Nathan and I smiled cautiously at each other and tried to behave as if this were fine, all good. I gazed out of the window, my thoughts as jumbled as the clouds beneath us, unable yet to think about the fact that this was not just a logistical challenge but an adventure for me – that I, Lou Clark, was actually headed to the other side of the world. I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see anything beyond Will by then. I felt like my sister, when she had first given birth to Thomas. ‘It’s like I’m looking through a funnel,’ she had said, gazing at his newborn form. ‘The world has just shrunk to me and him.’
She had texted me when I was in the airport.
You can do this. Am bloody proud of you xxx
I called it up now, just to look at it, feeling suddenly emotional, perhaps because of her choice of words. Or perhaps because I was tired and afraid and still finding it hard to believe that I had even got us this far. Finally, to block my thoughts, I turned on my little television screen, gazing unseeing at some American comedy series until the skies around us grew dark.
And then I woke to find that the air stewardess was standing over us with breakfast, that Will was talking to Nathan about a film they had just watched together, and that – astonishingly, and against all the odds – the three of us were less than an hour away from landing in Mauritius.
I don’t think I believed that any of this could actually happen until we touched down at Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport. We emerged groggily through Arrivals, still stiff from our time in the air, and I could have wept with relief at the sight of the operator’s specially adapted taxi. That first morning, as the driver sped us towards the resort, I registered little of the island. 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.
The hotel had, as promised, come up with the special wheelchair with wide wheels, and most mornings Nathan transferred Will into it and we all three walked down to the beach, me carrying a parasol so that I could protect him if the sun grew too fierce. But it never did; that southern part of the island was renowned for sea breezes and, out of season, the resort temperatures rarely rose past the early twenties. We would stop at a small beach near a rocky outcrop, just out of view of the main hotel. I would unfold my chair, place myself next to Will under a palm tree, and we would watch Nathan attempt to windsurf, or waterski – occasionally shouting encouragement, plus the odd word of abuse – from our spot on the sand.
At first the hotel staff wanted to do almost too much for Will, offering to push his chair, constantly pressing cool drinks upon him. We explained what we didn’t need from them, and they cheerfully backed off. It was good, though, during the moments when I wasn’t with him, to see porters or reception staff stopping by to chat with him, or sharing with him some place that they thought we should go. There was one gangly young man, Nadil, who seemed to take it upon himself to act as Will’s unofficial carer when Nathan was not around. One day I came out to find him and a friend gently lowering Will out of his chair on to a cushioned sunbed he had positioned by ‘our’ tree.
‘This better,’ he said, giving me the thumbs up as I walked across the sand. ‘You just call me when Mr Will want to go back in his chair.’
I was about to protest, and tell them they should not have moved him. But Will had closed his eyes and lay there with a look of such unexpected contentment that I just closed my mouth and nodded.
As for me, as my anxiety about Will’s health began to ebb, I slowly began to suspect that I was actually in paradise. I had never, in my life, imagined I would spend time somewhere like this. Every morning I woke to the sound of the sea breaking gently on the shore, unfamiliar birds calling to each other from the trees. I gazed up at my ceiling, watching the sunlight playing through the leaves, and from next door heard the murmured conversation that told me Will and Nathan had already been up long before me. I dressed in sarongs and swimsuits, enjoying the feeling of the warm sun on my shoulders and back. My skin grew freckled, my nails bleached, and I began to feel a rare happiness at the simple pleasures of existing here – of walking on a beach, eating unfamiliar foods, swimming in warm, clear water where black fish gazed shyly from under volcanic rocks, or watching the sun sink fiery red into the horizon. Slowly the past few months began to slip away. To my shame, I hardly thought of Patrick at all.
Our days fell into a pattern. We ate breakfast together, all three of us, at the gently shaded tables around the pool. Will usually had fruit salad, which I fed to him by hand, and sometimes followed up with a banana pancake as his appetite grew. We then went down to the beach, where we stayed – me reading, Will listening to music – while Nathan practised his watersport skills. Will kept telling me to try something too, but at first I said no. I just wanted to stay next to him. When Will insisted, I spent one morning windsurfing and kayaking, but I was happiest just hanging around next to him.
Occasionally if Nadil was around, and the resort was quiet, he and Nathan would ease Will into the warm water of the smaller pool, Nathan holding him under his head so that he could float. He didn’t say much when they did this, but he looked quietly contented, as if his body were remembering long-forgotten sensations. His torso, long pale, grew golden. His scars silvered and began to fade. He grew comfortable without a shirt.
At lunchtime we would wheel our way over to one of the resort’s three restaurants. The surface of the whole complex was tiled, with only a few small steps and slopes, which meant that Will could move in his chair with complete autonomy. It was a small thing, but him being able to get himself a drink without one of us accompanying him meant not so much a rest for me and Nathan as the brief removal of one of Will’s daily frustrations – being entirely dependent on other people. Not that any of us had to move much anywhere. It seemed wherever you were, beach or poolside, or even the spa, one of the smiling staff would pop up with some drink they thought you might like, usually decorated with a fragrant pink flower. Even as you lay on the beach, a small buggy would pass, and a smiling waiter would offer you water, fruit juice, or something stronger.
In the afternoons, when the temperatures were at their highest, Will would return to his room and sleep for a couple of hours. I would swim in the pool, or read my book, and then in the evening we would all meet again to eat supper at the beachside restaurant. I swiftly developed a taste for cocktails. Nadil had worked out that if he gave Will the correct size straw and placed a tall glass in his holder, Nathan and I need not be involved at all. As dusk fell, the three of us talked of our childhoods and our first boyfriends and girlfriends and our first jobs and our families and other holidays we had had, and slowly I saw Will re-emerge.
Except this Will was different. This place seemed to have granted him a peace that had been missing the whole time I had known him.
‘He’s doing good, huh?’ said Nathan, as he met me by the buffet.
‘Yes, I think he is.’
‘You know –’ Nathan leant towards me, reluctant for Will to see we were talking about him ‘– I think the ranch thing and all the adventures would have been great. But looking at him now, I can’t help thinking this place has worked out better.’
I didn’t tell him what I had decided on the first day, when we checked in, my stomach knotted with anxiety, already calculating how many days I had until the return home. I had to try for each of those ten days to forget why we were actually there – the six-month contract, my carefully plotted calendar, everything that had come before. I had to just live in the moment and try to encourage Will to do the same. I had to be happy, in the hope that Will would be too.
I helped myself to another slice of melon, and smiled. ‘So what’s on later? Are we doing the karaoke? Or have your ears not yet recovered from last night?’
On the fourth night, Nathan announced with only faint embarrassment that he had a date. Karen was a fellow Kiwi staying in the next hotel, and he had agreed to go down to the town with her.
‘Just to make sure she’s all right. You know … I’m not sure if it’s a good place for her to go alone.’
‘No,’ Will said, nodding his head sagely. ‘Very chivalrous of you, Nate.’
‘I think that is a very responsible thing to do. Very civic minded,’ I agreed.
‘I have always admired Nathan for his selflessness. Especially when it comes to the fairer sex.’
‘Piss off, you two,’ Nathan grinned, and disappeared.
Karen swiftly became a fixture. Nathan disappeared with her most evenings and, although he returned for late duties, we tacitly gave him as much time as possible to enjoy himself.
Besides, I was secretly glad. I liked Nathan, and I was grateful that he had come, but I preferred it when it was just Will and I. I liked the shorthand we seemed to fall into when nobody else was around, the easy intimacy that had sprung up between us. I liked the way he turned his face and looked at me with amusement, like I had somehow turned out to be so much more than he had expected.
On the penultimate night, I told Nathan that I didn’t mind if he wanted to bring Karen back to the complex. He had been spending nights in her hotel, and I knew it made it difficult for him, walking the twenty minutes each way in order to sort Will out last thing at night.
‘I don’t mind. If it will … you know … give you a bit of privacy.’
He was cheerful, already lost in the prospect of the night ahead, and didn’t give me another thought beyond an enthusiastic, ‘Thanks, mate.’
‘Nice of you,’ said Will, when I told him.
‘Nice of you, you mean,’ I said. ‘It’s your room I’ve donated to the cause.’
That night we got him into mine, and Nathan helped Will into bed and gave him his medication while Karen waited in the bar. In the bathroom I changed into my T-shirt and knickers and then opened the bathroom door and pottered over to the sofa with my pillow under my arm. I felt Will’s eyes on me, and felt oddly self-conscious for someone who had spent most of the previous week walking around in front of him in a bikini. I plumped my pillow down on the sofa arm.