Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

Perhaps it was something to do with the speed with which he turned away and
began busying himself with his computer keyboard. Perhaps it was his tone of
voice. But for some reason I didn’t throw it away. I put it carefully into his folder
in the kitchen.
Will gave me another book of short stories, one that he’d ordered from
Amazon, and a copy of The Red Queen. I knew it wasn’t going to be my sort of
book at all. ‘It hasn’t even got a story,’ I said, after studying the back cover.
‘So?’ Will replied. ‘Challenge yourself a bit.’
I tried – not because I really had an appetite for genetics – but because I
couldn’t bear the thought that Will would go on and on at me if I didn’t. He was
like that now. He was actually a bit of a bully. And, really annoyingly, he would
quiz me on how much I had read of something, just to make sure I really had.
‘You’re not my teacher,’ I would grumble.
‘Thank God,’ he would reply, with feeling.
This book – which was actually surprisingly readable – was all about a kind of
battle for survival. It claimed that women didn’t pick men because they loved
them at all. It said that the female of the species would always go for the
strongest male, in order to give her offspring the best chance. She couldn’t help
herself. It was just the way nature was.
I didn’t agree with this. And I didn’t like the argument. There was an
uncomfortable undercurrent to what he was trying to persuade me of. Will was
physically weak, damaged, in this author’s eyes. That made him a biological
irrelevance. It would have made his life worthless.
He had been going on and on about this for the best part of an afternoon when
I butted in. ‘There’s one thing this Matt Ridley bloke hasn’t factored in,’ I said.
Will looked up from his computer screen. ‘Oh yes?’
‘What if the genetically superior male is actually a bit of a dickhead?’
On the third Saturday of May, Treena and Thomas came home. My mother was
out of the door and up the garden path before they had made it halfway down the
street. Thomas, she swore, clutching him to her, had grown several inches in the
time they had been away. He had changed, was so grown-up, looked so much the
little man. Treena had cut off her hair and looked oddly sophisticated. She was