Page 39 of Before You Say Goodbye

“That is ridiculously pointless knowledge!” she said. He laughed. “You know what I mean. How many people are there like you, stopping themselves from being creative for one reason or another? How many songs like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ have we missed out on because people were too afraid to write stuff down?”

“You think about things differently,” he said, kissing her on the tip of her nose. “I love that.”

“Not everyone is capable of creating things. If you have something magic inside of you then you owe it to the world to set it free.”

He pondered her words for a minute.

“I wish you’d say this to Marley. He’s wasting so much potential, lying around here singing with me. He should be setting up a future for himself. Perhaps if he was, things would be different . . .”

She couldn’t disagree. Autumn had seen something special in Marley the night she’d watched him play — the night she’d met Bowie. She’d bet her life hardly anyone in that room had taken their eyes off him for more than a minute all evening. He rarely actually performed anymore, preferring to spend his time writing with Bowie. The songs they wrote together were catchy, creative and conscientiously crafted. Autumn was always impressed by how quickly they could take a melody or a lyric and turn it into something that sounded exceptional. They sometimes wrote two or three songs a day.

Like his brother, Autumn knew Marley was struggling to cope with a lack of purpose. He’d seen little success with his band — they’d performed at small venues and weddings mostly — but his bandmates had kept him busy and he’d confessed to her over a cigarette one evening that he was finding it tough to stay strong without some sort of distraction.

“When I was in New York with the band, I could forget all of this shit. I could focus on the music. Now, I have nothing to do but think about what’s happening to Bowie. It’s driving me mad.”

He was compelled to write almost all day, every day. He took his guitar wherever he went. The songs he wrote were haunting and beautiful. Bowie and Autumn often implored him to upload them onto music-sharing platforms but he always refused. Everypiece he produced was written from a place of pain. Strangers hearing them was absolutely not what he wanted.

Autumn understood how he felt. She’d split her time that summer between writing her manuscript and penning poetry, something that did not typically come naturally to her. The bedroom she shared with Bowie was littered with pieces of paper she’d made him promise he would never pick up and read. She didn’t know what was happening to her, why she felt so suddenly inspired. She’d never been able to pull words together in this way. Inspiration flowed through her brain and out of her fingertips at all hours of the day and night. She never read anything she wrote twice. One day, probably long after Bowie was gone, she would throw the scraps of paper away, but for now she was using them as therapy and it offered her a little bit of relief to be around people who understood how it felt to be utterly overwhelmed and frustrated by the constant urge to be creative. At least the three of them were facing that unusual form of torture together.

Lifting her head from her reverie, Autumn heard Bowie lie to Larry.

“Work used to be my life,” he said.

Larry sighed. He looked defeated.

“I have two days until previews and I cannot get my finale to work.”

“Where’s your musical director?”

“He’s there. But he’s no Bowie Whittle.”

Autumn was surprised to see Bowie’s chest swell, almost imperceptibly. Bowie was not typically the type to take comfort in compliments but his reputation as a musical director meant a lot to him, she knew. Larry clearly knew it too. She suspected this wasn’t the first time he’d used flattery to manipulate Bowie.

“I need you to have a look at it and tell us what to do with it,” he said. Bowie paused to think. He shook his head again.

“I can’t. I’ve already said goodbye to it all.”

Larry gripped his coffee cup and stood up to reach across the kitchen counter. He touched Bowie’s hand. It was an incredibly intimate thing to do. Bowie had never mentioned Larry to her, but the two were obviously friends.

“Bowie, don’t make me beg you. Please. Please. We need you. You’re the only one who can help us. Most of the cast is asking for you. Why else would I come all the way out here? It’s going to go to shit unless you sort it out. Think of it as—”

“If you say the words ‘lasting legacy’, you dickhead, I’m going to throw this coffee in your face.”

Larry made a show of rolling his lips tight shut and clasped his hands together, shaking them towards Bowie in a pleading motion that made them both smile. Bowie was beginning to waver, Autumn could tell. She silently willed him to agree to do it. He’d been feeling well recently and he quite clearly missed his life in the theatre.

“Please?” Larry whispered when Bowie still said nothing. Bowie groaned, slamming his coffee cup into the sink. Larry’s stupid face had won.

“There had better be an endless supply of soya cappuccinos there when I arrive,” Bowie said.

* * *

“Bowie!”

There were no fewer than forty people up on the stage and they sang out his name like a chorus. Several of them ran down to greet him. He opened his arms to receive them in a group hug.

“Be careful with me,” he said cautiously.

They were dressed in the most fabulous nineties costumes: oversized T-shirts, garish jumpers, pedal pushers, sequined crop tops and platform Union Jack boots she was sure she’d seen on the Spice Girls. Some of the women were wearing blue hairmascara and had glitter gel daubed on their faces. They were all wearing too much lip gloss. The stage was dressed as a nightclub, complete with disco ball and adequately dingy-looking carpet. There were streamers everywhere.

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