The worst thing about working as a carer is not what you might think. It’s not the lifting and cleaning, the medicines and wipes and the distant but somehow always perceptible smell of disinfectant. It’s not even the fact that most people assume you’re only doing it because you really aren’t smart enough to do anything else. It’s the fact that when you spend all day in really close proximity to someone, there is no escape from their moods. Or your own.
Will had been distant with me all morning, since I had first told him my plans. It was nothing an outsider could have put their finger on, but there were fewer jokes, perhaps less casual conversation. He asked me nothing about the contents of the day’s newspapers.
‘That’s … what you want to do?’ His eyes had flickered, but his face betrayed nothing.
I shrugged. Then I nodded more emphatically. I felt there was something childishly non-committal about my response. ‘It’s about time, really,’ I said. ‘I mean, I am twenty-seven.’
He studied my face. Something tightened in his jaw.
I felt suddenly, unbearably tired. I felt this peculiar urge to say sorry, and I wasn’t sure what for.
He gave a little nod, raised a smile. ‘Glad you’ve got it all sorted out,’ he said, and wheeled himself into the kitchen.
I was starting to feel really cross with him. I had never felt judged by anyone as I felt judged by Will now. It was as if me deciding to settle down with my boyfriend had made me less interesting to him. Like I could no longer be his pet project. I couldn’t say any of this to him, of course, but I was just as cool with him as he was with me.
It was, frankly, exhausting.
In the afternoon, there was a knock at the back door. I hurried down the corridor, my hands still wet from washing up, and opened it to find a man standing there in a dark suit, a briefcase in hand.
‘Oh no. We’re Buddhist,’ I said firmly, closing the door as the man began to protest.
Two weeks previously a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses had kept Will captive at the back door for almost fifteen minutes, while he struggled to reverse his chair back over the dislodged doormat. When I finally shut the door they had opened the letter box to call that ‘he more than anyone’ should understand what it was to look forward to the afterlife.
‘Um … I’m here to see Mr Traynor?’ the man said, and I opened the door cautiously. In all my time at Granta House nobody had ever come to see Will via the back door.
‘Let him in,’ Will said, appearing behind me. ‘I asked him to come.’ When I still stood there, he added, ‘It’s okay, Clark … he’s a friend.’
The man stepped over the threshold, held out his hand and shook mine. ‘Michael Lawler,’ he said.
He was about to say something else, but Will moved his chair between us, effectively cutting off any further conversation.
‘We’ll be in the living room. Could you make some coffee, then leave us for a while?’
‘Um … okay.’
Mr Lawler smiled at me, a little awkwardly, and followed Will into the living room. When I walked in with a tray of coffee some minutes later they were discussing cricket. The conversation about legs and runs continued until I had no further reason to lurk.
Brushing invisible dust from my skirt, I straightened up and said, ‘Well. I’ll leave you to it.’
‘Thanks, Louisa.’
‘You sure you don’t want anything else? Biscuits?’
‘Thank you, Louisa.’
Will never called me Louisa. And he had never banished me from anything before.
Mr Lawler stayed almost an hour. I did my chores, then hung around in the kitchen, wondering if I was brave enough to eavesdrop. I wasn’t. I sat, ate two Bourbon creams, chewed my nails, listened to the low hum of their voices, and wondered for the fifteenth time why Will had asked this man not to use the front entrance.
He didn’t look like a doctor, or consultant. He could have been a financial adviser, but he somehow didn’t have the right air about him. He certainly didn’t look like a physiotherapist, occupational therapist or dietician – or one of the legions of other people employed by the local authority to pop by and assess Will’s ever-changing needs. You could spot those a mile off. They always looked exhausted, but were briskly, determinedly cheerful. They wore woollens in muted colours, with sensible shoes, and drove dusty estate cars full of folders and boxes of equipment. Mr Lawler had a navy-blue BMW. His gleaming 5-series was not a local authority sort of a car.
Finally, Mr Lawler emerged. He closed his briefcase, and his jacket hung over his arm. He no longer looked awkward.
I was in the hallway within seconds.
‘Ah. Would you mind pointing me towards the bathroom?’
I did so, mutely, and stood there, fidgeting, until he emerged.
‘Right. So that’s all for now.’
‘Thank you, Michael.’ Will didn’t look at me. ‘I’ll wait to hear from you.’
‘I should be in touch later this week,’ Mr Lawler said.
‘Email would be preferable to letter – at least, for now.’
‘Yes. Of course.’
I opened the back door to see him out. Then, as Will disappeared back into the living room, I followed him into the courtyard and said lightly, ‘So – do you have far to go?’
His clothes were beautifully cut; they carried the sharp edge of the city in their tailoring, serious money in their thread count.
‘London, unfortunately. Still, hope the traffic won’t be too bad at this time of the afternoon.’
I stepped out after him. The sun was high in the sky and I had to squint to see him. ‘So … um … where in London are you based?’
‘Regent Street.’
‘The Regent Street? Nice.’
‘Yes. Not a bad place to be. Right. Thank you for the coffee, Miss … ’
‘Clark. Louisa Clark.’
He stopped then and looked at me for a moment, and I wondered whether he had sussed my inadequate attempts to work out who he might be.
‘Ah. Miss Clark,’ he said, his professional smile swiftly reinstated. ‘Thank you, anyway.’
He put his briefcase carefully on the back seat, climbed into his car and was gone.
That night, I stopped off at the library on my way home to Patrick’s. I could have used his computer, but I still felt like I should ask, and this just seemed easier. I sat down at the terminal, and typed ‘Michael Lawler’ and ‘Regent Street, London’ into the search engine. Knowledge is power, Will, I told him, silently.
There were 3,290 results, the first three of which revealed a ‘Michael Lawler, practitioner at law, specialist in wills, probate and power of attorney’ based in that same street. I stared at the screen for a few minutes, then I typed in his name again, this time against the search engine of images, and there he was, at some Round Table function, in a dark suit – Michael Lawler, specialist in wills and probate, the same man who had spent an hour with Will.
I moved into Patrick’s that night, in the hour and a half between me finishing work and him heading off to the track. I took everything except my bed and the new blinds. He arrived with his car, and we loaded my belongings into bin bags. Within two trips we had it all – bar my school books in the loft – at his.
Mum cried; she thought she was forcing me out.
‘For goodness’ sake, love. It’s time she moved on. She’s twenty-seven years old,’ my father told her.
‘She’s still my baby,’ she said, pressing two tins of fruit cake and a carrier bag of cleaning products into my arms.
I didn’t know what to say to her. I don’t even like fruit cake.
It was surprisingly easy, fitting my belongings into Patrick’s flat. He had next to nothing, anyway, and I had almost nothing from years spent in the box room. The only thing we fell out over was my CD collection, which apparently could only be combined with his once I had stickered the backs of mine and sorted them into alphabetical order.
‘Make yourself at home,’ he kept saying, as if I were some kind of guest. We were nervous, strangely awkward with each other, like two people on a first date. While I was unpacking, he brought me tea and said, ‘I thought this could be your mug.’ He showed me where everything lived in the kitchen, then said, several times, ‘Of course, put stuff where you want. I don’t mind.’
He had cleared two drawers and the wardrobe in the spare room. The other two drawers were filled with his fitness clothes. I didn’t know there were so many permutations of Lycra and fleece. My wildly colourful clothes left several feet of space still empty, the wire hangers jangling mournfully in the closet space.
‘I’ll have to buy more stuff just to fill it up,’ I said, looking at it.
He laughed nervously. ‘What’s that?’
He looked at my calendar, tacked up on the spare-room wall, with its ideas in green and its actual planned events in black. When something had worked (music, wine tasting), I put a smiley face next to it. When it hadn’t (horse racing, art galleries), it stayed blank. There was little marked in for the next two weeks – Will had become bored of the places nearby, and as yet I could not persuade him to venture further afield. I glanced over at Patrick. I could see him eyeing the 12 August date, which was now underlined with exclamation marks in black.
‘Um … it’s just reminding me about my job.’
‘You don’t think they’re going to renew your contract?’
‘I don’t know, Patrick.’
Patrick took the pen from its clip, looked at the next month, and scribbled under week 28: ‘Time to start job hunting.’
‘That way you’re covered for whatever happens,’ he said. He kissed me and left me to it.
I laid my creams out carefully in the bathroom, tucked my razors, moisturizer and tampons neatly into his mirrored cabinet. I put some books in a neat row along the spare-room floor under the window, including the new titles that Will had ordered from Amazon for me. Patrick promised to put up some shelves when he had a spare moment.
And then, as he left to go running, I sat and looked out over the industrial estate towards the castle, and practised saying the word home, silently under my breath.
I am pretty hopeless at keeping secrets. Treena says I touch my nose as soon as I even think of lying. It’s a pretty straightforward giveaway. My parents still joke about the time I wrote absence notes for myself after bunking off school. ‘Dear Miss Trowbridge,’ they read. ‘Please excuse Louisa Clark from today’s lessons as I am very poorly with women’s problems.’ Dad had struggled to keep a straight face even while he was supposed to be tearing a strip off me.
Keeping Will’s plan from my family had been one thing – I was good at keeping secrets from my parents (it’s one of the things we learn while growing up, after all) – but coping with the anxiety by myself was something else entirely.
I spent the next couple of nights trying to work out what Will was up to, and what I could do to stop him, my thoughts racing even as Patrick and I chatted, cooking together in the little galley kitchen. (I was already discovering new things about him – like, he really did know a hundred different things to do with turkey breast.) At night we made love – it seemed almost obligatory at the moment, as if we should take full advantage of our freedom. It was as if Patrick somehow felt I owed him something, given my constant physical proximity to Will. But as soon as he dropped off to sleep, I was lost in my thoughts again.
There were just over seven weeks left.
And Will was making plans, even if I wasn’t.
The following week, if Will noticed that I was preoccupied, he didn’t say anything. We went through the motions of our daily routine – I took him for short drives into the country, cooked his meals, saw to him when we were in his house. He didn’t make jokes about Running Man any more.
I talked to him about the latest books he had recommended: we had done The English Patient(I loved this), and a Swedish thriller (which I hadn’t). We were solicitous with each other, almost excessively polite. I missed his insults, his crabbiness – their absence just added to the looming sense of threat that hung over me.
Nathan watched us both, as if he were observing some kind of new species.
‘You two had a row?’ he asked me one day in the kitchen, as I unpacked the groceries.
‘You’d better ask him,’ I said.
‘That’s exactly what he said.’
He looked at me sideways, and disappeared into the bathroom to unlock Will’s medical cabinet.
Meanwhile, I’d lasted three days after Michael Lawler’s visit before I rang Mrs Traynor. I asked if we could meet somewhere other than her house, and we agreed on a little cafe that had opened in the grounds of the castle. The same cafe, ironically, that had cost me my job.
It was a much smarter affair than The Buttered Bun – all limed oak and bleached wood tables and chairs. It sold home-made soup full of actual vegetables, and fancy cakes. And you couldn’t buy a normal coffee, only lattes, cappuccinos and macchiatos. There were no builders, or girls from the hairdresser’s. I sat nursing my tea, and wondered about the Dandelion Lady and whether she would feel comfortable enough to sit in here and read a newspaper all morning.
‘Louisa, I’m sorry I’m late.’ Camilla Traynor entered briskly, her handbag tucked under her arm, dressed in a grey silk shirt and navy trousers.
I fought the urge to stand up. There was never a time when I spoke to her that I didn’t still feel like I was engaged in some kind of interview.
‘I was held up in court.’
‘Sorry. To get you out of work, I mean. I just … well, I wasn’t sure it could wait.’
She held up a hand, and mouthed something at the waitress, who within seconds had brought her a cappuccino. Then she sat across from me. I felt her gaze like I was transparent.
‘Will had a lawyer come to the house,’ I said. ‘I found out he is a specialist in wills and probate.’ I couldn’t think of any gentler way to open the conversation.
She looked like I’d just smacked her in the face. I realized, too late, that she might actually have thought I’d have something good to tell her.
‘A lawyer? Are you sure?’
‘I looked him up on the internet. He’s based in Regent Street. In London,’ I added unnecessarily. ‘His name is Michael Lawler.’
She blinked hard, as if trying to take this in. ‘Did Will tell you this?’
‘No. I don’t think he wanted me to know. I … I got his name and looked him up.’
Her coffee arrived. The waitress put it on the table in front of her, but Mrs Traynor didn’t seem to notice.
‘Did you want anything else?’ the girl said.
‘No, thank you.’
‘We have carrot cake on special today. We make it here ourselves. It’s got a lovely buttercream fill–’
‘No.’ Mrs Traynor’s voice was sharp. ‘Thank you.’
The girl stood there just long enough to let us know she was offended and then stalked off, her notepad swinging conspicuously from one hand.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘You told me before that I should let you know anything important. I stayed awake half the night trying to work out whether to say anything.’
Her face looked almost leached of colour.
I knew how she felt.
‘How is he in himself? Have you … have you come up with any other ideas? Outings?’
‘He’s not keen.’ I told her about Paris, and my list of things I had compiled.
All the while I spoke, I could see her mind working ahead of me, calculating, assessing.
‘Anywhere,’ she said, finally. ‘I’ll finance it. Any trip you want. I’ll pay for you. For Nathan. Just – just see if you can get him to agree to it.’
I nodded.
‘If there’s anything else you can think of … just to buy us some time. I’ll pay your wages beyond the six months, obviously.’
‘That’s … that’s really not an issue.’
We finished our coffees in silence, both lost in our thoughts. As I watched her, surreptitiously, I noticed that her immaculate hairstyle was now flecked with grey, her eyes as shadowed as my own. I realized I didn’t feel any better for having told her, to have passed my own heightened anxiety on to her – but what choice did I have? The stakes were getting higher with every day that passed. The sound of the clock striking two seemed to spur her out of her stasis.
‘I suppose I should get back to work. Please let me know anything that you … you can come up with, Louisa. It might be better if we have these conversations away from the annexe.’
I stood up. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘you’ll need my new number. I just moved.’ As she reached into her handbag for a pen, I added, ‘I moved in with Patrick … my boyfriend.’
I don’t know why this news surprised her so much. She looked startled, and then she handed me her pen.
‘I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.’
‘I didn’t know I needed to tell you.’
She stood, one hand resting on the table. ‘Will mentioned the other day that you … he thought you might be moving into the annexe. At weekends.’
I scribbled Patrick’s home number.
‘Well, I thought it might be more straightforward for everyone if I moved in with Patrick.’ I handed her the slip of paper. ‘But I’m not far away. Just by the industrial estate. It won’t affect my hours. Or my punctuality.’
We stood there. Mrs Traynor seemed agitated, her hand running through her hair, reaching down for the chain around her neck. Finally – as if she could not help herself – she blurted out, ‘Would it really have hurt you to have waited? Just a few weeks?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Will … I think Will is very fond of you.’ She bit her lip. ‘I can’t see … I can’t see how this really helps.’
‘Hold on. Are you telling me I shouldn’t have moved in with my boyfriend?’
‘I’m just saying that the timing is not ideal. Will is in a very vulnerable state. We’re all doing our best to keep him optimistic … and you –’
‘I what?’ I could see the waitress watching us, her notepad stilled in her hand. ‘I what? Dared to have a life away from work?’
She lowered her voice. ‘I am doing everything I can, Louisa, to stop this … thing. You know the task we’re facing. And I’m just saying that I wish – given the fact he is very fond of you – that you had waited a while longer before rubbing your … your happiness in his face.’
I could hardly believe what I was hearing. I felt the colour rise to my face, and took a deep breath before I spoke again.
‘How dare you suggest I would do anything to hurt Will’s feelings. I have done everything,’ I hissed. ‘I have done everything I can think of. I’ve come up with ideas, got him out, talked to him, read to him, looked after him.’ My last words exploded out of my chest. ‘I’ve cleaned up after him. I’ve changed his bloody catheter. I’ve made him laugh. I’ve done more than your bloody family have done.’
Mrs Traynor stood very still. She drew herself up to her full height, tucked her handbag under her arm. ‘I think this conversation has probably ended, Miss Clark.’
‘Yes. Yes, Mrs Traynor. I think it probably has.’
She turned, and walked swiftly out of the cafe.
When the door slammed shut, I realized I too was shaking.
That conversation with Mrs Traynor kept me jangling for the next couple of days. I kept hearing her words, the idea that I was rubbing my happiness in his face. I didn’t think Will could be affected by anything that I did. When he had seemed disapproving about my decision to move in with Patrick, I had thought it was about him not liking Patrick rather than any feelings he had for me. More importantly, I didn’t think I had looked particularly happy.
At home, I couldn’t shake this feeling of anxiety. It was like a low-level current running through me, and it fed into everything I did. I asked Patrick, ‘Would we have done this if my sister hadn’t needed my room at home?’
He had looked at me as if I were daft. He leant over and pulled me to him, kissing the top of my head. Then he glanced down. ‘Do you have to wear these pyjamas? I hate you in pyjamas.’
‘They’re comfortable.’
‘They look like something my mum would wear.’