Me Before You(85)
Author: Jojo Moyes

‘I could apply for a grant. Or maybe a loan. And I’ve got enough to see me through for a bit. I met this MP woman who said she has links to some agency that could help me. She gave me her card.’

‘Hang on,’ Katrina said, swivelling on her chair, ‘I >don’t really get this. I thought you wanted to stay with Will. I thought the whole point of this was that you wanted to keep him alive and keep working with him.’

‘I do, but … ’ I stared up at the ceiling.

‘But what?’

‘It’s complicated.’

‘So’s quantitive easing. But I still get that it means printing money.’

She rose from her chair and walked over to shut the bedroom door. She lowered her voice so that nobody outside could possibly hear.

‘You think you’re going to lose? You think he’s going to … ?’

‘No,’ I said hurriedly. ‘Well, I hope not. I’ve got plans. Big plans. I’ll show you in a bit.’

‘But … ’

I stretched my arms above me, twisting my fingers together. ‘But, I like Will. A lot.’

She studied me. She was wearing her thinking face. There is nothing more terrifying than my sister’s thinking face when it is trained directly on you.

‘Oh, shit.’

‘Don’t … ’

‘So this is interesting,’ she said.

‘I know.’ I dropped my arms.

‘You want a job. So that … ’

‘It’s what the other quads tell me. The ones who I talk to on the message boards. You can’t be both. You can’t be carer and … ’ I lifted my hands to cover my face.

I could feel her eyes on me.

‘Does he know?’

‘No. I’m not sure I know. I just … ’ I threw myself down on her bed, face first. It smelt of Thomas. Underlaid with a faint hint of Marmite. ‘I don’t know what I think. All I know is that most of the time I would rather be with him than anyone else I know.’

‘Including Patrick.’

And there it was, out there. The truth that I could barely admit to myself.

I felt my cheeks flood with colour. ‘Yes,’ I said into the duvet. ‘Sometimes, yes.’

‘Fuck,’ she said, after a minute. ‘And I thought I liked to make my life complicated.’

She lay down beside me on the bed, and we stared up at the ceiling. Downstairs we could hear Granddad whistling tunelessly, accompanied by the whine and clunk of Thomas driving some remote-control vehicle backwards and forwards into a piece of skirting. For some unexplained reason my eyes filled with tears. After a minute, I felt my sister’s arm snake around me.

‘You f**king madwoman,’ she said, and we both began to laugh.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said, wiping at my face. ‘I’m not going to do anything stupid.’

‘Good. Because the more I think about this, the more I think it’s about the intensity of the situation. It’s not real, it’s about the drama.’

‘What?’

‘Well, this is actual life or death, after all, and you’re locked into this man’s life every day, locked into his weird secret. That’s got to create a kind of false intimacy. Either that or you’re getting some weird Florence Nightingale complex.’

‘Believe me, that is definitely not it.’

We lay there, staring at the ceiling.

‘But it is a bit mad, thinking about loving someone who can’t … you know, love you back. Maybe this is just a panic reaction to the fact that you and Patrick have finally moved in together.’

‘I know. You’re right.’

‘And you two have been together a long time. You’re bound to get crushes on other people.’

‘Especially while Patrick is obsessed with being Marathon Man.’

‘And you might go off Will again. I mean, I remember when you thought he was an arse.’

‘I still do sometimes.’

My sister reached for a tissue and dabbed at my eyes. Then she thumbed at something on my cheek.

‘All that said, the college idea is good. Because – let’s be blunt – whether it all goes tits up with Will, or whether it doesn’t, you’re still going to need a proper job. You’re not going to want to be a carer forever.’

‘It’s not going to go “tits up”, as you call it, with Will. He’s … he’s going to be okay.’

‘Sure he is.’

Mum was calling Thomas. We could hear her, singing it beneath us in the kitchen. ‘Thomas. Tomtomtomtom Thomas … ’

Treena sighed and rubbed at her eyes. ‘You going back to Patrick’s tonight?’

‘Yes.’

‘You want to grab a quick drink at the Spotted Dog and show me these plans, then? I’ll see if Mum will put Thomas to bed for me. Come on, you can treat me, seeing as you’re now loaded enough to go to college.’

It was a quarter to ten by the time I got back to Patrick’s.

My holiday plans, astonishingly, had met with Katrina’s complete approval. She hadn’t even done her usual thing of adding, ‘Yes, but it would be even better if you … ’ There had been a point where I wondered if she was doing it just to be nice, because I was obviously going a bit nuts. But she kept saying things like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe you found this! You’ve got to take lots of pictures of him bungee jumping.’ And, ‘Imagine his face when you tell him about the skydiving! It’s going to be brilliant.’

Anyone watching us at the pub might have thought that we were two friends who actually really quite liked each other.

Still mulling this over, I let myself in quietly. The flat was dark from outside and I wondered if Patrick was having an early night as part of his intensive training. I dropped my bag on the floor in the hall and pushed at the living-room door, thinking as I did so that it was nice of him to have left a light on for me.

And then I saw him. He was sitting at a table laid with two places, a candle flickering between them. As I closed the door behind me, he stood up. The candle was burnt halfway down to the base.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

I stared at him.

‘I was an idiot. You’re right. This job of yours is only for six months, and I have been behaving like a child. I should be proud that you’re doing something so worthwhile, and taking it all so seriously. I was just a bit … thrown. So I’m sorry. Really.’