Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

Like it was some kind of contest.
I pulled a tendril from the honeysuckle and began picking off its leaves. ‘I
don’t know. I think I’m going to need to up my game.’ I told her what Mrs
Traynor had said to me about going abroad.
‘I can’t believe you went to a violin concert, though. You, of all people!’
‘I liked it.’
She raised an eyebrow.
‘No. Really, I did. It was … emotional.’
She looked at me carefully. ‘Mum says he’s really nice.’
‘He is really nice.’
‘And handsome.’
‘A spinal injury doesn’t mean you turn into Quasimodo.’ Please don’t say
anything about it being a tragic waste, I told her silently.
But perhaps my sister was smarter than that. ‘Anyway. She was definitely
surprised. I think she was prepared for Quasimodo.’
‘That’s the problem, Treen,’ I said, and threw the rest of my tea into the flower
bed. ‘People always are.’
Mum was cheerful over supper that night. She had cooked lasagne, Treena’s
favourite, and Thomas was allowed to stay up as a treat. We ate and talked and
laughed and talked about safe things, like the football team, and my job, and
what Treena’s fellow students were like. Mum must have asked Treena a
hundred times if she was sure she was managing okay on her own, whether there
was anything she needed for Thomas – as if they had anything spare they could
have given her. I was glad I had warned Treena about how broke they were. She
said no, gracefully and with conviction. It was only afterwards I thought to ask if
it was the truth.
That night I was woken at midnight by the sound of crying. It was Thomas, in
the box room. I could hear Treena trying to comfort him, to reassure him, the
sound of the light going on and off, a bed being rearranged. I lay in the dark,
watching the sodium light filter through my blinds on to my newly painted
ceiling, and waited for it to stop. But the same thin wail began again at two. This
time, I heard Mum padding across the hallway, and murmured conversation.
Then, finally, Thomas was silent again.