Page 73 of Before You Say Goodbye

“Fully grown and consenting adult women,” Marley said defensively.

“I am familiar with how threesomes work,” Bluebell quipped. Marley snorted, shaking his head. Autumn giggled at her friend’s brazenness.

“Can you please stop this now?” Emma sounded flustered. The conversation was over. Autumn was a little disappointed, but respected their mother too much to push it.

They slipped back into comfortable silence. Pip rolled another joint, took a drag from it and passed it to Autumn. She’d had enough, but took it anyway. Pip was watching her.

“Why are you called Autumn if you weren’t born in the autumn?” he asked.

“Why are you called Pip when you’re a human and not a pip?” she replied. Bowie and Marley laughed. “It’s just a name,” she added.

“Fair play,” Pip said.

Autumn moved to sit on the floor, drawing her knees up to her chest. She was too high. All she really wanted was to crawl into bed beside Bowie and drift off to sleep.

“Pip talks shit when he’s stoned . . .” Marley said. Bowie grabbed urgently for his brother’s hand. He looked as though he might be about to say something profound.

“But not as much shit as Bowie talks,” Marley finished, turning his attention to his twin.

“Marley, do you like being called Marley?” Bowie asked. Autumn laughed at the simplicity of the question he’d seemed so eager to spout. She mused over how this little plant had the whole family focused on fun for once instead of Bowie’s impending doom. Their postures were free from tension, their faces relaxed and beaming. Emma, by contrast, seemed still fraught with worry. Autumn wished that she would revoke her hatred of smoking and indulge, but knew that Emma felt as though that would be giving her children permission to smoke recreationally, something she did not, despite her own history, want any of them to do.

“Fuck, yeah, I do,” Marley answered.

Emma cautioned her son. “Mind your language.”

Marley whined. “Mum! ‘Fuck’ is the best word of all words.”

“It’s vulgar,” Emma said. “And I don’t like how flippantly you throw it around.”

“It’s so versatile,” Marley continued. He mouthed it again, soundlessly.

“Marley . . .” Emma frowned.

“You can use it for everything. It’s awesome.” He gesticulated in the air. “Whether something’s fucking shit or fucking brilliant, or someone’s getting on your fucking nerves—”

“You mean, like you’re getting on my fucking nerves,” his mother said. They cheered and she could not hide her smile.Autumn loved it when Emma joined in with their horseplay, and she knew the others did, too. Marley changed the subject.

“Nice work on our names, Mum,” Marley said. “I love having a name hardly anyone else has.”

Autumn nodded her agreement. She’d once hated her name — kids at school had made fun of her for it — but she loved it now. She regarded it as one of the few things her mum got right, albeit she’d done it accidentally. Autumn was almost certain Katherine had chosen her name not because she wanted to give her daughter a special moniker, but because she wanted credit for picking a name that was different. Autumn knew that was the case because her mother hated everything that was unique about Autumn’s personality. She’d wanted nothing more for Autumn than for her to fit in on their council estate and had regularly expressed her displeasure when her daughter had refused to conform. She hated the fact Autumn had grown into the type of woman who suited the name Autumn Rain. Emma, by contrast, adored her children’s quirky personalities and was thrilled they’d grown into their names.

Emma gave Marley a hearty thumbs-up and then returned her hand to Bowie’s chest. She was still clinging to him as though someone might drag him away from her. As the room fell again into contemplative silence, Emma touched her fingertips to Bowie’s chin, staring into his tired face. Her smile was gone. Bowie met his mother’s gaze. He squeezed her to him, swallowing hard. Marley was eyeing them with tears in his eyes. He got up from the floor beside Bowie, nudging his mum to move over so he could sit on the other side of her, sandwiching her between her twin boys. She moved to rest her head against his shoulder and wound her free hand up to stroke his hair. Autumn smiled to herself. Although Marley mocked his mother mercilessly, he always knew when he had taken it too far, andhe’d leap to hold her in his arms or kiss her tenderly on her forehead. She would, of course, forgive him instantly.

“Why, Mum?” Bluebell was slurring, too stoned to make her question clearer.

“I was young when I had you,” Emma said. “Only nineteen when the twins were born. At that time, music was everything to me. I loved Bob Dylan and Lenny Bruce too. I could have called them Bob and Lenny, I guess, but it didn’t have enough fun factor for me back then as a teenage flower-child. It just wasn’t me. Bluebell was named after my favourite flower. I may have grown up a little since then, but I’ve never regretted naming you as I did.”

She patted Bowie and Marley on each of their heads.

“Pip’s name came about for different reasons, of course,” she said, turning to elaborate for Autumn. “We were in a car accident while I was pregnant with him. Not a really serious crash but it felt serious enough with four kids and an unborn baby in the car. It was the middle of the night and a young man stopped to help us. A very young man, only around eighteen. He drove us to the hospital. When Pip was born, we named him after him.”

“That’s lovely,” Autumn said. “I didn’t know that. Does he know?”

“No.” Emma shook her head. “But that wasn’t really what it was about.”

“Imagine if he’d been called something normal,” Marley said jokingly. “Like Steve.”

Emma’s nose wrinkled at the thought.

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