Page 96 of Before You Say Goodbye

“We’d have to get a test and if this baby is yours, we’ll have to tell them all what we did,” she said decisively. He bit his lip and nodded slowly. It was impossible to imagine how his family might react. Autumn had tried. The only conclusion she’d felt able to draw was that they would forgive them both eventually.

“At least we can tell them Bowie knew,” he said. “I’m not sure how that makes it any better, but it does.”

Somehow, the knowledge that he’d known, and forgiven them, did make it better. Autumn knew that his family, through their anger, would take solace in the fact that their betrayal was not a secret that Bowie had died without knowing. She nodded, willing herself to admit, out loud, that she wanted to keep this baby. Marley studied her inscrutable expression, squeezing her hand in encouragement. She nodded again, with more conviction this time. He drew in a dramatic breath and moved to hug her, pausing to look at her once more.

“Do you mean . . . ? Are we really doing this?” he asked her breathlessly.

She allowed herself to sink into his arms, mindful not to hurt him. He held her tighter than anyone ever had before.

“I think we’re doing it,” she said, with a faltering smile. “I think we’re having a baby.”

Chapter 17

Because she believed it was important for her child to know his family and where they had come from, Autumn agreed to go back with the Whittles to England, promising a sullen Walter that they would continue their weekly telephone conversations just as they had before. No doubt believing it was where she would be most comfortable, Emma and Ben put her back in the bedroom she had shared with Bowie, and she hated it. The bed was new, but she couldn’t bear to sleep where Bowie had once slept. Where she had watched him die. For weeks, Autumn sat herself on the cold floor behind her bedroom door every evening and waited until everyone had gone to bed, before dragging her duvet to the sofa to get some sleep. A horrified Pip returned home early one morning to find her sniffling and crying on the couch. She was almost five months pregnant. He led her upstairs by the hand and insisted resolutely that she take his bed, waking Marley in the process. The next day, they offered to take Bowie’s bedroom and give her theirs.

“You can’t do that.” She shook her head at Marley. He’d yet to set foot in there. There was no way he’d be able to sleep.

“I can,” Marley said. “And I will.”

He lasted all of fifteen minutes. Autumn took herself upstairs for an early night, choosing Marley’s bed as her own because the smell of him was a comforting reminder of Bowie, but he knocked on her door before she’d even shut her eyes properly. He’d been crying.

“I can’t do it,” he said. “I know this might be weird, but can I sleep in here with you?”

She nodded sleepily, holding her arms out to invite him to climb under the duvet and accept her comfort. She held him close, stroking away his tears with her thumbs. It was the only time she let him sleep with her, but she found herself gazinglongingly at him more than once during her pregnancy. Most of the time, it was because she yearned for Bowie’s touch. Other times, she was ashamed to admit, it was Marley she longed for.

* * *

As a family, the Whittles had had the best of times trying to decide on a name for the baby. Though the discussion descended into argument more often than not, it was everybody’s favourite topic of conversation. Their suggestions were varied and, at times, ridiculous.

“What about Astro?” Bluebell had asked more than once.

“No!” they’d chorus every time she tried to suggest it.

“But it’s such a good name,” she said.

“What about Apple?” Pip asked, making Autumn laugh. He smiled at her. Laughing was not something they did an awful lot of anymore, and he looked pleased with himself.

“Molly?” Maddie suggested. Bluebell rolled her eyes.

“With parents called Bowie and Autumn, you can’t possibly be suggesting she’s called something plain like Molly?”

“This is Autumn’s decision,” Marley told them all.

“It has to be the perfect mix of weird and . . . not weird,” Bluebell said musingly. “Like Fern. Or Wilf. Or Ivy.”

“I like Ivy,” Autumn said. Marley scrunched his face up.

“I thought it was my decision?” She biffed him with a rolled-up newspaper.

“It was, until you suggested naming your baby after a fucking plant,” he said.

Bluebell frowned. “I’m named after a fucking plant.”

“I rest my case,” he said.

* * *

Time was — very slowly — healing Autumn’s heart. She cried for Bowie constantly in the months after his death, but the baby she was growing was most certainly helping her to heal. She’dkept her promise to Emma and was seeing a therapist. She’d thought she would hate sifting through the inner workings of her mind with a stranger and was genuinely surprised to find that the weekly sessions helped her feel calmer. Together they were talking through not only her grief over Bowie’s death, but how rejected and inadequate her family made her feel. They’d discussed how this might have given her a frantic and desperate desire for control and had almost certainly contributed to the issues she had with eating. It might also be why she had shunned friendships and relationships for so many years. They hadn’t yet figured out why Bluebell and Bowie had been different. Autumn wasn’t sure they ever would. Marley had found a therapist that was helping him too. He’d insisted, at first, that the sessions weren’t easing his agony at all, but his depression had been lifting, little by little, over time. Autumn knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there were days when her baby was all Marley was living for, but she’d noticed, after a while, that he took part in family frolics again. He would tease her and the others, and say things he knew would make them smile. But Emma could not relax.

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