Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

True, the colours seemed brighter than England, the sky more vivid, an azure
blue that just disappeared and grew deeper and deeper to infinity. I saw that the
island was lush and green, fringed with acres of sugar cane crops, the sea visible
like a strip of mercury through the volcanic hills. The air was tinged with
something smoky and gingery, the sun so high in the sky that I had to squint into
the white light. In my exhausted state it was as if someone had woken me up in
the pages of a glossy magazine.
But even as my senses wrestled with the unfamiliar, my gaze returned
repeatedly to Will, to his pale, weary face, to the way his head seemed oddly
slumped on his shoulders. And then we pulled into a palm-tree-lined driveway,
stopped outside a low framed building and the driver was already out and
unloading our bags.
We declined the offer of iced tea, of a tour around the hotel. We found Will’s
room, dumped his bags, settled him into his bed and almost before we had drawn
the curtains, he was asleep again. And then there we were. I had done it. I stood
outside his room, finally letting out a deep breath, while Nathan gazed out of the
window at the white surf on the coral reef beyond. I don’t know if it was the
journey, or because this was the most beautiful place I had ever been in my life,
but I felt suddenly tearful.
‘It’s okay,’ Nathan said, catching sight of my expression. And then, totally
unexpectedly, he walked up to me and enveloped me in a huge bear hug. ‘Relax,
Lou. It’s going to be okay. Really. You did good.’
It was almost three days before I started to believe him. Will slept for most of the
first forty-eight hours – and then, astonishingly, he began to look better. His skin
regained its colour and he lost the blue shadows around his eyes. His spasms
lessened and he began to eat again, wheeling his way slowly along the endless,
extravagant buffet and telling me what he wanted on his plate. I knew he was
feeling more like himself when he bullied me into trying things I would never
have eaten – spicy creole curries and seafood whose name I did not recognize.
He swiftly seemed more at home in this place than I did. And no wonder. I had
to remind myself that, for most of his life, this had been Will’s domain – this
globe, these wide shores – not the little annexe in the shadow of the castle.