Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

She floated around the house looking a bit lost for three days, then she began
spring cleaning with a vigour 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. When
she rang each evening, Mum would speak to them and then cry for a full halfhour
in her bedroom afterwards.
‘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.’