Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

‘Yeah? Well it’s still better than a great big fat nothing,’ I grumbled. ‘I’m
going to thank him, anyway. I won’t mention your name, if you really want to be
an arse about it.’
I wrote the card, and posted it. I said nothing more about it. But that evening,
Will’s words still echoing around my head, I found myself diverting into the
library and, spying an unused computer, I logged on to the internet. I looked up
whether there were any devices that Will could use to do his own writing. Within
an hour, I had come up with three – a piece of voice recognition software,
another type of software which relied on the blinking of an eye, and, as my sister
had mentioned, a tapping device that Will could wear on his head.
He was predictably sniffy about the head device, but he conceded that the
voice recognition software might be useful, and within a week we managed, with
Nathan’s help, to install it on his computer, setting Will up so that with the
computer tray fixed to his chair, he no longer needed someone else to type for
him. He was a bit self-conscious about it initially, but after I instructed him to
begin everything with, ‘Take a letter, Miss Clark,’ he got over it.
Even Mrs Traynor couldn’t find anything to complain about. ‘If there is any
other equipment that you think might be useful,’ she said, her lips still pursed as
if she couldn’t quite believe this might have been a straightforwardly good thing,
‘do let us know.’ She eyed Will nervously, as if he might actually be about to
wrench it off with his jaw.
Three days later, just as I set off for work, the postman handed me a letter. I
opened it on the bus, thinking it might be an early birthday card from some
distant cousin. It read, in computerized text:
Dear Clark,
This is to show you that I am not an entirely selfish arse. And I do appreciate your efforts.
Thank you.
Will
I laughed so hard the bus driver asked me if my lottery numbers had come up.
After years spent in that box room, my clothes perched on a rail in the hallway
outside, Treena’s bedroom felt palatial. The first night I spent in it I spun round
with my arms outstretched, just luxuriating in the fact that I couldn’t touch both
walls simultaneously. I went to the DIY store and bought paint and new blinds,