Page 69 of Before You Say Goodbye

“He’s torturing himself over what his death will do to me. If I perform for him and never mention suicide again, Bowie gets to believe he saved me,” Marley said. “He might die quicker, but at least he’ll die in peace.”

Autumn thought it might be the most harrowing and beautiful expression of love and hope she’d ever heard.

* * *

“Marley knows about last night, doesn’t he?” Bowie asked her later that day. “And that I arranged the tribute?”

Autumn was sitting at their dressing table, lazily swigging from a bottle of prosecco she was holding in one hand and applying foundation to her face with the other. She froze. She knew her silence would be confirmation of his suspicions.

It was all Marley’s fault. He’d come to sit with Bowie in the afternoon and she’d seen the optimism drain from his eyes at the sight of his ailing brother. This latest heart attack, if that’s what it had been, had possessed his features and lingered there still. Sleeping Bowie had looked as though he’d died. Marley had emitted a weird, choking, strangling sound, somewhere between a whimper and a sob, at the sight of him and Autumn had worried that he might faint. She’d stepped forward to catch him if he had and their gracelessness had woken Bowie up. Marley had tried in vain to talk with credibility about his fake flight to New York, but he hadn’t fooled anyone. Bowie had let him stammer and had barely said a word, but Autumn had seen his eyes dart accusingly in her direction a number of times and she’d realised, there and then, that he’d known what she’d done.

“Yes,” Autumn said now. “He knows, Bowie. I’m sorry.”

Bowie nodded and stared down at his duvet.

“That was my last chance to save him,” he said.

“It wasn’t.”

“Can you leave me alone?”

“Bowie—”

“Go away, Autumn.”

His tone was heartless and it made her feel numb. She stood up and headed for the door, the bottle and foundation brush still in her hands. She stopped before she reached it. This was the first time he’d ever been truly angry with her and she found herself rooted to the spot by the same abject fear she knewBluebell felt whenever they argued. What if he died and this was how they’d left things?

“Please don’t do this . . .” she whispered to him. Bowie pulled their duvet over his head. He ignored her. She contemplated climbing into bed beside him but was worried he might tell her to get out again. She took a long swig from her bottle and stared bitterly at his still and silent form. She wanted to scream her pain straight into his face. She wondered how he might feel if she got into a car and drove away and never came back. She wished, for the first time, that she’d never met him, never become involved in any of this. What might she be doing now if this man and his family hadn’t become her everything? Something less painful than this, she’d have been willing to bet.

“I love you,” she said despondently. She gave him time to reply but was met with further silence, so she turned on her heel and left him alone as he’d asked. She took herself to Maddie’s room, looking for the company of someone she did not have to explain herself to, but was disappointed to find Bluebell there as well. They had both, quite clearly, been crying.

“I told her about Bowie,” Maddie said sheepishly. “Sorry, Autumn.”

Autumn was annoyed, but didn’t have the strength to argue.

“Bowie knows that Marley knows too,” she said. The two sisters stared at her, their mouths agape.

“Turns out Marley isn’t quite the performer we thought he was. Not when it comes to hiding how he feels about Bowie anyway.”

“Is he mad about it?” Maddie asked. Autumn nodded.

“Seething,” she said. She took another gulp of her wine. Bluebell licked her lips and reached out to take the bottle from Autumn’s hand. Autumn fought the urge to tell her to go and get her own.

“But he still doesn’t know that the two of you know,” Autumn said. “He thinks I only told Marley, so please don’t tell him. Or anyone else.”

Autumn did not want to think about how much trouble she would be in with Bowie if he found out that his sisters knew about his not-so-secret heart attack, too.

“Give him some time,” Maddie said. “He’ll just be really disappointed, that’s all.”

Autumn felt disappointed, too. She was more upset than she cared to admit that the whole thing had been a set-up from the beginning, that Bowie was never going to be blown away by their performance in the way that she and Marley had dreamed he would be, and that she still had to sing the stupid tribute to him in public, knowing that everybody knew everything anyway. It all seemed like a massive waste of time and effort. She’d been stung by the venom she’d heard in Bowie’s voice when he’d told her to go away, and she was hurt that Maddie had told Bluebell when she’d specifically asked her not to. She was angry that Marley’s inability to hide his feelings from his twin had left her at odds with the man she loved. She was sick of them all. She was tired of the drama. She yearned for the sanctuary of her bed in New York. For some time on her own.

She sat down on the floor and they idly passed the bottle of prosecco between them until it was gone, talking through how they would handle things if Vincent approached anybody at the ball. Bluebell was adamant she would do nothing at all. She wouldn’t look at him, she wouldn’t run away, she would just continue whatever it was she was doing as though he did not exist and was not there. Autumn and Maddie agreed that was the best thing to do and promised to help her execute her plan should the situation arise. Soon, it was time to get ready. In her haste, Autumn had left her dress downstairs. Maddie offered to get it for her, but Autumn didn’t want to risk Bowie asking hissister if she knew about his heart attack, too. She would not be able to lie to him and he was angry enough with Autumn as it was.

Bowie was asleep, or at least pretending to be, so Autumn crept across the room to retrieve her gown from where it was hanging in a dress bag by the window. She sighed and watched his sleeping form, remembering the way he had kissed her yesterday and how her heart had fluttered when he’d told her he couldn’t wait to see her in it. She could never have considered that a heart attack between then and now would drive them so far apart. She hoped that he might still catch his breath when he saw her later. She stood and watched him sleeping for a while, hoping he might wake up and tell her he had forgiven her, that everything was going to be OK, that he knew that she had only betrayed him to protect him. When she rejoined his sisters upstairs, she found Bluebell pouring a massive wooden chest full of jewellery onto the bed and Maddie sorting through a mountain of shoes and bags.

“Oh my God!” She laughed when she saw them.

“We keep everything in this house,” Bluebell said. “You never know when you might need blue velvet shoes.”

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