Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

moved from his power chair until we were actually at the gates. Nathan would
remain on the ground, remove the joystick and turn it to manual, and then
carefully tie and bolster the chair, securing the pedals. He would personally
oversee its loading to protect against damage. It would be pink-tagged to warn
luggage handlers of its extreme delicacy. We had been allocated three seats in a
row so that Nathan could complete any medical assistance that Will needed
without prying eyes. The airline had assured me that the armrests lifted so that
we wouldn’t bruise Will’s hips while transferring him from the wheelchair to his
aircraft seat. We would keep him between us at all times. And we would be the
first allowed off the aircraft.
All this was on my ‘airport’ checklist. That was the sheet in front of my ‘hotel’
checklist but behind my ‘day before we leave’ checklist and the itinerary. Even
with all these safeguards in place, I felt sick.
Every time I looked at Will I wondered if I had done the right thing. Will had
only been cleared by his GP for travel the night before. He ate little and spent
much of every day asleep. He seemed not just weary from his illness, but
exhausted with life, tired of our interference, our upbeat attempts at
conversation, our relentless determination to try to make things better for him.
He tolerated me, but I got the feeling that he often wanted to be left alone. He
didn’t know that this was the one thing I could not do.
‘There’s the airline woman,’ I said, as a uniformed girl with a bright smile and
a clipboard walked briskly towards us.
‘Well, she’s going to be a lot of use on transfer,’ Nathan muttered. ‘She
doesn’t look like she could lift a frozen prawn.’
‘We’ll manage,’ I said. ‘Between us, we will manage.’
It had become my catchphrase, ever since I had worked out what I wanted to
do. Since my conversation with Nathan in the annexe, I had been filled with a
renewed zeal to prove them all wrong. Just because we couldn’t do the holiday
I’d planned did not mean that Will could not do anything at all.
I hit the message boards, firing out questions. Where might be a good place
for a far weaker Will to convalesce? Did anyone else know where we could go?
Temperature was my main consideration – the English climate was too
changeable (there was nothing more depressing than an English seaside resort in
the rain). Much of Europe was too hot in late July, ruling out Italy, Greece, the