Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

And then, as he left to go running, I sat and looked out over the industrial
estate towards the castle, and practised saying the word home, silently under my
breath.
I am pretty hopeless at keeping secrets. Treena says I touch my nose as soon as I
even think of lying. It’s a pretty straightforward giveaway. My parents still joke
about the time I wrote absence notes for myself after bunking off school. ‘Dear
Miss Trowbridge,’ they read. ‘Please excuse Louisa Clark from today’s lessons
as I am very poorly with women’s problems.’ Dad had struggled to keep a
straight face even while he was supposed to be tearing a strip off me.
Keeping Will’s plan from my family had been one thing – I was good at
keeping secrets from my parents (it’s one of the things we learn while growing
up, after all) – but coping with the anxiety by myself was something else
entirely.
I spent the next couple of nights trying to work out what Will was up to, and
what I could do to stop him, my thoughts racing even as Patrick and I chatted,
cooking together in the little galley kitchen. (I was already discovering new
things about him – like, he really did know a hundred different things to do with
turkey breast.) At night we made love – it seemed almost obligatory at the
moment, as if we should take full advantage of our freedom. It was as if Patrick
somehow felt I owed him something, given my constant physical proximity to
Will. But as soon as he dropped off to sleep, I was lost in my thoughts again.
There were just over seven weeks left.
And Will was making plans, even if I wasn’t.
The following week, if Will noticed that I was preoccupied, he didn’t say
anything. We went through the motions of our daily routine – I took him for
short drives into the country, cooked his meals, saw to him when we were in his
house. He didn’t make jokes about Running Man any more.
I talked to him about the latest books he had recommended: we had done The
English Patient(I loved this), and a Swedish thriller (which I hadn’t). We were
solicitous with each other, almost excessively polite. I missed his insults, his
crabbiness – their absence just added to the looming sense of threat that hung
over me.
Nathan watched us both, as if he were observing some kind of new species.