Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

24
There is nothing more disconcerting to passers-by than to see a man in a
wheelchair pleading with a woman who is meant to be looking after him. It’s
apparently not really the done thing to be angry with your disabled charge.
Especially when he is plainly unable to move, and is saying, gently, ‘Clark.
Please. Just come over here. Please.’
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t look at him. Nathan had packed up Will’s stuff, and I
had met them both in the lobby the following morning – Nathan still groggy
from his hangover – and from the moment we had to be in each other’s company
again, I refused to have anything to do with him. I was furious and miserable.
There was an insistent, raging voice inside my head, which demanded to be as
far as possible from Will. To go home. To never see him again.
‘You okay?’ Nathan said, appearing at my shoulder.
As soon as we arrived at the airport, I had marched away from them to the
check-in desk.
‘No,’ I said. ‘And I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Hungover?’
‘No.’
There was a short silence.
‘This mean what I think it does?’ He was suddenly sombre.
I couldn’t speak. I nodded, and I watched Nathan’s jaw stiffen briefly. He was
stronger than I was, though. He was, after all, a professional. Within minutes he
was back with Will, showing him something he had seen in a magazine,
wondering aloud about the prospects for some football team they both knew of.
Watching them, you would know nothing of the momentousness of the news I
had just imparted.