Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

and Dad decided it would be best if they slept in my room, while Treena and
Thomas went into theirs, where the odd bit of felt tip apparently didn’t matter.
Once you had accounted for all the extra bed stripping and laundry, me
spending Friday and Saturday nights at Pat’s, Mum admitted, wasn’t actually
much help at all.
And then there was Patrick. Patrick was now a man obsessed. He ate, drank,
lived and breathed the Xtreme Viking. His flat, normally sparsely furnished and
immaculate, was strung with training schedules and dietary sheets. He had a new
lightweight bike which lived in the hallway and which I wasn’t allowed to touch,
in case I interfered with its finely balanced lightweight racing capabilities.
And he was rarely home, even on a Friday or Saturday night. What with his
training and my work hours we seemed to have become used to spending less
time together. I could follow him down to the track and watch him push himself
round and round in circles until he had completed the requisite number of miles,
or I could stay home and watch television by myself, curled up in a corner of his
vast leather settee. There was no food in the fridge, apart from strips of turkey
breast and vile energy drinks the consistency of frogspawn. Treena and I had
tried one once and spat it out, gagging theatrically, like children.
The truth of it was I didn’t like Patrick’s flat. He had bought it a year ago,
when he finally felt his mother would be okay by herself. His business had done
well, and he had told me it was important that one of us get on to the property
ladder. I suppose that would have been the cue for us to have a conversation
about whether we were going to live together, but somehow it didn’t happen, and
neither of us is the type to bring up subjects that make us feel a bit
uncomfortable. As a result, there was nothing of me in that flat, despite our years
together. I had never quite been able to tell him, but I would rather live in my
house, with all its noise and clutter, than in that soulless, featureless bachelor
pad, with its allocated parking spaces and executive view of the castle.
And besides, it was a bit lonely.
‘Got to stick to the schedule, babe,’ he would say, if I told him. ‘If I do any
fewer than twenty-three miles at this stage of the game, I’ll never make it back
on schedule.’ Then he would give me the latest update on his shin splints or ask
me to pass him the heat spray.