Page 85 of Before You Say Goodbye

“We should leave him,” she said to Maddie. “Let’s leave him here with Bowie.”

Maddie froze, thinking deeply, and then suddenly relented. She held Marley’s sobbing, quivering form to her chest, told him she hoped that he would make the right decision, and then released him gently. She took Autumn’s hand and pulled her out into the hallway.

“Let’s give him until the morning?” Maddie whispered, her voice hoarse from sobbing. Autumn nodded and they sat side by side on the sofa, staring silently into glasses they’d filled with neat gin. Neither spoke for over an hour.

“I’m glad it’s finally over.” Maddie’s voice shattered the silence. Autumn wasn’t sure where she had been, but was shocked back into the present. Maddie’s words broke her heart. Bowie was really gone.

“Me too.” It was a lie. She was not glad. She would never be glad.

“His suffering has consumed us all for years,” Maddie continued. She was searching for something positive to say. Autumn knew her attempts were futile. There was no silver lining. She resisted the urge to tell Maddie to stop talking.

“I’m glad I was finally able to do something to help him. It doesn’t feel wrong,” she added.

Even in her stupefied state, Autumn knew Maddie was trying to tell her something. She didn’t have the energy to ask her to explain, but managed to raise her head expectantly, bracing herself for what her friend had to say.

“Did Bowie ever tell you that I’m not their biological sister?” she asked. Autumn’s mind went instantly blank. She shook her head. “Dad isn’t actually his dad. His real father left Emma when the twins were only four and Bluebell was two. My mother left Dad for someone else when I was one. Dad met Emma when the twins were seven and Bluebell was five. I don’t remember life before them, but apparently there was one.”

Autumn was blindsided by this revelation and yet, through the fog of confusion and grief, everything made so much sense to her now. Her mind raced through the differences — both in appearance and attitude — between the siblings, Ben’s unwillingness to contradict Emma or to intervene in matters relating to Bowie’s health, and to Marley’s outburst at the dinner table a few nights before, when he’d called Ben by his first name. Bowie’s violent response seemed suddenly justifiable. Autumn felt sad for Ben. It must have been very painful to hear Marley talk like that.

“When Marley called Dad ‘Ben’ the other night, you didn’t react. I felt sure that you knew.”

“I was confused by it, yes,” Autumn said. “But, no, I never knew.”

Maddie smiled meekly.

“When Dad and Mum told me the truth when I was six, I was devastated,” she said. “Bowie, Marley and Bluebell promised me that nobody would ever know, that they would never tell anybody, but I felt sure that they would break their promises when they grew up and fell in love. I guess I was wrong. It was so important to me that I was a legitimate part of this family, that I was as much their sister as Bluebell.”

“He never told me, Maddie.” Autumn listened to Maddie talk about how zealously Ben loved Bowie, Marley and Bluebell. He had never once failed them in his fatherly duties, even when they’d been disrespectful to him. Autumn marvelled at this man, who’d devoted himself to loving his wife’s children with a ferocity that she had never seen from her own father, and at Bowie, who had, as it turned out, understood perfectly well how it felt to have had a dad who didn’t care, but never revealed this to her because that would have meant breaking the promises they’d made as siblings to Maddie.

“I’m so proud to have been his sister, Autumn,” she whispered. Autumn put her arm around her friend.

“And he was so proud to be your brother,” Autumn said.

“We created this life together,” Maddie said. “All of us. We forgot about the people who’d forgotten about us, so we could make ourselves into this incredible family.”

Autumn could barely believe it. Somewhere out there in the night slept the man who’d conceived Bowie and Marley, and he had no idea, nor any desire to know, that at least one of his sons had lost his fight with life tonight.

“It isn’t over,” Maddie added. “It won’t die with Bowie. My parents are terrified you’ll leave us, Autumn. They love you and they don’t want you to leave, but they’ll never tell you because they don’t want you to feel obliged to stay.”

Autumn knew now why Maddie had chosen to disclose their family’s secret. She was afraid that Autumn might leave and she wanted her to know that her family was more opaque than it seemed. For Autumn, pondering what she might do after Bowie died had been too painful, but she had always been fairly certain that she would, in all likelihood, leave the Whittle home as soon as she could. She would run right back to her old life and try to pretend that none of it had ever happened. She didn’t know how she’d be able to get over it any other way. She was ashamed to acknowledge, even now, as she sat conversing calmly with his sister, that she was fighting the urge to bolt from this house, but she couldn’t leave until she knew what Marley’s decision had been. She had to know, for better or worse. Every now and then as they sat, Autumn had to fight an overwhelming urge to rip the bedroom door open. Waiting to know, powerless over the outcome, was excruciating. She felt such sadness for Marley. If he had killed himself, he’d died all by himself. If he hadn’t, he was still all alone in there, with Bowie’s lifeless body beside him. It broke her heart.

* * *

As the sun lit up the hallway with soft morning light, Maddie and Autumn walked, hand in hand, to the bedroom door. Maddie pulled it open tentatively. The medication had moved. Marley was laying on the bed beside his brother. As they stepped fearfully across the floorboards towards him, he turned to look at them. The packets were untouched.

They threw their arms around him, sobbing with relief.

Chapter 15

“I used to believe I really knew who I was. I thought I’d be that person for the rest of my life. But then I met Bowie, completely by chance. He asked me if I wanted to eat vegan cake with him, and, even though I had no real interest in indulging a man that night, I somehow found myself saying yes. Bowie chased me with the same intensity he ploughed into everything he ever wanted in life. By the end of the night, I was shamelessly hooked on every single aspect of him. He spent the next few months forcing me to question everything I thought I knew about men, love and relationships. He didn’t even know he was doing it. Or maybe he did. I’ll never know for sure.

“Bowie was wickedly shrewd. A master manipulator. He could coerce anyone into doing almost anything with his charm and gentleness, but all he really wanted was for us to be our best selves. To follow our hearts. To put everything we have into the things we love. To forgive each other, accept each other, teach each other and to work towards making a better world for the people who aren’t as lucky as we are.

“By doing the thing he loved most, making music, Bowie left behind a legacy. People will continue to fall in love with the music he made. He had so much love to give, it poured out of him and into everything he cared about. When we lost Bowie, we lost a creative genius, a defender of the innocent, and a fiercely loving friend.

“Before he died, Bowie asked me to tell his parents and his siblings that he loved them, despite the fact he’d barely gone a day of his life without telling them himself. This is the man we’re here to say goodbye to. A man who loved others so deeply that they were his only concern in his last few hours on this earth. He told me once that if he had to face being sick every day for a thousand lifetimes or lose Ben or Emma, Marley orBluebell, Maddie or Pip, he would bear this disease gladly. Bowie could not stand the thought of those he loved being in pain. He was glad that he was the one facing death. He was the bravest person I’ve ever met. I will never be the same because of him. Everything I thought I knew has changed because of him.

“I know you’ll agree that the world will be a poorer place without him. All I can do now is honour him with my own actions. I know that the best way to do that is to love the way he did. I hope that you’ll join me in doing so. It’s the only thing this wonderful man would ever have asked of any of us.”

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