Me Before You(31)
Author: Jojo Moyes

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 annexe 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 towards 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 only really 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. My thoughts hummed so busily that I almost missed the next snatch of conversation.

‘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.’

8

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, or one of those awful magazines that the cleaner always has poking out of her handbag, full of women whose daughters ran off with their cheating partners, tales of amazing weight loss and two-headed babies.

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 any more.

I had been a magistrate for almost eleven years now. 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.