Me Before You (47 page)

‘I wasn’t alone. Treena knew,’ she said, looking at me. ‘Treena was great.’

‘I didn’t do anything,’ I said, hugging Thomas. He had
lost interest in the conversation now that Mum had put an open tin of Celebrations in front of him. ‘I was just an ear. You did the lot. You came up with all the ideas.’

‘And some ideas they turned out to be.’ She leant against Dad, sounding bereft.

Dad tilted her chin so that she had to look at him. ‘But you did everything you could.’

‘And I failed.’

‘Who says you failed?’ Dad stroked her hair back from her face. His expression was tender. ‘I’m just thinking of what I know about Will Traynor, what I know about men like him. And I’ll say one thing to you. I’m not sure anyone in the world was ever going to persuade that man once he’d set his mind to something. He’s who he is. You can’t make people change who they are.’

‘But his parents! They can’t let him kill himself,’ said Mum. ‘What kind of people are they?’

‘They’re normal people, Mum. Mrs Traynor just doesn’t know what else she can do.’

‘Well, not bloody taking him to this clinic would be a start.’ Mum was angry. Two points of colour had risen to her cheekbones. ‘I would fight for you two, for Thomas, until my dying breath.’

‘Even if he’d already tried to kill himself?’ I said. ‘In really grim ways?’

‘He’s ill, Katrina. He’s depressed. People who are vulnerable should not be given the chance to do something that they’ll … ’ She tailed off in mute fury and dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. ‘That woman must be heartless.
Heartless
. And to think they got Louisa involved in all this. She’s a magistrate, for goodness’ sake. You’d think a magistrate
would know what was right or wrong. Of all people. I’ve a good mind to head down there now and bring him back here.’

‘It’s complicated, Mum.’

‘No. It’s not. He’s vulnerable and there is no way on earth she should entertain the thought of it. I’m shocked. That poor man. That
poor
man.’ She got up from the table, taking the remains of the chicken with her, and stalked out to the kitchen.

Louisa watched her go, her expression a little stunned. Mum was never angry. I think the last time we heard her raise her voice was 1993.

Dad shook his head, his mind apparently elsewhere. ‘I’ve just thought – no wonder I haven’t seen Mr Traynor. I wondered where he was. I assumed they were all off on some family holiday.’

‘They’ve … they’ve gone?’

‘He’s not been in these last two days.’

Lou sat back down and slumped in her chair.

‘Oh shit,’ I said, and then clamped my hands around Thomas’s ears.

‘It’s tomorrow.’

Lou looked at me, and I glanced up at the calendar on the wall.

‘The thirteenth of August. It’s tomorrow.’

Lou did nothing that last day. She was up before me, staring out of the kitchen window. It rained, and then it cleared, and then it rained again. She lay on the sofa with Granddad, and she drank the tea that Mum made her, and every half an hour or so I watched her gaze slide silently
towards the mantelpiece and check the clock. It was awful to watch. I took Thomas swimming and I tried to make her come with us. I said Mum would mind him if she wanted to go to the shops with me later. I said I’d take her to the pub, just the two of us, but she refused every offer.

‘What if I made a mistake, Treen?’ she said, so quietly that only I could hear it.

I glanced up at Granddad, but he had eyes only for the racing. I think Dad was still putting on a sneaky bet each way for him, even though he denied it to Mum.

‘What do you mean?’

‘What if I should have gone with him?’

‘But … you said you couldn’t.’

Outside, the skies were grey. She stared through our immaculate windows at the miserable day beyond.

‘I know what I said. But I just can’t bear not knowing what’s happening.’ Her face crumpled a little. ‘I can’t bear not knowing how he’s feeling. I can’t bear the fact that I never even got to say goodbye.’

‘Couldn’t you go now? Maybe try and get a flight?’

‘It’s too late,’ she said. And then she closed her eyes. ‘I’d never get there in time. There’s only two hours left until … until it stops for the day. I looked it up. On the internet.’

I waited.

‘They don’t … do … it … after five thirty.’ She shook her head in bemusement. ‘Something to do with the Swiss officials who have to be there. They don’t like … certifying … things outside office hours.’

I almost laughed. But I didn’t know what to say to her. I couldn’t imagine having to wait, as she was waiting, knowing what might be happening in some far-off place. I had
never loved a man like she seemed to love Will. I had liked men, sure, and wanted to sleep with them, but sometimes I wondered if I was missing some sensitivity chip. I couldn’t imagine crying over anyone I’d been with. The only equivalent was if I thought about Thomas, waiting to die in some strange country, and as soon as that thought came to mind it made something inside me actually flip over, it was so hideous. So I stuck that in the back of my mental filing cabinet too, under the drawer labelled:
Unthinkable
.

I sat down beside my sister on the sofa and we stared in silence at the three thirty Maiden Stakes, then the four o’clock handicap stakes, and the four races that followed it, with the fixed intensity of people who might actually have all the money in the world on the winner.

And then the doorbell rang.

Louisa was off the sofa and in the hallway in seconds. She opened the door and the way she wrenched it open made even my heart stop.

But it wasn’t Will there on the doorstep. It was a young woman, her make-up thick and perfectly applied, her hair cut in a neat bob around her chin. She folded her umbrella and smiled, reaching round towards the large bag she had over her shoulder. I wondered briefly if this was Will Traynor’s sister.

‘Louisa Clark?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m from
The Globe
. I wondered if I could have a quick word?’

‘
The Globe
?’

I could hear the confusion in Lou’s voice.

‘The newspaper?’ I stepped behind my sister. I saw then the notepad in the woman’s hand.

‘Can I come in? I’d just like to have a little chat with you about William Traynor. You do work for William Traynor, don’t you?’

‘No comment,’ I said. And before the woman had a chance to say anything else, I slammed the door in her face.

My sister stood stunned in the hallway. She flinched as the doorbell rang again.

‘Don’t answer it,’ I hissed.

‘But how – ?’

I began to push her up the stairs. God, she was impossibly slow. It was like she was half asleep. ‘Granddad, don’t answer the door!’ I yelled. ‘Who have you told?’ I said, when we reached the landing. ‘Someone must have told them. Who knows?’

‘Miss Clark,’ the woman’s voice came through the letter box. ‘If you just give me ten minutes … we do understand this is a very sensitive issue. We’d like you to put your side of the story … ’

‘Does this mean he’s dead?’ Her eyes had filled with tears.

‘No, it just means some arse is trying to cash in.’ I thought for a minute.

‘Who was that, girls?’ Mum’s voice came up the stairwell.

‘No one, Mum. Just don’t answer the door.’

I peered over the banister. Mum was holding a tea towel in her hands and gazing at the shadowy figure visible through the glass panels of the front door.

‘Don’t answer the door?’

I took my sister’s elbow. ‘Lou … you didn’t say anything to Patrick, did you?’

She didn’t need to say anything. Her stricken face said it all.

‘Okay. Don’t have a baby. Just don’t go near the door. Don’t answer the phone. Don’t say a word to them, okay?’

Mum was not amused. She was even less amused after the phone started ringing. After the fifth call we put all calls through to the answerphone, but we still had to listen to them, their voices invading our little hallway. There were four or five of them, all the same. All offering Lou the chance to put her side of ‘the story’, as they called it. Like Will Traynor was now some commodity that they were all scrabbling over. The telephone rang and the doorbell rang. We sat with the curtains closed, listening to the reporters on the pavement just outside our gate, chatting to each other and speaking on their mobile phones.

It was like being under siege. Mum wrung her hands and shouted through the letter box for them to get the hell out of our front garden, whenever one of them ventured past the gate. Thomas gazed out of the upstairs bathroom window and wanted to know why there were people in our garden. Four of our neighbours rang, wanting to know what was going on. Dad parked in Ivy Street and came home via the back garden, and we had a fairly serious talk about castles and boiling oil.

Then, after I’d thought a bit longer, I rang Patrick and
asked him how much he had got for his sordid little tip. The slight delay before he denied everything told me all I needed to know.

‘You shitbag,’ I yelled. ‘I’m going to kick your stupid marathon-running shins so hard you’re going to think 157th was actually a good result.’

Lou just sat in the kitchen and cried. Not proper sobbing, just silent tears that ran down her face and which she wiped away with the palm of her hand. I couldn’t think what to say to her.

Which was fine. I had plenty to say to everyone else.

All but one of the reporters cleared off by half past seven. I didn’t know if they had given up, or if Thomas’s habit of posting bits of Lego out of the letter box every time they passed another note through had become boring. I told Louisa to bath Thomas for me, mainly because I wanted her to get out of the kitchen, but also because that way I could go through all the messages on our answerphone and delete the newspaper ones while she couldn’t hear me. Twenty-six. Twenty-six of the buggers. And all sounding so nice, so understanding. Some of them even offered her money.

I pressed delete on every one. Even those offering money, although I admit I was a teeny bit tempted to see how much they were offering. All the while, I heard Lou talking to Thomas in the bathroom, the whine and splash of him dive-bombing his six inches of soapsuds with the Batmobile. That’s the thing you don’t know about children unless you have them – bath time, Lego and fish fingers don’t allow you to dwell on tragedy for too long. And then I hit the last message.

‘Louisa? It’s Camilla Traynor. Will you call me? As soon as possible?’

I stared at the answerphone. I rewound and replayed it. Then I ran upstairs and whipped Thomas out of the bath so fast my boy didn’t even know what hit him. He was standing there, the towel wrapped tightly around him like a compression bandage, and Lou, stumbling and confused, was already halfway down the stairs, me pushing her by the shoulder.

‘What if she hates me?’

‘She didn’t sound like she hated you.’

‘But what if the press are surrounding them there? What if they think it’s all my fault?’ Her eyes were wide and terrified. ‘What if she’s ringing to tell me he’s done it?’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Lou. For once in your life, just get a grip. You won’t know anything unless you call. Call her. Just call. You don’t have a bloody choice.’

I ran back into the bathroom, to set Thomas free. I shoved him into his pyjamas, told him that Granny had a biscuit for him if he ran to the kitchen super fast. And then I peered out of the bathroom door, to peek at my sister on the phone down in the hallway.

She was turned away from me, one hand smoothing the hair at the back of her head. She reached out a hand to steady herself.

‘Yes,’ she was saying. ‘I see.’ And then, ‘Okay.’

And after a pause, ‘Yes.’

She looked down at her feet for a good minute after she’d put the phone down.

‘Well?’ I said.

She looked up as if she’d only just seen me there, and shook her head.

‘It was nothing about the newspapers,’ she said, her voice still numb with shock. ‘She asked me – begged me – to come to Switzerland. And she’s booked me on to the last flight out this evening.’

In other circumstances I suppose it might have seemed strange that I, Lou Clark, a girl who had rarely been more than a bus ride from her home town in twenty years, was now flying to her third country in less than a week. But I packed an overnight case with the swift efficiency of an air stewardess, rejecting all but the barest necessities. Treena ran around silently fetching any other things she thought I might need, and then we headed downstairs. We stopped halfway down. Mum and Dad were already in the hall, standing side by side in the ominous way they used to do when we sneaked back late from a night out.

‘What’s going on?’ Mum was staring at my case.

Treena had stopped in front of me.

‘Lou’s going to Switzerland,’ she said. ‘And she needs to leave now. There’s only one flight left today.’

We were about to move when Mum stepped forward.

‘No.’ Her mouth was set into an unfamiliar line, her arms folded awkwardly in front of her. ‘Really. I don’t want you involved. If this is what I think it is, then no.’

‘But –’ Treena began, glancing behind at me.

‘No,’ said Mum, and her voice held an unusually steely quality. ‘No buts. I’ve been thinking about this, about everything you told us. It’s wrong. Morally wrong. And if you get embroiled in it and you’re seen to be helping a man kill himself, then you could end up in all sorts of trouble.’

‘Your mum’s right,’ Dad said.

‘We’ve seen it in the news. This could affect your whole life, Lou. This college interview, everything. If you get a criminal record, you will never get a college degree or a good job or anything –’

‘He’s asked for her to come. She can’t just ignore him,’ Treena interrupted.

‘Yes. Yes, she can. She’s given six months of her life to this family. And a fat lot of good it’s brought her, judging by the state of things. A fat lot of good it’s brought this family, with people banging on the door and all the neighbours thinking we’ve been done for benefit fraud or some such. No, she’s finally got the chance to make something of herself, and now they want her to go to that dreadful place in Switzerland and get involved in God knows what. Well, I say no. No, Louisa.’