Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

Her voice was small, like Thomas’s, when he hurts himself and is trying to be
really brave. Outside we could hear next door’s dog running up and down
alongside the garden fence, chasing the neighbourhood cats. Every now and then
we could hear a burst of manic barking; its head would be popping up over the
top right now, its eyes bulging with frustration.
‘I’m not sure there’s anything you can do. God. All that stuff you fixed up for
him. All that effort … ’
‘I told him I loved him,’ she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. ‘And he
just said it wasn’t enough.’ Her eyes were wide and bleak. ‘How am I supposed
to live with that?’
I am the one in the family who knows everything. I read more than anyone
else. I go to university. I am the one who is supposed to have all the answers.
But I looked at my big sister, and I shook my head. ‘I haven’t got a clue,’ I
said.
She finally emerged the following day, showered and wearing clean clothes, and
I told Mum and Dad not to say a word. I implied it was boyfriend trouble, and
Dad raised his eyebrows and made a face as if that explained everything and
God only knew what we had been working ourselves into such a fuss over. Mum
ran off to ring the Bingo Club and tell them she’d had second thoughts about the
risks of air travel.
Lou ate a piece of toast (she didn’t want lunch) and she put on a big floppy
sunhat and we walked up to the castle with Thomas to feed the ducks. I don’t
think she really wanted to go out, but Mum insisted that we all needed some
fresh air. This, in my mother’s vocabulary, meant she was itching to get into the
bedroom and air it and change the bedding. Thomas skipped and hopped ahead
of us, clutching a plastic bag full of crusts, and we negotiated the meandering
tourists with an ease born of years of practice, ducking out of the way of
swinging backpacks, separating around posing couples and rejoining on the
other side. The castle baked in the high heat of summer, the ground cracked and
the grass wispy, like the last hairs on the head of a balding man. The flowers in
the tubs looked defeated, as if they were already half preparing for autumn.
Lou and I didn’t say much. What was there to say?