Me Before You(107)
Author: Jojo Moyes

I lay down on the bed beside him and I placed my arm across him. I rested my head on his chest, letting my body absorb the gentle rise and fall of it. I could feel the faint pressure of Will’s fingertips on my back, his warm breath in my hair. I closed my eyes, breathing in the scent of him, still the same expensive cedar-wood smell, despite the bland freshness of the room, the slightly disturbing scent of disinfectant underneath. I tried not to think of anything at all. I just tried to be, tried to absorb the man I loved through osmosis, tried to imprint what I had left of him on myself. I did not speak. And then I heard his voice. I was so close to him that when he spoke it seemed to vibrate gently through me.

‘Hey, Clark,’ he said. ‘Tell me something good.’

I stared out of the window at the bright-blue Swiss sky and I told him a story of two people. Two people who shouldn’t have met, and who didn’t like each other much when they did, but who found they were the only two people in the world who could possibly have understood each other. And I told him of the adventures they had, the places they had gone, and the things I had seen that I had never expected to. I conjured for him electric skies and iridescent seas and evenings full of laughter and silly jokes. I drew a world for him, a world far from a Swiss industrial estate, a world in which he was still somehow the person he had wanted to be. I drew the world he had created for me, full of wonder and possibility. I let him know a hurt had been mended in a way that he couldn’t have known, and for that alone there would always be a piece of me indebted to him. And as I spoke I knew these would be the most important words I would ever say and that it was important that they were the right words, that they were not propaganda, an attempt to change his mind, but respectful of what Will had said.

I told him something good.

Time slowed, and stilled. It was just the two of us, me murmuring in the empty, sunlit room. Will didn’t say much. He didn’t answer back, or add a dry comment, or scoff. He nodded occasionally, his head pressed against mine, and murmured, or let out a small sound that could have been satisfaction at another good memory.

‘It has been,’ I told him, ‘the best six months of my entire life.’

There was a long silence.

‘Funnily enough, Clark, mine too.’

And then, just like that, my heart broke. My face crumpled, my composure went and I held him tightly and I stopped caring that he could feel the shudder of my sobbing body because grief swamped me. It overwhelmed me and tore at my heart and my stomach and my head and it pulled me under, and I couldn’t bear it. I honestly thought I couldn’t bear it.

‘Don’t, Clark,’ he murmured. I felt his lips on my hair. ‘Oh, please. Don’t. Look at me.’

I screwed my eyes shut and shook my head.

‘Look at me. Please.’

I couldn’t.

‘You’re angry. Please. I don’t want to hurt you or make you –’

‘No … ’ I shook my head again. ‘It’s not that. I don’t want … ’ My cheek was pressed to his chest. ‘I don’t want the last thing you see to be my miserable, blotchy face.’

‘You still don’t get it, Clark, do you?’ I could hear the smile in his voice. ‘It’s not your choice.’

It took some time to regain my composure. I blew my nose, took a long deep breath. Finally, I raised myself on my elbow, and I looked back at him. His eyes, so long strained and unhappy, looked oddly clear and relaxed.

‘You look absolutely beautiful.’

‘Funny.’

‘Come here,’ he said. ‘Right up close to me.’

I lay down again, facing him. I saw the clock above the door and had a sudden sense of time running out. I took his arm and wrapped it tightly around me, threading my own arms and legs around him so that we were tightly entwined. I took his hand – the good one – and wrapped my fingers in his, kissing the knuckles as I felt him squeeze mine. His body was so familiar to me now. I knew it in a way I had never known Patrick’s – its strengths and vulnerabilities, its scars and scents. I placed my face so close to his that his features became indistinct, and I began to lose myself in them. I stroked his hair, his skin, his brow, with my fingertips, tears sliding unchecked down my cheeks, my nose against his, and all the time he watched me silently, studying me intently as if he were storing each molecule of me away. He was already retreating, withdrawing to somewhere I couldn’t reach him.

I kissed him, trying to bring him back. I kissed him and let my lips rest against his so that our breath mingled and the tears from my eyes became salt on his skin, and I told myself that, somewhere, tiny particles of him would become tiny particles of me, ingested, swallowed, alive, perpetual. I wanted to press every bit of me against him. I wanted to will something into him. I wanted to give him every bit of life I felt and force him to live.

I realized I was afraid of living without him. How is it you have the right to destroy my life, I wanted to demand of him, but I’m not allowed a say in yours?

But I had promised.

So I held him, Will Traynor, ex-City whiz kid, ex-stunt diver, sportsman, traveller, lover. I held him close and said nothing, all the while telling him silently that he was loved. Oh, but he was loved.

I couldn’t say how long we stayed like that. I was dimly aware of soft conversation outside, of the shuffle of shoes, a distant church bell ringing in some far-off place. Finally, I felt him loosen a great breath, almost a shudder, and he drew his head back just an inch so that we could see each other clearly.

I blinked at him.

He gave me a small smile, almost an apology.

‘Clark,’ he said, quietly. ‘Can you call my parents in?’

27

CROWN PROSECUTION SERVICE

FAO: Director of Public Prosecutions

Confidential Advisory

Re: William John Traynor

4.9.2009

Detectives have now interviewed everyone involved in the above case, and I attach files containing all related documents accordingly.

The subject at the centre of the investigation is Mr William Traynor, a 35-year-old former partner in the firm Madingley Lewins, based in the City of London. Mr Traynor suffered a spinal injury in a road accident in 2007 and had been diagnosed C5/6 quadriplegic with very limited movement in one arm only, requiring 24-hour care. His medical history is attached.

The papers show that Mr Traynor had been at pains to regularize his legal affairs sometime before his trip to Switzerland. We have been forwarded a signed and witnessed statement of intent by his lawyer, Mr Michael Lawler, as well as copies of all relevant documentation relating to his consultations with the clinic beforehand.