I wanted to feel sorry for him. I really did. I thought he was the saddest person I had ever met, in those moments when I glimpsed him staring out of the window. And as the days went by and I realized that his condition was not just a matter of being stuck in that chair, of the loss of physical freedom, but a never-ending litany of indignities and health problems, of risks and discomforts, I decided that if I were Will, I would probably be pretty miserable too.
But oh Lord, he was vile to me. Everything I said, he had a sharp answer for. If I asked him if he was warm enough, he would retort that he was quite capable of letting me know if he needed another blanket. If I asked if the vacuum cleaner was too noisy for him – I hadn’t wanted to interrupt his film – he asked me why, had I worked out a way to make it run silently? When I fed him, he complained that the food was too hot or too cold, or that I had brought the next forkful up to his mouth before he had finished the last. He had the ability to twist almost anything I said or did so that I seemed stupid.
During those first two weeks, I got quite good at keeping my face completely blank, and I would turn away and disappear into the other room and just say as little to him as I possibly could. I started to hate him, and I’m sure he knew it.
I hadn’t realized it was possible to miss my old job more than I already did. I missed Frank, and the way he actually looked pleased to see me when I arrived in the morning. I missed the customers, their company, and the easy chatter that swelled and dipped gently like a benign sea around me. This house, beautiful and expensive as it was, was as still and silent as a morgue. Six months, I repeated under my breath, when it felt unbearable. Six months.
And then on the Thursday, just as I was mixing Will’s mid-morning, high-calorie drink, I heard Mrs Traynor’s voice in the hall. Except this time there were other voices too. I waited, the fork stilled in my hand. I could just make out a woman’s voice, young, well-spoken, and a man’s.
Mrs Traynor appeared in the kitchen doorway, and I tried to look busy, whisking briskly at the beaker.
‘Is that made up with 60:40 water and milk?’ she asked, peering at the drink.
‘Yes. It’s the strawberry one.’
‘Will’s friends have come to see him. It would probably be best if you –’
‘I’ve got lots of things I should be doing in here,’ I said. I was actually quite relieved that I would be spared his company for an hour or so. I screwed the lid on to the beaker. ‘Would your guests like some tea or coffee?’
She looked almost surprised. ‘Yes. That would be very kind. Coffee. I think I’ll … ’
She seemed even more tense than usual, her eyes darting towards the corridor, from where we could hear the low murmur of voices. I guessed that Will didn’t get many visitors.
‘I think … I’ll leave them all to it.’ She gazed out into the corridor, her thoughts apparently far away. ‘Rupert. It’s Rupert, his old friend from work,’ she said, suddenly turning towards me.
I got the feeling that this was in some way momentous, and that she needed to share it with someone, even if it was just me.
‘And Alicia. They were … very close … for a bit. Tea would be lovely. Thank you, Miss Clark.’
I hesitated a moment before I opened the door, leaning against it with my hip so that I could balance the tray in my hands.
‘Mrs Traynor said you might like some coffee,’ I said as I entered, placing the tray on the low table. As I placed Will’s beaker in the holder of his chair, turning the straw so that he only needed to adjust his head position to reach it, I sneaked a look at his visitors.
It was the woman I noticed first. Long-legged and blonde-haired, with pale caramel skin, she was the kind of woman who makes me wonder if humans really are all the same species. She looked like a human racehorse. I had seen these women occasionally; they were usually bouncing up the hill to the castle, clutching small Boden-clad children, and when they came into the cafe their voices would carry, crystal clear and unselfconscious, as they asked, ‘Harry, darling, would you like a coffee? Shall I see if they can do you a macchiato?’ This was definitely a macchiato woman. Everything about her smelt of money, of entitlement and a life lived as if through the pages of a glossy magazine.
Then I looked at her more closely and realized with a jolt that a) she was the woman in Will’s skiing photograph, and b) she looked really, really uncomfortable.
She had kissed Will on the cheek and was now stepping backwards, smiling awkwardly. She was wearing a brown shearling gilet, the kind of thing that would have made me look like a yeti, and a pale-grey cashmere scarf around her neck, which she began to fiddle with, as if she couldn’t decide whether to unwrap herself or not.
‘You look well,’ she said to him. ‘Really. You’ve … grown your hair a bit.’
Will didn’t say a thing. He was just looking at her, his expression as unreadable as ever. I felt a fleeting gratitude that it wasn’t just me he looked at like that.
‘New chair, eh?’ The man tapped the back of Will’s chair, chin compressed, nodding in approval as if he were admiring a top-of-the-range sports car. ‘Looks … pretty smart. Very … high tech.’
I didn’t know what to do. I stood there for a moment, shifting from one foot to another, until Will’s voice broke into the silence.
‘Louisa, would you mind putting some more logs on the fire? I think it needs building up a bit.’
It was the first time he had used my Christian name.
‘Sure,’ I said.
I busied myself by the log burner, stoking the fire and sorting through the basket for logs of the right size.
‘Gosh, it’s cold outside,’ the woman said. ‘Nice to have a proper fire.’
I opened the door of the wood burner, prodding at the glowing logs with the poker.
‘It’s a good few degrees colder here than London.’
‘Yes, definitely,’ the man agreed.
‘I was thinking of getting a wood burner at home. Apparently they’re much more efficient than an open fire.’ Alicia stooped a little to inspect this one, as if she’d never actually seen one before.
‘Yes, I’ve heard that,’ said the man.
‘I must look into it. One of those things you mean to do and then … ’ she tailed off. ‘Lovely coffee,’ she added, after a pause.
‘So – what have you been up to, Will?’ The man’s voice held a kind of forced joviality to it.