Page 37 of Before You Say Goodbye

“It’s different,” he said. “He’d call me a hypocrite. And he’d be right.”

It was so tragic Autumn could hardly stand it. The more time they’d spent together writing, smoking and talking, the fonder she was becoming of Marley. He was talented, funny and sweet. She felt desperate to stop all of this from happening, but she didn’t know what she could do except hope against hope that when it came to it, Marley would discover — as she had once for herself — thinking about and acting on that feeling of hopelessness were two entirely different matters.

“Do you really think he could do it?” she asked. She had once felt exactly as Marley did now — certain she was going to takeher own life, waiting for the right moment to do it. Climbing over the railings had been easy for her, but letting go and stepping out had been harder than she’d expected. Her potential non-existence had frozen her rigid. No matter how hard her frantic mind had tried to convince her that was what she’d wanted, in the end she’d found herself frightened she might slip. She’d been sober enough to realise that that must have meant she hadn’t really wanted to die. The entire episode had transformed the way Autumn felt about suicide. As far as she was concerned, someone had to be unimaginably distressed and immeasurably brave to take that step. Sure, Marley was threatening suicide, but would he actually find himself able to do it when the time came?

“I know he will,” Bowie said. “We’ve never wanted to live without each other. This is exactly what Maddie is talking about. She would argue Marley should be allowed to make his own choice when the time comes because he knows what he wants.”

“I bet your mum and dad love that,” Autumn said.

“Nobody talks about it because we know it’ll turn into a fight. Marley won’t discuss it with anyone. Sometimes he starts when he’s drunk, but Dad is pretty good at shutting him up.”

“Losing you both will destroy your family.”

“Yeah, we know that.”

“Well, can’t Marley consider how they will feel?”

It sounded selfish; she didn’t really know why. She didn’t want Marley to die. How could that be wrong? She closed her eyes and sighed. Bowie reached for her hand.

“I can’t set myself on fire to light the path for you,” he said.

It was a line from her favourite piece of poetry, a piece by a woman called Pippa Benjamin. She’d recited it to him on the evening they’d met. The context he was using wasn’t quite right — it was actually about someone taking the blame for her lover’s poor behaviour. She considered defensively telling him he’d interpreted the poem wrong, but Autumn knew what he wastrying to say. Marley could not live his life for the sake of others who depended on him for their happiness. And that was the point of poetry, wasn’t it? To take the bits that had meaning for you and use them when your own words failed you.

Autumn lit another cigarette.

“That’s an odd defence for a man who’d snuff out his own life because he loves you so much,” she said. “And I think we both know Marley would do absolutely anything to make life easier for you. He dotes on you. You live for him and him for you. I’d hazard a guess he would, in fact, set himself alight to light the path if he was doing it for you, he just wouldn’t do it for anybody else.”

“The rules don’t apply when it comes to each other.”

“You’ve made surviving without each other impossible,” Autumn said.

Bowie shrugged. Autumn continued.

“He’s spent thirty-four years living for you, existing because you do. It’s up to you to convince him there’s life out there beyond the two of you growing old together. Other people to live for. Joy and happiness that exist without you. You’re the only one who can do it.”

Bowie stared at her.

“I get it now,” she said. “Nobody is talking to Marley because everyone thinks it’s pointless. You’ve convinced yourselves there’s no life unless you both have one and everyone who loves you knows it. They think Marley’s suicide is inevitable. This course of action was decided by you both when you were children who didn’t know any better and now Marley won’t listen to anyone. He thinks it’s the only way forward for him, because he can’t imagine living without you, and becauseyou’recertainyouwould kill yourself if things were the other way around. But youcouldconvince him otherwise.”

Bowie swallowed, shifting his gaze to the floor.

“You could at least try,” she said.

“I have,” he whispered, fixing his eyes on hers again. He was fighting back tears. “I promise, I have. In private, so he doesn’t feel ganged up on by everyone. He shouts me down, Autumn. He asks me what I would do and I can’t lie, not to him, he can spot it in a second, so he calls me a hypocrite. He turns on me, tells me I don’t know what he’s going through. Sometimes he cries. I can’t stand it, so I give in. He wants to know at least one person understands and how can that be anyone but me?”

She switched seats so they were sitting closer together, wrapping her arm supportively around his shoulders. Bowie closed his eyes and cried.

“I’m haunted by visions of the things he might do to himself. By the idea that he’ll be all alone, scared and unsupported. It’s there, in my head, all the time. I’m the only person who can put myself in his shoes. I’m the only person who gets it. He knows everyone else thinks he’s mad. Every time I try to argue with him about it, it pushes him further away from me and into himself. I can’t keep arguing with him, Autumn. Every time I do, I’m telling him he’s on his own.”

Bowie sobbed and Autumn held him close to her, lost in thought. She’d been forever changed by this conversation.

They really were all alone. All of them. No matter who you had around you and how much they loved you, you were battling through life by yourself, free to decide what was too much for you to live with. Or without, as the case might be. When it was your time to die, you’d be doing it on your own, whether people were sitting at your bedside holding your hand or you were alone in your flat with a noose-shaped rope.

Still, it mattered. She knew that now.

Chapter 8

It was 7 a.m. on a Thursday morning and Bowie was staring despondently at a stranger at the front door.

---