Page 80 of Before You Say Goodbye

“I’ve never done anything like this in my entire life,” he said. “And then you come along with your stupid, flirty eyes and your fucking promiscuous attitude and suddenly I’m doing the worst thing I could ever possibly do to anyone.”

“Don’t you dare!” She didn’t have the energy to tell him just how outraged she felt, and she knew she didn’t have to. He already knew. He was actively trying to hurt her and she braced herself for more.

“Why?” He hunched over and put his head in his hands. “Why did we do this?”

“It was a mistake,” she said softly.

“A fucking mistake? That’s a fucking understatement, isn’t it?”

“Stop screaming at me.” She was sick of his reaction. He was being completely irrational and she wasn’t sure what he was hoping to achieve, besides making her feel even worse than she already did. Perhaps that was his point.

“I hate you,” he said. He’d have hurt her less if he’d slapped her across the face. She felt her cheeks flood with anger.

“Do you know what, Marley?” she said calmly. “I fucked you because I can’t have sex with your brother anymore. You smell good and you look good and I was drunk and wanted to fuck you. I’m selfish. Really fucking selfish. At least I can admit that. You can scream at me all you want, but nobody forced you to do what you did. You were thinking with your dick. At least have the decency to acknowledge that.”

“You kissed me,” he said accusingly.

“You held my hand,” she said.

“I hold everybody’s hand.”

“Are you honestly trying to tell me that you bear no responsibility for what happened?” she said. He kicked at the ground, glaring at her. She shook her head hopelessly and looked out across the field, hugging her arms to her chest.

“I’ll never be able to make it up to him,” he said sadly. He looked utterly devastated. Autumn felt sympathy for him. She willed herself to get a grip. He’d been nasty. Unbelievably spiteful. He didn’t deserve her pity. She stopped herself from telling him that everything would be OK.

“He doesn’t want to talk to you about it,” she told him.

“That’s what he always says when I fuck up,” he said, sighing into the palms of his hands. “I have to try to explain.”

“There’s nothing to explain. There’s no excuse for what we did and he’s reconciled it in his own mind by telling himself we’re falling in love.”

Marley chuckled obnoxiously and shook his head. Autumn ignored his vindictiveness.

“He told me specifically to tell you not to talk to him about it. If you try, he’ll refuse. I’ll let him know that you know and if he wants to talk to you, then he’ll come to you. The least we can do is leave him alone if that’s what he wants. Don’t even think about trying to blame me. There is no point. He knows you. He knows both of us. Forget about it, Marley. Move on. Or at least pretend to. You’re an actor, aren’t you? Fucking act for once. For Bowie’s sake.”

She turned abruptly on her heel and left him standing on his own in the field.

Chapter 14

Bowie died the following Tuesday, in the evening. His death did not allow Autumn the time she felt she needed to really make it up to him, even though he’d sworn, whenever he’d caught her agonising over what she’d done, that things were fine between them. If he’d had thirty years more to keep telling her that he had forgiven her, she was quite sure that she would never have believed him completely.

He knew he was running out of time and asked Autumn if she would find a way to take him away from the house for a while before it was too late. His chest pains were not as drastic, but they were present almost all the time and his breathing was heavy and raspy. He pivoted wildly between believing he had a mass close to his chest and that he’d caught an infection his body couldn’t fight off because of his weakened immune system. Autumn asked him which was the better scenario and Bowie meekly told her neither. They cried together for a while, then he proposed they get out of the house. He wanted the chance to go somewhere different with her, he said. She agreed to take him to London, and they woke in the early hours of the morning to leave the house before anybody could stop them, taking the wheelchair they knew Maddie had in the back of her car from her care-working days in case he needed it later. They smoked cannabis as they strolled very slowly, hand in swinging hand, to the train station, pushing the wheelchair along as they went, his left hand on the left handle, her right hand on the right. On the train, Bowie spoke sheepishly to Autumn about his brother.

“Marley tried to talk to me about what happened,” he said. “He came to me yesterday and tried to apologise.”

Autumn nodded, fiddling with her coat. She wasn’t sure what he expected her to say. “I told him I didn’t want to hear it,” he said. An uncomfortable silence fell between them. Shestared out of the window and worked hard to force the image of Marley’s face, in ecstasy above hers, from her mind. The image haunted her, day and night, even more so whenever she saw him, which was, at least, less frequently, since he was making himself exceptionally scarce.

For a talented actor, Marley was doing a tremendously bad job of pretending that nothing had happened between them. He spoke to her only when he really had to and openly scoffed at the things she said. One evening over dinner, he’d ploughed his way through such an extraordinary amount of alcohol that Ben had tried to take a bottle of rum away from him.

“I think you’ve had enough, son.”

“Leave me alone, Ben,” he’d said, seething, and yanked the bottle out of reach. None of the Whittle children ever called either of their parents by their first names. The table erupted in outrage. Bowie was so incensed by his twin’s disrespect that Autumn had to grab him by the waistband of his jeans, fearing he might throw himself across the table to attack Marley, even as weak as he was. Emma berated both boys and they all finished their meal in silence. Marley took himself to bed immediately afterwards.

Autumn and Bowie let the others discover their absence with a note left on the kitchen table, and answered Emma’s frantic phone calls as they climbed cautiously up out of the Tube station. They were fine, they assured her. They just needed some time to themselves. Yes, they’d be careful. Yes, they would call if they needed anything. Yes, they’d check in with her every hour or so. They’d be home later that evening, and, yes, they said, they loved her too.

They’d planned to grab breakfast on the way into the city, but Bowie didn’t much feel like eating, so they bought two cappuccinos and took them along the towpath. They sat together, Bowie in the wheelchair and Autumn on the grass withher head in his lap, and watched the world go by. They found deserted alleyways whenever he wanted to smoke to ease his pain. Autumn kissed him ardently whenever the moment took her, and he dragged her onto his lap whenever he could, burying his head into her hair and inhaling her perfume. They drank cheap red wine out of a brown paper bag and bought ridiculously decadent cupcakes at a tiny, plant-based café they found in King’s Cross. Bowie gave Autumn his icing, the only bit she ever actually wanted, and she gave him her sponge.

They sat in front of the gates at Buckingham Palace, mimicking the members of the royal family. They fed pigeons in Hyde Park. They waited fifteen minutes or more to hear Big Ben chime five times. They talked about calling Larry Ross and asking him if they could have two tickets to watch his show that evening, but Bowie said that he was too tired. Autumn knew he was lying. The show had been raucously reviewed, but Bowie hadn’t wanted to hear anything about it. It was just too painful.

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