Page 71 of Before You Say Goodbye

“We’re not going,” Marley said. “Bowie, I love you for what you’ve been trying to do for me, but no.”

“He needs to go to the hospital, Marley,” Emma said. “We need to take him to the hospital.”

Marley ignored her and set about trying to comfort his brother. He asked him if he thought it was another heart attack, but Bowie was adamant he didn’t think it was. Marley tried to stand him up to take him to bed, but Bowie sat straight back down again. They brought him a glass of water and some painkillers, then Marley pulled up a chair and sat beside him, a united front. Ben tried earnestly to break through the knot of his defiant children and Emma shouted with a shrillness that only intensified with every second that passed. Marley bore the brunt of her screams. How could he sit there and watch his brother die? Why couldn’t he let her take Bowie to the hospital for a check-up? Why would he do this to his twin, she wanted to know. Eventually, he broke and bellowed at her, springing violently to his feet.

“Stop it, Mum. Stop it both of you. Nobody is taking Bowie anywhere this time. We promised him, remember?”

He left Bowie with Autumn and stood beside his siblings, forming a human wall of hurt and love and sheer force of will. He glared at his parents until they accepted that their fight was futile this time. When he was sure they had accepted his orders, Marley wrapped his arms around them both, collapsing into hysterical sobs himself. Autumn felt a surge of pride. Beside her, she felt Bowie force himself to look up at his brother. He was smiling.

* * *

“I’m still weirdly disappointed that we didn’t get to confront Vincent,” Bluebell admitted.

It was later that same evening and they were all sitting or lying on and around Bowie in his bed. They’d managed to move him and, at Maddie’s suggestion, given him some cannabis to smoke. His pain had subsided so drastically as a result that he’d tried to convince everyone that they could leave him and go to the ball. No one wanted to, they assured him. They’d forced him into his room, protesting all the way, promising him they would stay with him instead. That’s what they all wanted, more than anything. Time with him.

“He’s going to think he’s won when we don’t turn up,” Bluebell added, resting her chin on the side of Bowie’s bed. Marley, who had only just been informed he’d narrowly avoided a run-in with his nemesis, smiled sadly at his sister.

“He’s a child abuser,” he said. “So he never gets to ‘win’.”

“He’s still loved and adored and living in his gorgeous house with his lovely wife.” Bluebell shrugged.

“And, yet, he’s still a child abuser,” Marley said again.

“Yeah, but not a convicted one.” Bluebell sighed. Marley reached out to take her hand and squeezed it.

“He hasn’t ‘won’ anything. You need to re-evaluate what it means to win.”

“I really don’t know anymore.” Maddie joined their conversation. She was sitting beside Autumn on the dressing-table stool. “I always thought it was buying a house and having kids, but I don’t think that stuff would be enough to make me feel like I’d won. Not really. It’s just what’s expected.”

“Winning is knowing who you are,” Bowie said sleepily. “And knowing it so unashamedly that it makes following everyone else and what they’re doing completely impossible. It’s living entirely for yourself and the things you love, no matter what anyone else tries to tell you is right, and finding other people who want to do that with you.”

He moved to take a lazy drag from the joint, but Marley whipped it from his fingertips.

“I think you might have had enough of this.”

The girls giggled. Emma sighed and rolled her eyes. She was still angry with them for stopping her getting to her son, but was too scared he might die to leave his side to sulk. She sat as close to him as it was possible to be, nestled into his chest with one arm beneath his torso and the other across his ailing heart, her eyes rarely deviating from his face.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been a part of a posher hot-box,” Pip said facetiously. Marley was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and Bluebell had only half finished curling her hair, but everyone else looked like they’d just stepped off a red carpet.

Emma started to grumble. “You’re turning my house into a drug den.”

“It’s just a plant,” Marley said, drawing from the joint and then passing it to Autumn. She inhaled deeply, throwing Emma an apologetic smile.

“Where did it even come from?” she asked as she exhaled. Pip raised his hand proudly. Emma scowled.

“I also have a stash upstairs.” Bluebell jumped to her brother’s defence.

“So do I,” Marley said. He stared pointedly at his father through the haze he’d created. “Anything you might want to add, Dad?”

Bowie laughed heartily. Autumn couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard him do that. She smiled.

“Er, no?” Ben said. Emma glared from her son to her husband.

“No?” Marley nudged Ben with his toe.

“Nope.” Ben shook his head. “Nothing at all.”

One evening the previous month, shaking with anxiety and struggling to sleep, Ben had joined Autumn and Marley in thegarden in the early hours of the morning and asked to share a joint with them. Autumn hadn’t bothered asking how he’d known what they were doing, though she’d been absolutely convinced until that night that nobody knew they swapped cigarettes for weed every now and then. They’d accepted his company and his request without question. He’d admitted that he and Emma had enjoyed using recreational drugs quite regularly when they were younger, but that she had developed a raging hatred for anything of that sort when the twins became teenagers, claiming it was ‘a slippery slope’. Autumn had not been surprised to hear it. From the way Emma dressed and the way she talked, to the names she and Ben had chosen for their children, Bowie’s mum was a real hippy at heart.

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