about his anger and

his sadness. I thought about what his mother had said—that I was

one of the only people able to get through to him. I thought about

him trying not to laugh at the “Molahonkey Song” on a night when

the snow drifted gold past the window. I thought about the warm skin

and soft hair and hands of someone living, someone who was far

cleverer and funnier than I would ever be and who still couldn’t see a

better future than to obliterate himself. And finally, my head pressed

into the pillow, I cried, because my life suddenly seemed so much

darker and more complicated than I could ever have imagined, and I

wished I could go back, back to when my biggest worry was whether

Frank and I had ordered in enough Chelsea buns.

There was a knock on the door.

I blew my nose. “Piss off, Katrina.”

“I’m sorry.”

I stared at the door.

Her voice was muffled, as if her lips were close up to the keyhole.

“I’ve got wine. Look, let me in, for God’s sake, or Mum will hear me.

I’ve got two Bob the Builder mugs stuck up my sweater, and you

know how she gets about us drinking upstairs.”

I climbed off the bed and opened the door.

She glanced up at my tear-stained face, and swiftly closed the

bedroom door behind her. “Okay,” she said, wrenching off the screw

top and pouring me a mug of wine, “what really happened?”

I looked at my sister hard. “You mustn’t tell anyone what I’m

about to tell you. Not Dad. Especially not Mum.”

Then I told her.

I had to tell someone.

There were many ways in which I disliked my sister. A few years ago

I could have shown you whole scribbled lists I had written on that

very topic. I hated her for the fact that she’s got thick, straight hair,

while mine breaks off if it grows beyond my shoulders. I hated her for

the fact that you can never tell her anything that she doesn’t already

know. I hated her for the fact that for my whole school career

teachers insisted on telling me in hushed tones how bright she was,

as if her brilliance wouldn’t mean that by default I lived in a

permanent shadow. I hated her for the fact that at the age of twenty-

six I lived in a box room in a semidetached house just so she could

have her illegitimate son in with her in the bigger bedroom. But every

now and then I was very glad indeed that she was my sister.

Because Katrina didn’t shriek in horror. She didn’t look shocked,

or insist that I tell Mum and Dad. She didn’t once tell me I’d done the

wrong thing by walking away.

She took a huge swig of her drink. “Jeez.”

“Exactly.”

“It’s legal as well. It’s not as if they can stop him.”

“I know.”

“Fuck. I can’t even get my head around it.”

We had downed two glasses just in the telling of it, and I could

feel the heat rising in my cheeks. “I hate the thought of leaving him.

But I can’t be part of this, Treen. I can’t.”

“Mmm.” She was thinking. My sister actually has a “thinking

face.” It makes people wait before speaking to her. Dad says my

thinking face makes it look like I want to go to the loo.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said.

She looked up at me, her face suddenly brightening. “It’s simple.”

“Simple.”

She poured us another glass each. “Oops. We seem to have

finished this already. Yes. Simple. They’ve got money, right?”

“I don’t want their money. She offered me a raise. It’s not the

point.”

“Shut up. Not for you, idiot girl. They’ll have their own money. And

he’s probably got a shedload of insurance from the accident. Well,

you tell them that you want a budget and then you use that money,

and you use the—what was it?—four months you’ve got left. And

you change Will Traynor’s mind.”

“What?”

“You change his mind. You said he spends most of his time

indoors, right? Well, start with something small, then once you’ve got

him out and about again, you think of every fabulous thing you could

do for him, everything that might make him want to live—adventures,

foreign travel, swimming with dolphins, whatever—and then you do

it. I can help you. I’ll look things up on the Internet at the library. I bet

we could come up with some brilliant things for him to do. Things

that would really make him happy.”

I stared at her.

“Katrina—”

“Yeah. I know.” She grinned as I started to smile. “I’m a fucking

genius.”

They looked a bit surprised. Actually, that’s an understatement. Mrs.

Traynor looked stunned, and then a bit disconcerted, and then her

whole face closed off. Her daughter, curled up next to her on the

sofa, just glowered—the kind of face Mum used to warn me would

stick in place if the wind changed. It wasn’t quite the enthusiastic

response I’d been hoping for.

“But what is it you actually want to do?”

“I don’t know yet. My sister is good at researching stuff. She’s

trying to find out what’s possible for quadriplegics. But I really

wanted to find out from you whether you would be willing to go with

it.”

We were in their drawing room. It was the same room I had been

interviewed in, except this time Mrs. Traynor and her daughter were

perched on the sofa, their slobbery old dog between them. Mr.

Traynor was standing by the fire. I was wearing my French peasant’s

jacket in indigo denim, a minidress, and a pair of army boots. With

hindsight, I realized, I could have picked a more professional-looking

uniform in which to outline my plan.

“Let me get this straight.” Camilla Traynor leaned forward. “You

want to take Will away from this house.”

“Yes.”

“And take him on a series of ‘adventures.’” She said it like I was

suggesting performing amateur keyhole surgery on him.

“Yes. Like I said, I’m not sure what’s possible yet. But it’s about

just getting him out and about, widening his horizons. There may be

some local things we could do at first, and then hopefully something

farther afield before too long.”

“Are you talking about going abroad?”

“Abroad…?” I blinked. “I was thinking more about maybe getting

him to the pub. Or to a show, just for starters.”

“Will has barely left this house in two years, apart from hospital

appointments.”

“Well, yes…I thought I’d try and persuade him otherwise.”

“And you would, of course, go on all these adventures with him,”

Georgina Traynor said.

“Look. It’s nothing extraordinary. I’m really talking about just

getting him out of the house, to start with. A walk around the castle,

or a visit to the pub. If we end up swimming with dolphins in Florida,

then that’s lovely. But really I just wanted to get him out of the house

and thinking about something else.” I didn’t add that the mere

thought of driving to the hospital in sole charge of Will was still

enough to bring me out in a cold sweat. The thought of taking him

abroad felt as likely as me running a marathon.

“I think it’s a splendid idea,” Mr. Traynor said. “I think it would be

marvelous to get Will out and about. You know it can’t have

it. Where is it you liked? Ipsos?

Kalypsos?”

“Skiathos.”

“That’s the one. You want to check your hotel very carefully. Do it

on the Internet. He and Daddy watched something on the news at

lunchtime. Apparently they’re building sites, half of those budget

deals, and you wouldn’t know until you got there. Daddy, would you

like a cup of tea? Did Lou not offer you one?” She put the kettle on,

then glanced up at me. It’s possible she had finally noticed I wasn’t

saying anything. “Are you all right, love? You look awfully pale.”

She reached out a hand and felt my forehead, as if I were much

younger than twenty-six.

“I don’t think we’re going on holiday.”

My mother’s hand stilled. Her gaze had that X-ray thing that it

had held since I was a kid. “Are you and Pat having some

problems?”

“Mum, I—”

“I’m not trying to interfere. It’s just, you’ve been together an awful

long time. It’s only natural if things get a bit sticky every now and

then. I mean, me and your father, we—”

“I lost my job.”

My voice cut into the silence. The words hung there, searing

themselves on the little room long after the sound had died away.

“You what?”

“Frank’s shutting down the café. From tomorrow.” I held out a

hand with the slightly damp envelope I had gripped in shock the

entire journey home. All 180 steps from the bus stop. “He’s given me

my three months’ money.”

The day had started like any other day. Everyone I knew hated

Monday mornings, but I never minded them. I liked arriving early at

the Buttered Bun, firing up the huge tea urn in the corner, bringing in

the crates of milk and bread from the backyard, and chatting to

Frank as we prepared to open.

I liked the fuggy bacon-scented warmth of the café, the little

bursts of cool air as the door opened and closed, the low murmur of

conversation, and, when quiet, Frank’s radio singing tinnily to itself in

the corner. It wasn’t a fashionable place—its walls were covered in

scenes from the castle up on the hill, the tables still sported Formica

tops, and the menu hadn’t altered since I started, apart from the

addition of chocolate brownies to the iced-bun tray.

But most of all I liked the customers. I liked Kev and Angelo, the

plumbers, who came in most mornings and teased Frank about

where his meat might have come from. I liked the Dandelion Lady,

nicknamed for her shock of white hair, who ate one egg and chips

from Monday to Thursday and sat reading the complimentary

newspapers and drinking her way through two cups of tea. I always

made an effort to chat with her. I suspected it might be the only

conversation the old woman got all day.

I liked the tourists, who stopped on their walk up to and down

from the castle, the shrieking schoolchildren, who stopped by after

school, the regulars from the offices across the road, and Nina and

Cherie, the hairdressers, who knew the calorie count of every single

item the Buttered Bun had to offer. Even the annoying customers,

like the red-haired woman who ran the toy shop and disputed her

change at least once a week, didn’t trouble me.

I watched relationships begin and end across those tables,

children transferred between ex-spouses, the guilty relief of those

parents who couldn’t face cooking, and the secret pleasure of

pensioners at a fried breakfast. All human life came through, and

most of them shared a few words with me, trading jokes or

comments over the mugs of steaming tea. Dad always said he never

knew what was going to come out of my mouth next, but in the café

it didn’t matter.

Frank liked me. He was quiet by nature, and said having me

there kept the place lively. It was a bit like being a barmaid, but

without the hassle of drunks.

And then that afternoon, after the lunchtime rush had ended, and

with the place briefly empty, Frank, wiping his hands on his apron,

had come out from behind the hot plate and turned the little CLOSED

sign to face the street.

He was twisting a tea towel between his two hands and looked

more uncomfortable than I had ever seen him. I wondered, briefly,

whether someone had complained about me. And then he motioned

to me to sit down.

“Sorry, Louisa,” he said, after he had told me. “But I’m going back

to Australia. My dad’s not too good, and it looks like the castle is

definitely going to start doing its own refreshments. The writing’s on

the wall.”

I think I sat there with my mouth actually hanging open. And then

Frank handed me the envelope, and answered my next question

before it left my lips. “I know we never had, you know, a formal

contract or anything, but I wanted to look after you. There’s three

months’ money in there. We close tomorrow.”

“Three months!” Dad exploded, as my mother thrust a cup of sweet

tea into my hands. “Well, that’s big of him, given she’s worked like a

ruddy Trojan in that place for the last six years.”

“Bernard.” Mum shot him a warning look, nodding toward

Thomas. My parents minded him after school every day until Treena

finished work.

“What the hell is she supposed to do now? He could have given

her more than a day’s bloody notice.”

“Well…she’ll just have to get another job.”

“There are no bloody jobs, Josie. You know that as well as I do.

We’re in the middle of a bloody recession.”

Mum shut her eyes for a moment, as if composing herself before

she spoke. “She’s a bright girl. She’ll find herself something. She’s

got a solid employment record, hasn’t she? Frank will give her a

good reference.”

“Oh, fecking marvelous…‘Louisa Clark is very good at buttering

toast, and a dab hand with the old teapot.’”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad.”

“I’m just saying.”

I knew the real reason for Dad’s anxiety. They relied on my

wages. Treena earned next to nothing at the flower shop. Mum

couldn’t work, as she had to look after Granddad, and Granddad’s

pension amounted to almost nothing. Dad lived in a constant state of

anxiety about his job at the furniture factory. His boss had been

muttering about possible redundancies for months. There were

murmurings at home about debts and the juggling of credit cards.

Dad had had his car written off by an uninsured driver two years

previously, and somehow this had been enough for the whole

teetering edifice that was my parents’ finances to finally collapse. My

modest wages had been a little bedrock of housekeeping money,

enough to help see the family through from week to week.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. She can head down to the Job

Center tomorrow and see what’s on offer. She’s got enough to get by

for now.” They spoke as if I weren’t there. “And she’s smart. You’re

smart, aren’t you, love? Perhaps she could do a typing course. Go

into office work.”

I sat there as my parents discussed what other jobs my limited

qualifications might entitle me to. Factory work, machinist, roll

butterer. For the first time that afternoon I wanted to cry. Thomas

watched me with big, round eyes, and silently handed me half a

soggy biscuit.

“Thanks, Tommo,” I mouthed silently, and ate it.

He was down at the athletics club, as I had known he would be.

Mondays to Thursdays, regular as a station timetable, Patrick was

there in the gym or running in circles around the floodlit track.

“Run with me,” he puffed, as he got closer. His breath came in

pale clouds. “I’ve got four laps to go.”

I hesitated just a moment, and then began to run alongside him.

It was the only way I was going to get any kind of conversation out of

him. I was wearing my pink trainers with the turquoise laces, the only

shoes I could possibly run in.

I had spent the day at home, trying to be useful. I’m guessing it

was about an hour before I started to get under my mother’s feet.

Mum and Granddad had their routines, and having me there

interrupted them. Dad was asleep, as he was on nights this month,

and not to be disturbed. I tidied my room, then sat and watched

television with the sound down, and when I remembered,

periodically, why I was at home in the middle of the day, I felt an

actual brief pain in my chest.

“I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I got fed

been

good for him staring at the four walls day in and day out.”

“We have tried to get him out, Steven,” Mrs. Traynor said. “It’s not

as if we’ve left him in there to rot. I’ve tried again and again.”

“I know that, darling, but we haven’t been terribly successful,

have we? If Louisa here can think up things that Will is prepared to

try, then that can only be a good thing, surely?”

“Yes, well, ‘prepared to try’ being the operative phrase.”

“It’s just an idea,” I said. I felt suddenly irritated. I could see what

she was thinking. “If you don’t want me to do it—”

“You’ll leave?” She looked straight at me.

I didn’t look away. She didn’t frighten me anymore. Because I

knew now that she was no better than me. She was a woman who

could sit back and let her son die right in front of her.

“Yes, I probably will.”

“So it’s blackmail.”

“Georgina!”

“Well, let’s not beat around the bush here, Daddy.”

I sat up a little straighter. “No. Not blackmail. It’s about what I’m

prepared to be part of. I can’t sit by and just quietly wait out the time

until…Will…well…” My voice trailed off.

We all stared at our cups of tea.

“Like I said,” Mr. Traynor said firmly, “I think it’s a very good idea.

If you can get Will to agree to it, I can’t see that there’s any harm at

all. I’d love the idea of him going on holiday. Just…just let us know

what you need us to do.”

“I’ve got an idea.” Mrs. Traynor put a hand on her daughter’s

shoulder. “Perhaps you could go on holiday with them, Georgina.”

“Fine by me,” I said. It was. Because my chances of getting Will

away on holiday were about the same as me competing on

Mastermind.

Georgina Traynor shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I can’t. You

know I start my new job in two weeks. I won’t be able to come over

to England again for a bit once I’ve started.”

“You’re going back to Australia?”

“Don’t sound so surprised. I did tell you this was just a visit.”

“I just thought that…given…given recent events, you might want

to stay here a bit longer.” Camilla Traynor stared at her daughter in a

way she never stared at Will, no matter how rude he was to her.

“It’s a really good job, Mummy. It’s the one I’ve been working

toward for the last two years.” She glanced over at her father. “I can’t

put my whole life on hold just because of Will’s mental state.”

There was a long silence.

“This isn’t fair. If it was me in the chair, would you have asked Will

to put all his plans on hold?”

Mrs. Traynor didn’t look at her daughter. I glanced down at my

list, reading and rereading the first paragraph.

“I have a life too, you know.” It came out like a protest.

“Let’s discuss this some other time.” Mr. Traynor’s hand landed

on his daughter’s shoulder and squeezed it gently.

“Yes, let’s.” Mrs. Traynor began to shuffle the papers in front of

her. “Right, then. I propose we do it like this. I want to know

everything you are planning,” she said, looking up at me. “I want to

do the estimates and, if possible, I’d like a schedule so that I can try

and plan some time off to come along with you. I have some unused

holiday entitlement left that I can—”

“No.”

We all turned to look at Mr. Traynor. He was stroking the dog’s

head and his expression was gentle, but his voice was firm. “No. I

don’t think you should go, Camilla. Will should be allowed to do this

by himself.”

“Will can’t do it by himself, Steven. There is an awful lot that

needs to be considered when Will goes anywhere. It’s complicated. I

don’t think we can really leave it to—”

“No, darling,” he repeated. “Nathan can help, and Louisa can

manage just fine.”

“But—”

“Will needs to be allowed to feel like a man. That is not going to

be possible if his mother—or his sister, for that matter—is always on

hand.”

I felt briefly sorry for Mrs. Traynor then. She still wore that

haughty look of hers, but I could see underneath that she seemed a

little lost, as if she couldn’t quite understand what her husband was

doing. Her hand went to her necklace.

“I will make sure he’s safe,” I said. “And I will let you know

everything we’re planning on doing, well in advance.”

Her jaw was so rigid that a little muscle was visible just

underneath her cheekbone. I wondered if she actually hated me

then.

“I want Will to want to live too,” I said, finally.

“We do understand that,” Mr. Traynor said. “And we do

appreciate your determination. And discretion.” I wondered whether

that word was in relation to Will or to something else entirely, and

then he stood up and I realized that it was my signal to leave.

Georgina and her mother still sat on the sofa, saying nothing. I got

the feeling there was going to be a whole lot more conversation once

I was out of the room.

“Right, then,” I said. “I’ll draw you up the paperwork as soon as

I’ve worked it all out in my head. It will be soon. We haven’t much…”

Mr. Traynor patted my shoulder.

“I know. Just let us know what you come up with,” he said.

Treena was blowing on her hands, her feet moving involuntarily up

and down, as if marching on the spot. She was wearing my dark-

green beret, which, annoyingly, looked much better on her than it did

on me. She leaned over and pointed to the list she had just pulled

from her pocket, and handed it to me.

“You’re probably going to have to scratch number three, or at

least put that off until it gets warmer.”

I checked the list. “Quadriplegic basketball? I’m not even sure if

he likes basketball.”

“That’s not the point. Bloody hell, it’s cold up here.” She pulled

the beret lower over her ears. “The point is, it will give him a chance

to see what’s possible. He can see that there are other people just

as bad off as he is who are doing sports and things.”

“I’m not sure. He can’t even lift a cup. I think these people must

be paraplegic. I can’t see that you could throw a ball without the use

of your arms.”

“You’re missing the point. He doesn’t have to actually do

anything, but it’s about widening his horizons, right? We’re letting

him see what other handicapped people are doing.”

“If you say so.”

A low murmur rose in the crowd. The runners had been sighted,

some distance away. If I went onto tiptoes, I could just make them

out, probably two miles away, down in the valley, a small block of

bobbing white dots forcing their way through the cold along a damp,

gray road. I glanced at my watch. We had been 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 center 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 near the finish line. 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 from flapping. “So what else did you come up with?”

“You said you wanted to go farther afield, right?” She pointed to

my fingers. “You’ve given yourself the bigger bit.”

“Take this bit then. I think the family thinks I’m freeloading.”

“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 in the chat rooms. 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 to 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 mustache, 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 swiveled 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.”

“Go, Patrick!” I yelled weakly. He didn’t see me.

And he flashed by, toward the finish line.

Treena didn’t talk to me for two days after I failed to show the

required enthusiasm for her to-do list. My parents didn’t notice; they

were just overjoyed to hear that I had decided not to leave my job.

Management had called a series of meetings at the furniture factory

for the end of that week, and Dad was convinced that he would be

among those made redundant. Nobody over the age of forty had yet

survived the cull.

“We’re very grateful for your housekeeping, love,” Mum said, so

often that it made me feel a bit uncomfortable.

It was a funny week. Treena began packing for her course, and

each day I had to sneak upstairs to go through the bags she had

already packed to see which of my possessions she planned to take

with her. Most of my clothes were safe, but so far I had recovered a

hair dryer, my fake Prada sunglasses, and my favorite washbag with

the lemons on it. If I confronted her over any of it, she would just

shrug and say, “Well, you never use it,” as if that were entirely the

point.

That was Treena all over. She felt entitled. Even though Thomas

had come along, she had never quite lost that sense of being the

baby of the family—the deep-rooted feeling that the whole world

actually did revolve around her. When we were little and she threw a

huge tantrum because she wanted something of mine, Mum would

plead with me to “just let her have it,” if only for some peace in the

house. Nearly twenty years later, nothing had really changed. We

had to babysit Thomas so that Treena could still go out, feed him so

that Treena didn’t have to worry, buy her extra-nice presents at

birthdays and Christmas “because Thomas means she often goes

without.” Well, she could go without my bloody lemons washbag. I

stuck a note on my door that read: “My stuff is MINE. GO AWAY.”

Treena ripped it off and told Mum I was the biggest child she had

ever met and that Thomas had more maturity in his little finger than I

did.

But it got me thinking. One evening, after Treena had gone out to

her night class, I sat in the kitchen while Mum sorted Dad’s shirts

ready for ironing.

“Mum…”

“Yes, love.”

“Do you think I could move into Treena’s room once she’s gone?”

Mum paused, a half-folded shirt pressed to her chest. “I don’t

know. I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“I mean, if she and Thomas are not going to be here, it’s only fair

that I should be allowed a proper-sized bedroom. It seems silly, it

sitting empty, if they’re going off to college.”

Mum nodded, and placed the shirt carefully in the laundry basket.

“I suppose you’re right.”

“And by rights, that room should have been mine, what with me

being the elder and all. It’s only because she had Thomas that she

got it at all.”

She could see the sense in it. “That’s true. I’ll talk to Treena about

it,” she said.

I suppose, with hindsight, it would have been a good idea to

mention it to my sister first.

Three hours later she came bursting into the living room with a

face like thunder.

“Would you jump in my grave so quickly?”

Granddad jerked awake in his chair, his hand reflexively clasped

to his chest.

I looked up from the television. “What are you talking about?”

“Where are me and Thomas supposed to go on weekends? We

can’t both fit in the box room. There’s not even enough room in there

for two beds.”

“Exactly. And I’ve been stuck in there for five years.” The

knowledge that I was ever so slightly in the wrong made me sound

pricklier than I had intended.

“You can’t take my room. It’s not fair.”

“You’re not even going to be in it!”

“But I need it! There’s no way me and Thomas can fit in the box

room. Dad, tell her!”

Dad’s chin descended to somewhere deep in his collar, his arms

folded across his chest. He hated it when we fought, and tended to

leave it to Mum to sort out. “Turn it down a bit, girls,” he said.

“I don’t believe you. No wonder you were so keen to help me

leave.”

“What? So you begging me to keep my job so that I can help you

out financially is now part of my sinister plan, is it?”

“You’re so two-faced.”

“Katrina, calm down.” Mum appeared in the doorway, her rubber

gloves dripping foamy water onto the living-room carpet. “We can

talk about this calmly. I don’t want you getting Granddad all wound

up.”

Katrina’s face had gone blotchy, the way it did when she was

small and she didn’t get her way. “She actually wants me to go.

That’s what this is. She can’t wait for me to go, because she’s

jealous that I’m actually doing something with my life. So she just

wants to make it difficult for me to come home again.”

“There’s no guarantee you’re even going to be coming home on

the weekends,” I yelled, stung. “I need a bedroom, not a cupboard,

and you’ve had the best room the whole time, just because you were

dumb enough to get yourself up the duff.”

“Louisa!” said Mum.

“Yes, well, if you weren’t so thick that you can’t even get a proper

job, you could have gotten your own bloody place. You’re old

enough. Or what’s the matter? You’ve finally figured out that Patrick

is never going to ask you?”

“That’s it!” Dad’s roar broke into the silence. “I’ve heard enough!

Treena, go into the kitchen. Lou, sit down and shut up. I’ve got

enough stress in my life without having to listen to you caterwauling

at each other.”

“If you think I’m helping you now with your stupid list, you’ve got

another thing coming,” Treena hissed at me, as Mum manhandled

her out the door.

“Good. I didn’t want your help anyway, freeloader,” I said, and

then ducked as Dad threw a copy of the Radio Times at my head.

On Saturday morning I went to the library. I think I probably hadn’t

been in there since I was at school—quite possibly out of fear that

they would remember the Judy Blume I had lost in Year 7, and that a

clammy, official hand would reach out as I passed through the

building’s Victorian

pillared doors, demanding £3,853 in fines.

It wasn’t what I remembered. Half the books seemed to have

been replaced by CDs and DVDs, great bookshelves full of

audiobooks, and even stands of greeting cards. And it was not silent.

The sound of singing and clapping filtered through from the

children’s book corner, where some kind of mother and baby group

was in full swing. People read magazines and chatted quietly. The

section where old men used to fall asleep over the free newspapers

had disappeared, replaced by a large oval table with computers

dotted around the perimeter. I sat down gingerly at one of these,

hoping that nobody was watching. Computers, like books, are my

sister’s thing. Luckily, they seemed to have anticipated the sheer

terror felt by people like me. A librarian stopped by my table, and

handed me a card and a laminated sheet with instructions on it. She

didn’t stand over my shoulder, just murmured that she would be at

the desk if I needed any further help, and then it was just me and a

chair with a wonky castor and the blank screen.

The only computer I have had any contact with in years is

Patrick’s. He only really uses it to download fitness plans, or to order

sports technique books from Amazon. If there is other stuff he does

on there, I don’t really want to know about it. But I followed the

librarian’s instructions, double-checking every stage as I completed

it. And, astonishingly, it worked. It didn’t just work, but it was easy.

Four hours later I had the beginnings of my list.

And nobody mentioned the Judy Blume. Mind you, that was

probably because I had used my sister’s library card.

On the way home I nipped in to the stationer’s and bought a wall

calendar—the sort you might find in an office, with staff holiday

entitlement marked on it in permanent pen. In my little room at home,

I opened it out, pinned it carefully to the back of my door, and

marked the date when I had started at the Traynors’, way back at the

beginning of February. Then I counted forward, and marked the date

—August 12—now barely four months ahead. I took a step back and

stared at it for a while, trying to make the little black ring bear some

of the weight of what it heralded. And as I stared, I began to realize

what I was taking on.

I would have to fill those little white rectangles with a lifetime of

things that could generate happiness, contentment, satisfaction, or

pleasure. I would have to fill them with every good experience I could

summon up for a man whose powerless arms and legs meant he

could no longer make them happen by himself. I had just under four

months’ worth of printed rectangles to pack with days out, trips away,

visitors, lunches, and concerts. I had to come up with all the practical

ways to make them happen, and do enough research to make sure

that they didn’t fail.

And then I had to convince Will to actually do them.

I stared at my calendar, the pen stilled in my hand. This little

patch of paper suddenly bore a whole heap of responsibility.

I had a hundred and seventeen days in which to convince Will

Traynor that he had a reason to live.

There are places where the changing seasons are marked by

migrating birds, or the ebb and flow of tides. Here, in our little town, it

was the return of the tourists. At first, a tentative trickle, stepping off

trains or out of cars in brightly colored waterproof coats, clutching

their guidebooks and National Trust membership; then, as the air

warmed and the season crept forward, disgorged alongside the

belch and hiss of their coaches, clogging up the high street,

Americans, Japanese, and packs of foreign schoolchildren dotted

the perimeter of the castle.

In the winter, little stayed open. The wealthier shop owners took

advantage of the long bleak months to disappear to holiday homes

abroad, while the more determined hosted Christmas events,

capitalizing on occasional carol concerts on the grounds, or festive

craft fairs. But then as the temperatures rose, the castle car parks

would become studded with vehicles, the local pubs would chalk up

an increase in requests for a ploughman’s lunch, and, within a few

sunny Sundays, we had morphed again from being a sleepy market

town into a traditional English tourist destination.

I walked up the hill, dodging this season’s hovering early few as

they clutched their neoprene fanny packs and well-thumbed tourist

guides, their cameras already poised to capture mementoes of the

castle in spring. I smiled at a few, paused to take photographs of

others with proffered cameras. Some locals complained about the

tourist season—the traffic jams, the overwhelmed public toilets, the

demands for strange comestibles in the Buttered Bun café (“You

don’t do sushi? Not even hand roll?”). But I didn’t. I liked the breath

of foreign air, the close-up glimpses of lives far removed from my

own. I liked to hear the accents and work out where their owners

came from, to study the clothes of people who had never seen a

Next catalog or bought a five-pack of knickers at Marks and Spencer.

“You look cheerful,” Will said, as I dropped my bag in the hallway.

He said it as if it were almost an affront.

“That’s because it’s today.”

“What is?”

“Our outing. We’re taking Nathan to see the horse racing.”

Will and Nathan looked at each other. I almost laughed. I had

been so relieved at the sight of the weather; once I saw the sun, I

knew everything was going to be all right.

“Horse racing?”

“Yup. Flat racing at”—I pulled my notepad from my pocket

—“Longfield. If we leave now we can be there in time for the third

race. And I have five pounds each way on Man Oh Man, so we’d

better get a move on.”

“Horse racing.”

“Yes. Nathan’s never been.”

In honor of the occasion I was wearing my blue quilted minidress,

with the scarf with horse bits around the edge knotted at my neck,

and a pair of leather riding boots.

Will studied me carefully, then reversed his chair and swerved so

that he could better see his male caregiver. “This is a long-held

desire of yours, is it, Nathan?”

I gave Nathan a warning glare.

“Yiss,” he said, and broke out in a smile. “Yes, it is. Let’s head for

the ponies.”

I had primed him, of course. I had rung him on Friday and asked

him which day I could borrow him. The Traynors had agreed to pay

his extra hours (Will’s sister had left for Australia, and I think they

wanted to be sure that someone “sensible” was going to accompany

me), but I hadn’t been sure until Sunday what it actually was we

were going to do. This seemed the ideal start—a nice day out, less

than half an hour’s drive away.

“And what if I say I don’t want to go?”

“Then you owe me forty pounds,” I said.

“Forty pounds? How do you work that out?”

“My winnings. Five pounds each way at eight to one.” I shrugged.

“Man Oh Man’s a sure thing.”

I seemed to have got him off balance.

Nathan clapped his hands onto his knees. “Sounds great. Nice

day for it too,” he said. “You want me to pack some lunch?”

“Nah,” I said. “There’s a nice restaurant. When my horse comes

in, lunch is on me.”

“You’ve been racing often, then?” Will said.

And then before he could say anything else, we had bundled him

into his coat and I ran outside to reverse the car.

I had it all planned, you see. We would arrive at the racecourse on a

beautiful sunny day. There would be burnished, stick-legged

Thoroughbreds, their jockeys in billowing bright silks, careering past.

Perhaps a brass band or two. The stands would be full of cheering

people, and we would find a space from which to wave our winning

betting slips. Will’s competitive streak would kick in and he would be

unable to resist calculating the odds and making sure he won more

than either Nathan or me. I had worked it all out. And then, when we

had had enough of watching the horses, we would go to the well-

reviewed racecourse restaurant and have a slap-up meal.

I should have listened to my father. “Want to know the true

definition of the triumph of hope over experience?” he would say.

“Plan a fun family day out.”

It started with the car park. I drove there without incident, now a

little more confident that I wasn’t going to tip Will over if I went faster

than 15 mph. I kept up a cheerful banter almost the whole way there,

commenting on the beautiful blue sky, the countryside, the lack of

traffic. There were no queues to enter the racecourse, which was,

admittedly, a little less grand than I had expected, and the car park

was clearly marked.

But nobody had warned me it was on grass, and grass that had

been driven over for much of a wet winter at that. We backed into a

space (not hard, as it was only half full) and almost as soon as the

ramp was down Nathan looked worried.

“It’s too soft,” he said. “He’s going to sink.”

I glanced over at the stands. “Surely, if we can get him onto that

pathway we’ll be okay?”

“It weighs a ton, this chair,” he said. “And that’s forty feet away.”

“Oh, come on. They must build these chairs to withstand a bit of

soft ground.”

I backed Will’s chair down carefully and then watched as the

wheels sank several inches into the mud.

Will said nothing. He looked uncomfortable, and had been silent

for much of the half-hour drive. “Come on,” I said. “We’ll do it

manually. I’m sure between us we can manage to get there.”

We tilted Will backward. I took one handle and Nathan took the

other and we dragged the chair toward the path. It was slow

progress. I had to keep stopping because my arms hurt and my

pristine boots grew thick with mud. When we finally made it to the

pathway, Will’s blanket had half slipped off him and had somehow

got caught up in his wheels, leaving one corner torn and muddy.

“Don’t worry,” Will said drily. “It’s only cashmere.”

I ignored him. “Right. We’ve made it. Now for the fun bit.”

Ah, yes. The fun bit. Who thought it would be a good idea for

racecourses to have turnstiles? It was hardly as if they needed

crowd control. We looked at the turnstile, and then back at Will’s

chair, and then Nathan and I looked at each other.

Nathan stepped over to the ticket office and explained our plight

to the woman inside. She tilted her head to look at Will, then pointed

us toward the far end of the stand.

“The disabled entrance is over there,” she said.

She said disabled like someone entering a diction contest. It was

a good two hundred yards away. By the time we finally made it over

there the blue skies had disappeared abruptly, replaced by a sudden

squall. Naturally, I hadn’t brought an umbrella. I kept up a relentless,

cheerful commentary about how funny this was and how ridiculous,

and even to my ears I had begun to sound brittle and irritating.

“Clark,” said Will, finally. “Just chill out, okay? You’re being

exhausting.”

We bought tickets for the stands, and then, almost faint with relief

at finally having gotten there, I wheeled Will out to a sheltered area

just to the side of the main stand. While Nathan sorted out Will’s

drink, I had some time to look at our fellow race-goers.

Above us, on a glass-fronted balcony, men in suits proffered

champagne glasses to women in wedding outfits. They looked warm

and cozy, and I guessed that was the Premier Area, listed next to

some stratospheric price on the board in the ticket kiosk. They wore

little badges on red thread, marking them out as special. I wondered

briefly if it was possible to color our blue ones a different shade, but

decided that being the only people with a wheelchair would probably

make us a little conspicuous.

Beside us, dotted along the stands and clutching polystyrene

cups of coffee and hip flasks, were men in tweedy suits and women

in smart padded coats. They looked a little more everyday, and wore

blue badges like ours. And then, like some parody of a class system,

around the parade ring stood a group of men in striped polo shirts,

who clutched beer cans and seemed to be on some kind of outing.

Their shaved heads suggested military service. Periodically they

would break out into song, or begin some noisy, physical altercation,

ramming one another with blunt heads or wrapping their arms

around one another’s necks. As I passed to go to the loo, they

catcalled and I flipped them the finger behind my back. And then

they lost interest as seven or eight horses began skirting around one

another, and they eased into the stands with workmanlike skill, all

preparing for the next race.

And then I jumped as around us the small crowd roared into life

and the horses bolted from the starting gate. I stood and watched

them go, suddenly transfixed, unable to suppress a flurry of

excitement at the tails suddenly streaming out behind them, the

frantic efforts of the brightly colored men atop them, all jostling for

position. When the winner crossed the finish line it was almost

impossible not to cheer.

We watched the Sisterwood Cup, and then the Maiden Stakes,

and Nathan won six pounds on a small each-way bet. Will declined

to bet. He watched each race, but he was silent, his head retracted

into the high collar of his jacket. I thought perhaps he had been

indoors so long that it was all bound to feel a little weird for him, and

I decided I was simply not going to acknowledge it.

“So how many races will it take to ensure we’ve fulfilled your

long-held ambitions?”

“Don’t be grumpy. They say you should try everything once,” I

said.

“I think horse racing falls into the ‘except incest and morris

dancing’ category.”

“You’re the one always telling me to widen my horizons. You’re

loving it,” I said. “And don’t pretend otherwise.”

And then they were off. Man Oh Man was in purple silks with a

yellow diamond. I watched him flatten out around the white rail, the

horse’s head extended, the jockey’s legs pumping, arms flailing

backward and forward up the horse’s neck.

“Go on, mate!” Nathan had gotten into it, despite himself. His fists

were clenched, his eyes fixed on the blurred group of animals

speeding around the far side of the track.

“Go on, Man Oh Man!” I yelled. “We’ve got a steak dinner riding

on you!” I watched him vainly trying to make ground, his nostrils

dilated, his ears back against his head. My own heart lurched into

my mouth. And then, as they reached the final furlong, my yelling

began to die away. “All right, a coffee,” I said. “I’ll settle for a coffee.”

Around me the stands had erupted into shouting and screaming.

A girl was bouncing up and down two seats away from us, her voice

hoarse with screeching. I found I was bouncing on my toes. And then

I looked down and saw that Will’s eyes were closed, a faint furrow

separating his brows. I tore my attention from the track, and knelt

down.

“Are you okay, Will?” I said, moving close to him. “Do you need

something?”

“Scotch,” he said. “Large one.”

He lifted his eyes to mine. He looked utterly fed up.

“Let’s get some lunch,” I said to Nathan.

Man Oh Man, that four-legged impostor, flashed past the finish

line a miserable sixth. There was another cheer, and the

announcer’s voice came over the loudspeaker: Ladies and

gentlemen, an emphatic win there from Love Be a Lady, there in first

place, followed by Winter Sun, and Barney Rubble two lengths

behind in third place.

I pushed Will’s chair through the oblivious groups of people,

deliberately bashing into heels when they failed to react to my

second “excuse me.”

We were just at the lift when I heard Will’s voice. “So, Clark, does

this mean you owe me forty pounds?”

The restaurant had been refurbished, the food now under the

auspices of a television chef whose face appeared on posters

around the racecourse. I had looked up the menu beforehand.

“The signature dish is duck in orange sauce,” I told the two men.

“It’s seventies retro, apparently.”

“Like your outfit,” said Will.

Out of the cold, and away from the crowds, he appeared to have

cheered up a little. He had begun to look around him, instead of

retreating back into his solitary world. My stomach began to rumble,

already anticipating a good, hot lunch. Will’s mother had given us

eighty pounds as a “float.” I had decided I would pay for my

food

myself, and show her the receipt, and as a result had no fears at all

that I was going to order myself whatever I fancied on the menu—

retro roast duck or otherwise.

“You like going out to eat, Nathan?” I said.

“I’m more of a beer and takeaway man myself,” Nathan said.

“Happy to come today, though.”

“When did you last go out for a meal, Will?” I said.

He and Nathan looked at each other. “Not while I’ve been there,”

Nathan said.

“Strangely, I’m not overly fond of being spoon-fed in front of

strangers.”

“Then we’ll get a table where we can face you away from the

room,” I said. I had anticipated this one. “And if any celebrities are

here, that will be your loss.”

“Because celebrities are thick on the ground at a muddy minor

racecourse in March.”

“You’re not going to spoil this for me, Will Traynor,” I said, as the

lift doors opened. “The last time I ate out anywhere was a birthday

party for four-year-olds at Hailsbury’s only indoor bowling alley, and

there wasn’t a thing that wasn’t covered in batter. Including the

children.”

We wheeled our way down the carpeted corridor. The restaurant

ran along one side, behind a glass wall, and I could see there were

plenty of free tables.

“Hello,” I said, stepping up to the reception area. “I’d like a table

for three, please.” Please don’t look at Will, I told the woman silently.

Don’t make him feel awkward. It’s important that he enjoy this.

“Badge, please,” she said.

“Sorry?”

“Your Premier Area badge?”

I looked at her blankly.

“This restaurant is for Premier badge holders only.”

I glanced behind me at Will and Nathan. They couldn’t hear me,

but stood, expectantly, waiting. Nathan was helping remove Will’s

coat.

“Um…I didn’t know we couldn’t eat anywhere we wanted. We

have the blue badges.”

She smiled. “Sorry,” she said. “Only Premier badge holders. It

does say so on all our promotional material.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay. Are there any other restaurants?”

“I’m afraid the Weighing Room, our relaxed dining area, is being

refurbished right now, but there are stalls along the stands where

you can get something to eat.” She saw my face fall, and added,

“The Pig in a Poke is pretty good. You get a hog roast in a bun. They

do applesauce too.”

“A stall.”

“Yes.”

I leaned in toward her. “Please,” I said. “We’ve come a long way,

and my friend there isn’t good in the cold. Is there any way at all that

we could get a table in here? We just really need to get him into the

warm. It’s really important that he has a good day.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I’m really sorry,” she said. “It’s more than

my job’s worth to override the rules. But there is a disabled seating

area downstairs that you can shut the doors on. You can’t see the

course, but it’s quite snug.”

I stared at her. I could feel the tension creeping upward from my

shins. I studied her name badge. “Sharon,” I said, “you haven’t even

begun to fill your tables. Surely it would be better to have more

people eating than leaving half these tables empty? Just because of

some arcane class-based regulation in a rule book?”

Her smile glinted under the recessed lighting. “Madam, I have

explained the situation to you. If we relaxed the rules for you, we’d

have to do it for everyone.”

“It’s a wet Monday lunchtime. You have empty tables. We want to

buy a meal. A properly expensive meal, with napkins and everything.

We don’t want to eat pork rolls and sit in a cloakroom with no view,

no matter how snug.”

Other diners had begun to turn in their seats, curious about the

altercation by the door. I could see Will looking embarrassed now.

He and Nathan had worked out that something was going wrong.

“Then I’m afraid you should have bought a Premier Area badge.”

“Okay.” I reached for my handbag, and began to rifle through,

searching for my purse. “How much is a Premier Area badge?”

Tissues, old bus tickets, and one of Thomas’s Hot Wheels toy cars

flew out. I no longer cared. I was going to get Will his posh lunch in a

restaurant. “Here. How much? Another ten? Twenty?” I thrust a fistful

of notes at her.

She looked down at my hand. “I’m sorry, Madam, we don’t sell

badges here. This is a restaurant. You’ll have to go back to the ticket

office.”

“The one that’s all the way over at the other side of the

racecourse.”

“Yes.”

We stared at each other.

Will’s voice broke in. “Louisa, let’s go.”

I felt my eyes suddenly brim with tears. “No,” I said. “This is

ridiculous. We’ve come all this way. You stay here and I’ll go and get

us all Premier Area badges. And then we will have our meal.”

“Louisa, I’m not hungry.”

“We’ll be fine once we’ve eaten. We can watch the horses and

everything. It will be fine.”

Nathan stepped forward and laid a hand on my arm. “Louisa, I

think Will really just wants to go home.”

We were now the focus of the whole restaurant. The gaze of the

diners swept over us and traveled past me to Will, where they

clouded with faint pity or distaste. I felt like an utter failure. I looked

up at the woman, who did at least have the grace to look slightly

embarrassed now that Will had actually spoken.

“Well, thank you,” I said to her. “Thanks for being so fucking

accommodating.”

“Clark—” Will’s voice carried a warning.

“So glad that you are so flexible. I’ll certainly recommend you to

everyone I know.”

“Louisa!”

I grabbed my bag and thrust it under my arm.

“You’ve forgotten your little car,” she called, as I swept through

the door that Nathan held open for me.

“Why, does that need a bloody badge too?” I said, and followed

them into the lift.

We descended in silence. I spent most of the short lift journey

trying to stop my hands from shaking with rage.

We ordered three buns with pork, crackling, and applesauce, and

sheltered under the striped awning while we ate them. I perched on

a small dustbin, so that I could be at the same level as Will, and

helped him to manageable bites of meat, shredding it with my fingers

when necessary. The two women who served behind the counter

pretended not to look at us. I could see them monitoring Will out of

the corners of their eyes, periodically muttering to each other when

they thought we weren’t looking. Poor man, I could practically hear

them saying. What a terrible way to live. I tried not to think too hard

about what Will must be feeling.

The rain had stopped, but the windswept course felt suddenly

bleak, its brown and green surface littered with discarded betting

slips, its horizon flat and empty. The car park had thinned out with

the rain, and in the distance we could just hear the distorted sound of

the loudspeaker as some other race thundered past.

“I think maybe we should head back,” Nathan said, wiping his

mouth. “I mean, it was nice and all, but best to miss the traffic, eh?”

“Didn’t he like it?” said one of the women, as Nathan began to

wheel him away across the grass.

“I don’t know. Perhaps he would have liked it better if it hadn’t

come with a side order of rubberneck,” I said, and chucked the

remnants hard into the bin.

But getting to the car and back up the ramp was easier said than

done. In the few hours that we had spent at the racecourse, the

arrivals and departures meant that the car park had turned into a sea

of mud. Even with Nathan’s impressive might, and my best shoulder,

we couldn’t get the chair even halfway across the grass to the car.

The wheels skidded and whined, unable to get the purchase to make

it up that last couple of inches. My feet and Nathan’s slithered in the

mud, which worked its way up the sides of our shoes.

“It’s not going to happen,” said Will.

“I think we’re going to need some help,” Nathan said. “I can’t

even get the chair back onto the path. It’s stuck.”

Will let out an audible sigh. He looked about as fed up as I had

ever seen him.

“I could lift you into the front seat, Will, if I tilt it back a little. And

then Louisa and I could see if we could get the chair in afterward.”

Will’s voice emerged through gritted teeth. “I am not ending today

with a fireman’s lift.”

“Sorry, mate,” Nathan said.

“But Lou and I are not going to be

able to manage this alone. Here, Lou, you’re prettier than I am. Go

and collar a few extra pairs of arms, will you?”

Will closed his eyes, set his jaw, and I ran toward the stands.

I am not usually good with strangers, but desperation made me

fearless. I walked from group to group of race-goers in the

grandstand, asking if anyone could just spare me a few minutes’

help. They looked at me and my clothes as if I were plotting some

kind of trap.

“We’re just waiting on the next race,” they said. Or, “Sorry.” Or,

“It’ll have to wait till after the two thirty.”

I even thought about collaring a jockey or two. But as I got near

the enclosure, I saw that they were even smaller than I was.

By the time I got to the parade ring I was incandescent with

suppressed rage. I suspect I was snarling at people then, not

smiling. And there, finally, joy of joys, were the lads in striped polo

shirts. The backs of their shirts referred to “Marky’s Last Stand” and

they clutched cans of Pilsner and Tennent’s Extra. They cheered as I

approached, and I fought the urge to give them the finger again.

“Gissa smile, sweetheart. It’s Marky’s stag weekend,” one

slurred, slamming a ham-sized hand on my shoulder.

“It’s Monday.” I tried not to flinch as I peeled it off.

“You’re joking. Monday already?” He reeled backward.

“Actually,” I said, “I’ve come over to ask you for help.”

“Ah’ll give you any help you need, pet.” This was accompanied by

a lascivious wink.

His mates swayed gently around him like aquatic plants.

“I need you to help my friend. Over in the car park.”

“Ah’m sorry, ah’m not sure ah’m in any fit state to help youse,

pet.”

“Next race is up, Marky. You got money on this? I think I’ve got

money on this.”

They turned back toward the track, already losing interest. I

looked over my shoulder at the car park, seeing the hunched figure

of Will, Nathan pulling vainly at the handles of his chair. I pictured

myself returning home to tell Will’s parents that we had left Will’s

superexpensive chair in a car park. And then I saw the tattoo.

“He’s a soldier,” I said, loudly. “Ex-soldier.”

One by one they turned around.

“He was injured. In Iraq. All we wanted to do was get him a nice

day out. But nobody will help us.” As I spoke the words, I felt my

eyes welling up with tears.

“Where is he?”

“In the car park. I’ve asked lots of people, but they just don’t want

to help.”

“C’mon, lads. We’re not having that.” They swayed after me in a

wayward trail. When we reached them, Nathan was standing by Will,

whose head had sunk deep into the collar of his coat with cold, even

as Nathan covered his shoulders with another blanket.

“These very nice gentlemen have offered to help us,” I said.

Nathan was staring at the cans of lager. I had to admit that you’d

have had to look quite hard to see a suit of armor in any of them.

“Where do youse want to get him to?” said one.

The others stood around Will, nodding their hellos. One offered

him a beer, apparently unable to grasp that Will could not pick it up.

Nathan motioned to our car. “Back in the car, ultimately. But to do

that we need to get him over to the stand, and then reverse the car

back to him.”

“You don’t need to do that,” said one, clapping Nathan on the

back. “We can take him to your car, can’t we, lads?”

There was a chorus of agreement. They began to position

themselves around Will’s chair.

I shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know…that’s a long way for you

to carry him,” I ventured. “And the chair’s very heavy.”

They were howlingly drunk. Some of them could barely hang on

to their cans of drink. One thrust his Tennent’s into my hand.

“Don’t you worry, pet. Anything for a fellow soldier, isn’t that right,

lads?”

“We wouldn’t leave you there, mate. We never leave a man

down.”

I saw Nathan’s face and shook my head furiously at his quizzical

expression. Will seemed unlikely to say anything. He just looked

grim, and then—as the men clustered around his chair and with a

shout hoisted it up between them—vaguely alarmed.

“What regiment, pet?”

I tried to smile, trawling my memory for names. “Rifles…,” I said.

“Eleventh Rifles.”

“I don’t know the Eleventh Rifles,” said another.

“It’s a new regiment,” I stuttered. “Top secret. Based in Iraq.”

Their trainers slid in the mud, and I felt my heart lurch. Will’s chair

was hoisted several inches off the ground, like some kind of sedan.

Nathan was running for Will’s bag, and unlocking the car ahead of

us.

“Did those boys train over in Catterick?”

“That’s the one,” I said, and then changed the subject. “So—

which one of you is getting married?”

We had exchanged numbers by the time I finally got rid of Marky

and his mates. They dug into their pockets, offering us almost forty

pounds toward Will’s rehabilitation fund, and only stopped insisting

when I told them we would be happiest if they would have a drink on

us instead. I had to kiss each and every one of them. I was nearly

dizzy with fumes by the time I had finished. I continued to wave at

them as they disappeared back into the stands, and Nathan sounded

the horn to get me into the car.

“They were helpful, weren’t they?” I said brightly, as I turned the

ignition.

“The tall one dropped his entire beer down my right leg,” said

Will. “I smell like a brewery.”

“I don’t believe this,” said Nathan, as I finally pulled out toward

the main entrance. “Look. There’s a whole disabled parking section

right there, by the stand. And it’s all on tarmac.”

Will didn’t say much of anything for the rest of the day. He bid

Nathan good-bye when we dropped him off at home, and then grew

silent as I negotiated the road up to the castle. The traffic had

thinned out now that the temperature had dropped again, and finally

I parked outside the annex.

I lowered Will’s chair, got him inside, and made him a warm drink.

I changed his shoes and trousers, put the beer-stained ones in the

washing machine, and got the fire going. I put the television on, and

drew the curtains so that the room grew cozy around us—perhaps

cozier for the time spent out in the cold air. But it was only when I sat

in the living room with him, sipping my tea, that I realized he wasn’t

talking—not out of exhaustion, or because he wanted to watch the

television. He just wasn’t talking to me.

“Is…something the matter?” I said, when he failed to respond to

my third comment about the local news.

“You tell me, Clark.”

“What?”

“Well, you know everything else there is to know about me. You

tell me.”

I stared at him. “I’m sorry,” I said, finally. “I know today didn’t turn

out quite like I planned. But it was just meant to be a nice outing. I

actually thought you’d enjoy it.”

I didn’t add that he was being determinedly grumpy, that he had

no idea what I had gone through just to get him to try to enjoy

himself, that he hadn’t even tried to have a good time. I didn’t tell him

that if he’d let me buy the stupid badges we might have had a nice

lunch and all the other stuff might have been forgotten.

“That’s my point.”

“What?”

“Oh, you’re no different from the rest of them.”

“What does that mean?”

“If you’d bothered to ask me, Clark, if you’d bothered to consult

me just once about this so-called fun outing of ours, I could have told

you. I hate horses, and horse racing. Always have. But you didn’t

bother to ask me. You decided what you thought you’d like me to do,

and you went ahead and did it. You did what everyone else does.

You decided for me.”

I swallowed.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“But you did.”

He turned his chair away from me, and after another couple of

minutes of silence, I realized I had been dismissed.

I can tell you the exact day I stopped being fearless.

It was almost seven years ago, in the last lazy, heat-slurred days

of July, when the narrow streets around the castle were thick with

tourists, and the air filled with the sound of their meandering

footsteps and the chimes of the ever-present ice cream vans that

lined the top of the hill.

My grandmother had died a month previously

after a long illness,

and that summer was veiled in a thin layer of sadness; it gently

smothered everything we did, muting my and my sister’s tendencies

to the dramatic, and canceling our usual summer routines of brief

holidays and days out. My mother stood most days at her washing-

up bowl, her back rigid with the effort of trying to suppress her tears,

while Dad disappeared to work each morning with a grimly

determined expression, returning hours later shiny-faced from the

heat and unable to speak before he had cracked open a beer. My

sister was home from her first year at university, her head already

somewhere far from our small town. I was twenty and would meet

Patrick in less than three months. We were enjoying one of those

rare summers of utter freedom—no financial responsibility, no debts,

no time owing to anybody. I had a seasonal job and all the hours in

the world to practice my makeup, put on heels that made my father

wince, and just generally work out who I was.

I dressed normally, in those days. Or, I should say, I dressed like

the other girls in town—long hair, flicked over the shoulder, indigo

jeans, T-shirts tight enough to show off our tiny waists and high

breasts. We spent hours perfecting our lip gloss, and the exact

shade of a smoky eye. We looked good in anything, but spent hours

complaining about nonexistent cellulite and invisible flaws in our

skin.

And I had ideas. Things I wanted to do. One of the boys I knew at

school had taken a round-the-world trip and come back somehow

removed and unknowable, like he wasn’t the same scuffed eleven-

year-old who used to blow spit bubbles during double French. I had

booked a cheap flight to Australia on a whim, and was trying to find

someone who might come with me. I liked the exoticism his travels

gave him, the unknownness. He had blown in with the soft breezes

of a wider world, and it was weirdly seductive. Everyone here knew

everything about me, after all. And with a sister like mine, I was

never allowed to forget any of it.

It was a Friday, and I had spent the day working as a car park

attendant with a group of girls I had known at school, steering

visitors to a craft fair held on the grounds of the castle. The whole

day was punctuated with laughter, with fizzy drinks guzzled under a

hot sun, the blue sky’s light glinting off the battlements. I don’t think

there was a single tourist who didn’t smile at me that day. People

find it very hard not to smile at a group of cheerful, giggling girls. We

were paid thirty pounds, and the organizers were so pleased with the

turnout that they gave us an extra fiver each. We celebrated by

getting drunk with some boys who had been working on the far car

park by the visitor center. They were well spoken, sporting rugby

shirts and floppy hair. One was called Ed, two of them were at

university—I still can’t remember where—and they were working for

holiday money too. They were flush with cash at the end of a whole

week of stewarding, and when our money ran out they were happy

to buy drinks for giddy local girls who flicked their hair and sat on one

another’s laps and shrieked and joked and called them posh. They

spoke a different language; they talked of gap years and summers

spent in South America, and the backpacker trail in Thailand and

who was going to try for an internship abroad. While we listened, and

drank, I remember my sister stopping by the beer garden where we

lay sprawled on the grass. She was wearing the world’s oldest hoody

and no makeup, and I’d forgotten I was meant to be meeting her. I

told her to tell Mum and Dad I’d be back sometime after I was thirty.

For some reason I found this hysterically funny. She had lifted her

eyebrows, and stalked off like I was the most irritating person ever

born.

When the Red Lion closed we all went and sat in the center of

the castle maze. Someone managed to scramble over the gates

and, after much colliding and giggling, we all found our way to the

middle and drank strong cider while someone passed around a joint.

I remember staring up at the stars, feeling myself disappear into their

infinite depths, as the ground gently swayed and lurched around me

like the deck of a huge ship. Someone was playing a guitar, and I

had on a pair of pink satin high heels, which I kicked into the long

grass and never went back for. I thought I probably ruled the

universe.

It was about half an hour before I realized that the other girls had

gone.

My sister found me silent and shivering, in the center of the

maze, sometime later, long after the stars had been obscured by the

night clouds. As I said, she’s pretty smart. Smarter than me, anyway.

She’s the only person I ever knew who could find her way out of

the maze safely.

“This will make you laugh. I’ve joined the library.”

Will was over by his CD collection. He swiveled the chair around,

and waited while I put his drink in his cup holder. “Really? What are

you reading?”

“Oh, nothing sensible. You wouldn’t like it. Just boy-meets-girl

stuff. But I’m enjoying it.”

“You were reading my Flannery O’Connor the other day.” He took

a sip of his drink. “When I was ill.”

“The short stories? I can’t believe you noticed that.”

“I couldn’t help but notice. You left the book out on the side. I

can’t pick it up.”

“Ah.”

“So don’t read rubbish. Take the O’Connor stories home. Read

them instead.”

I was about to say no, and then I realized I didn’t really know why

I was refusing. “All right. I’ll bring them back as soon as I’ve

finished.”

“Put some music on for me, Clark.”

“What do you want?”

He told me, nodding at its rough location, and I flicked through

until I found the CD.

“I have a friend who plays lead violin in the Albert Symphonia. He

called to say he’s playing near here next week. This piece of music.

Do you know it?”

“I don’t know anything about classical music. I mean, sometimes

my dad accidentally tunes into Classic FM, but—”

“You’ve never been to a concert?”

“No.”

He looked genuinely shocked.

“Well, I did go to see Westlife once. But I’m not sure if that

counts. It was my sister’s choice. Oh, and I was meant to go see

Robbie Williams on my twenty-second birthday, but I got food

poisoning.”

Will gave me one of his looks—the kind of look that suggests I

may actually have been locked up in somebody’s cellar for several

years.

“You should go. He’s offered me tickets. This will be really good.

Take your mother.”

I laughed and shook my head. “I don’t think so. My mum doesn’t

really go out. And it’s not my cup of tea.”

“Like films with subtitles weren’t your cup of tea?”

I frowned at him. “I’m not your project, Will. This isn’t My Fair

Lady.”

“Pygmalion.”

“What?”

“The play you’re referring to. It’s Pygmalion. My Fair Lady is just

its bastard offspring.”

I glared at him. It didn’t work. I put the CD on. When I turned

around he was still shaking his head.

“You’re the most terrible snob, Clark.”

“What? Me?”

“You cut yourself off from all sorts of experiences because you

tell yourself you are ‘not that sort of person.’”

“But I’m not.”

“How do you know? You’ve done nothing, been nowhere. How do

you have the faintest idea what kind of person you are?”

How could someone like him have the slightest clue what it felt

like to be me? I felt almost cross with him for willfully not getting it.

“Go on. Open your mind.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I’d be uncomfortable. I feel like…I feel like they’d

know.”

“Who? Know what?”

“Everyone else would know that I didn’t belong.”

“How do you think I feel?”

We looked at each other.

“Clark, every single place I go to now people look at me like I

don’t belong.”

We sat in silence as the music started. Will’s father was on the

telephone in his hall, and the sound of muffled laughter carried

through it into the annex, as if from a long way away. The disabled

entrance is over there, the woman at the racecourse had said. As if

he were a different species.

I stared at the CD cover. “I’ll go if you come with me.”

“But you won’t go on your own.”

“Not a chance.”

We sat there,

while he digested this. “Jesus, you’re a pain in the

arse.”

“So you keep telling me.”

I made no plans this time. I expected nothing. I was just quietly

hopeful that, after the racing debacle, Will was still prepared to leave

the annex. His friend the violinist sent us the promised free tickets,

with an information leaflet on the venue attached. It was a forty-

minute drive away. I did my homework, checked the location of the

disabled parking, rang the venue beforehand to assess the best way

to get Will’s chair to his seat. They would place us at the front, with

me on a folding chair beside Will.

“It’s actually the best location,” the woman in the box office said

cheerfully. “You somehow get more of an impact when you’re right in

the pit near the orchestra. I’ve often been tempted to sit there

myself.”

She even asked if I would like someone to meet us in the car

park, to help us to our seats. Afraid that Will would feel too

conspicuous, I thanked her and said no.

As the evening approached, I don’t know who grew more nervous

about it, Will or me. I felt the failure of our last outing keenly, and

Mrs. Traynor didn’t help, coming in and out of the annex fourteen

times to confirm where and when the concert it would be taking

place and what exactly we would be doing.

Will’s postconcert evening routine would also take some time,

she said. She needed to ensure that someone was there to help.

Nathan had other plans later. Mr. Traynor was apparently out for the

evening. “It’s an hour and a half minimum,” she said.

“And it’s incredibly tedious,” Will said.

I realized he was looking for an excuse not to go. “I’ll do it,” I said.

“If Will tells me what to do. I don’t mind staying to help.” I said it

almost before I realized what I was agreeing to.

“Well, that’s something for us both to look forward to,” Will said

grumpily after his mother had left. “You get a good view of my

backside, and I get a bed bath from someone who falls over at the

sight of naked flesh.”

“I do not fall over at the sight of naked flesh.”

“Clark, I’ve never seen anyone more uncomfortable with a human

body than you.”

“Let your mum do it, then,” I snapped back.

“Yes, because that makes the whole idea of going out so much

more attractive.”

And then there was the wardrobe problem. I didn’t know what to

wear.

I had worn the wrong thing to the races. How could I be sure I

wouldn’t do so again? I asked Will what would be best, and he

looked at me as if I were mad. “The lights will be down,” he

explained. “Nobody will be looking at you. They’ll be focused on the

music.”

“You know nothing about women,” I said.

I brought three different outfits to work with me in the end, hauling

them all onto the bus in my dad’s ancient suit carrier. It was the only

way I could convince myself to go at all.

Nathan arrived for the teatime shift at 5:30 P.M., and while he saw

to Will I disappeared into the bathroom to get ready. First I put on

what I thought of as my “artistic” outfit, a green smock dress with

huge amber beads stitched into it. I imagined the kind of people who

went to concerts might be quite arty and flamboyant. Will and Nathan

both stared at me as I entered the living room.

“No,” said Will flatly.

“That looks like something my mum would wear,” said Nathan.

“You never told me your mum was Nana Mouskouri,” Will said.

I could hear them both chuckling as I disappeared back into the

bathroom.

The second outfit was a very severe black dress, cut on the bias

and stitched with white collar and cuffs, which I had made myself. It

looked, I thought, both chic and Parisian.

“You look like you’re about to serve the ice creams,” Will said.

“Aw, mate, but you’d make a great maid,” Nathan said,

approvingly. “Feel free to wear that one in the daytime. Really.”

“You,” I said, “are both going to get Mr. Muscle in your tea

tomorrow.”

I put on my third option, a vintage dress in dark-red satin. It was

made for a more frugal generation and I always had to say a secret

prayer that the zip would make it up past my waist, but it gave me

the outline of a 1950s starlet, and it was a “results” dress, one of

those outfits you couldn’t help but feel good in. I put a silver bolero

over my shoulders, tied a gray silk scarf around my neck to cover up

my cleavage, applied some matching lipstick, and then stepped into

the living room.

“Ka-pow,” said Nathan, admiringly.

Will’s eyes traveled up and down my dress. It was only then that I

realized he had changed into a shirt and suit jacket. Clean-shaven,

and with his trimmed hair, he looked surprisingly handsome. I

couldn’t help but smile at the sight of him. It wasn’t so much how he

looked; it was the fact that he had made the effort.

“That’s the one,” he said. His voice was expressionless and oddly

measured. And as I reached down to adjust my neckline, he said,

“But lose the jacket.”

He was right. I had known it wasn’t quite right. I took it off, folded

it carefully, and laid it on the back of the chair.

“And the scarf.”

My hand shot to my neck. “The scarf? Why?”

“It doesn’t go. And you look like you’re trying to hide something

behind it.”

“But I’m…well, I’m all cleavage otherwise.”

“So?” He shrugged. “Look, Clark, if you’re going to wear a dress

like that you need to wear it with confidence. You need to fill it

mentally as well as physically.”

“Only you, Will Traynor, could tell a woman how to wear a bloody

dress.”

But I took the scarf off.

Nathan went to pack Will’s bag. I was working out what I could

add about how patronizing he was when I turned and saw that he

was still looking at me.

“You look great, Clark,” he said, quietly. “Really.”

With ordinary people—what Camilla Traynor would probably call

“working-class” people—I had observed a few basic routines as far

as Will was concerned. Most would stare. A few might smile

sympathetically, express sympathy, or ask me in a stage whisper

what had happened. I was often tempted to respond, “Unfortunate

falling-out with MI6,” just to see their reaction, but I never did.

Here’s the thing about middle-class people. They pretend not to

look, but they do. They’re too polite to actually stare. Instead, they do

this weird thing of catching sight of Will in their field of vision and

then determinedly not looking at him. Until he’s gone past, at which

point their gaze flickers toward him, even while they remain in

conversation with someone else. They won’t talk about him, though.

Because that would be rude.

As we moved through the foyer of the symphony hall, where

clusters of smart people stood with handbags and programs in one

hand, gin and tonics in the other, I saw this response pass through

them in a gentle ripple that followed us to the stalls. I don’t know if

Will noticed it. Sometimes I thought the only way he could deal with it

was to pretend he could see none of it.

We sat down, the only two people at the front in the center block

of seats. To our right there was another man in a wheelchair, chatting

cheerfully to two women who flanked him. I watched them, hoping

that Will would notice them too. But he stared straight in front of him,

his head dipped into his shoulders as if he were trying to become

invisible.

This isn’t going to work, a little voice said.

“Do you need anything?” I whispered.

“No.” He shook his head. He swallowed. “Actually, yes.

Something’s digging into my collar.”

I leaned over and ran my finger around the inside of it; a nylon

tag had been left inside. I pulled at it, hoping to snap it, but it proved

stubbornly resistant.

“New shirt. Is it really troubling you?”

“No. I just thought I’d bring it up for fun.”

“Do we have any scissors in the bag?”

“I don’t know, Clark. Believe it or not, I rarely pack it myself.”

There were no scissors. I glanced behind me, where the other

concertgoers were still settling themselves into their seats,

murmuring and scanning their programs. If Will couldn’t relax and

focus on the music, the outing would be wasted. I couldn’t afford a

second disaster.

“Don’t move,” I said.

“Why—”

Before he could finish, I leaned across, gently peeled his collar

from the side of his neck, placed my mouth against it, and took the

offending tag between my front teeth. After a few seconds, I was

able to bite through it, and I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the

scent of clean male, the feel of his skin against mine, the incongruity

of what I was doing. And then, finally, I felt it give. I pulled back my

head and opened my eyes, triumphant, with the freed tag between

my front teeth.

“Got it!” I said, pulling the tag from my teeth and flicking it across

the seats.

Will stared at me.

“What?”

I swiveled in my chair to catch those audience members who

suddenly seemed to find their programs absolutely fascinating. Then

I turned back to Will.

“Oh, come on, it’s not as if they’ve never seen a girl nibbling a

bloke’s collar before.”

I seemed to have briefly silenced him. Will blinked a couple of

times and made as if to shake his head. I noticed with amusement

that his neck had colored a deep red.

I straightened my skirt. “Anyway,” I said, “I think we should both

just be grateful that it wasn’t in your trousers.”

And then, before he could respond, the orchestra musicians

walked out in their dinner jackets and cocktail dresses and the

audience grew quiet. I felt a little flutter of excitement despite myself.

I placed my hands together on my lap and sat up in my seat. They

began to tune up, and suddenly the auditorium was filled with a

single sound—the most alive, three-dimensional thing I had ever

heard. It made the hairs on my skin stand up, my breath catch in my

throat.

Will looked sideways at me, his face still carrying the mirth of the

last few moments. Okay, his expression said. We’re going to enjoy

this.

The conductor stepped up, tapped twice on the rostrum, and a

great hush descended. I felt the stillness, the auditorium alive,

expectant. Then he brought down his baton and suddenly everything

was pure sound. I felt the music like a physical thing; it didn’t just sit

in my ears, it flowed through me, around me, made my senses

vibrate. It made my skin prickle and my palms dampen. Will hadn’t

described any of it like this. I had thought I might be bored. It was the

most beautiful thing I had ever heard.

And it made my imagination do unexpected things; as I sat there,

I found myself thinking of things I hadn’t thought of for years, old

emotions washing over me, new thoughts and ideas being pulled

from me as if my perception itself were being stretched out of shape.

It was almost too much, but I didn’t want it to stop. I wanted to sit

there forever. I stole a look at Will. He was rapt, suddenly unself-

conscious. I turned away, unexpectedly afraid to look at him. I was

afraid of what he might be feeling, the depth of his loss, the extent of

his fears. Will Traynor’s life had been so far beyond the experiences

of mine. Who was I to tell him how he should want to live it?

Will’s friend left a note asking us to go backstage and see him

afterward, but Will didn’t want to. I urged him once, but I could see

from the set of his jaw that he would not be budged. I couldn’t blame

him. I remembered how his former workmate Rupert had looked at

him that day—that mixture of pity, revulsion, and, somewhere, deep

relief that he himself had escaped this particular stroke of fate. I

suspected there were only so many of those sorts of meetings he

could stomach.

We waited until the auditorium was empty, then I wheeled him

out, down to the car park in the lift, and loaded Will up without

incident. I didn’t say much; my head was still ringing with the music,

and I didn’t want it to fade. I kept thinking back to it, the way that

Will’s friend had been so lost in what he was playing. I hadn’t

realized that music could unlock things in you, could transport you to

somewhere even the composer hadn’t predicted. It left an imprint in

the air around you, as if you carried its remnants with you when you

went. For some time, as we sat there in the audience, I had

completely forgotten Will was even beside me.

We pulled up outside the annex. In front of us, just visible above

the wall, the castle sat, floodlit under the full moon, gazing serenely

down from its position on the top of the hill.

“So you’re not a classical music person.”

I looked into the rearview mirror. Will was smiling.

“I didn’t enjoy that in the slightest.”

“I could tell.”

“I especially didn’t enjoy that bit near the end, the bit where the

violin was singing by itself.”

“I could see you didn’t like that bit. In fact, I think you had tears in

your eyes you hated it so much.”

I grinned back at him. “I really loved it,” I said. “I’m not sure I’d

like all classical music, but I thought that was amazing.” I rubbed my

nose. “Thank you. Thank you for taking me.”

We sat in silence, gazing at the castle. Normally, at night, it was

bathed in a kind of orange glow from the lights dotted around the

fortress wall. But tonight, under a full moon, it seemed flooded in an

ethereal blue.

“What kind of music would they have played there, do you think?”

I said. “They must have listened to something.”

“The castle? Medieval stuff. Lutes, strings. Not my cup of tea, but

I’ve got some I can lend you, if you like. You should walk around the

castle with it on earphones, if you really want the full experience.”

“Nah. I don’t really go to the castle.”

“It’s always the way, when you live close by somewhere.”

We sat there a moment longer, listening to the engine tick its way

to silence.

“Right,” I said, unfastening my belt. “We’d better get you in. The

evening routine awaits.”

“Just wait a minute, Clark.”

I turned in my seat. Will’s face was in shadow and I couldn’t quite

make it out.

“Just hold on. Just for a minute.”

“Are you all right?” I found my gaze dropping toward his chair,

afraid some part of him was pinched, or trapped, that I had gotten

something wrong.

“I’m fine. I just…”

I could see his pale collar, his dark suit jacket a contrast against

it.

“I don’t want to go in just yet. I just want to sit and not have to

think about…” He swallowed.

Even in the half-dark it seemed effortful.

“I just…want to be a man who has been to a concert with a girl in

a red dress. Just for a few minutes more.”

I released the door handle.

“Sure.”

I closed my eyes and lay my head against the headrest, and we

sat there together for a while longer, two people lost in remembered

music, half hidden in the shadow of a castle on a moonlit hill.

My sister and I never really talked about what happened that night at

the maze. I’m not entirely sure we had the words. She held me for a

bit, then spent some time helping me find my clothes, and then

searched in vain in the long grass for my shoes until I told her that it

really didn’t matter. I wouldn’t have worn them again, anyway. And

then we walked home slowly—me in my bare feet, her with her arm

linked through mine, even though we hadn’t walked like that since

she was in her first year at school and Mum had insisted I never let

her go.

When we got home, we stood on the porch and she wiped at my

hair and then at my eyes with a damp tissue, and then we unlocked

the front door and walked in as if nothing had happened.

Dad was still up, watching some football match. “You girls are a

bit late,” he called out. “I know it’s a Friday, but still…”

“Okay, Dad,” we called out, in unison.

Back then, I had the room that is now Granddad’s. I walked

swiftly upstairs and, before my sister could say a word, I closed the

door behind me.

I chopped all my hair off the following week. I canceled my plane

ticket. I didn’t go out with the girls from my old school again. Mum

was too sunk in her own grief to notice, and Dad put any change in

mood in our house, and my new habit of locking myself in my

bedroom, down to “Women’s problems.” I had worked out who I was,

and it was someone very different from the giggling girl who got

drunk with strangers. It was someone who wore nothing that could

be construed as suggestive. Clothes that would not

appeal to the

kind of men who went to the Red Lion, anyway.

Life returned to normal. I took a job at the hairdresser’s, then the

Buttered Bun, and put it all behind me.

I must have walked past the castle five thousand times since that

day.

But I have never been to the maze since.

Patrick stood on the edge of the track, jogging on the spot, his new

Nike T-shirt and shorts sticking slightly to his damp limbs. I had

stopped by to say hello and to tell him that I wouldn’t be at the

Triathlon Terrors meeting at the pub that evening. Nathan was off,

and I had stepped in to take over the evening routine.

“That’s three meetings you’ve missed.”

“Is it?” I counted back on my fingers. “I suppose it is.”

“You’ll have to come next week. It’s all the travel plans for the

Xtreme Viking. And you haven’t told me what you want to do for your

birthday.” He began to do his stretches, lifting his leg high and

pressing his chest to his knee. “I thought maybe the cinema? I don’t

want to do a big meal, not while I’m training.”

“Ah. Mum and Dad are planning a special dinner.”

He grabbed at his heel, pointing his knee to the ground.

I couldn’t help but notice that his leg was becoming weirdly

sinewy.

“It’s not exactly a night out, is it?”

“Well, nor is the multiplex. Anyway, I feel like I should, Patrick.

Mum’s been a bit down.”

Treena had moved out the previous weekend (minus my lemons

washbag). Mum was devastated; it was actually worse than when

Treena had gone to university the first time around. She missed

Thomas like an amputated limb. His toys, which had littered the

living-room floor since babyhood, were boxed up and put away.

There were no chocolate fingers or small cartons of drink in the

cupboard. She no longer had a reason to walk to the school at 3:15

P.M., nobody to chat to on the short walk home. It had been the only

time Mum ever really spent outside the house. Now she went

nowhere at all, apart from the weekly supermarket shopping with

Dad.

She floated around the house looking a bit lost for three days,

then she began spring cleaning with a vigor that frightened even

Granddad. He would mouth gummy protests at her as she tried to

vacuum under the chair that he was still sitting in or flick at his

shoulders with her duster. Treena had said she wouldn’t come home

for the first few weeks, just to give Thomas a chance to settle in.

When she rang each evening, Mum would speak to them and then

cry for a full half hour in her bedroom afterward.

“You’re always working late these days. I feel like I hardly see

you.”

“Well, you’re always training. Anyway, it’s good money, Patrick.

I’m hardly going to say no to the overtime.”

He couldn’t argue with that.

I was earning more than I had ever earned in my life. I doubled

the amount I gave my parents, put some aside into a savings

account every month, and I was still left with more than I could

spend. Part of it was, I worked so many hours that I was never away

from Granta House when the shops were open. The other was,

simply, that I didn’t really have an appetite for spending. The spare

hours I did have I had started to spend in the library, looking things

up on the Internet.

There was a whole world available to me from that PC, layer

upon layer of it, and it had begun to exert a siren call.

It had started with the thank-you letter. A couple of days after the

concert, I told Will I thought we should write and thank his friend, the

violinist.

“I bought a nice card on the way in,” I said. “You tell me what you

want to say, and I’ll write it. I’ve even brought in my good pen.”

“I don’t think so,” Will said.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“You don’t think so? That man gave us front-of-house seats. You

said yourself it was fantastic. The least you could do is thank him.”

Will’s jaw was fixed, immovable.

I put down my pen. “Or are you just so used to people giving you

stuff that you don’t feel you have to?”

“You have no idea, Clark, how frustrating it is to rely on someone

else to put your words down for you. The phrase ‘written on behalf

of’ is…humiliating.”

“Yeah? Well, it’s still better than a great big fat nothing,” I

grumbled. “I’m going to thank him, anyway. I won’t mention your

name, if you really want to be an arse about it.”

I wrote the card, and posted it. I said nothing more about it. But

that evening, with Will’s words still echoing around my head, I found

myself diverting into the library. I looked up whether there were any

devices that Will could use to do his own writing. Within an hour, I

had come up with three—a piece of voice recognition software,

another type of software that relied on the blinking of an eye, and, as

my sister had mentioned, a tapping device that Will could wear on

his head.

He was predictably sniffy about the head device, but he

conceded that the voice recognition software might be useful, and

within a week we managed, with Nathan’s help, to install it on his

computer, setting Will up so that with the computer tray fixed to his

chair, he no longer needed someone else to type for him. He was

self-conscious about it initially, but after I instructed him to begin

everything with “Take a letter, Miss Clark,” he got over it.

Even Mrs. Traynor couldn’t find anything to complain about. “If

there is any other equipment that you think might be useful,” she

said, her lips still pursed as if she couldn’t quite believe this might

have been a straightforwardly good thing, “do let us know.” Three

days later, just as I set off for work, the postman handed me a letter.

I opened it on the bus, thinking it might be an early birthday card

from some distant cousin. It read, in computerized text:

Dear Clark,

This is to show you that I am not an entirely selfish arse. And I do appreciate your

efforts.

Thank you. Will

I laughed so hard the bus driver asked me if my lottery numbers

had come up.

After years in that box room, my clothes perched on a rail in the

hallway outside, Treena’s bedroom felt palatial. The first night I spent

in it I spun around with my arms outstretched, just luxuriating in the

fact that I couldn’t touch both walls simultaneously. I went to the DIY

store and bought paint and new blinds, as well as a new bedside

light and some shelves, which I assembled myself. It’s not that I’m

good at that stuff; I guess I just wanted to see if I could do it.

I set about redecorating, painting for an hour a night after I came

home from work, and at the end of the week even Dad had to admit

I’d done a really good job. He stared for a bit at my cutting in,

fingered the blinds that I had put up myself, and put his hand on my

shoulder. “This job has been the making of you, Lou.”

I bought a new duvet cover, a rug, and some oversized cushions

—just in case anyone ever stopped by, and fancied lounging. Not

that anyone did. The calendar went on the back of the new door.

Nobody saw it except for me. Nobody else would have known what it

meant, anyway.

I went to work each day thinking about other places I could take

Will. I didn’t have any overall plan, I just focused each day on getting

him out and about and trying to keep him happy. There were some

days—days when his limbs burned, or when infection claimed him

and he lay miserable and feverish in bed—that were harder than

others. But on the good days I had managed several times to get

him out into the spring sunshine. I knew now that one of the things

Will hated most was the pity of strangers, so I drove him to local

beauty spots, where for an hour or so it could be just the two of us. I

made picnics and we sat out on the edges of fields, just enjoying the

breeze and being away from the annex.

“My boyfriend wants to meet you,” I told him one afternoon,

breaking off pieces of cheese-and-pickle sandwich for him.

I had driven several miles out of town, up onto a hill, and we

could see the castle across the valley opposite, separated from us

by fields of lambs.

“Why?”

“He wants to know who I’m spending all these late nights with.”

Oddly, I could see he found this quite cheering.

up at home. I thought maybe we could do something.”

He looked sideways at me. There was a fine film of sweat on his

face. “The sooner you get another job, babe, the better.”

“It’s all of twenty-four hours since I lost the last one. Am I allowed

to just be a bit miserable and floppy? You know, just for today?”

“But you’ve got to look at the positive side. You knew you couldn’t

stay at that place forever. You want to move upward, onward.”

Patrick had been named Stortfold Young Entrepreneur of the Year

two years previously, and had not yet quite recovered from the

honor. He had since acquired a business partner, Ginger Pete,

offering personal training to clients over a forty-mile area, and two

liveried vans on credit. “Being made redundant can change people’s

lives, Lou.” He glanced at his watch, checking his lap time. “What do

you want to do? You could retrain. I’m sure they do a grant for

people like you.”

“People like me?”

“People looking for a new opportunity. What do you want to be?

You could be a beautician. You’re pretty enough.” He nudged me as

we ran, as if I should be grateful for the compliment.

“You know my beauty routine. Soap, water, the odd paper bag.”

Patrick was beginning to look exasperated.

I was starting to lag behind. I hate running. I hated him for not

slowing down.

“Look…shop assistant. Secretary. Estate agent. I don’t know…

there must be something you want to do.”

But there wasn’t. I had liked it in the café. I liked knowing

everything there was to know about the Buttered Bun, and hearing

about the lives of the people who came through it. I had felt

comfortable there.

“You can’t mope around, babe. Got to get over it. All the best

entrepreneurs fight their way back from rock bottom. Jeffrey Archer

did it. So did Richard Branson.” He tapped my arm, trying to get me

to keep up.

“I doubt if Jeffrey Archer ever got made redundant from toasting

teacakes.” I was out of breath. And I was wearing the wrong bra. I

slowed, dropped my hands down onto my knees.

He turned, running backward, his voice carrying on the still, cold

air. “I’m just saying. Sleep on it, put on a smart suit, and head down

to the Job Center. Or I’ll train you to work with me, if you like. You

know there’s money in it. And don’t worry about the holiday. I’ll pay.”

I smiled at him.

He blew a kiss and his voice echoed across the empty stadium.

“You can pay me back when you’re back on your feet.”

I made my first claim for Jobseeker’s Allowance. I attended a forty-

five-minute interview, and a group interview, where I sat with a group

of twenty or so mismatched men and women, half of whom wore the

same slightly stunned expression I suspected I did, and the other

half the blank, uninterested faces of people who had been here too

many times before. I wore what my dad deemed my “civilian”

clothes.

As a result of these efforts, I endured a brief stint filling in on a

night shift at a chicken processing factory (it gave me nightmares for

weeks), and two days at a training session as a “home energy

adviser.” I realized pretty quickly that I was essentially being

instructed to befuddle old people into switching energy suppliers,

and told Syed, my personal “adviser,” that I couldn’t do it. He insisted

that I continue, so I listed some of the practices that they had asked

me to employ, at which point he went a bit quiet and suggested we (it

was always “we” even though it was pretty obvious that one of us

had a job) try something else.

I did two weeks at a fast-food chain. The hours were okay, I could

cope with the fact that the uniform made my hair static, but I found it

impossible to stick to the “appropriate responses” script, with its

“How can I help you today?” and its “Would you like large fries with

that?” I was let go after one of the doughnut girls caught me debating

the varying merits of the free toys with a four-year-old. What can I

say? She was a smart four-year-old. I also thought the Sleeping

Beautys were sappy.

Now I sat at my fourth interview as Syed scanned through the

touch screen for further employment “opportunities.” Even Syed, who

wore the grimly cheerful demeanor of someone who had shoehorned

the most unlikely candidates into a job, was starting to sound a little

weary.

“Um…Have you ever considered joining the entertainment

industry?”

“What, as in mime artist? Opera singer?”

“Actually, no. But there is an opening for a pole dancer. Several,

in fact.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Please tell me you are kidding.”

“It’s thirty hours a week on a self-employed basis. I believe the

tips are good. You said you were good with people. And you seem to

like…theatrical…clothing.” He glanced at my tights, which were

green and glittery. I had thought they would cheer me up. Thomas

had hummed the theme tune from The Little Mermaid at me for

almost the whole of breakfast.

Syed tapped something into his keyboard. “How about ‘adult chat

line supervisor’?”

I stared at him.

He shrugged. “You said you liked talking to people.”

“No. And no to seminude bar staff. Or masseuse. Or webcam

operator. Come on, Syed. There must be something I can do that

wouldn’t actually give my dad a heart attack.”

This appeared to stump him. “There’s not much left outside flexi-

hour retail opportunities.”

“Nighttime shelf stacking?” I had been here enough times now to

speak their language.

“There’s a waiting list. Parents tend to go for it, because it suits

the school hours,” he said apologetically. He studied the screen

again. “So we’re really left with care assistant.”

“Wiping old people’s bottoms.”

“I’m afraid, Louisa, you’re not qualified for much else. If you

wanted to retrain, I’d be happy to point you in the right direction.

There are plenty of courses at the adult education center.”

“But we’ve been through this, Syed. If I do that, I lose my

Jobseeker money, right?”

“If you’re not available for work, yes.”

We sat there in silence for a moment. I gazed at the doors, where

two burly security men stood. I wondered if they had got the job

through the Job Center.

“I’m not good with old people, Syed. My granddad lives at home

since he had his strokes, and I can’t cope with him.”

“Ah. So you have some experience of care giving.”

“Not really. My mum does everything for him.”

“Would your mum like a job?”

“Funny.”

“I’m not being funny.”

“And leave me looking after my granddad? No, thanks. That’s

from him, as well as me, by the way. Haven’t you got anything in any

cafés?”

“I don’t think there are enough cafés left to guarantee you

employment, Louisa. We could try Kentucky Fried Chicken. You

might get on better there.”

“Because I’d get so much more out of offering a Bargain Bucket

than Chicken McNuggets? I don’t think so.”

“Well, then perhaps we’ll have to look farther afield.”

“There are only four buses to and from our town. You know that.

And I know you said I should look into the tourist bus, but I rang the

station and it stops running at 5 P.M. Plus it’s twice as expensive as

the normal bus.”

Syed sat back in his seat. “At this point in the proceedings,

Louisa, I really need to make the point that as a fit and able person,

in order to continue qualifying for your allowance, you need—”

“—to show that I’m trying to get a job. I know.”

How could I explain to this man how much I wanted to work? Did

he have the slightest idea how much I missed my old job?

Unemployment had been a concept, something droningly referred to

on the news in relation to shipyards or car factories. I had never

considered that you might miss a job like you missed a limb—a

constant, reflexive thing. I hadn’t thought that as well as the obvious

fears about money, and your future, losing your job would make you

feel inadequate, and a bit useless. That it would be harder to get up

in the morning than when you were rudely shocked into

consciousness by the alarm. That you might miss the people you

worked with, no matter how little you had in common with them. Or

even that you might find yourself searching for familiar faces as you

walked the

“Running Man.”

“I think my parents do too.”

“I get nervous when a girl says she wants me to meet her

parents. How is your mum, anyway?”

“The same.”

“Your dad’s job? Any news?”

“No. Next week, they’re telling him now. Anyway, they said did I

want to invite you to my birthday dinner on Friday? All very relaxed.

Just family, really. But it’s fine…I said you wouldn’t want to.”

“Who says I wouldn’t want to?”

“You hate strangers. You don’t like eating in front of people. And

you don’t like the sound of my boyfriend. It seems like a no-brainer to

me.”

I had worked him out now. The best way to get Will to do

anything was to tell him you knew he wouldn’t want to. Some

obstinate, contrary part of him still couldn’t bear it.

Will chewed for a minute. “No. I’ll come to your birthday. It’ll give

your mother something to focus on, if nothing else.”

“Really? Oh God, if I tell her she’ll start polishing and dusting this

evening.”

“Are you sure she’s your biological mother? Isn’t there supposed

to be some kind of genetic similarity there? Sandwich, please, Clark.

And more pickle on the next bit.”

I had been only half joking. Mum went into a complete tailspin at

the thought of hosting a quadriplegic. Her hands flew to her face,

and then she started rearranging stuff on the dresser, as if he were

going to arrive within minutes of me telling her.

“But what if he needs to go to the loo? We don’t have a

downstairs bathroom. I don’t think Daddy would be able to carry him

upstairs. I could help…but I’d feel a bit worried about where to put

my hands. Would Patrick do it?”

“You don’t need to worry about that side of things. Really.”

“And what about his food? Will he need his pureed? Is there

anything he can’t eat?”

“No, he just needs help picking it up.”

“Who’s going to do that?”

“I will. Relax, Mum. He’s nice. You’ll like him.”

And so it was arranged. Nathan would pick up Will and drive him

over, and would come by two hours later to take him home again and

run through the nighttime routine. I had offered, but they both

insisted I should “let my hair down” on my birthday. They plainly

hadn’t met my parents.

At half past seven on the dot, I opened the door to find Will and

Nathan on the front porch. Will was wearing his smart shirt and

jacket. I didn’t know whether to be pleased that he had made the

effort or worried that my mum would now spend the first hour of the

night worrying that she hadn’t dressed smartly enough.

“Hey, you.”

My dad emerged into the hallway behind me. “Aha. Was the ramp

okay, lads?” He had spent all afternoon making the particleboard

ramp for the outside steps.

Nathan carefully negotiated Will’s chair up and into our narrow

hallway. “Nice,” Nathan said, as I closed the door behind him. “Very

nice. I’ve seen worse in hospitals.”

“Bernard Clark.” Dad reached out and shook Nathan’s hand. He

held it out toward Will, before snatching it away again with a sudden

flush of embarrassment. “Bernard. Sorry, um…I don’t know how to

greet a…I can’t shake your—” He began to stutter.

“A curtsy will be fine.”

Dad stared at him and then, when he realized Will was joking, he

let out a great laugh of relief. “Hah!” he said, and clapped Will on the

shoulder. “Yes. Curtsy. Nice one. Hah!”

It broke the ice. Nathan left with a wave and a wink, and I

wheeled Will through to the kitchen. Mum, luckily, was holding a

casserole dish, which absolved her of the same anxiety.

“Mum, this is Will. Will, Josephine.”

“Josie, please.” She beamed at him, her oven gloves up to her

elbows. “Lovely to meet you finally, Will.”

“Pleased to meet you,” he said. “Don’t let me interrupt.”

She put down the dish and her hand went to her hair, always a

good sign with my mother. It was a shame she hadn’t remembered

to take an oven glove off first.

“Sorry,” she said. “Roast dinner. It’s all in the timing, you know.”

“Not really,” Will said. “I’m not a cook. But I love good food. It’s

why I have been looking forward to tonight.”

“So…” Dad opened the fridge. “How do we do this? Do you have

a special beer…cup, Will?”

If it was Dad, I told Will, he would have had an adapted beer cup

before he had a wheelchair.

“Got to get your priorities right,” Dad said. I rummaged in Will’s

bag until I found his beaker.

“Beer will be fine. Thank you.”

He took a sip and I stood in the kitchen, suddenly conscious of

our tiny, shabby house with its 1980s wallpaper and dented kitchen

cupboards. Will’s home was elegantly furnished, its décor spare and

beautiful. Our house looked as if 90 percent of its contents came

from the local pound shop. Thomas’s dog-eared paintings covered

every unoccupied surface of wall. But if he had noticed, Will said

nothing. He and Dad had quickly found a shared point of reference,

which turned out to be my general uselessness. I didn’t mind. It kept

them both happy.

“Did you know, she once drove backward into a postbox and

swore it was the postbox’s fault…”

“You want to see her lowering my ramp. It’s like Ski Sunday

coming out of that car sometimes…”

Dad burst out laughing.

I left them to it. Mum followed me out, fretting. She put a tray of

glasses on the dining table, then glanced up at the clock. “Where’s

Patrick?”

“He was coming straight from training,” I said. “Perhaps he’s

been held up.”

“He couldn’t put it off just for your birthday? This chicken is going

to be spoiled if he’s much longer.”

“Mum, it will be fine.”

I waited until she had put the tray down, and then I slid my arms

around her and gave her a hug. She was rigid with anxiety. I felt a

sudden wave of sympathy for her. It couldn’t be easy being my

mother.

“Really. It will be fine.”

She let go of me, kissed the top of my head, and brushed her

hands down her apron. “I wish your sister was here. It seems wrong

to have a celebration without her.”

Not to me, it didn’t. Just for once, I was quite enjoying being the

focus of attention. It might sound childish, but it was true. I loved

having Will and Dad laughing about me. I loved the fact that every

element of supper—from roast chicken to chocolate mousse—was

my favorite. I liked the fact that I could be who I wanted to be without

my sister’s voice reminding me of who I had been.

The doorbell rang, and Mum flapped her hands. “There he is.

Lou, why don’t you start serving?”

Patrick was still flushed from his exertions at the track. “Happy

birthday, babe,” he said, stooping to kiss me. He smelled of

aftershave and deodorant and warm, recently showered skin.

“Best go straight through.” I nodded toward the living room.

“Mum’s having a timing meltdown.”

“Oh.” He glanced down at his watch. “Sorry. Must have lost track

of time.”

“Not your time, though, eh?”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Dad had moved the big gateleg table into the living room. He had

also, on my instruction, moved one of the sofas to the other wall so

that Will would be able to enter the room unobstructed. Will

maneuvered his wheelchair to the place I pointed to, and then

elevated himself a little so that he would be the same height as

everyone else. I sat on his left, and Patrick sat opposite. He and Will

and Granddad nodded their hellos. I had already warned Patrick not

to try to shake Will’s hand. Even as I sat down I could feel Will

studying Patrick, and I wondered, briefly, whether he would be as

charming to my boyfriend as he had been to my parents.

Will inclined his head toward me. “If you look in the back of the

chair, there’s a little something for the dinner.”

I leaned back and reached my hand downward into his bag. I

pulled it up again, retrieving a bottle of Laurent-Perrier champagne.

“You should always have champagne on your birthday,” he said.

“Oh, look at that,” Mum said, bringing in the plates. “How lovely!

But we have no champagne glasses.”

“These will be fine,” Will said.

“I’ll open it.” Patrick reached for it, unwound the wire, and placed

his thumbs under the cork. He kept glancing over at Will, as if Will

were not what he had expected at all.

“If you do that,” Will observed, “it’s going to go everywhere.”

lifted his arm an inch or so, gesturing vaguely. “I find that holding the

cork and turning the bottle tends to be a safer bet.”

“There’s a man who knows his champagne,” Dad said. “There

you go, Patrick. Turning the bottle, you say? Well, who knew?”

“I knew,” Patrick said. “That’s how I was going to do it.”

The champagne was safely popped and poured, and my birthday

was toasted.

Granddad called out something that may well have been “Hear,

hear.”

I stood up and bowed. I was wearing a 1960s yellow A-line

minidress I had got from the thrift shop. The woman had thought it

might be Biba, although someone had cut the label out.

“May this be the year our Lou finally grows up,” Dad said. “I was

going to say ‘does something with her life’ but it seems like she

finally is. I have to say, Will, since she’s had the job with you she’s—

well, she’s really come out of herself.”

“We’re very proud,” Mum said. “And grateful. To you. For

employing her, I mean.”

“Gratitude’s all mine,” Will said. He glanced sideways at me.

“To Lou,” Dad said. “And her continued success.”

“And to absent family members,” Mum said.

“Blimey,” I said. “I should have a birthday more often. Most days

you all just hurl abuse at me.”

They began to talk, Dad telling some other story about me that

made him and Mum laugh out loud. It was good to see them

laughing. Dad had looked so worn down these last weeks, and Mum

had been hollow-eyed and distracted, as if her real self were always

elsewhere. I wanted to savor these moments, of them briefly

forgetting their troubles, in shared jokes and familial fondness. Just

for a moment, I realized I wouldn’t have minded if Thomas was

there. Or Treena, for that matter.

I was so lost in my thoughts that it took a minute to register

Patrick’s expression. I was feeding Will as I said something to

Granddad, folding a piece of smoked salmon in my fingers and

placing it to Will’s lips. It was such an unthinking part of my daily life

now that the intimacy of the gesture only struck me when I saw the

shock on Patrick’s face.

Will said something to Dad and I stared at Patrick, willing him to

stop. On his left, Granddad was picking at his plate with greedy

delight, letting out what we called his “food noises”—little grunts and

murmurs of pleasure.

“Delicious salmon,” Will said to my mother. “Really lovely flavor.”

“Well, it’s not something we would have every day,” she said,

smiling. “But we did want to make today special.”

Stop staring, I told Patrick silently.

Finally, he caught my eye and looked away. He looked furious.

I fed Will another piece, and then some bread when I saw him

glance at it. I had, I realized in that moment, become so attuned to

Will’s needs that I barely needed to look at him to work out what he

wanted.

“So, Patrick,” Will said, perhaps sensing my discomfort. “Louisa

tells me you’re a personal trainer. What does that involve?”

I so wished he hadn’t asked. Patrick launched into his sales spiel,

all about personal motivation and how a fit body made for a healthy

mind. Then he segued into his training schedule for the Xtreme

Viking. I normally tuned out at this point, but all I could think of now,

with Will beside me, was how inappropriate it was. Why couldn’t he

have just said something vague and left it at that?

“In fact, when Lou said you were coming, I thought I’d take a look

at my books and see if there was any physio I could recommend.”

I choked on my champagne. “It’s quite a specialist thing, Patrick.

I’m not sure you’d really be the person.”

“I can do specialist. I do sports injuries. I have medical training.”

“This is not a sprained ankle, Pat. Really.”

“There’s a man I worked with a couple of years ago had a client

who was paraplegic. He’s almost fully recovered now, he says. Does

triathlons and everything.”

“Fancy,” said my mother.

“He pointed me to this new research in Canada that says

muscles can be trained to remember former activity. If you get them

working enough, every day, it’s like a brain synapse—it can come

back. I bet you if we hooked you up with a really good regime, you

could see a difference in your muscle memory. After all, Lou tells me

you were quite the action man before.”

“Patrick,” I said loudly. “You know nothing about it.”

“I was just trying to—”

“Well, don’t. Really.”

The table fell silent. Dad coughed, and excused himself for it.

Granddad peered around the table in wary silence.

Mum made as if to offer everyone more bread, and then seemed

to change her mind.

When Patrick spoke again, there was a faint air of martyrdom in

his tone. “It’s just research that I thought might be helpful. But I’ll say

no more about it.”

Will looked up and smiled, his face blank, polite. “I’ll certainly

bear it in mind.”

I got up to clear the plates, wanting to escape the table. But Mum

scolded me, telling me to sit down.

“You’re the birthday girl,” she said—as if she ever let anyone else

do anything, anyway. “Bernard. Why don’t you go and get the

chicken?”

The rest of the meal passed without incident. My parents, I could

see, were completely charmed by Will. Patrick, less so. He and Will

barely exchanged another word. Somewhere around the point where

Mum served up the roast potatoes—Dad doing his usual thing of

trying to steal extras—I stopped worrying. Dad was asking Will all

sorts of questions, about his life before, even about the accident, and

he seemed comfortable enough to answer him directly. In fact, I

learned a fair bit that he’d never told me. His job, for example,

sounded pretty important, even if he played it down. He bought and

sold companies and made sure he turned a profit while doing so. It

took Dad a few attempts to prize out of him that his idea of profit ran

into six or seven figures. I found myself staring at Will, trying to

reconcile the man I knew with this ruthless financier that he now

described. Dad told him about the company that was about to take

over the furniture factory, and when he said the name, Will nodded

almost apologetically, and said that, yes, he knew of them. Yes, he

would probably have gone for it too. The way he said it didn’t sound

promising for Dad’s job.

Mum just cooed at Will, and made a huge fuss over him. I

realized, watching her smile, that at some stage during the meal he

had just become a smart young man at her table. No wonder Patrick

was pissed off.

“Birthday cake?” Granddad said, as Mum began to clear the

dishes.

It was so distinct, so surprising, that Dad and I stared at each

other in shock. The whole table went quiet.

“No.” I walked around the table and kissed him. “No, Granddad.

Sorry. But it is chocolate mousse. You like that.”

He nodded in approval. My mother was beaming. I don’t think

any of us could have had a better present.

The mousse arrived on the table, and with it a large, square

present, about the size of a telephone directory, wrapped in tissue.

“Presents, is it?” Patrick said. “Here. Here’s mine.” He smiled at

me as he placed it in the middle of the table.

I raised a smile back. This was no time to argue, after all.

“Go on,” said Dad. “Open it.”

I opened theirs first, peeling the paper away carefully so that I

didn’t tear it. It was a photograph album, and on every page there

was a picture from a year in my life. Me as a baby; me and Treena

as solemn, chubby-faced girls; me on my first day at secondary

school, all hair clips and oversized skirt. More recently, there was a

picture of me and Patrick, the one where I was actually telling him to

piss off. And me, dressed in a gray skirt, my first day on my new job.

In between the pages were pictures of our family by Thomas, letters

that Mum had kept from school trips, my childish handwriting telling

of days on the beach, lost ice creams, and thieving gulls. I flipped

through, and only hesitated briefly when I saw the girl with the long,

dark, flicked-back hair. I turned the page.

“Can I see?” Will said.

“It’s not been…the best year,” Mum told him, as I turned the

pages in front of him. “I mean, we’re fine and everything.

But, you

know, things being what they are. And then Granddad saw

something on the daytime telly about making your own presents, and

I thought that was something that would…you know…really mean

something.”

“It does, Mum.” My eyes had filled with tears. “I love it. Thank

you.”

“Granddad picked out some of the pictures,” she said.

“It’s beautiful,” said Will.

“I love it,” I said again.

The look of utter relief she and Dad exchanged was the saddest

thing I have ever seen.

“Mine next.” Patrick pushed the little box across the table. I

opened it slowly, feeling vaguely panicked for a moment that it might

be an engagement ring. I wasn’t ready. I had barely gotten my head

around having my own bedroom. I opened the little box, and there,

against the dark-blue velvet, was a thin gold chain with a little star

pendant. It was sweet, delicate, and not remotely me. I didn’t wear

that kind of jewelry, never had.

I let my eyes rest on it while I worked out what to say. “It’s lovely,”

I said, as he leaned across the table and fastened it around my neck.

“Glad you like it,” Patrick said, and kissed me on the mouth. I

swear he’d never kissed me like that in front of my parents before.

Will watched me, his face impassive.

“Well, I think we should eat pudding now,” Dad said. “Before it

gets too hot.” He laughed out loud at his own joke. The champagne

had boosted his spirits immeasurably.

“There’s something in my bag for you too,” Will said, quietly. “The

one on the back of my chair. It’s in orange wrapping.”

I pulled the present from Will’s backpack.

My mother paused, the serving spoon in her hand. “You got Lou

a present, Will? That’s ever so kind of you. Isn’t that kind of him,

Bernard?”

“It certainly is.”

The wrapping paper had brightly colored Chinese kimonos on it. I

didn’t have to look at it to know I would save it. Perhaps even create

something to wear based on it. I removed the ribbon, putting it to one

side for later. I opened the paper, and then the tissue paper within it,

and there, staring at me, was a strangely familiar black and yellow

stripe.

I pulled the fabric from the parcel, and in my hands were two

pairs of black and yellow tights. Adult-sized, opaque, in a wool so

soft that it almost slid through my fingers.

“I don’t believe it,” I said. I had started to laugh—a joyous,

unexpected thing. “Oh my God! Where did you get these?”

“I had them made. You’ll be happy to know I instructed the

woman via my brand-new voice recognition software.”

“Tights?” Dad and Patrick said in unison.

“Only the best pair of tights ever.”

My mother peered at them. “You know, Louisa, I’m pretty sure

you had a pair just like that when you were very little.”

Will and I exchanged a look.

I couldn’t stop beaming. “I want to put them on now,” I said.

“Jesus Christ, she’ll look like Max Wall in a beehive,” my father

said, shaking his head.

“Ah, Bernard, it’s her birthday. Sure, she can wear what she

wants.”

I ran out of the room and pulled on a pair in the hallway. I pointed

a toe, admiring the silliness of them. I don’t think a present had ever

made me so happy in my life.

I walked back in. Will let out a small cheer. Granddad banged his

hands on the table. Mum and Dad burst out laughing. Patrick just

stared.

“I can’t even begin to tell you how much I love these,” I said.

“Thank you. Thank you.” I reached out a hand and touched the back

of his shoulder. “Really.”

“There’s a card in there too,” he said. “Open it some other time.”

My parents made a huge fuss over Will as he was leaving.

Dad, who was drunk, kept thanking him for employing me, and

made him promise to come back. “If I lose my job, maybe I’ll come

over and watch the footie with you one day,” he said.

“I’d like that,” said Will, even though I’d never seen him watch a

football match.

My mum wrapped some leftover mousse in a Tupperware

container and pressed it on him. “Seeing as you liked it so much.”

What a gentleman, they would say, for a good hour after he had

gone. A real gentleman.

Patrick came out to the hallway, his hands shoved deep in his

pockets, as if perhaps to stop the urge to shake Will’s own. That was

my more generous conclusion.

“Good to meet you, Patrick,” Will said. “And thank you for the…

advice.”

“Oh, just trying to help my girlfriend get the best out of her job,”

he said. “That’s all.” There was a definite emphasis on the word my.

“Well, you’re a lucky man,” Will said, as Nathan began to steer

him out. “She certainly gives a good bed bath.” The words came out

so quickly that the door was closed before Patrick even realized

what he had said.

“You never told me you were giving him bed baths.”

We had gone back to Patrick’s house, a new-build flat on the

edge of town. It had been marketed as “loft living,” even though it

overlooked the retail park and was no more than three floors high.

“What does that mean? You wash his dick?”

“I don’t wash his dick.” I picked up the cleanser that was one of

the few things I was allowed to keep at Patrick’s place, and began to

clean off my makeup with sweeping strokes.

“He just said you did.”

“He’s teasing you. And after you going on and on about how he

used to be an action man, I don’t blame him.”

“So what is it you do for him? You’ve obviously not been giving

me the full story.”

“I do wash him, sometimes, but only down to his underwear.”

Patrick’s stare spoke volumes. Finally, he looked away from me,

pulled off his socks, and hurled them into the laundry basket. “Your

job isn’t meant to be about this. No medical stuff, it said. No intimate

stuff. It wasn’t part of your job description.” A sudden thought

occurred to him. “You could sue. Constructive dismissal, I think it is,

when they change the terms of your job.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. And I do it because Nathan can’t always be

there, and it’s horrible for Will to have some complete stranger from

an agency handling him. And besides, I’m used to it now. It really

doesn’t bother me.”

How could I explain to him—how a body can become so familiar

to you? I could change Will’s tubes with a deft professionalism,

sponge-bathe his naked top half without a break in our conversation.

I didn’t even balk at Will’s scars now. For a while, all I had been able

to see was a potential suicide. Now he was just Will—maddening,

mercurial, clever, funny Will—who patronized me and liked to play

Professor Higgins to my Eliza Doolittle. His body was just part of the

whole package, a thing to be dealt with, at intervals, before we got

back to the talking. It had become, I supposed, the least interesting

part of him.

“I just can’t believe…after all we went through…how long it took

you to let me come anywhere near you…and here’s some stranger

who you’re quite happy to get up close and personal with—”

“Can we not talk about this tonight, Patrick? It’s my birthday.”

“I wasn’t the one who started it, with talk of bed baths and

whatnot.”

“Is it because he’s good-looking?” I demanded. “Is that it? Would

it all be so much easier for you if he looked like—you know—a

proper vegetable?”

“So you do think he’s good-looking.”

I pulled my dress over my head, and began peeling my tights

carefully from my legs, the dregs of my good mood finally

evaporating. “I can’t believe you’re doing this. I can’t believe you’re

jealous of him.”

“I’m not jealous of him.” His tone was dismissive. “How could I be

jealous of a cripple?”

Patrick made love to me that night. Perhaps “made love” is

stretching it a bit. We had sex, a marathon session in which he

seemed determined to show off his athleticism, his strength and

vigor. It lasted for hours. If he could have swung me from a

chandelier I think he would have done so. It was nice to feel so

wanted, to find myself the focus of Patrick’s attention after months of

semidetachment. But a little part of me stayed aloof during the whole

thing. I suspected it wasn’t for me, after all. I had worked that out

pretty quickly. This little show was for Will’s benefit.

“How was that, eh?” He wrapped himself around me afterward,

our skin sticking slightly with perspiration, and kissed my forehead.

“Great,” I said.

“I love you, babe.”

And, satisfied, he rolled off, threw an arm back over his head,

and was asleep within minutes.

When sleep didn’t come for me, I got out of bed and went

downstairs to my bag. I rifled through it, looking for the book of

Flannery O’Connor short stories. It was as I pulled them from my bag

that the envelope fell out.

I stared at it. Will’s card. I hadn’t opened it at the table. I did so

now, feeling an unlikely sponginess at its center. I slid the card

carefully from its envelope, and opened it. Inside were ten crisp fifty-

pound notes. I counted them twice, unable to believe what I was

seeing. Inside, it read:

Birthday bonus. Don’t fuss. It’s a legal requirement. W.

May was a strange month. The newspapers and television were full

of headlines about what they termed “The right to die.” A woman

suffering from a degenerative disease had asked that the law be

clarified to protect her husband, should he accompany her to

Dignitas when her suffering became too much. A young football

player had committed suicide after persuading his parents to take

him there. The police were involved. There was to be a debate in the

House of Lords.

I watched the news reports and listened to the legal arguments

from prolifers and esteemed moral philosophers, and didn’t quite

know where I stood on any of it. It all seemed weirdly unrelated to

Will.

We, in the meantime, had gradually been increasing Will’s

outings—and the distance that he was prepared to travel. We had

been to the theater, down the road to see the morris dancers (Will

kept a straight face at their bells and hankies, but he had gone

slightly pink with the effort), driven one evening to an open-air

concert at a nearby stately home (more his thing than mine), and

gone once to the multiplex, where, due to inadequate research on

my part, we ended up watching a film about a girl with a terminal

illness.

But I knew he saw the headlines too. He had begun using the

computer more since we got the new software, and he had worked

out how to move a mouse by dragging his thumb across a track pad.

This laborious exercise enabled him to read the day’s newspapers

online. I brought him a cup of tea one morning to find him reading

about the young football player—a detailed feature about the steps

he had gone through to bring about his own death. He blanked the

screen when he realized I was behind him. That small action left me

with a lump somewhere high in my chest that took a full half hour to

go away.

I looked up the same piece at the library. I had begun to read

newspapers. I had worked out which of their arguments tended to go

deeper—that information wasn’t always at its most useful boiled

down to stark, skeletal facts.

The football player’s parents had been savaged by the tabloid

newspapers. HOW COULD THEY LET HIM DIE? screamed the headlines. I

couldn’t help but feel the same way. Leo McInerney was twenty-four.

He had lived with his injury for almost three years, so not much

longer than Will. Surely he was too young to decide that there was

nothing left to live for? And then I read what Will had read—not an

opinion piece, but a carefully researched feature about what had

actually taken place in this young man’s life. The writer seemed to

have had access to his parents.

Leo, they said, had played football since he was three years old.

His whole life was football. He had been injured in what they termed

a “million-to-one” accident when a tackle went wrong. They had tried

everything to encourage him, to give him a sense that his life would

still hold value. But he had retreated into depression. He was an

athlete not just without athleticism but without even the ability to

move or, on occasion, breathe without assistance. He gleaned no

pleasure from anything. His life was painful, disrupted by infection,

and dependent on the constant ministrations of others. He missed

his friends, but refused to see them. He told his girlfriend he wouldn’t

see her. He told his parents daily that he didn’t want to live. He told

them that watching other people live even half the life he had

planned for himself was unbearable, a kind of torture.

He had tried to commit suicide twice by starving himself until

hospitalized, and when he returned home had begged his parents to

smother him in his sleep. When I read that, I sat in the library and

stuck the balls of my hands in my eyes until I could breathe without

sobbing.

Dad lost his job. He was pretty brave about it. He came home that

afternoon, got changed into a shirt and tie, and headed back into

town on the next bus, to register at the Job Center.

He had already decided, he told Mum, that he would apply for

anything, despite being a skilled craftsman with years of experience.

“I don’t think we can afford to be picky at the moment,” he said,

ignoring Mum’s protestations.

But if I had found it hard to get employment, prospects for a fifty-

five-year-old man who had only ever held one job were harder. He

couldn’t even get a job as a warehouseman or a security guard, he

said, despairingly, as he returned home from another round of

interviews. They would take some unreliable snot-nosed seventeen-

year-old because the government would make up their wages, but

they wouldn’t take a mature man with a proven work record. After a

fortnight of rejections, he and Mum admitted they would have to

apply for benefits, just to tide them over, and spent their evenings

poring over incomprehensible fifty-page forms that asked how many

people used their washing machine, and when was the last time they

had left the country (Dad thought it might have been 1988). I put

Will’s birthday money into the cash tin in the kitchen cupboard. I

thought it might make them feel better to know they had a little

security.

When I woke up in the morning, it had been pushed back under

my door in an envelope.

The tourists came, and the town began to fill. Mr. Traynor was

around less and less now; his hours lengthened as the visitor

numbers to the castle grew. I saw him in town one Thursday

afternoon, when I walked home via the dry cleaner’s. That wouldn’t

have been unusual in itself, except for the fact that he had his arm

around a red-haired woman who clearly wasn’t Mrs. Traynor. When

he saw me he dropped her like a hot potato.

I turned away, pretending to peer into a shop window, unsure if I

wanted him to know that I had seen them, and tried very hard not to

think about it again.

On the Friday after my dad lost his job, Will received an invitation

—a wedding invitation from Alicia and Rupert. Well, strictly speaking,

the invitation came from Colonel and Mrs. Timothy Dewar, Alicia’s

parents, inviting Will to celebrate their daughter’s marriage to Rupert

Freshwell. It arrived in a heavy parchment envelope with a schedule

of celebrations, and a fat, folded list of things that people could buy

them from stores I had never even heard of.

“She’s got some nerve,” I observed, studying the gilt lettering, the

gold-edged piece of thick card. “Want me to throw it?”

“Whatever you want.” Will’s whole body was a study in

determined indifference.

I stared at the list. “What the hell is a couscoussier anyway?”

Perhaps it was something to do with the speed with which he

turned away and began busying himself with his computer keyboard.

Perhaps it was his tone of voice. But for some reason I didn’t throw it

away. I put it carefully into his folder in the kitchen.

Will gave me another book of short stories, one that he’d ordered

from Amazon, and a copy of The Red Queen. I knew it wasn’t going

to be my sort of book at all. “It hasn’t even got a story,” I said, after

studying the back cover.

“So?” Will replied. “Challenge yourself a bit.”

I tried—not because I really had an appetite for genetics—but

because I couldn’t bear the thought that Will would go on and on at

me if I didn’t. He was like that now. He was actually a bit of a bully.

And, really annoyingly, he

would quiz me on how much I had read of

something, just to make sure I really had.

“You’re not my teacher,” I would grumble.

“Thank God,” he would reply, with feeling.

This book—which was actually surprisingly readable—was all

about a kind of battle for survival. It claimed that women didn’t pick

men because they loved them at all. It said that the female of the

species would always go for the strongest male, in order to give her

offspring the best chance. She couldn’t help herself. It was just the

way nature was.

I didn’t agree with this. And I didn’t like the argument. There was

an uncomfortable undercurrent to what he was trying to persuade

me of. Will was physically weak, damaged, in this author’s eyes.

That made him biologically irrelevant. It would have made his life

worthless.

He had been going on and on about this for the better part of an

afternoon when I butted in. “There’s one thing this Matt Ridley bloke

hasn’t factored in,” I said.

Will looked up from his computer screen. “Oh yes?”

“What if the genetically superior male is actually a bit of a

dickhead?”

On the third Saturday of May, Treena and Thomas came home. My

mother was out the door and up the garden path before they had

made it halfway down the street. Thomas, she swore, clutching him

to her, had grown several inches in the time they had been away. He

had changed, was so grown-up, looked so much the little man.

Treena had cut off her hair and looked oddly sophisticated. She was

wearing a jacket I hadn’t seen before, and strappy sandals. I found

myself wondering, meanly, where she had found the money.

“So how is it?” I asked, while Mum walked Thomas around the

garden, showing him the frogs in the tiny pond. Dad was watching

football with Granddad, exclaiming in mild frustration at another

supposed missed opportunity.

“Great. Really good. I mean, it’s hard not having any help with

Thomas, and it did take him a while to settle in at the crèche.” She

leaned forward. “Although you mustn’t tell Mum—I told her he was

fine.”

“But you like the course.”

Treena’s face broke out into a smile. “It’s the best. I can’t tell you,

Lou, the joy of just using my brain again. I feel like there’s been this

big chunk of me missing for ages…and it’s like I’ve found it again.

Does that sound wanky?”

I shook my head. I was actually glad for her. I wanted to tell her

about the library, and the computers, and what I had done for Will.

But I thought this should probably be her moment. We sat on the

foldaway chairs, under the tattered sunshade, and sipped at our

mugs of tea. Her fingers, I noticed, were all the right colors.

“She misses you,” I said.

“We’ll be back most weekends from now on. I just needed…Lou,

it wasn’t just about settling Thomas in. I just needed a bit of time to

be away from it all. I just wanted time to be a different person.”

She looked a bit like a different person. It was weird. Just a few

weeks away from home could rub the familiarity right off someone. I

felt like she was on the path to being someone I wasn’t quite sure of.

I felt, weirdly, as if I were being left behind.

“Mum told me your disabled bloke came to dinner.”

“He’s not my disabled bloke. His name’s Will.”

“Sorry. Will. So it’s going well, then, the old antibucket list?”

“So-so. Some trips have been more successful than others.” I

told her about the horse racing disaster, and the unexpected triumph

of the violin concert. I told her about our picnics, and she laughed

when I told her about my birthday dinner.

“Do you think…” I could see her working out the best way to put

it. “Do you think you’ll win?”

Like it was some kind of contest.

I pulled a tendril from the honeysuckle and began picking off its

leaves. “I don’t know. I think I’m going to need to up my game.” I told

her what Mrs. Traynor had said to me about going abroad.

“I can’t believe you went to a violin concert, though. You, of all

people!”

“I liked it.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“No. Really, I did. It was…emotional.”

She looked at me carefully. “Mum says he’s really nice.”

“He is really nice.”

“And handsome.”

“A spinal injury doesn’t mean you turn into Quasimodo.” Please

don’t say anything about it being a tragic waste, I told her silently.

But perhaps my sister was smarter than that. “Anyway. She was

definitely surprised. I think she was prepared for Quasimodo.”

“That’s the problem, Treen,” I said, and threw the rest of my tea

into the flower bed. “People always are.”

Mum was cheerful over supper that night. She had cooked lasagna,

Treena’s favorite, and Thomas was allowed to stay up as a treat. We

ate and laughed and talked about safe things, like the football team,

and my job, and what Treena’s fellow students were like. Mum must

have asked Treena a hundred times if she was sure she was

managing okay on her own, whether there was anything she needed

for Thomas—as if they had anything spare they could have given

her. I was glad I had warned Treena about how broke they were.

She said no, gracefully and with conviction. It was only afterward I

thought to ask if it was the truth.

That night I was woken at midnight by the sound of crying. It was

Thomas, in the box room. I could hear Treena trying to comfort him,

to reassure him, the sound of the light going on and off, a bed being

rearranged. I lay in the dark, watching the sodium light filter through

my blinds onto my newly painted ceiling, and waited for it to stop. But

the same thin wail began again at two. This time, I heard Mum

padding across the hallway, and murmured conversation. Then,

finally, Thomas was silent again.

At four I woke to the sound of my door creaking open. I blinked

groggily, turning toward the light. Thomas stood silhouetted against

the doorway, his oversized pajamas loose around his legs, his

comfort blanket half spooled on the floor. I couldn’t see his face, but

he stood there uncertainly, as if unsure what to do next.

“Come here, Thomas,” I whispered. As he padded toward me, I

could see he was still half asleep. His steps were halting, his thumb

thrust into his mouth, his treasured blanket clutched to his side. I

held the duvet open and he climbed into bed beside me, his tufty

head burrowing into the other pillow, and curled up into a fetal ball. I

pulled the duvet over him and lay there, gazing at him, marveling at

the certainty and immediacy of his sleep.

“Night, night, sweetheart,” I whispered, and kissed his forehead,

and a fat little hand crept out and took a chunk of my T-shirt in its

grasp, as if to reassure itself that I couldn’t move away.

“What was the best place you’ve ever visited?”

We were sitting in the shelter, waiting for a sudden squall to stop

so that we could walk around the rear gardens of the castle. Will

didn’t like going to the main area—too many people to gawk at him.

But the vegetable gardens were one of its hidden treasures, visited

by few. Its secluded orchards and fruit gardens were separated by

honeyed pea-shingle paths that Will’s chair could negotiate quite

happily.

“In terms of what? And what’s that?”

I poured some soup from a flask and held it up to his lips.

“Tomato.”

“Okay. Jesus, that’s hot. Give me a minute.” He squinted into the

distance. “I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro when I hit thirty. That was

pretty incredible.”

“How high?”

“A little over nineteen thousand feet to Uhuru Peak. That said, I

pretty much crawled the last thousand or so. The altitude hits you

pretty hard.”

“Was it cold?”

“No…” He smiled at me. “It’s not like Everest. Not the time of year

that I went, anyway.” He gazed off into the distance, briefly lost in his

remembrance. “It was beautiful. The roof of Africa, they call it. When

you’re up there, it’s like you can actually see to the end of the world.”

Will was silent for a moment. I watched him, wondering where he

really was. When we had these conversations he became like the

boy in my class, the boy who had distanced himself from us by

venturing away.

“So where else have you liked?”

“Trou d’Eau Douce bay, Mauritius. Lovely people, beautiful

beaches, great diving. Um…Tsavo National Park, Kenya, all red

earth and wild animals. Yosemite. That’s California. Rock faces so

tall your brain can’t quite process the scale of them.”

He told me of a night he’d spent rock climbing, perched on a

ledge several hundred feet up, how he’d had to pin himself into his

sleeping bag, and attach it to the rock face, because to roll over in

his sleep would have been disastrous.

“You’ve actually just described my worst nightmare, right there.”

“I like more metropolitan places too. Sydney, I loved. The

Northern Territories. Iceland. There’s a place not far from the airport

where you can bathe in the volcanic springs. It’s like a strange,

nuclear landscape. Oh, and riding across central China. I went to this

place about two days’ ride from the capital of Sichuan province, and

the locals spat at me because they hadn’t seen a white person

before.”

“Is there anywhere you haven’t been?”

He took another sip of soup. “North Korea?” He pondered. “Oh,

I’ve never been to Disneyland. Will that do? Not even Disneyland

Paris.”

“I once booked a ticket to Australia. Never went, though.”

He turned to me in surprise.

“Stuff happened. It’s fine. Perhaps I will go one day.”

“Not ‘perhaps.’ You’ve got to get away from here, Clark. Promise

me you won’t spend the rest of your life stuck around this bloody

parody of a place mat.”

“Promise you? Why?” I tried to make my voice light. “Where are

you going?”

“I just…can’t bear the thought of you staying around here

forever.” He swallowed. “You’re too bright. Too interesting.” He

looked away from me. “You only get one life. It’s actually your duty to

live it as fully as possible.”

“Okay,” I said, carefully. “Then tell me where I should go. Where

would you go, if you could go anywhere?”

“Right now?”

“Right now. And you’re not allowed to say Kilimanjaro. It has to

be somewhere I can imagine going myself.”

When Will’s face relaxed, he looked like someone quite different.

A smile settled across his face now, his eyes creasing with pleasure.

“Paris. I would sit outside a café in Le Marais and drink coffee and

eat a plate of warm croissants with unsalted butter and strawberry

jam.”

“Le Marais?”

“It’s a little district in the center of Paris. It is full of cobbled streets

and teetering apartment blocks and gay men and orthodox Jews and

women of a certain age who once looked like Brigitte Bardot. It’s the

only place to stay.”

I turned to face him, lowering my voice. “We could go,” I said.

“We could do it on the Eurostar. It would be easy. I don’t think we’d

even need to ask Nathan to come. I’ve never been to Paris. I’d love

to go. Really love to go. Especially with someone who knows his way

around. What do you say, Will?”

I could see myself in that café. I was there, at that table, maybe

admiring a new pair of French shoes, purchased in a chic little

boutique, or picking at a pastry with Parisian red fingernails. I could

taste the coffee, smell the smoke from the next table’s Gauloises.

“No.”

“What?” It took me a moment to drag myself away from that

sidewalk table.

“No.”

“But you just told me—”

“You don’t get it, Clark. I don’t want to go there in this—this thing.”

He gestured at the chair, his voice dropping. “I want to be in Paris as

me, the old me. I want to sit in a chair, leaning back, my favorite

clothes on, with pretty French girls who pass by giving me the eye

just as they would any other man sitting there. Not looking away

hurriedly when they realize I’m a man in an overgrown bloody pram.”

“But we could try,” I ventured. “It needn’t be—”

“No. No, we couldn’t. Because at the moment I can shut my eyes

and know exactly how it feels to be in the Rue des Francs

Bourgeois, cigarette in hand, clementine juice in a tall, cold glass in

front of me, the smell of someone’s steak frites cooking, the sound of

a moped in the distance. I know every sensation of it.”

He swallowed. “The day we go and I’m in this bloody contraption,

all those memories, those sensations, will be wiped out, erased by

the struggle to get behind the table, up and down Parisian curbs, the

taxi drivers who refuse to take us, and the wheelchair bloody power

pack that wouldn’t charge in a French socket. Okay?”

His voice had hardened. I screwed the top back on the vacuum

flask. I examined my shoes quite carefully as I did it, because I didn’t

want him to see my face.

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay.” Will took a deep breath.

Below us a coach stopped to disgorge another load of visitors

outside the castle gates. We watched in silence as they filed out of

the vehicle and into the old fortress in a single, obedient line, primed

to stare at the ruins of another age.

It’s possible he realized I was a bit subdued, because he leaned

into me a little. And his face softened. “So, Clark. The rain seems to

have stopped. Where shall we go this afternoon. The maze?”

“No.” It came out more quickly than I would have liked, and I

caught the look Will gave me.

“You claustrophobic?”

“Something like that.” I began to gather up our things. “Let’s just

go back to the house.”

The following weekend, I came down in the middle of the night to

fetch some water. I had been having trouble sleeping, and had found

that actually getting up was marginally preferable to lying in my bed

batting away the swirling mess of my thoughts.

I didn’t like being awake at night. I couldn’t help but wonder

whether Will was awake, on the other side of the castle, and my

imagination kept prying its way into his thoughts. It was a dark place

to go to.

Here was the truth of it: I was getting nowhere with him. Time

was running out. I couldn’t even persuade him to take a trip to Paris.

And when he told me why, it was hard for me to argue. He had a

good reason for turning down almost every single longer trip I

suggested to him. And without telling him why I was so anxious to

take him, I had little leverage at all.

I was walking past the living room when I heard the sound—a

muffled cough, or perhaps an exclamation. I stopped, retraced my

steps, and stood in the doorway. I pushed gently at the door. On the

living-room floor, the sofa cushions arranged into a sort of haphazard

bed, lay my parents, under the guest quilt, their heads level with the

gas fire. We stared at each other for a moment in the half-light, my

glass motionless in my hand.

“What—what are you doing there?”

My mother pushed herself up onto her elbow. “Shh. Don’t raise

your voice. We…” She looked at my father. “We fancied a change.”

“What?”

“We fancied a change.” My mother glanced at my father for

backup.

“We’ve given Treena our bed,” Dad said. He was wearing an old

blue T-shirt with a rip in the shoulder, and his hair stuck up on one

side. “She and Thomas, they weren’t getting on too well in the box

room. We said they could have ours.”

“But you can’t sleep down here! You can’t be comfortable like

this.”

“We’re fine, love,” Dad said. “Really.”

And then, as I stood, dumbly struggling to comprehend, he

added, “It’s only at weekends. And you can’t sleep in that box room.

You need your sleep, what with…” He swallowed. “What with you

being the only one of us at work and all.”

My father, the great lump, couldn’t meet my eye.

“Go on back to bed now, Lou. Go on. We’re fine.” Mum practically

shooed me away.

I walked back up the stairs, my bare feet silent on the carpet,

dimly aware of the brief murmured conversation below.

I hesitated outside Mum and Dad’s room, now hearing what I had

not heard before—Thomas’s muffled snoring within. Then I walked

slowly back across the landing to my own room, and I closed the

door carefully behind me. I lay in my oversized bed and stared out

the window at the sodium lights of the street, until dawn—finally,

thankfully—brought me a few precious hours of sleep.

There were seventy-nine days left on my calendar. I started to feel

anxious again.

And I wasn’t alone.

Mrs. Traynor had waited until Nathan was taking care of Will one

lunchtime, then asked me to accompany her to the big house. She

sat

me down in the living room and asked me how I thought things

were going.

“Well, we’re going out a lot more,” I said.

She nodded, as if in agreement.

“He talks more than he did.”

“To you, perhaps.” She gave a half-laugh that wasn’t really a

laugh at all. “Have you mentioned going abroad to him?”

“Not yet. I will. It’s just…you know what he’s like.”

“I really don’t mind,” she said, “if you want to go somewhere. I

know we probably weren’t the most enthusiastic advocates of your

idea, but we’ve been talking a lot, and we both agree…”

We sat there in silence. She had brought me coffee in a cup and

saucer. I took a sip of it. It always made me feel about sixty, having a

saucer balanced on my lap.

“So—Will tells me he went to your house.”

“Yes, it was my birthday. My parents were doing a special dinner.”

“How was he?”

“Good. Really good. He was really sweet with my mum.” I

couldn’t help but smile when I thought back to it. “I mean, she’s a bit

sad because my sister and her son moved out. Mum misses them. I

think he…he just wanted to take her mind off it.”

Mrs. Traynor looked surprised. “That was…thoughtful of him.”

“My mum thought so.”

She stirred her coffee. “I can’t remember the last time Will agreed

to have supper with us.”

She probed a little more. Never asking a direct question, of

course—that wasn’t her way. But I couldn’t give her the answers she

wanted. Some days I thought Will was happier—he went out with me

without a fuss, he teased me, prodded me mentally, seemed a little

more engaged with the world outside the annex—but what did I

really know? With Will I sensed a vast internal hinterland, a world he

wouldn’t give me even a glimpse of. These last couple of weeks I’d

had the uncomfortable feeling that hinterland was growing.

“He seems a little happier,” she said. It sounded almost as if she

were trying to reassure herself.

“I think so.”

“It has been very”—her gaze flickered toward me—“rewarding, to

see him a little more like his old self. I am very well aware that all

these improvements are due to you.”

“Not all of them.”

“I couldn’t reach him. I couldn’t get anywhere near him.” She

placed her cup and saucer on her knee. “He’s a singular person,

Will. From the time he hit adolescence, I always had to fight the

feeling that in his eyes I had somehow done something wrong. I’ve

never been quite sure what it was.” She tried to laugh, but it wasn’t

really a laugh at all, glancing briefly at me and then looking away.

I pretended to sip my coffee, even though there was nothing in

my cup.

“Do you get on well with your mother, Louisa?”

“Yes,” I said, then added, “It’s my sister who drives me nuts.”

Mrs. Traynor gazed out the windows, to where her precious

garden had begun to bloom, its blossoms a pale and tasteful melding

of pinks, mauves, and blues.

“We have just two and a half months.” She spoke without turning

her head.

I put my coffee cup on the table. I did it carefully, so that it didn’t

clatter. “I’m doing my best, Mrs. Traynor.”

“I know, Louisa.” She nodded.

I let myself out.

Leo McInerney died on May 22, in the anonymous room of a flat in

Switzerland, wearing his favorite football shirt, with both his parents

at his side. His younger brother refused to come, but issued a

statement saying that no one could have been more loved or more

supported than his brother. Leo drank the milky solution of lethal

barbiturate at 3:47 P.M., and his parents said that within minutes he

was in what appeared to be a deep sleep. He was pronounced dead

at a little after four o’clock that afternoon by an observer who had

witnessed the whole thing, alongside a video camera there to

forestall any suggestion of wrongdoing.

“He looked at peace,” his mother was quoted as saying. “It’s the

only thing I can hold on to.”

She and Leo’s father had been interviewed three times by police

and faced the threat of prosecution. Hate mail had been sent to their

house. She looked almost twenty years older than her given age.

And yet, there was something else in her expression when she

spoke; something that, alongside the grief and the anger and the

anxiety and the exhaustion, told of a deep, deep relief.

“He finally looked like Leo again.”

“So come on then, Clark. What exciting events have you got planned

for this evening?”

We were in the garden. Nathan was doing Will’s physio, gently

moving his knees up and down toward his chest, while Will lay on a

blanket, his face turned to the sun, his arms spread out as though he

were sunbathing. I sat on the grass alongside them and ate my

sandwiches. I rarely went out at lunchtime anymore.

“Why?”

“Curiosity. I’m interested in how you spend your time when you’re

not here.”

“Well…tonight it’s a quick bout of advanced martial arts, then a

helicopter is flying me to Monte Carlo for supper. And then I might

take in a cocktail in Cannes on the way home. If you look up at

around—ooh—2 A.M., I’ll give you a wave on my way over,” I said. I

peeled the two sides of my sandwich apart, checking the filling. “I’m

probably finishing my book.”

Will glanced up at Nathan. “Tenner,” he said, grinning.

Nathan reached into his pocket. “Every time,” he said.

I stared at them. “Every time what?” I said, as Nathan put the

money into Will’s hand.

“He said you’d be reading a book. I said you’d be watching telly.

He always wins.”

My sandwich stilled at my lips. “Always? You’ve been betting on

how boring my life is?”

“That’s not a word we would use,” Will said. The faintly guilty look

in his eyes told me otherwise.

I sat up straight. “Let me get this straight. You two are betting

actual money that on a Friday night I would be at home either

reading a book or watching television?”

“No,” said Will. “I had each way on you seeing Running Man

down at the track.”

Nathan released Will’s leg. He pulled Will’s arm straight and

began massaging it from the wrist up.

“What if I said I was actually doing something completely

different?”

“But you never do,” Nathan said.

“Actually, I’ll have that.” I plucked the tenner from Will’s hand.

“Because tonight you’re wrong.”

“You said you were going to read your book!” he protested.

“Now I have this,” I said, brandishing the ten-pound note. “I’ll be

going to the pictures. So there. Law of unintended consequences, or

whatever it is you call it.”

I stood up, pocketed the money, and shoved the remains of my

lunch into its brown paper bag. I was smiling as I walked away from

them but, weirdly, and for no reason that I could immediately

understand, my eyes were prickling with tears.

I had spent an hour working on the calendar before coming to

Granta House that morning. Some days I just sat and stared at it

from my bed, magic marker in hand, trying to work out what I could

take Will to. I wasn’t yet convinced that I could get Will to go much

farther afield, and even with Nathan’s help the thought of an

overnight visit seemed daunting.

I scanned the local paper, glancing at football matches and

village fêtes, but was afraid after the racing debacle that Will’s chair

might get stuck in the grass. I was concerned that crowds might

leave him feeling exposed. I had to rule out all horse-related

activities, which in an area like ours meant a surprising amount of

outdoor stuff. I knew he wouldn’t want to watch Patrick running, and

cricket and rugby left him cold. Some days I felt crippled by my own

inability to think up new ideas.

Perhaps Will and Nathan were right. Perhaps I was boring.

Perhaps I was the least well-equipped person in the world to try to

come up with things that might inflame Will’s appetite for life.

A book, or the television.

Put like that, it was hard to believe any differently.

After Nathan left, Will found me in the kitchen. I was sitting at the

small table, peeling potatoes for his evening meal, and didn’t look up

when he positioned his wheelchair in the doorway. He watched me

long enough for my ears to turn pink with the scrutiny.

“You know,” I said, finally, “I could have been horrible to you back

there. I could

have pointed out that you do nothing either.”

“I’m not sure Nathan would have offered particularly good odds

on me going out dancing,” Will said.

“I know it’s a joke,” I continued, discarding a long piece of potato

peel. “But you just made me feel really like crap. If you were going to

bet on my boring life, did you have to make me aware of it? Couldn’t

you and Nathan just have had it as some kind of private joke?”

He didn’t say anything for a bit. When I finally looked up, he was

watching me. “Sorry,” he said.

“You don’t look sorry.”

“Well…okay…maybe I wanted you to hear it. I wanted you to

think about what you’re doing.”

“What, how I’m letting my life slip by…?”

“Yes, actually.”

“God, Will. I wish you’d stop telling me what to do. What if I like

watching television? What if I don’t want to do much else other than

read a book?” My voice had become shrill. “What if I’m tired when I

get home? What if I don’t need to fill my days with frenetic activity?”

“But one day you might wish you had,” he said, quietly. “Do you

know what I would do if I were you?”

I put down my peeler. “I suspect you’re going to tell me.”

“Yes. And I’m completely unembarrassed about telling you. I’d be

doing night school. I’d be training as a seamstress or a fashion

designer or whatever it is that taps into what you really love.” He

gestured at my minidress, a sixties-inspired Pucci-type dress, made

with fabric that had once been a pair of Granddad’s curtains.

The first time Dad had seen it he had pointed at me and yelled,

“Hey, Lou, pull yourself together!” It had taken him a full five minutes

to stop laughing.

Will continued, “I’d be finding out what I could do that didn’t cost

much—keep-fit classes, swimming, volunteering, whatever. I’d be

teaching myself music or going for long walks with somebody else’s

dog, or—”

“Okay, okay, I get the message,” I said irritably. “But I’m not you,

Will.”

“Luckily for you.”

We sat there for a bit. Will wheeled himself in, and raised the

height of his chair so that we faced each other over the table.

“Okay,” I said. “So what did you do after work? That was so

valuable?”

“Well, there wasn’t much time left after work, but I tried to do

something every day. I did rock climbing at an indoor center, and

squash, and I went to concerts, and tried new restaurants—”

“It’s easy to do those things if you have money,” I protested.

“And I went running. Yes, really,” he said, as I raised an eyebrow.

“And I tried to learn new languages for places I thought I might visit

one day. And I saw my friends—or people I thought were my

friends…” He hesitated for a moment. “And I planned trips. I looked

for places I’d never been, things that would frighten me or push me

to my limit. I swam the Channel once. Yes—” he said, as I made to

interrupt, “I know a lot of these need money, but a lot of them don’t.

And besides, how do you think I made money?”

“Ripping people off through your job?”

“I worked out what would make me happy, and I worked out what

I wanted to do, and I trained myself to do the job that would make

those two things happen.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

“It is simple,” he said. “The thing is, it’s also a lot of hard work.

And people don’t want to put in a lot of work.”

I had finished the potatoes. I threw the peels into the bin, and put

the pan on the stove ready for later. I turned and pushed up, using

my arms, so that I was sitting on the table facing him, my legs

dangling.

“You had a big life, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I did.” He moved a bit closer, and raised his chair so that

he was almost at eye level. “That’s why you piss me off, Clark.

Because I see all this talent, all this…” He shrugged. “This energy

and brightness, and—”

“Don’t say potential…”

“Potential. Yes. Potential. And I cannot for the life of me see how

you can be content to live this tiny life. This life that will take place

almost entirely within a five-mile radius and contain nobody who will

ever surprise you or push you or show you things that will leave your

head spinning and unable to sleep at night.”

“This is your way of telling me I should be doing something far

more worthwhile than peeling your potatoes.”

“I’m telling you there’s a whole world out there. But that I’d be

very grateful if you’d do me some potatoes first.” He smiled at me,

and I couldn’t help but smile back.

“Don’t you think—” I started, and then broke off.

“Go on.”

“Don’t you think it’s actually harder for you…to adapt, I mean?

Because you’ve done all that stuff?”

“Are you asking me if I wish I’d never done it?”

“I’m just wondering if it would have been easier for you. If you’d

led a smaller life. To live like this, I mean.”

“I will never, ever regret the things I’ve done. Because most days,

if you’re stuck in one of these, all you have are the places in your

memory that you can go to.” He smiled. It was tight, as if it cost him.

“So if you’re asking me would I rather be reminiscing about the view

of the castle from the minimart, or that lovely row of shops down off

the roundabout, then, no. My life was just fine, thanks.”

I slid off the table. I wasn’t entirely sure how, but I felt, yet again,

like I’d somehow been argued into a corner. I reached for the

chopping board on the drainer.

“And Lou, I’m sorry. About the money thing.”

“Yeah. Well.” I turned, and began rinsing the chopping board

under the faucet. “Don’t think that’s going to get you your tenner

back.”

Two days later Will ended up in hospital with an infection. A

precautionary measure, they called it, although it was obvious to

everyone that he was in a lot of pain. Some quadriplegics had no

sensation, but, while he was impervious to temperature, below his

chest Will could feel both pain and touch. I went in to see him twice,

bringing him music and nice things to eat, and offering to keep him

company, but peculiarly I felt in the way, and realized quite quickly

that Will didn’t actually want the extra attention in there. He told me

to go home and enjoy some time to myself.

A year previously, I would have wasted those free days; I would

have trawled the shops, maybe gone over to meet Patrick for lunch. I

would probably have watched some daytime television, and maybe

made a vague attempt to sort out my clothes. I might have slept a

lot.

Now, however, I felt oddly restless and dislocated. I missed

having a reason to get up early, a purpose to my day.

It took me half a morning to work out that this time could be

useful. I went to the library and began to research. I looked up every

Web site about quadriplegics that I could find, and worked out things

we could do when Will was better. I wrote lists, adding to each entry

the equipment or things I might need to consider for each event.

I discovered chat rooms for those with spinal injuries, and found

there were thousands of men and women out there just like Will—

leading hidden lives in London, Sydney, Vancouver, or just down the

road—aided by friends or family, or sometimes heartbreakingly

alone.

I wasn’t the only caregiver interested in these sites. There were

girlfriends asking how they could help their partners gain the

confidence to go out again, husbands seeking advice on the latest

medical equipment. There were advertisements for wheelchairs that

would go on sand or off-road, clever hoists, and inflatable bathing

aids.

There were codes to their discussions. I worked out that SCI was

a spinal cord injury, AB the able-bodied, a UTI an infection. I saw

that a C4-5 spinal injury was far more severe than a C11-12, which

seemed to allow most the use of their arms or torso. There were

stories of love and loss, of partners struggling to cope with disabled

spouses as well as young children. There were wives who felt guilty

that they had prayed their husbands would stop beating them—and

then found they never would again. There were husbands who

wanted to leave disabled wives but were afraid of the reaction of

their community. There was exhaustion and despair, and a lot of

black humor—jokes about exploding catheter

bags, other people’s

well-meaning idiocy, or drunken misadventures. Falling out of chairs

seemed to be a common theme. And there were threads about

suicide—those who wanted to, those who encouraged them to give

themselves more time, to learn to look at their lives in a different way.

I read each thread, and felt like I was getting a secret insight into the

workings of Will’s brain.

I took a breath and typed a message.

Hi—I am the friend/caregiver of a 35 yo C5-6 quadriplegic. He was very successful

and dynamic in his former life and is having trouble adjusting to his new one. In fact,

I know that he does not want to live, and I am trying to think of ways of changing his

mind. Please could anyone tell me how I could do this? Any ideas for things he

might enjoy, or ways I could get him to think differently? All advice gratefully

received.

I called myself Busy Bee. Then I sat back in my chair, chewed at

my thumbnail for a bit, and finally pressed Send.

When I sat down at the terminal the next morning, I had fourteen

answers. I logged into the chat room, and blinked as I saw the list of

names, the responses that had come from people worldwide,

throughout the day and night. The first one said:

Dear Busy Bee,

Welcome to our board. I’m sure your friend will gain a lot of comfort from having

someone looking out for him.

I’m not so sure about that, I thought.

Most of us on here have hit a definite hump at some point in our lives. It may be

that your friend has hit his. Don’t let him push you away. Stay positive. And remind

him that it is not his place to decide when we enter and depart this world, but that of

the Lord. He decided to change your friend’s life, in His own wisdom, and there may

be a lesson in it that He—

I scanned down to the next one.

Dear Bee,

There is no way around it, being a quad can suck. If your guy was a bit of a player

too, then he is going to find it extra hard. These are the things that helped me. A lot

of company, even when I didn’t feel like it. Good food. Good docs. Good meds,

depression meds when necessary. You didn’t say where you were based, but if you

can get him talking to others in the SCI community it may help. I was pretty

reluctant at first (I think some part of me didn’t want to admit I was actually a quad)

but it does help to know you’re not alone out there.

Oh, and DON’T let him watch any films like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Major downer!

Let us know how you get on.

All best,

Ritchie

I looked up The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. “The story of a man

who suffers a paralyzing stroke, and his attempts to communicate

with the outside world,” the Web site said. I wrote the title down on

my pad, uncertain whether I was doing so to make sure Will avoided

it or to remind myself to watch it.

The next two responses were from a Seventh-day Adventist and

a man whose suggested ways in which I could cheer Will up were

certainly not covered by my working contract. I blushed and hurriedly

scrolled down, afraid that someone might glance at the screen from

behind me. And then I hesitated on the next reply.

Hi Busy Bee,

Why do you think your friend/charge/whatever needs his mind changed? If I could

work out a way of dying with dignity, and if I didn’t know it would devastate my

family, I would take it. I have been stuck in this chair eight years now, and my life is

a constant round of humiliations and frustrations. Can you really put yourself in his

shoes? Do you know how it feels to not even be able to empty your bowels without

help? To know that forever after you are going to be stuck in your bed unable to eat,

dress, communicate with the outside world without someone to help you? To never

have sex again? To face the prospect of sores and ill health and even ventilators?

You sound like a nice person, and I’m sure you mean well. But it may not be you

looking after him next week. It may be someone who depresses him, or even

doesn’t like him very much. That, like everything else, is out of his control. We SCIs

know that very little is under our control—who feeds us, dresses us, washes us,

dictates our medication. Living with that knowledge is very hard.

So I think you are asking the wrong question. Who are the AB to decide what

our lives should be? If this is the wrong life for your friend, shouldn’t the question

be: How do I help him to end it?

Best wishes,

Gforce, Missouri, US

I stared at the message, my fingers briefly stilled on the

keyboard. Then I scrolled down. The next few were from other

quadriplegics, criticizing Gforce for his bleak words, protesting that

they had found a way forward, that theirs was a life worth living.

There was a brief argument going on that seemed to have little to do

with Will at all.

And then the thread dragged itself back to my request. There

were suggestions of antidepressants, massage, miracle recoveries,

stories of how members’ own lives had been given new value. There

were a few practical suggestions: wine tasting, music, art, specially

adapted keyboards.

“A partner,” said Grace31 from Birmingham. “If he has love, he

will feel he can go on. Without it, I would have sunk many times

over.”

That phrase echoed in my head long after I had left the library.

Will came out of the hospital on Thursday. I picked him up in the

adapted car, and brought him home. He was pale and exhausted,

and stared out the window listlessly for the whole journey.

“No sleep in these places,” he explained when I asked him if he

was okay. “There’s always someone moaning in the next bed.”

I told him he would have the weekend to recover, but after that I

had a series of outings planned. I told him I was taking his advice

and trying new things, and he would have to come with me. It was a

subtle change in emphasis, but I knew that was the only way I could

get him to accompany me.

In fact, I had devised a detailed schedule for the next couple of

weeks. Each event was carefully marked on my calendar in black,

with red pen outlining the precautions I should take, and green for

the accessories I would need. Every time I looked at the back of my

door I felt a little glimmer of excitement, both that I had been so

organized and that one of these events might actually be the thing

that changed Will’s view of the world.

As my dad always says, my sister is the brains of our family.

The art gallery trip lasted a shade under twenty minutes. And that

included driving around the block three times in search of a suitable

parking space. We got there, and almost before I had closed the

door behind him he said all the work was terrible. I asked him why

and he said if I couldn’t see it he couldn’t explain it. The cinema had

to be abandoned after the staff told us, apologetically, that their lift

was out of order. Others, such as the failed attempt to go swimming,

required more time and organization—ringing up the swimming pool

beforehand, booking Nathan for overtime—and then, when we got to

the leisure center, after the flask of hot chocolate was drunk in

silence in the car park, Will resolutely refused to go in.

The following Wednesday evening, we went to hear a singer he

had once seen live in New York. That was a good trip.

And then the following day I took him to a wine tasting, part of a

promotional event held by a vineyard in a specialist wine shop. I had

to promise Nathan I wouldn’t get him drunk. I held up each glass for

Will to sniff, and he knew what it was even before he’d tasted it. I

tried quite hard not to snort when Will spat it into the beaker (it did

look really funny), and he looked at me and said I was a complete

child. The shop owner went from being weirdly disconcerted by

having a man in a wheelchair in his shop to being quite impressed.

As the afternoon went on, he sat down and started opening other

bottles, discussing region and grape with Will, while I wandered up

and down looking at the labels, becoming, frankly, a little bored.

“Come on, Clark. Get an education,” he said, nodding at me

to sit

down beside him.

“I can’t. My mum told me it was rude to spit.”

The two men looked at each other as if I were the mad one. And

yet he didn’t spit every time. I watched him. And he was suspiciously

talkative for the rest of the afternoon—swift to laugh, and even more

combative than usual.

And then, on the way home, we were driving through a town we

didn’t normally go to and, as we sat in traffic, I glanced over and saw

the Tattoo and Piercing Parlor.

“I always quite fancied a tattoo,” I said.

I should have known that you couldn’t just say stuff like that in

Will’s presence. He didn’t do small talk, or shooting the breeze. He

immediately wanted to know why I hadn’t gotten one.

“Oh, the thought of what everyone would say, I guess.”

“Why? What would they say?”

“My dad hates them.”

“How old are you again?”

“Patrick hates them too.”

“And he never does anything that you might not like.”

“I might get claustrophobic. I might change my mind once it was

done.”

“Then you get it removed by laser, surely?”

I looked at him in my rearview mirror. His eyes were merry.

“Come on, then,” he said. “What would you have?”

I realized I was smiling. “Not a snake. Or anyone’s name.”

“I wasn’t expecting a heart with a banner saying ‘Mother.’”

“You promise not to laugh?”

“You know I can’t do that. Oh God, you’re not going to have some

Indian Sanskrit proverb or something, are you? What doesn’t kill me

makes me stronger.”

“No. I’d have a bee. A little black and yellow bee. I love them.”

He nodded, as if that were a perfectly reasonable thing to want.

“And where would you have it? Or daren’t I ask?”

I shrugged. “Dunno. My shoulder? Lower hip?”

“Pull over,” he said.

“Why, are you okay?”

“Just pull over. There’s a space there. Look, on your left.”

I pulled the car up to the curb and glanced back at him. “Go on,

then,” he said. “We’ve got nothing else on today.”

“Go on where?”

“To the tattoo parlor.”

I started to laugh. “Yeah. Right.”

“Why not?”

“You have been swallowing instead of spitting.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

I turned in my seat. He was serious.

“I can’t just go and get a tattoo. Just like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because…”

I stared down the road at the tattoo parlor frontage. The slightly

grimy window bore a large neon heart, and some framed

photographs of Angelina Jolie and Mickey Rourke.

Will’s voice broke into my calculations. “Okay. I will, if you will.”

I turned back to him. “You’d get a tattoo?”

“If it persuaded you, just once, to climb out of your little box.”

I switched off the engine. We sat, listening to it tick its way down,

the dull murmur of the cars queuing along the road beside us.

“It’s quite permanent.”

“No ‘quite’ about it.”

“Patrick will hate it.”

“So you keep saying.”

“And we’ll probably get hepatitis from dirty needles. And die slow,

horrible, painful deaths.” I turned to Will. “They probably wouldn’t be

able to do it now. Not actually right now.”

“Probably not. But shall we just go and check?”

Two hours later we exited the tattoo parlor, me eighty pounds lighter

and bearing a surgical patch over my hip where the ink was still

drying. Its relatively small size, the tattoo artist said, meant that I

could have it lined and colored in one visit, so there I was. Finished.

Tattooed. Or, as Patrick would no doubt say, scarred for life. Under

that white dressing sat a fat little bumblebee, culled from the

laminated ring binder of images that the tattoo artist had handed us

when we walked in. I felt almost hysterical with excitement. I kept

reaching around to peek at it until Will told me to stop or I was going

to dislocate something.

Will had been relaxed and happy in there, oddly enough. They

had not given him a second look. They had done a few quads, they

said, which explained the ease with which they had handled him.

They were surprised when Will said he could feel the needle. Six

weeks earlier they had finished inking a paraplegic who had had

trompe l’oeil bionics inked the whole way down one side of his leg.

The tattooist with the bolt through his ear had taken Will into the

next room and, with my tattooist’s help, laid him down on a special

table so that all I could see through the open door were his lower

legs. I could hear the two men murmuring and laughing over the

buzz of the tattooing needle, the smell of antiseptic sharp in my

nostrils.

When the needle first bit into my skin, I chewed my lip,

determined not to let Will hear me squeal. I kept my mind on what he

was doing next door, trying to eavesdrop on his conversation,

wondering what it was he was having done.

“You’re a bad bloody influence on me, Will Traynor,” I said,

opening the car door and lowering the ramp. I couldn’t stop grinning.

“Show me.”

I glanced down the street, then turned and peeled a little of the

dressing down from my hip.

“It’s great. I like your little bee. Really.”

“I’m going to have to wear high-waisted trousers around my

parents for the rest of my life.” I helped him steer his chair onto the

ramp and raised it. “Mind you, if your mum gets to hear you’ve had

one too…”

“I’m going to tell her the girl from the council estate led me

astray.”

“Okay then, Traynor, you show me yours.”

He gazed at me steadily, half smiling. “You’ll have to put a new

dressing on it when we get home.”

“Yeah. Like that never happens. Go on. I’m not driving off until

you do.”

“Lift my shirt, then. To the right. Your right.”

I leaned through the front seats, and tugged at his shirt, peeling

back the piece of gauze beneath. There, dark against his pale skin,

was a black-and-white-striped ink rectangle, small enough that I had

to look twice before I realized what it said.

Best before: 19 March 2007

I stared at it. I half laughed, and then my eyes filled with tears. “Is

that the—”

“Date of my accident. Yes.” He raised his eyes to the heavens.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, don’t get maudlin, Clark. It was meant to be

funny.”

“It is funny. In a crappy sort of way.”

“Nathan will enjoy it. Oh, come on, don’t look like that. It’s not as

if I’m ruining my perfect body, is it?”

I pulled Will’s shirt back down and then turned and fired up the

ignition. I had no idea what to say. I didn’t know what any of this

meant. Was this him coming to terms with his state? Or just another

way of showing his contempt for his own body?

“Hey, Clark, do me a favor,” he said, just as I was about to pull

away. “Reach into the backpack for me. The zipped pocket.”

I glanced into the rearview mirror, and put the hand brake on

again. I leaned through the front seats and put my hand in the bag,

rummaging around according to his instructions.

“You want painkillers?” I was inches from his face. He had more

color in his skin than at any time since he’d come back from the

hospital. “I’ve got some in my—”

“No. Keep looking.”

I pulled out a piece of paper and sat back. It was a folded ten-

pound note.

“There you go. The emergency tenner.”

“So?”

“It’s yours.”

“For what?”

“That tattoo.” He grinned at me. “Right up until you were in that

chair, I didn’t think for a minute you were going to actually do it.”

There was no way around it. The sleeping arrangements just weren’t

working. Every weekend that Treena came home, the Clark family

began a lengthy nocturnal game of musical beds. After supper on

Friday night Mum and Dad would offer up their bedroom, and Treena

would accept it, after they had reassured her that no, they were not

in the least bit put out, and how much better Thomas was at sleeping

in a room he knew. It would mean, they said, that everyone got a

good night’s sleep.

But Mum sleeping downstairs also involved her and Dad needing

their own quilt, their own pillows and even undersheet, as Mum

couldn’t sleep properly unless her bed was just as she liked it. So

after supper she and Treena would strip Mum and Dad’s bed and put

on a new set of sheets, together with a mattress protector, just in

case Thomas had an accident. Mum and Dad’s bedding, meanwhile,

would be folded and placed in the corner of the living room, where

high street. The first time I had seen the Dandelion Lady

wandering past the shops, looking as aimless as I felt, I had fought

the urge to go and give her a hug.

Syed’s voice broke into my reverie. “Aha. Now this might work.”

I tried to peer around at the screen.

“Just came in. This very minute. Care assistant position.”

“I told you I was no good with—”

“It’s not old people. It’s a…a private position. To help in

someone’s house, and the address is less than two miles from your

home. ‘Care and companionship for a disabled man.’ Can you

drive?”

“Yes. But would I have to wipe his—”

“No bottom wiping required, as far as I can tell.” He scanned the

screen. “He’s a…a quadriplegic. He needs someone in the daylight

hours to help feed and assist. Often in these jobs it’s a case of being

there when they want to go out somewhere, helping with basic stuff

that they can’t do themselves. Oh. It’s good money. Quite a lot more

than the minimum wage.”

“That’s probably because it involves bottom wiping.”

“I’ll ring them to confirm the absence of bottom wiping. But if

that’s the case, you’ll go along for the interview?”

He said it like it was a question.

But we both knew the answer.

I sighed, and gathered up my bag, ready for the trip home.

“Jesus Christ,” said my father. “Can you imagine? If it wasn’t

punishment enough ending up in a ruddy wheelchair, then you get

our Lou turning up to keep you company.”

“Bernard!” my mother scolded.

Behind me, Granddad was laughing into his mug of tea.

I am not thick. I’d just like to get that out of the way at this point. But

it’s quite hard not to feel a bit deficient in the Department of Brain

Cells, growing up next to a younger sister who was moved up not

just a year into my class, but then to the year above.

Everything that is sensible, or smart, Katrina did first, despite

being eighteen months younger than me. Every book I ever read she

had read first, every fact I mentioned at the dinner table she already

knew. She is the only person I know who actually likes exams.

Sometimes I think I dress the way I do because the one thing Treena

can’t do is put clothes together. She’s a pullover-and-jeans kind of

girl. Her idea of smart is ironing the jeans first.

My father calls me a “character,” because I tend to say the first

thing that pops into my head. My mother calls me “individual,” which

is her polite way of not quite understanding the way I dress.

But apart from a brief period in my teens, I never wanted to look

like Treena, or any of the girls at school; I preferred boys’ clothes till I

was about fourteen, and now tend to please myself—depending on

what mood I am in on the day. There’s no point in me trying to look

conventional. I am small, dark-haired, and, according to my dad,

have the face of an elf. That’s not as in “elfin beauty.” I am not plain,

but I don’t think anyone is ever going to call me beautiful. I don’t

have that graceful thing going on. Patrick calls me gorgeous when

he wants to get his leg over, but he’s fairly transparent like that.

We’ve known each other for coming up to seven years.

I was twenty-six years old and I wasn’t really sure what I was. Up

until I lost my job I hadn’t even given it any thought. I supposed I

would probably marry Patrick, knock out a few kids, live a few streets

away from where I had always lived. Apart from an exotic taste in

clothes, and the fact that I’m a bit short, there’s not a lot separating

me from anyone you might pass in the street. You probably wouldn’t

look at me twice. An ordinary girl, leading an ordinary life. It actually

suited me fine.

“You must wear a suit to an interview,” Mum had insisted.

“Everyone’s far too casual these days.”

“Because wearing pinstripes will be vital if I’m spoon-feeding a

geriatric.”

“Don’t be smart.”

“I can’t afford to buy a suit. What if I don’t get the job?”

“You can wear mine, and I’ll iron you a nice blouse, and just for

once don’t wear your hair up in those”—she gestured to my hair,

which was normally twisted into two dark knots on each side of my

head—“Princess Leia things. Just try to look like a normal person.”

I knew better than to argue with my mother. And I could tell Dad

had been instructed not to comment on my outfit as I walked out of

the house, my gait awkward in the too-tight skirt.

“Bye, love,” he said, the corners of his mouth twitching. “Good

luck now. You look very…businesslike.”

The embarrassing thing was not that I was wearing my mother’s

suit, or that it was in a cut last fashionable in the late 1980s, but that

it was actually a tiny bit small for me. I felt the waistband cutting into

my midriff, and pulled the double-breasted jacket across. As Dad

says of Mum, there’s more fat on a hairpin.

I sat through the short bus journey feeling faintly sick. I had never

had a proper job interview. I had joined the Buttered Bun after

Treena bet me that I couldn’t get a job in a day. I had walked in and

simply asked Frank if he needed a spare pair of hands. It had been

his first day open, and he had looked almost blinded by gratitude.

Now, looking back, I couldn’t even remember having a discussion

with him about money. He suggested a weekly wage, I agreed, and

once a year he told me he’d upped it a bit, usually by a little more

than what I would have asked for.

What did people ask in interviews anyway? Syed had said there

was a male caregiver who covered his “intimate needs” (I shuddered

at the phrase). The secondary caregiver’s job was, he said, “a little

unclear at this point.” I pictured myself wiping drool from the old

man’s mouth, maybe asking loudly, “DO YOU WANT A CUP OF

TEA?”

When Granddad had first begun his recovery from his strokes he

hadn’t been able to do anything for himself. Mum had done it all.

“Your mother is a saint,” Dad said, which I took to mean that she

wiped his bum without running screaming from the house. I was

pretty sure nobody had ever described me as such. I cut Granddad’s

food up for him and made him cups of tea but as for anything else, I

wasn’t sure I was made of the right ingredients.

Granta House was on the other side of Stortfold Castle, close to

the medieval walls, on the long unpavemented stretch that

comprised only four houses and the National Trust shop, bang in the

middle of the tourist area. I had passed this house a million times in

my life without ever actually properly seeing it. Now, walking past the

car park and the miniature railway, both of which were empty and as

bleak as only a summer attraction can look in February, I saw it was

bigger than I had imagined, redbrick with a double front, the kind of

house you saw in old copies of Country Life while waiting at the

doctor’s.

I walked up the long drive, trying not to think about whether

anybody was watching out the window. Walking up a long drive puts

you at a disadvantage; it automatically makes you feel inferior. I was

just contemplating whether to actually tug at my forelock when the

door opened, and I jumped.

A woman, not much older than me, stepped out onto the porch.

She was wearing white slacks and a medical-looking tunic and

carried a coat and a folder under her arm. As she passed me she

gave a polite smile.

“And thank you so much for coming,” a voice said, from inside.

“We’ll be in touch. Ah.” A woman’s face appeared, middle-aged but

beautiful, under expensive precision-cut hair. She was wearing a

trouser suit that I guessed cost more than my dad earned in a

month.

“You must be Miss Clark.”

“Louisa.” I shot out a hand, as my mother had impressed upon

me to do. The young people never offered up a hand these days, my

parents had agreed. In the old days you wouldn’t have dreamed of a

“hiya” or, worse, an air kiss. This woman did not look like she would

have welcomed an air kiss.

“Right. Yes. Do come in.” She withdrew her hand from mine as

soon as humanly possible, but I felt her eyes linger upon me, as if

she were already assessing me.

“Would you like to come through? We’ll talk in the drawing room.

My name is Camilla Traynor.” She

Thomas would dive into it and onto it and string the sheet across the

dining chairs to turn it into a tent.

Granddad offered his room, but nobody took it. It smelled of

yellowing copies of the Racing Post and Old Holborn, and it would

have taken all weekend to clear out. I would alternately feel guilty—

all this was my fault, after all—while knowing I would not offer to

return to the box room. It had become a kind of specter for me, that

airless little room with no windows. The thought of sleeping in there

again made my chest feel tight. I was twenty-seven years old. I was

the main earner of the family. I could not sleep in what was

essentially a cupboard.

One weekend I offered to sleep at Patrick’s, and everyone looked

secretly relieved. But then, while I was away, Thomas put sticky

fingers all over my new blinds and drew on my new duvet cover in

permanent pen, at which point Mum and Dad decided it would be

best if they slept in my room, while Treena and Thomas went into

theirs, where the odd bit of felt tip apparently didn’t matter.

Once you had accounted for all the extra bed stripping and

laundry, me spending Friday and Saturday nights at Pat’s, Mum

admitted, wasn’t actually much help at all.

And then there was Patrick. Patrick was now a man obsessed.

He ate, drank, lived, and breathed the Xtreme Viking. His flat,

normally sparsely furnished and immaculate, was strung with training

schedules and dietary sheets. He had a new lightweight bike which

lived in the hallway and which I wasn’t allowed to touch, in case I

interfered with its finely balanced lightweight racing capabilities.

And he was rarely home, even on a Friday or Saturday night.

What with his training and my work hours we seemed to have

become used to spending less time together. I could follow him down

to the track and watch him push himself around and around in circles

until he had completed the requisite number of miles, or I could stay

home and watch television by myself, curled up in a corner of his

vast leather settee. There was no food in the fridge, apart from strips

of turkey breast and vile energy drinks the consistency of frog

spawn. Treena and I had tried one once and spat it out, gagging

theatrically, like children.

The truth of it was I didn’t like Patrick’s flat. He had bought it a

year ago, when he finally felt his mother would be okay by herself.

His business had done well, and he had told me it was important that

one of us get on the property ladder. I suppose that would have been

the cue for us to have a conversation about whether we were going

to live together, but somehow it didn’t happen, and neither of us is

the type to bring up subjects that make us feel a bit uncomfortable.

As a result, there was nothing of me in that flat, despite our years

together. I had never quite been able to tell him, but I would rather

live in my house, with all its noise and clutter, than in that soulless,

featureless bachelor pad, with its allocated parking spaces and

executive view of the castle.

And besides, it was a bit lonely.

“Got to stick to the schedule, babe,” he would say, if I told him. “If

I do any fewer than twenty-three miles at this stage of the game, I’ll

never make it back on schedule.” Then he would give me the latest

update on his shin splints or ask me to pass him the heat spray.

When he wasn’t training, he was at endless meetings with other

members of his team, comparing equipment and finalizing travel

arrangements. Sitting among them was like being with a bunch of

Korean speakers. I had no idea what any of it meant, and no great

desire to immerse myself.

And I was supposed to be going with them to Norway in seven

weeks’ time. I hadn’t yet worked out how to tell Patrick that I hadn’t

asked the Traynors for the time off. How could I? By the time the

Xtreme Viking took place, there would be less than one week of my

contract left to run. I suppose I was childishly refusing to deal with it

all, but truthfully, all I could see was Will and a ticking clock. Not a lot

else seemed to register.

The great irony of all this was that I didn’t even sleep well at

Patrick’s flat. I don’t know what it was, but I came to work from there

feeling like I was speaking through a glass jar, and looking like I had

been punched in both eyes. I began painting concealer on my dark

shadows with slapdash abandon.

“What’s going on, Clark?” Will said.

I opened my eyes. He was right beside me, his head cocked to

one side, watching me. I got the feeling he might have been there for

some time. My hand went automatically for my mouth in case I had

been dribbling.

The film I was supposed to have been watching was now a series

of slow-moving credits.

“Nothing. Sorry. It’s just warm in here.” I pushed myself upright.

“It’s the second time you’ve fallen asleep in three days.” He

studied my face. “And you look bloody awful.”

So I told him. I told him about my sister, and our sleeping

arrangements, and how I didn’t want to make a fuss because every

time I looked at Dad’s face I saw his barely concealed despair that

he could not even provide his family with a house we could all sleep

in.

“He’s still not found anything?”

“No. I think it’s his age. But we don’t talk about it. It’s…” I

shrugged. “It’s too uncomfortable for everyone.”

It felt somehow wrong, telling Will my problems. They seemed

embarrassingly trivial next to his.

“I’ll get used to it,” I said. “It’ll be fine. Really.”

Will seemed preoccupied for the rest of the afternoon. I washed

up, then came through and set up his computer for him. When I

brought him a drink, he swiveled his chair toward me.

“It’s quite simple,” he said, as if we had been in conversation.

“You can sleep here on weekends. There’s a room going spare—it

might as well get some use.”

I stopped, the beaker in my hand. “I can’t do that.”

“Why not? I’m not going to pay you for the extra hours you’re

here.”

I placed the beaker in his holder. “But what would your mum

think?”

“I have no idea.”

I must have looked troubled, because he added, “It’s okay. I’m

safe in taxis.”

“What?”

“If you’re worried I have some devious secret plan to seduce you,

you can just pull my plug out.”

“Funny.”

“Seriously. Think about it. You could have it as your backup

option. Things might change faster than you think. Your sister might

decide she doesn’t want to spend every weekend at home after all.

Or she might meet someone. A million things might change.”

And you might not be here in two months, I told him silently, and

immediately hated myself for thinking it.

“Tell me something,” he said as he went to leave the room. “Why

isn’t Running Man offering you his place?”

“Oh, he has,” I said.

He looked at me, as if he were about to pursue the conversation.

And then he seemed to change his mind. “Like I said.” He

shrugged. “The offer’s there.”

“You saw my dad in town the other week.”

“Oh. Yes.” I was hanging washing out on a line. The line itself

was hidden in what Mrs. Traynor called the Kitchen Garden. I think

she didn’t want anything as mundane as laundry polluting the view of

her herbaceous borders. My own mother pegged her whites out

almost as a badge of pride. It was like a challenge to her neighbors:

Beat this, ladies! It was all Dad could do to stop her putting a second

revolving clothes dryer out front.

“He asked me if you’d said anything about it.”

“Oh.” I kept my face a studied blank. And then, because he

seemed to be waiting, “Evidently not.”

“Was he with someone?”

I put the last peg back in the peg bag. I rolled it up and placed it

in the empty laundry basket. I turned to him.

“Yes.”

“A woman.”

“Yes.”

“Red-haired?”

“Yes.”

Will thought about this for a minute.

“I’m sorry if you think I should have told you,” I said. “But it…it

didn’t seem like my business.”

“And it’s never an easy conversation to have.”

“No.”

“If it’s any consolation, Clark, it’s not the first time,” he said, and

headed back into the house.

Every day, while he was watching television, or otherwise engaged, I

sat in front of Will’s

seemed weary, as if she had

uttered the same words many times that day already.

I followed her through to a huge room with floor-to-ceiling French

windows. Heavy curtains draped elegantly from fat mahogany

curtain poles, and the floors were carpeted with intricately decorated

Persian rugs. It smelled of beeswax and antique furniture. There

were little elegant side tables everywhere, their burnished surfaces

covered with ornamental boxes. I wondered briefly where on earth

the Traynors put their cups of tea.

“So you have come via the Job Center advertisement, is that

right? Do sit down.”

While she flicked through her folder of papers, I gazed

surreptitiously around the room. I had thought the house might be a

bit like a nursing home, all hoists and wipe-clean surfaces. But this

was like one of those scarily expensive hotels, steeped in old money,

with well-loved things that looked valuable in their own right. There

were silver-framed photographs on a sideboard, but they were too

far away for me to make out the faces. As she scanned her pages, I

shifted in my seat, to try to get a better look.

And it was then that I heard it—the unmistakable sound of

stitches ripping. I glanced down to see that the two pieces of material

that joined at the side of my right leg had torn apart, sending frayed

pieces of silk thread shooting upward in an ungainly fringe. I felt my

face flood with color.

“So…Miss Clark…do you have any experience with

quadriplegia?”

I turned to face Mrs. Traynor, wriggling so that my jacket covered

as much of the skirt as possible.

“No.”

“Have you been a caregiver for long?”

“Um…I’ve never actually done it,” I said, adding, as if I could hear

Syed’s voice in my ear, “but I’m sure I could learn.”

“Do you know what a quadriplegic is?”

I faltered. “When…you’re stuck in a wheelchair?”

“I suppose that’s one way of putting it. There are varying

degrees, but in this case we are talking about complete loss of use

of the legs, and very limited use of the hands and arms. Would that

bother you?”

“Well, not as much as it would bother him, obviously.” I raised a

smile, but Mrs. Traynor’s face was expressionless. “Sorry—I didn’t

mean—”

“Can you drive, Miss Clark?”

“Yes.”

“Clean license?”

I nodded.

Camilla Traynor ticked something on her list.

The rip was growing. I could see it creeping inexorably up my

thigh. At this rate, by the time I stood up I would look like a Vegas

showgirl.

“Are you all right?” Mrs. Traynor was gazing at me.

“I’m just a little warm. Do you mind if I take my jacket off?” Before

she could say anything, I wrenched the jacket off in one fluid motion

and tied it around my waist, obscuring the split in the skirt. “So hot,” I

said, smiling at her, “coming in from outside. You know.”

There was the faintest pause, and then Mrs. Traynor looked back

at her folder. “How old are you?”

“I’m twenty-six.”

“And you were in your previous job for six years.”

“Yes. You should have a copy of my reference.”

“Mm…” Mrs. Traynor held it up and squinted. “Your previous

employer says you are a ‘warm, chatty, and life-enhancing

presence.’”

“Yes, I paid him.”

That poker face again.

Oh hell, I thought.

It was as if I were being studied. Not necessarily in a good way.

My mother’s shirt felt suddenly cheap, the synthetic threads shining

in the thin light. I should just have worn my plainest trousers and a

shirt. Anything but this suit.

“So why are you leaving this job, where you are clearly so well

regarded?”

“Frank—the owner—sold the café. It’s the one at the bottom of

the castle. The Buttered Bun. Was,” I corrected myself. “I would have

been happy to stay.”

Mrs. Traynor nodded, either because she didn’t feel the need to

say anything further about it, or because she too would have been

happy for me to stay there.

“And what exactly do you want to do with your life?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Do you have aspirations for a career? Would this be a stepping-

stone to something else? Do you have a professional dream that you

wish to pursue?”

I looked at her blankly.

Was this some kind of trick question?

“I…I haven’t really thought that far. Since I lost my job. I just—” I

swallowed. “I just want to work again.”

It sounded feeble. What kind of person came to an interview

without even knowing what she wanted to do? Mrs. Traynor’s

expression suggested she thought the same thing.

She put down her pen. “So, Miss Clark, why should I employ you

instead of, say, the previous candidate, who has several years’

experience with quadriplegics?”

I looked at her. “Um…honestly? I don’t know.” This met with

silence, so I added, “I guess that would be your call.”

“You can’t give me a single reason why I should employ you?”

My mother’s face suddenly swam into view. The thought of going

home with a ruined suit and another interview failure was beyond

me. And this job paid more than nine pounds an hour.

I sat up a bit. “Well…I’m a fast learner, I’m never ill, I only live on

the other side of the castle, and I’m stronger than I look…probably

strong enough to help move your husband around—”

“My husband? It’s not my husband you’d be working with. It’s my

son.”

“Your son?” I blinked. “Um…I’m not afraid of hard work. I’m good

at dealing with all sorts of people and…and I make a mean cup of

tea.” I began to blather into the silence. The thought of it being her

son had thrown me. “I mean, my dad seems to think that’s not the

greatest reference. But in my experience there’s not much that can’t

be fixed by a decent cup of tea…”

There was something a bit strange about the way Mrs. Traynor

was looking at me.

“Sorry,” I spluttered, as I realized what I had said. “I’m not

suggesting the thing…the paraplegia…quadriplegia…with…your

son…could be solved by a cup of tea.”

“I should tell you, Miss Clark, that this is not a permanent

contract. It would be for a maximum of six months. That is why the

salary is…commensurate. We wanted to attract the right person.”

“Believe me, when you’ve done shifts at a chicken processing

factory, working in Guantánamo Bay for six months looks attractive.”

Oh, shut up, Louisa. I bit my lip.

But Mrs. Traynor seemed oblivious. She closed her file. “My son

—Will—was injured in a road accident almost two years ago. He

requires twenty-four-hour care, the majority of which is provided by a

trained nurse. I have recently returned to work, and the caregiver

would be required to be here throughout the day to keep him

company, help him with food and drink, generally provide an extra

pair of hands, and make sure that he comes to no harm.” Camilla

Traynor looked down at her lap. “It is of the utmost importance that

Will has someone here who understands that responsibility.”

Everything she said, even the way she emphasized her words,

seemed to hint at some stupidity on my part.

“I can see that.” I began to gather up my bag.

“So would you like the job?”

It was so unexpected that at first I thought I had heard her wrong.

“Sorry?”

“We would need you to start as soon as possible. Payment will

be weekly.”

I was briefly lost for words. “You’d rather have me instead of—” I

began.

“The hours are quite lengthy—eight A.M. till five P.M., sometimes

later. There is no lunch break as such, although when Nathan, his

daily nurse, comes in at lunchtime to attend to him, there should be a

free half an hour.”

“You wouldn’t need anything…medical?”

“Will has all the medical care we can offer him. What we want for

him is somebody robust…and upbeat. His life is…complicated, and it

is important that he is encouraged to—” She broke off, her gaze

fixed on something outside the French windows. Finally, she turned

back to me. “Well, let’s just say that his mental welfare is as

important to us as his physical welfare. Do you understand?”

“I think so. Would I…wear a uniform?”

“No. Definitely no uniform.” She glanced at my legs. “Although

you might want to wear…something a bit less revealing.”

I glanced down to where my jacket had shifted, revealing a

generous expanse of bare thigh. “It…I’m sorry. It ripped. It’s not

actually mine.”

But Mrs. Traynor no longer appeared to be listening. “I’ll explain

what needs doing when you start. Will is not the easiest person to be

around at the moment, Miss Clark. This job is going to be about

mental attitude as much as any…professional skills you might have.

So. We will see you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow? You don’t want…you don’t want me to meet him?”

“Will is not having a good day. I think it’s best that we start afresh

then.”

I stood up, realizing Mrs. Traynor was already waiting to see me

out.

“Yes,” I said, tugging Mum’s jacket across me. “Um. Thank you.

I’ll see you at eight o’clock tomorrow.”

Mum was spooning potatoes onto Dad’s plate. She put two on, he

parried, lifting a third and fourth from the serving dish. She blocked

him, steering them back onto the serving dish, finally rapping him on

the knuckles with the serving spoon when he made for them again.

Around the little table sat my parents, my sister and Thomas, my

granddad, and Patrick—who always came for dinner on

Wednesdays.

“Daddy,” Mum said to Granddad. “Would you like someone to cut

your meat? Treena, will you cut Daddy’s meat?”

Treena leaned across and began slicing at Granddad’s plate with

deft strokes. On the other side she had already done the same for

Thomas.

“So how messed up is this man, Lou?”

“Can’t be up to much if they’re willing to let our daughter loose on

him,” Dad remarked. Behind me, the television was on so that Dad

and Patrick could watch the football. Every now and then they would

stop, peering around me, their mouths stopping midchew as they

watched some pass or near miss.

“I think it’s a great opportunity. She’ll be working in one of the big

houses. For a good family. Are they posh, love?”

In our street “posh” could mean anyone who didn’t have a family

member in possession of an antisocial behavior order.

“I suppose so.”

“Hope you’ve practiced your curtsy.” Dad grinned.

“Did you actually meet him?” Treena leaned across to stop

Thomas from elbowing his juice onto the floor. “The crippled man?

What was he like?”

“I meet him tomorrow.”

“Weird, though. You’ll be spending all day every day with him.

Nine hours. You’ll see him more than you see Patrick.”

“That’s not hard,” I said.

Patrick, across the table, pretended he couldn’t hear me.

“Still, you won’t have to worry about the old sexual harassment,

eh?” Dad said.

“Bernard!” said my mother, sharply.

“I’m only saying what everyone’s thinking. Probably the best boss

you could find for your girlfriend, eh, Patrick?”

Across the table, Patrick smiled. He was busy refusing potatoes,

despite Mum’s best efforts. He was having a noncarb month, in

preparation for a marathon in early March.

“You know, I was thinking, will you have to learn sign language? I

mean, if he can’t communicate, how will you know what he wants?”

“She didn’t say he couldn’t talk, Mum.” I couldn’t actually

remember what Mrs. Traynor had said. I was still vaguely in shock at

actually having been given a job.

“Maybe he talks through one of those devices. Like that scientist

bloke. The one on The Simpsons.”

“Bugger,” said Thomas.

“Nope,” said Dad.

“Stephen Hawking,” said Patrick.

“That’s you, that is,” Mum said, looking accusingly from Thomas

to Dad. She could cut steak with that look. “Teaching him bad

language.”

“It is not. I don’t know where he’s getting it from.”

“Bugger,” said Thomas, looking directly at his grandfather.

Treena made a face. “I think it would freak me out, if he talked

through one of those voice boxes. Can you imagine? ‘Get-me-a-

drink-of-water,’” she mimicked.

Bright—but not bright enough not to get herself knocked up, as

Dad occasionally muttered. She had been the first member of our

family to go to university, until Thomas’s arrival had caused her to

drop out during her final year. Mum and Dad still held out hopes that

one day she would bring the family a fortune. Or possibly work in a

place with a reception desk that didn’t have a security screen around

it. Either would do.

“Why would being in a wheelchair mean he had to speak like a

robot?” I said.

“But you’re going to have to get up close and personal with him.

At the very least you’ll have to wipe his mouth and give him drinks

and stuff.”

“So? It’s hardly rocket science.”

“Says the woman who used to put Thomas’s nappy on inside

out.”

“That was once.”

“Twice. And you only changed him three times.”

I helped myself to green beans, trying to look more sanguine than

I felt.

But even as I had ridden the bus home, the same thoughts had

already started buzzing around my head. What would we talk about?

What if he just stared at me, head lolling, all day? Would I be freaked

out? What if I couldn’t understand what it was he wanted? I was

legendarily bad at caring for things; we no longer had houseplants at

home, or pets, after the disasters that were the hamster, the stick

insects, and Randolph the goldfish. And how often was that stiff

mother of his going to be around? I didn’t like the thought of being

watched all the time. Mrs. Traynor seemed like the kind of woman

whose gaze turned capable hands into fingers and thumbs.

“Patrick, what do you think of it all, then?”

Patrick took a long slug of water, and shrugged.

Outside, the rain beat on the windowpanes, just audible over the

clatter of plates and cutlery.

“It’s good money, Bernard. Better than working nights at the

chicken factory, anyway.”

There was a general murmur of agreement around the table.

“Well, it comes to something when the best you can all say about

my new career is that it’s better than hauling chicken carcasses

around the inside of an aircraft hangar,” I said.

“Well, you could always get fit in the meantime and go and do

some of your personal training stuff with Patrick here.”

“Get fit. Thanks, Dad.” I had been about to reach for another

potato, and now changed my mind.

“Well, why not?” Mum looked as if she might actually sit down—

everyone paused briefly, but no, she was up again, helping

Granddad to some gravy. “It might be worth bearing in mind for the

future. You’ve certainly got the gift of the gab.”

“She has the gift of the flab,” Dad snorted.

“I’ve just got myself a job,” I said. “Paying more than the last one

too, if you don’t mind.”

“But it is only temporary,” Patrick interjected. “Your dad’s right.

You might want to start getting in shape while you do it. You could be

a good personal trainer, if you put in a bit of effort.”

“I don’t want to be a personal trainer. I don’t fancy…all that…

bouncing.” I mouthed an insult at Patrick, who grinned.

“What Lou wants is a job where she can put her feet up and

watch daytime telly while feeding old Ironside there through a straw,”

said Treena.

“Yes. Because rearranging limp dahlias into buckets of water

requires so much physical and mental effort, doesn’t it, Treen?”

“We’re teasing you, love.” Dad raised his mug of tea. “It’s great

that you’ve got a job. We’re proud of you already. And I wouldn’t

worry about it only being for six months. I bet you, once you slide

those feet of yours under the table at the big house those buggers

won’t want to let you go.”

“Bugger,” said Thomas.

“Not me,” said Dad, chewing, before Mum could say a thing.

“This is the annex. It used to be stables, but we realized it would suit

Will rather better than the house as it’s all on one floor. This is the

spare room so that Nathan can stay over if necessary. We needed

someone quite often in the early days.”

Mrs. Traynor walked briskly down the corridor, gesturing from one

doorway to another, without looking back, her high heels clacking on

the flagstones. There seemed to be an expectation that I would keep

up.

“The keys to the car are here. I’ve put you on our insurance. I’m

trusting the details you gave me were correct. Nathan should be able

to show you how the ramp works. All you have to do is help Will

position properly and the vehicle will do the rest. Although…he’s not

desperately keen to go anywhere at the moment.”

“It is a bit chilly out,” I said.

Mrs. Traynor

didn’t seem to hear me.

“You can make yourself tea and coffee in the kitchen. I keep the

cupboards stocked. The bathroom is through here—”

She opened the door and I stared at the white metal and plastic

hoist that crouched over the bath. There was an open wet area

under the shower, with a folded wheelchair beside it. In the corner a

glass-fronted cabinet revealed neat stacks of shrink-wrapped bales. I

couldn’t see what they were from here, but it all gave off a faint scent

of disinfectant.

Mrs. Traynor closed the door, and turned briefly to face me. “I

should reiterate, it is very important that Will has someone with him

all the time. A previous caregiver disappeared for several hours once

to get her car fixed, and Will…injured himself in her absence.” She

swallowed, as if still traumatized by the memory.

“I won’t go anywhere.”

“Of course you will need…comfort breaks. I just want to make it

clear that he can’t be left for periods longer than, say, ten or fifteen

minutes. If something unavoidable comes up either ring the

intercom, as my husband, Steven, may be home, or call my mobile

number. If you do need to take any time off, I would appreciate as

much notice as possible. It is not always easy finding cover.”

“No.”

Mrs. Traynor opened the hall cupboard. She spoke like someone

reciting a well-rehearsed speech.

I wondered briefly how many caregivers there had been before

me.

“If Will is occupied, then it would be helpful if you could do some

basic housekeeping. Wash bedding, run a vacuum cleaner around,

that sort of thing. The cleaning equipment is under the sink. He may

not want you around him all the time. You and he will have to work

out your level of interaction for yourselves.”

Mrs. Traynor looked at my clothes, as if for the first time. I was

wearing the very shaggy waistcoat thing that Dad says makes me

look like an emu. I tried to smile. It seemed like an effort.

“Obviously I would hope that you could…get on with each other.

It would be nice if he could think of you as a friend rather than a paid

professional.”

“Right. What does he…um…like to do?”

“He watches films. Sometimes he listens to the radio, or to music.

He has one of those digital things. If you position it near his hand, he

can usually manipulate it himself. He has some movement in his

fingers, although he finds it hard to grip.”

I felt myself brightening. If he liked music and films, surely we

could find some common ground? I had a sudden picture of myself

and this man laughing at some Hollywood comedy, me running the

Hoover around the bedroom while he listened to his music. Perhaps

this was going to be okay. Perhaps we might end up as friends.

“Do you have any questions?”

“No.”

“Then let’s go and introduce you.” She glanced at her watch.

“Nathan should have finished dressing him by now.”

We hesitated outside the door and Mrs. Traynor knocked. “Are

you in there? I have Miss Clark to meet you, Will.”

There was no answer.

“Will? Nathan?”

A broad New Zealand accent. “He’s decent, Mrs. T.”

She pushed open the door. The annex’s living room was

deceptively large, and one wall consisted entirely of glass doors that

looked out over open countryside. A wood burner glowed quietly in

the corner, and a low beige sofa faced a huge flat-screen television,

its seats covered by a wool throw. The mood of the room was

tasteful, and peaceful—a Scandinavian bachelor pad.

In the center of the room stood a black wheelchair, its seat and

back cushioned by sheepskin. A solidly built man in white collarless

scrubs was crouching down, adjusting a man’s feet on the footrests

of the wheelchair. As we stepped into the room, the man in the

wheelchair looked up from under shaggy, unkempt hair. His eyes

met mine, and after a pause, he let out a bloodcurdling groan. Then

his mouth twisted, and he let out another unearthly cry.

I felt his mother stiffen.

“Will, stop it!”

He didn’t even glance toward her. Another prehistoric sound

emerged from somewhere near his chest. It was a terrible, agonizing

noise. I tried not to flinch. The man was grimacing, his head tilted

and sunk into his shoulders as he stared at me through contorted

features. He looked grotesque, and vaguely angry. I realized that

where I held my bag, my knuckles had turned white.

“Will! Please.” There was a faint note of hysteria in his mother’s

voice. “Please, don’t do this.”

Oh God, I thought. I’m not up to this. I swallowed, hard. The man

was still staring at me. He seemed to be waiting for me to do

something.

“I—I’m Lou.” My voice, uncharacteristically tremulous, broke into

the silence. I wondered, briefly, whether to hold out a hand and then,

remembering that he wouldn’t be able to take it, gave a feeble wave

instead. “Short for Louisa.”

Then to my astonishment his features cleared, and his head

straightened on his shoulders.

Will Traynor gazed at me steadily, the faintest of smiles flickering

across his face. “Good morning, Miss Clark,” he said. “I hear you’re

my latest minder.”

Nathan had finished adjusting the footrests. He shook his head

as he stood up. “You are a bad man, Mr. T. Very bad.” He grinned,

and held out a broad hand, which I shook limply. Nathan exuded an

air of unflappability. “I’m afraid you just got Will’s best Christy Brown

impression. You’ll get used to him. His bark is worse than his bite.”

Mrs. Traynor was holding the cross at her neck with slim white

fingers. She moved it back and forth along its thin gold chain, a

nervous habit. Her face was rigid. “I’ll leave you all to get on. You can

call through using the intercom if you need any help. Nathan will talk

you through Will’s routines, and his equipment.”

“I’m here, Mother. You don’t have to talk across me. My brain isn’t

paralyzed. Yet.”

“Yes, well, if you’re going to be foul, Will, I think it’s best if Miss

Clark does talk directly to Nathan.” His mother wouldn’t look at him

as she spoke, I noticed. She kept her gaze about ten feet away on

the floor. “I’m working from home today. So I’ll pop in at lunchtime,

Miss Clark.”

“Okay.” My voice emerged as a squawk.

Mrs. Traynor disappeared. We were silent while we listened to

her clipped footsteps disappearing down the hall toward the main

house.

Then Nathan broke the silence. “You mind if I go and talk Miss

Clark through your meds, Will? You want the television? Some

music?”

“Radio Four please, Nathan.”

“Sure thing.”

We walked through to the kitchen.

“You’ve not had much experience with quadriplegics, Mrs. T

says?”

“No.”

“Okay. I’ll keep it fairly simple for today. There’s a folder here that

tells you pretty much everything you need to know about Will’s

routines, and all his emergency numbers. I’d advise you to read it, if

you get a spare moment. I’m guessing you’ll have a few.”

Nathan took a key from his belt and opened a locked cabinet,

which was packed full of boxes and small plastic canisters of

medication. “Right. This lot is mostly my bag, but you do need to

know where everything is in case of emergencies. There’s a

timetable there on the wall so you can see what he has when on a

daily basis. Any extras you give him you mark in there”—he pointed

—“but you’re best to clear anything through Mrs. T, at least at this

stage.”

“I didn’t realize I was going to have to handle drugs.”

“It’s not hard. He mostly knows what he needs. But he might

need a little help getting them down. We tend to use this beaker

here. Or you can crush them with this pestle and mortar and put

them in a drink.”

I picked up one of the labels. I wasn’t sure I had ever seen so

many drugs outside a pharmacy.

“Okay. So he has two meds for blood pressure, this to lower it at

bedtime, this one to raise it when he gets out of bed. These he

needs fairly often to control his muscular spasms—you will need to

give him one midmorning, and again at midafternoon. He doesn’t

find those too hard to swallow, because they’re the little coated ones.

These are for bladder spasms, and these here are for acid reflux. He

sometimes needs these after eating if he gets uncomfortable.

This is

his antihistamine for the morning, and these are his nasal sprays, but

I mostly do those last thing before I leave, so you shouldn’t have to

worry. He can have paracetamol if he’s in pain, and he does have

the odd sleeping pill, but these tend to make him more irritable in the

daytime, so we try to restrict them.

“These”—he held up another bottle—“are the antibiotics he has

every two weeks for his catheter change. I do those unless I’m away,

in which case I’ll leave clear instructions. They’re pretty strong.

There are the boxes of rubber gloves, if you need to clean him up at

all. There’s also cream there if he gets sore, but he’s been pretty

good since we got the air mattress.”

As I stood there, he reached into his pocket and handed another

key to me. “This is the spare,” he said. “Not to be given to anyone

else. Not even Will, okay? Guard it with your life.”

“It’s a lot to remember.” I swallowed.

“It’s all written down. All you need to remember for today are his

antispasm meds. Those ones. There’s my mobile number if you

need to call me. I’m studying when I’m not here, so I’d rather not be

called too often but feel free till you feel confident.”

I stared at the folder in front of me. It felt like I was about to sit an

exam I hadn’t prepared for. “What if he needs…to go to the loo?” I

thought of the hoist. “I’m not sure I could, you know, lift him.” I tried

not to let my face betray my panic.

Nathan shook his head. “You don’t need to do any of that. His

catheter takes care of that. I’ll be in at lunchtime to change it all.

You’re not here for the physical stuff.”

“What am I here for?”

Nathan studied the floor before he looked at me. “Try to cheer

him up a little? He’s…he’s a little cranky. Understandable, given…the

circumstances. But you’re going to have to have a fairly thick skin.

That little skit this morning is his way of getting you off balance.”

“Is this why the pay is so good?”

“Oh yes. No such thing as a free lunch, eh?” Nathan clapped me

on the shoulder. I felt my body reverberate with it. “Ah, he’s all right.

You don’t have to pussyfoot around him.” He hesitated. “I like him.”

He said it like he might be the only person who did.

I followed him back into the living room. Will Traynor’s chair had

moved to the window, and he had his back to us and was staring out,

listening to something on the radio.

“That’s me done, Will. You want anything before I go?”

“No. Thank you, Nathan.”

“I’ll leave you in Miss Clark’s capable hands, then. See you

lunchtime, mate.”

With a rising sense of panic, I watched the affable helper putting

on his jacket.

“Have fun, you guys.” Nathan winked at me, and then he was

gone.

I stood in the middle of the room, hands thrust in my pockets,

unsure what to do. Will Traynor continued to stare out the window as

if I weren’t there.

“Would you like me to make you a cup of tea?” I said, finally,

when the silence became unbearable.

“Ah. Yes. The girl who makes tea for a living. I wondered how

long it would be before you wanted to show off your skills. No. No,

thank you.”

“Coffee, then?”

“No hot beverages for me just now, Miss Clark.”

“You can call me Lou.”

“Will it help?”

I blinked, my mouth opening briefly. I closed it. Dad always said it

made me look more stupid than I actually was. “Well…can I get you

anything?”

He turned to look at me. His jaw was covered in several weeks of

stubble, and his eyes were unreadable. He turned away.

“I’ll—” I cast around the room. “I’ll see if there’s any washing,

then.”

I walked out of the room, my heart thumping. From the safety of

the kitchen I pulled out my mobile phone and thumped out a

message to my sister.

This is awful. He hates me.

The reply came back within seconds.

You have only been there an hour,

you wuss! M & D really

worried about money. Just get a grip

& think of hourly rate. X

I snapped my mobile phone shut, and blew out my cheeks. I went

through the laundry basket in the bathroom, managing to raise a

paltry quarter load of washing, and spent some minutes checking the

instructions to the machine. I didn’t want to misprogram it or do

anything that might prompt Will or Mrs. Traynor to again look at me

like I was stupid. I started the washing machine and stood there,

trying to work out what else I could legitimately do. I pulled the

vacuum cleaner from the hall cupboard and ran it up and down the

corridor and into the two bedrooms, thinking all the while that if my

parents could see me they would have insisted on taking a

commemorative photograph. The spare bedroom was almost empty,

like a hotel room. I suspected Nathan did not stay over often. I

thought I probably couldn’t blame him.

I hesitated outside Will Traynor’s bedroom, then reasoned that it

needed vacuuming just like anywhere else. There was a built-in shelf

unit along one side, upon which sat around twenty framed

photographs.

As I vacuumed around the bed, I allowed myself a quick peek at

them. There was a man bungee jumping from a cliff, his arms

outstretched like a statue of Christ. There was a man who might

have been Will in what looked like a jungle, and him again in the

midst of a group of drunken friends. The men wore bow ties and

dinner jackets and had their arms around one another’s shoulders.

There he was on a ski slope, beside a girl with dark glasses and

long blond hair. I picked up the frame, to get a better view of him in

his ski goggles. He was clean-shaven in the photograph, and even in

the bright light his face had that expensive sheen to it that moneyed

people get through going on holiday three times a year. He had

broad, muscular shoulders visible even through his ski jacket. I put

the photograph carefully back on the shelf and continued to vacuum

around the back of the bed. Finally, I turned the vacuum cleaner off,

and began to wind the cord up. As I reached down to unplug it, I

caught a movement in the corner of my eye and jumped, letting out a

small shriek. Will Traynor was in the doorway, watching me.

“Courchevel. Two and a half years ago.”

I blushed. “I’m sorry. I was just—”

“You were just looking at my photographs. Wondering how awful

it must be to live like that and then turn into a cripple.”

“No.” I blushed even more furiously.

“The rest of my photographs are in the bottom drawer if you find

yourself overcome with curiosity again,” he said.

And then with a low hum the wheelchair turned to the right, and

he disappeared.

The morning sagged and decided to last for several years. I couldn’t

remember the last time minutes and hours stretched so interminably.

I tried to find as many jobs to occupy myself as I could—dusting

shelves and the like—and went into the living room as seldom as

possible, knowing I was being cowardly, but not really caring.

At twelve thirty, Nathan arrived, bringing with him the cold air of

outside, and a raised eyebrow. “All okay?” he said.

I had rarely been so happy to see someone in my life. “Fine.”

“Great. You can take a half hour now. Me and Mr. T have a few

things we attend to at this point in the day.”

I almost ran for my coat. I hadn’t planned on going out for lunch,

but I was almost faint with relief at getting out of that house. I pulled

up my collar, slung my handbag over my shoulder, and set off at a

brisk pace down the drive, as if I had somewhere I actually wanted to

go. In fact, I just walked around the surrounding streets for half an

hour, expelling hot clouds of breath into my tightly wrapped scarf.

There were no cafés at this end of town, now that the Buttered

Bun was closed. The castle was deserted. The nearest eating place

was a gastropub, the kind of place where I doubted I could afford a

drink, let alone a quick lunch. All the cars in the car park were huge

and expensive with recent number plates.

I stood in the castle car park, making sure I was out of view of

Granta House, and dialed my sister’s number. “Hey.”

“You know I can’t talk at work. You haven’t walked out, have

you?”

“No. I just needed to hear a friendly voice.”

“Is he that bad?”

14-05-2021-091024Me-Before-You - Inglês (2024)

FAQs

What is the full story of Me Before You summary? ›

Young and quirky Louisa "Lou" Clark (Emilia Clarke) moves from one job to the next to help her family make ends meet. Her cheerful attitude is put to the test when she becomes a caregiver for Will Traynor (Sam Claflin), a wealthy young banker left paralyzed from an accident two years earlier. Will's cynical outlook starts to change when Louisa shows him that life is worth living. As their bond deepens, their lives and hearts change in ways neither one could have imagined.

Me Before You / Film synopsis

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Is You Before Me based on a true story? ›

In response to the backlash, author Jojo Moyes said the story was inspired by her own family where relatives required 24-hour care, as well as a real-life news story about a quadriplegic man who convinced his parents to take him to a centre for assisted suicide.

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Why is it called me before you? ›

By positioning "Me" before "You," it subtly suggests a focus on the protagonist's perspective, indicating that the story may be primarily told from Louisa's point of view. This hints at the potential for a deeply emotional and character-driven narrative.

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How old is Louisa Clark in Me before you? ›

Louisa Clark – a 26-year-old woman who is creative, talented, and funny but underestimates herself and has few ambitions. Her life changes when she begins working as a caretaker for a paralysed man. Over time, she learns to harness her capabilities and step out of her limited comfort zone.

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What is the moral of the story of Me Before You? ›

The intention of “Me Before You” is to tell a love story that will motivate watchers to live life boldly and live it to the fullest, to be grateful that they are healthy and whole. This is the advice Traynor gives to Clark, and to people in the audience who are like Clark.

What is the disability in Me Before You? ›

Me Before You tells the story of a cheerful underachiever, Louisa, who is hired as the Personal Care Attendant for a wealthy quadriplegic named Will Traynor.

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Is Me Before You accurate? ›

The movie is fictional and represents one story (and not all people with disabilities), but clearly it shows that Hollywood needs to provide more representation for people who live with disabilities.

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Is there a Me Before You Part 2? ›

After You (Me Before You, #2), Jojo Moyes

After You is a romance novel written by Jojo Moyes, a sequel to Me Before You. The book was first published on 29 September 2015 in the United Kingdom. A second sequel, Still Me, was published in January 2018. It continues the story of Louisa Clark after Will's death.

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Did Will fall in love with Louisa? ›

Saranya Yes, Will did love Louisa. But I guess we can safely say that he loved himself more than anyone ,even Lou, to see himself in such a pathetic state. Jane I think Will loved her, he needed to love himself and he didn't love the new Will. He could not get over his situation.

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Is Me Before You sad? ›

And then there's the fact that Me Before You feels somewhat manipulative, with its BIG. SAD. FEELINGS. No melancholy moment is left unaccompanied by too-on-the-nose music, no delicate interaction between Lou and Will is spared a close-up.

What is the plot summary of before we were yours? ›

It tells the story of a family torn apart by the Tennessee Children's Home Society, a real-life orphanage that kidnapped and abused children for decades. The book alternates between past and present, unraveling the heartbreaking secrets and the enduring power of family bonds.

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What is the summary of my life before me? ›

In My Life Before Me, Norah McClintock takes the framework of the series and fits it to her usual territory of mystery and crime. Her heroine, Cady, is an aspiring journalist looking for the big story that will launch her career. She wastes no time getting out of Hope and, indeed, out of Canada.

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What's the point of Me Before You? ›

Me Before You gives us insight of life meaning in unique way. It answers question about what kind of life you want and people's struggle to be in the ideal condition of worth living.

14-05-2021-091024Me-Before-You - Inglês (2024)

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What is the full story of Me Before You summary? ›

What is the disability in Me Before You? ›

References