Page 51 (2/2)

I stared aton the kitchen table It was a terrible picture It looked like so,like

‘Nathan?’

‘What?’

‘If I could fix soree to, would you still come? Would you still helpand hauled his backpack over his shoulder He turned to face ot to be honest, Lou I’ to be able to pull this one off’

23

Exactly ten days later, Will’s father disgorged us froe on to a trolley, and ain that Will was comfortable – until even he becaood trip,’ Mr Traynor said, placing a hand on Will’s shoulder ‘Don’t get up to too much mischief’ He actually winked at me when he said this

Mrs Traynor hadn’t been able to leave work to come too I suspected that actually meant she hadn’t wanted to spend two hours in a car with her husband

Will nodded but said nothing He had been disar out of the ith his i Nathan and me as we chatted about traffic and e already knee had forgotten

Even as alked across the concourse I wasn’t sure ere doing the right thing Mrs Traynor had not wanted hireed to my revised plan, I knew she had been afraid to tell hi to us at all that last week She sat with Will in silence, talking only to the arden, cutting things doith frightening efficiency

‘The airline is meant to meet us They’re meant to come and meet us,’ I said, as we hto post someone at the doors,’ Nathan said

‘But the chair has to travel as a "fragile medical device" I checked with the woman on the phone three tiet funny about Will’s on-board iven hts and checklists I had subsequently triple-checked with the airline that ould be given bulkhead seats, and that Will would be boarded first, and not ates Nathan would reround, remove the joystick and turn it tothe pedals He would personally oversee its loading to protect against dae handlers of its extreme delicacy We had been allocated three seats in a row so that Nathan could co eyes The airline had assured me that the armrests lifted so that ouldn’t bruise Will’s hps while transferring him from the wheelchair to his aircraft seat We would keep him between us at all times And ould be the first allowed off the aircraft

All this was on my ‘airport’ checklist That was the sheet in front of my ‘hotel’ checklist but behind my ‘day before we leave’ checklist and the itinerary Even with all these safeguards in place, I felt sick

Every ti Will had only been cleared by his GP for travel the night before He ate little and spent much of every day asleep He seemed not just weary from his illness, but exhausted with life, tired of our interference, our upbeat attempts at conversation, our relentless deters better for hi that he often wanted to be left alone He didn’t know that this was the one thing I could not do

‘There’s the airline woht smile and a clipboard walked briskly towards us

‘Well, she’s going to be a lot of use on transfer,’ Nathan muttered ‘She doesn’t look like she could lift a frozen prawn’

‘We’ll e’

It had become my catchphrase, ever since I had worked out what I wanted to do Since my conversation with Nathan in the annexe, I had been filled with a renewed zeal to prove the Just because we couldn’t do the holiday I’d planned did notat all

I hit the ood place for a far weaker Will to convalesce? Did anyone else knohere we could go? Telish cli than an English seaside resort in the rain) Much of Europe was too hot in late July, ruling out Italy, Greece, the South of France and other coastal areas I had a vision, you see I saw Will, relaxing by the sea The probleo, there was a di it a reality

There were commiserations from the others, and many, many stories about pneumonia It seemed to be the spectre that haunted theo, but none that inspired me Or, more importantly, none that I felt Will would be inspired by I did not want spas, or places where he ht see other people in the same position as he was I didn’t really knohat I wanted, but I scrolled backwards through the list of their suggestions and knew that nothing was right

It was Ritchie, that chat-room stalwart, who had come to my aid in the end The afternoon that Will was released from hospital, he typed:

Give ot hiave ed man with a broad Yorkshire accent When he toldsomewhere deep in rateful to hi of it, pet,’ he said ‘You just ood time’

That said, by the time we left I was al with the finer require we left I had not been convinced that Will would be well enough to coazed at hiain if I had been wrong I had a sudden ain? What if he hated every ? What if I had misread this whole situation, and what Will needed was not an epic journey, but ten days at home in his own bed?

But we didn’t have ten days to spare This was it This was ht,’ Nathan said, as he strolled back from the duty free He looked at me, raised an eyebrow, and I took a breath

‘Okay,’ I replied ‘Let’s go’

The flight itself, despite twelve long hours in the air, was not the ordeal I had feared Nathan proved hies under cover of a blanket The airline staff were solicitous and discreet, and careful with the chair Will was, as promised, loaded first, achieved transfer to his seat with no bruising, and then settled in between us

Within an hour of being in the air I realized that, oddly enough, above the clouds, provided his seat was tilted and he edged in enough to be stable, Will was pretty much equal to anyone in the cabin Stuck in front of a screen, with nowhere toto do, there was very little, 30,000 feet up, that separated hiers He ate and watched a film, and mostly he slept