Page 97 of Before You Say Goodbye

“I want to hear him laugh again,” she whispered to Autumn one afternoon. “When that happens, I think that’s when I’ll know he’s really on the mend.”

Autumn was thrilled to be beside him when that happened. It was a Saturday morning and they were reading their phones in their separate beds.

Marley moaned. “I’m hungry.”

“Want some breakfast?” she asked, sitting up.

“You’re pregnant,” he said.

“And? That doesn’t mean I’m suddenly incapable of making a cracking breakfast.”

Marley was watching her uneasily. She rolled her eyes, annoyed. She was sick of everyone treating her like a piece of crêpe paper.

“Do you want breakfast or not?” she said.

“Yes,” he said. She knew he wanted to ask her if she was sure, but he didn’t dare.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Sausage sandwich, please. Brown sauce, plenty of it.”

“OK, coming right up.” She pulled on her dressing gown and headed to the kitchen.

She returned twenty minutes later with his sandwich and a cup of decaf coffee for each of them. Marley sat up in bed, dramatically licking his lips.

“There’s a condition to this sandwich,” she said, holding it over his head.

“I knew this was too good to be true,” Marley muttered. “Go on.”

“You need to give me the best bit.”

“The best bit?” He stared at her quizzically.

“The bit right in the middle,” she said. “The bit where the melty butter meets the perfect bite of sausage. The bit with all the sauce and the softest bit of the bread. The bit everyone makes sausage sandwiches for. That bit.”

He gasped theatrically. “You can’t take my best bit. Why didn’t you make your own sandwich?”

“I can’t eat a whole one,” Autumn said. “I feel sick. I just want that bit. That one tiny little best bit.”

“But that’s the bit I want!”

“That’s my condition.” She held the sandwich higher. Marley sighed, the corners of his mouth curling into the start of a smile.

“Fine,” he said.

She handed him the plate and perched on the edge of his bed, watching him eating the crusty edges of the bread andwaiting, expectantly, for him to stuff the rest of it in his mouth before she could stop him, but he didn’t. He held the best bit out for her to take from his plate.

“Think very carefully about this . . .” he said. She grabbed it without a moment’s hesitation, jamming it into her mouth before he could say anything else. He stared, aghast, at the empty plate in his hand. She collapsed in a fit of giggles, chewing her way through a mouthful that was far bigger than she could swallow. In the end, her high spirits won him over. Once he started laughing, they found they couldn’t stop.

* * *

Throughout her pregnancy, Autumn and Marley spent all of their time together. He’d become fiercely protective of her. He wouldn’t tolerate anyone telling her off, asking for her help or doing anything she might not like. If they did, Marley would leap to her defence. He watched her constantly and never stopped asking if she felt OK. Nobody said anything about it. She expected they all believed he was doing the right thing by his brother’s baby. Autumn did sometimes wonder if it were more than that though. She suspected Marley thought the baby was his. One evening, six weeks or so before her due date, they were sitting on the porch with cups of tea and watching the sun set over the trees — their smoking and drinking days far behind them — and she’d dared to ask him how he was feeling about the paternity test.

“I don’t really want to think about it,” he said. “What’s the point? Whatever happens, the baby wins. If he’s Bowie’s, we don’t have to tell anyone about what happened and he gets to know his father was an absolutely amazing man. If he’s mine, he gets to have a living father. We’ll have to tell everyone what we did, but it’ll be worth it if he gets to have his dad.”

Autumn was ashamed to admit that she hadn’t thought about it like that. She’d always hoped her baby was Bowie’s, but if he were Marley’s, it would most certainly be better for him. Or her. Autumn had decided not to find out the baby’s gender, but somehow the Whittles had concluded she was having a boy. Now, Autumn too had defaulted to referring to her baby as he and him.

“You have to stop calling it a him,” she said. “What if it’s a girl?”

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