Before You Say Goodbye

Chapter 16

Before she flew home, partly from a desire to escape the Whittle home and partly out of an ill-advised need to make a connection, Autumn called her mother, Katherine, to let her know she was on her way to visit. Could her mother pick her up from the train station, she asked. Katherine thought for several minutes and eventually told her no, she couldn’t. She always spent her Friday afternoons drinking wine with her friend, Pam, and there was no way she could let a mate down. Autumn had no idea who Pam was, but, apparently, she had been there for her mother through some fairly recent difficult times. Katherine told Autumn she’d have to get a taxi.

Autumn called her sister.

“I’ll do it for a tenner for petrol?” Lilly said. Autumn agreed. A taxi would’ve been cheaper, but her sister was unemployed, and Autumn suddenly felt eager to see them. She valued family ties differently now. She wasn’t sure how long she would stay, but promised herself she’d hold them both in her arms and tell them they were important to her, regardless of the outcome.

She ran to her sister’s car as soon as she saw it pulling into the dreary grey car park. It was the same electric-blue Renault Clio they’d shared when they were teenagers. Her mum and Pam were in the back. Autumn reached impatiently to open the door and readied herself to greet them, but Lilly pulled the car playfully forward. Autumn sighed and shook her head, smiling and jogging heartily after it. She grabbed the door handle, hauling it open before Lilly could pull away again. Katherine and Pam cackled loudly in the back seat. Autumn felt ridiculed, but she shook the feeling off. She knew she was being oversensitive. If Bluebell or Maddie had joked in such a way, she’d have found it funny, so she forced herself to laugh along with them, blowing a kiss to her mother and pecking her sister on the cheek. Their familiar voices, the smell of the washing powder they had always used and the lingering whiff of her mother’s hairspray overwhelmed Autumn’s senses and made her feel nervous.

She’d spent most of her time on the train debating whether she should tell them about what she’d been through. She decided that she wouldn’t, but, when her sister asked her how she was, she found herself blurting the whole sorry tale to them. It felt good, and she realised that she’d needed someone to talk to who was not a Whittle. Since the funeral, speaking with his family about Bowie had been extremely distressing.

The women in the car gasped and made sympathetic noises as she told them about Bowie, how she’d met him, and what had happened to him. She waited for them to ask her why she hadn’t called them when she’d first flown back to England, but they didn’t. She was both relieved and a little disappointed. When she ran out of words, there was silence. She wasn’t sure if they were absorbing what she’d said, or if they’d stopped listening, just didn’t care, or were waiting for her to continue. Her mother broke the silence.

“Did he leave you any money?”

“Mum!” Autumn was aghast.

“We pronounce it ‘Mam’ here,” Katherine said pointedly. She’d never been able to bear anything other than the northeastern pronunciation of her title. “This boy of yours was from a posh family, wasn’t he? You said they lived down south and your accent has changed. You sound posher.”

Autumn shook her head, but didn’t say anything to deny the Whittles’ wealth. Subdued, she asked her mother to stop it, self-consciously dropping the ‘t’ at the end of her sentence, as she had as a child, in the hope that it might appease her. She hadn’t noticed until now how diluted her accent had become. She was still distinguishable as northern and the Whittle men had teased her relentlessly about how she pronounced certain words, particularly ‘moor, ‘year’ and ‘purple’, but there was no denying that the way she spoke was quite noticeably less northern than it had been.

“And you said he was a fancy musical bigwig in New York. He didn’t leave you anything?”

“No.” She shook her head. “He didn’t.”

She didn’t bother to go into the fact that she had no need for Bowie’s money. They’d have known if they’d ever bothered to follow her career. Nor did she elaborate on the details of Bowie’s estate. It was none of their business. He’d left everything he had to his mother besides one lump sum he’d ringfenced for Maddie, with the stipulation she should use it to help her buy a home. Autumn had told Maddie herself, at Bowie’s request.

“Bowie wanted you never to feel you might have to give up your work being a social-care-working hero because you couldn’t make ends meet,” she’d said.

If Maddie had refused to allow him his wishes, and, true to form, she had objected vehemently to accepting anything — Bowie had arranged for his money to be kept in trust for any children she might have, or released to her later in life if she changed her mind. Maddie had been overwhelmed by her brother’s wishes.

“I told him once that I might not return to care work because of the money being so bad,” Maddie had told Autumn, struggling to process her guilt. “I didn’t really mean it. I would never want to do anything else.”

“Bowie would’ve wanted you to have the money anyway,” Autumn said. Marley nodded his agreement. Autumn and Maddie shared a sad smile. Marley nodded again, drawing in a jittery breath and accepting his sister’s hand when she reached to squeeze his. He could not force an expression across his frozen face, but he knew how important it was that he reassured Maddie, and Autumn was grateful that he could summon the strength from somewhere. They were all aware that Bowie’s gesture was only in part about Maddie being able to continue as a care worker. Without Maddie stockpiling a cocktail of his meds for months to help release him from his pain, he’d have suffered for far longer, or risked an even bleaker outcome by trying, and potentially failing, to take his own life. Bowie was sending Maddie his thanks by taking away her worries for the future and, in doing so, releasing her from the dependence on her parents she found so difficult to bear.

Emma attempted to split the remainder of Bowie’s savings equally between everyone else, but they resisted, encouraging her to give his money to charity instead. Bowie cared deeply for others and it seemed like the right thing to do. They suggested a list of causes to Emma one rainy afternoon, and she agreed to split the money between an organisation helping young people with lymphoma, a charity that brought music to disadvantaged youths, and a vegan animal sanctuary, in Bowie’s memory.

“Can we stop at a corner shop?” Autumn asked her sister now, winding down her window and biting back tears. “I need cigarettes and wine.”

* * *

They sat themselves around the blue plastic table in her mother’s sea-blue kitchen and each lit a cigarette. Katherine eyed her eldest daughter critically.

“I thought you’d given up,” she said acerbically.

Autumn sighed. “I’ve been through a lot, Mam.”

“Huh! You don’t know you’re born,” Katherine muttered.

It was fair to say that Autumn’s mother hadn’t had the easiest time. Autumn’s grandmother had been a teenager when she’d given birth to Katherine on the bathroom floor and, in very different times, the family had been publicly shunned. Katherine had been raised on the very same housing estate where she’d raised Autumn, and where she still lived. She’d never met her father, nor even knew who he was. The man her mother had gone on to marry had been violent and he’d tried to molest Katherine several times throughout the years. Autumn’s family had seen history repeat itself, as so many families did, in all the wrong ways. When Katherine and her mother had confronted her stepfather together, there had been an altercation involving a knife. Katherine had left home and moved in with her boyfriend, Autumn’s father, and his family. She’d become pregnant with Autumn’s sister, Summer, at fourteen, but the baby had died as a result of complications in labour. Autumn had been born a year later. They’d lived with her father’s family until she was eight and, although her memories of that time were not very clear, she seemed to remember that her mother had seemed constantly scared.

On the day they’d moved out, her mother had shown her happily to her brand-new bedroom in a little two-up, two-down with a box room, a few streets away, before telling her that her father would not be joining them. Mummy’s friend, Aaron, who’d lived next door to Autumn’s father’s family, would be moving in instead. Autumn had never liked Aaron. He shouted all the time and he’d never said hello to her. She’d seen him fight with her father, and, in spite of her dad’s disinterest in her, her irrationally intense love for him had made her a fiercely loyal child. She’d stayed that way until the day he’d refused to save her from sexual assault. As it turned out, Aaron’s shouty and violent nature in the early days had been a prelude. He’d gone on to start hitting her mother, then her.

On Autumn’s thirteenth birthday, Aaron had given her a lager and lime laced with ecstasy to drink and then her first kiss. He’d pressed her against the wall in the hallway before she could stop him and shoved his groin against hers. Autumn had hit out at him and pushed him away. The next day, she’d overheard him telling her mother that he was worried that Autumn might accuse him of doing something he shouldn’t have. Autumn had listened to her mother telling him not to worry, that her eldest daughter was an attention-seeker and she wouldn’t ever believe anything she had to say about Aaron ‘in a million years’. Autumn had known then that Aaron had meant to harm her, safe in the knowledge that even her own mother wouldn’t believe her. She’d spent the next three years making sure they were never alone together, often going to bed with boys she’d barely liked just to avoid being home alone with him. For a long time, she’d traded hand jobs for a safe place to sleep.

At sixteen, she’d returned home from shopping one day with her mother and walked in on Aaron having sex with a pretty eighteen-year-old on the family sofa. He’d told them he was leaving them there and then. Katherine had never got over it.

Autumn studied her mother now, her face framed by the smoke they were creating with their sucks and blows. There was a scruffiness to the way she inhaled her cigarettes. Autumn chided herself in her mind. There was no real difference between smoking roll-ups on a porch in the southern countryside and puffing away in the kitchen of a council house twenty miles from Newcastle, but she couldn’t help but feel that the act, when indulged here, reeked of boredom and desperation. Katherine had not taken care of herself and looked much older than she was. She had given her children her thick brown hair and green eyes. Years of smoking had blackened her teeth and she’d had fine lines around her mouth and across her cheeks for as long as Autumn could remember. The several brown sunspots on her face were the result of a love of tanning booths.

“I was beautiful once, but age catches up with everyone,” she’d often told Autumn. “You wait. You’re gonna look like me one day.”

Autumn was self-aware enough to know that flippant comments like this, spewed at her on a fairly frequent basis from the tender age of five, had contributed to her unhealthy relationship with her own body.

Katherine caught her staring, and Autumn turned her face away and nudged her sister.

“Tell me about your life, Lilly.”

“No.” Her sister shook her head. “Boring. Tell me about yours. About Bowie and New York. Tell me about this love affair.”

Autumn felt a sudden rush of affection for her sister and reached out to take her hand, a gentle gesture she’d grown accustomed to performing, without a second thought, with Bowie’s family. Lilly flinched noticeably at her touch, but didn’t pull her hand away. She felt cold to Autumn.

“Can we put the heating on?” Autumn asked her mother.

“No,” Katherine answered abruptly. Autumn was not surprised by her answer. It had always been the same. Katherine didn’t need to elaborate. They couldn’t afford to keep the house warm and Autumn knew that.

“I bet your boy’s folks never worried about putting their heating on.” Lilly laughed lightly, drawing her hand away.

“No.” Autumn shook her head. “They didn’t. But the house was big and it was still cold all the time.”

“Got any photos?” Lilly inquired. “Of the house? Or your bloke?”

Autumn felt immediately on edge, but nodded her head. Katherine, Lilly and Pam scooted towards her until they were all surrounding Autumn. She took out her phone, skimming through hundreds of photographs she had taken of the best and worst summer she’d ever had. It was painful to look back on happier times, but she couldn’t seem to stop. Seeing Bowie’s face hurt her heart. She’d wiped him from her screensaver on the day he’d died so that she wasn’t tempted to stare at his picture, and subtly avoided looking for too long at Marley, who, in her grief, looked more like Bowie to her now than he had even on the evening they’d met.

“He’s so handsome, Autumn,” Lilly said. “God, they look alike too, don’t they? The brothers, I mean. I can’t believe they’re not identical.”

“Yeah.” Autumn nodded. “They’re very much alike, especially in photographs. It was much easier to tell them apart in real life.”

“That must have been hard work.” Katherine laughed. “Making sure you didn’t take the wrong one to bed.”

Unbidden, the mental image of Marley’s face forged its way into her mind, his lips slightly parted, his head thrown back in ecstasy. She closed her eyes and shook her head to erase his features from her thoughts. When she summoned the nerve to look up at them, they were all watching her, their faces tinged with suspicion.

“I bet loads of women want to bed them together,” Katherine said. Autumn smiled in spite of herself, remembering with fondness their frivolity on the night they’d discussed the very same thing, the night they should have been at the ball. The night she and Marley had . . .

“Mam, that’s gross.” Lilly frowned.

“’I wouldn’t kick either of them out of bed, together or separately!” Katherine laughed, louder than was necessary. Autumn winced through a smile and lit another cigarette.

“Was he good?” Pam asked. “This Bowie bloke? In bed?”

“I’m not sure that’s a very appropriate question,” Autumn replied, trying, in vain, to keep her voice even so as not to start an upset. Autumn didn’t know Pam, and the woman had barely said a word to her all afternoon. Still, she wasn’t entirely surprised by this stranger’s nosiness. On this estate, everything was everyone’s business, especially when it came to who was sleeping with who. They hopped in and out of each other’s beds with a frequency that would make even Bluebell blush.

“I bet he was shit.” Katherine took a cigarette. “Posh boys always are. They don’t have to work as hard to keep their women. Not women like us, anyway.”

‘Women like us?’ Autumn was suddenly incensed. She had been doing well to keep a lid on her reactions to their ignorant questions and lack of compassion, but she felt herself seethe in response to her mother’s statement before she could stop herself. Could it be that her mother still thought that Autumn was anything like her? Katherine was uncaring, cold and self-righteous. She rarely thought of anybody but herself. Yes, poverty may have played a part in making her the person she’d become, but Autumn had been raised on the same streets, in almost identical circumstances, and she would never have said something so spiteful to someone who was grieving. Katherine’s casual nastiness made Autumn feel about as irate as she’d ever felt.

“I’m nothing like you,” Autumn said. Her words were cold and harsh. Her mother’s eyes narrowed in a way that used to make Autumn feel afraid.

“You’ll always be like us, my love. You can run as far as you like, but you’ll always be an estate girl at heart.”

Autumn willed herself to remember who she really was inside. To remind herself she was the woman she’d been becoming for more than a decade. She would never go out of her way to make someone else feel upset because of the way she was feeling about herself or her own life. She would never want anyone to feel she was indifferent to their presence. She hoped nobody would ever be afraid to tell her how she’d made them feel. She never wanted anybody to feel lonely when she was in the room. She wanted people around her to know she cared about the things they had to say. She was nothing like them. Not at all.

“You’ve always thought you were too good for us, Autumn,” Katherine continued in a bitter tone. “We’ve never been enough for you. Well, it stops right now, do you hear? You don’t get to come back here, expecting tea and fucking sympathy because your precious posh boyfriend went and died on you and left you with nothing. You act like you’re better than we are, with your fancy American shoes and the way you always look down your nose at us. I’m tired of it.”

Pam snickered nastily in support of her friend. Autumn, biting back tears, poured herself another glass of wine in silence — it was her fourth, if she had been counting correctly. It had been a mistake to come back here. She felt vulnerable enough already and could have protected herself from walking into this living nightmare. She felt like a fool. And yet, somehow, deep down, she recognised that she also felt lucky; she had been one boyfriend away from being stuck here herself. She mightn’t have developed such a hard shell, mightn’t have become so fucking determined to get away from them all. It might’ve been so easy to have fallen in love with the youngest lad of a family of six and become stranded here, on these streets, like everyone else. If things had been different for Autumn and she had wound up stuck at home, she was in no doubt that she’d have felt the same way as her mother by now: jealous of the privileged, ashamed in private, but ludicrously proud in public, full of bravado that she was happy to be a poor, uneducated northern lass. She too would have been convinced that someone with Autumn’s affiliations was trying to be somebody she was not. Autumn could see, all too clearly, in her mind’s eye, how her mother saw her. She thought she was a snob.

Autumn supposed she was being snobbish. She had been judging them, when she really was no better than her family — no better than anyone. At some point she’d come to believe that she was, but she could see now, despite her anger, they were all nothing more than a victim of circumstance. She could hardly expect anything else from her mother except resentment, the snooty thoughts she’d indulged in had almost certainly translated into facial expressions, and Katherine had become defensive. She was quick to anger, sure, but it was in part Autumn’s fault this time.

Her thoughts moved to Bowie and she wondered what he’d think about the way she’d inwardly judged her mother, about the ego she had grown in his presence, without his permission. He’d tell her she was wrong to look down on anyone.

Autumn was close to apologising, but then Katherine spoke again, and what she said cast all of Autumn’s pity and sensitivity into the wind.

“You’ve given that posh little prick and his family more time and attention in the last six months than you’ve given us, your family, in thirty years. You barely bloody knew them. It was me that gave birth to you, Autumn.”

“Shut up, Mum!” Grief and pent-up rage were swallowing her and she could feel herself losing control.

“It’s ‘Mam’!” Katherine roared back at her. “You’re not posh, you never were and you never will be, so stop talking like you are.”

“Don’t fucking talk to me like that,” Autumn got to her feet. She moved towards her mother, knowing that all it would do was provoke her. It had been a long time since they had physically fought. They had been quite evenly matched when Autumn was in her teens, but her mother was a fair bit wider now and Autumn was so much thinner. Still, every fibre of Autumn’s being wanted to take everything she felt out on this woman, right here, right now. This woman who had cheated on her father. This woman who had always favoured her sister. This woman who had made her feel so utterly worthless. This woman who had allowed her stepfather to beat her, who refused to believe she had been sexually assaulted. Who’d been happy to see her leave home because she couldn’t wait to turn her bedroom into a gym. Who’d tried to invalidate everything that Autumn had worked so hard for, hadn’t bothered to read her book, and who cared more about how she pronounced her words than if she was making a success of herself. This woman who still dared to call herself her mother when she barely knew the meaning of the word. This woman who could stand in front of her and insult a family who had supported Autumn more in the last six months than she had in thirty-two years, and the only man she had ever been in love with. A man who had shown her more care and affection in such a short time than this woman ever had. A lovely, sweet, unashamedly kind, dead man.

Autumn was consumed by a deeply dangerous rage. As she lunged at her mother, she wondered what Bowie might think of her if he could see her now. If she had ever dared tell him about her family and the kind of anger they stirred up in her, would he even have believed she had it in her? She knew he wouldn’t. She had once been angry at him for hitting a wall in her presence. She remembered the guilty expression he’d worn that morning when he’d promised her he’d just been overcome with emotion and realised she was being a hypocrite. It only made her angrier at her mother. As far as she was concerned at that moment, this was all Katherine’s fault. Autumn felt her mother’s hand reflexively slap her across her face. Before Autumn could grab her by her hair, Lilly wrapped her arms around her waist from behind and wrestled her out of the room. She dragged Autumn upstairs and into her bedroom, then sat with her back against the door and refused to move, even when Autumn kicked her. Lilly let her scream for a while and then, when Autumn showed no sign of calming down, shouted at her.

“It’s not us you’re mad at, sis,” she said. “Stop it, babe. Please.”

Autumn let herself sink to her knees, holding her hands over her heart and howling, slowly and sadly. Lilly watched her sister cry, her own lips quivering at the rawness of Autumn’s anguish, and then pulled her into a hug.

They held on to one another until Autumn had calmed down. When they eventually found the emotional strength to stand up together, the evening had drawn in and their mother was long gone. Before she left, presumably with Pam, she’d called to warn Autumn that she’d better be gone by the morning. Autumn could come home again only when she remembered who she really was, she’d said. The sisters climbed into bed together.

“You should have chosen the other one.” Lilly spoke wryly into the silence, stroking Autumn’s hair with all the grace of a person unaccustomed to demonstrating affection. “The other brother. You’d still be sitting in a mansion now, instead of here with me in this freezing-cold shithole.”

Autumn rolled her eyes, but didn’t say anything. She knew her sister didn’t mean to be insensitive. There was no need to tell Lilly that the Whittles had begged her to stay with them, that they’d approached her, both collectively and individually, and implored her not to leave. It was hopeless to point out that falling in love with Bowie had been the cataclysmic conclusion to an evening out she hadn’t even wanted, rather than a rational choice she had made. Pathetically, Autumn found herself declaring instead that the Whittles’ home was a country estate, not a mansion. Her mind was racing, but these were the only words she managed to muster.

She wanted to tell Lilly that she’d been feeling deeply depressed and that she needed help. She was desperate to confess to someone, anyone, that grief and guilt were preventing her from sleeping, and that she was already missing Marley more than was appropriate. She wanted to tell her sister that she’d been spurred by a missing period, sickness, and a strange intuition, to take a pregnancy test. That it had been positive, and that she didn’t know whose baby she was carrying. She thought about the horrified stare and look of judgement her confession would likely induce and shook violently against her sibling’s shoulder instead. Eventually, she encouraged Lilly to go to sleep, then she kissed her on the top of her head, collected her things and took a taxi to the airport in the early hours of the morning, trying to ignore the terrifying truth of what was growing inside her.

* * *

Bowie had only ever been in her apartment twice, but she still saw him everywhere. He was on the sofa they’d made up on, in the bed they’d slept in, and all over the mug he’d thrown up into, which was sitting, clean and dry, on the drainer beside her sink. Autumn held the cup to her cheek and cried for him, before taking it to bed with her. She hid under the duvet, grasping the cup to her heart, and hoping that she might find peace in slumber.

Restless, she thought carefully back to a time when she’d felt depressed like this before, remembering how she’d found it possible to sleep in those days only by imagining that she was no longer alive. Nothing mattered when you were dead, she’d reasoned back then. She allowed herself to pretend for a moment that she did not exist. Nobody knew for sure where she was. She was entirely alone. Again.

She felt herself relax a little at last.

* * *

Autumn’s eyes opened a full forty-eight hours after she’d closed them. She had eight missed calls from Emma and multiple messages from various members of the Whittle family. Her sister had tried to call her, too.

She was hungry, thirsty, and really needed the loo. Despite an ache in her back that made her want to crawl to the bathroom, she forced herself to walk. She could hardly bear the touch of her T-shirt as it brushed across her breasts. She really wanted to be sick. She’d never known her body to feel so sensitive. Suddenly, she felt incredibly pregnant.

She weed, and then stood under the shower, scrubbing the skin on her stomach viciously as she washed, silently urging the ball of cells hidden inside her not to be real. She stared up at the ceiling, urging the universe to help her out of this mess. She’d heard that lots of women had miscarriages in the very early stages of pregnancy. Whomever he or she belonged to, this baby had been conceived barely four weeks before. Autumn let herself hope that she’d miscarry. It would make everything so much easier. She felt a twinge of guilt.

“Nobody wants you.” She spoke to the foetus lurking in her belly. She sat down in the shower stall, hugging her knees to her chest and wondering what Bowie would want her to do if he were here. Keep it. She could almost hear his voice in her head. There was no question in her mind at all what his response would be. He’d have asked her to keep it even though Marley might be its father. And Marley? She knew right away what he would want her to do, too. It might be Bowie’s, and he would never advocate aborting a part of his brother. She spent less than a second pondering what the others would want from her. He or she was a Whittle. Bowie and Marley’s family would want her to have it, no question, and would love it dearly.

“I don’t want you,” she said, correcting herself. She couldn’t keep it. It was too complicated.

She texted Bluebell to tell her she was safe and in New York, and then stared at her phone, waiting for what she knew was the inevitable. Emma rang her right away.

“Autumn! Is everything all right?” she asked urgently.

“I’m fine,” Autumn said. “I just needed . . .” She paused. What did she need? She didn’t know any more. “Something.” She finished hopelessly.

“Yes,” Emma said. “We understand that, darling.”

“I’m sorry, Emma.” Autumn’s apology was heartfelt. She knew that they’d wanted her to stay close by, but she couldn’t bear to listen to them telling stories and sharing memories of Bowie. She had a baby to abort and needed to do that alone, though she wasn’t sure that she’d feel much differently even if she hadn’t had this added complication. “How is everyone?” she asked.

“Missing Bowie,” Emma said. “Missing you.”

Her tone made Autumn feel guilty. She felt irritated by the pressure Emma’s comment put her under, but then reminded herself that this poor woman had no idea what else Autumn was going through.

“I miss you all too,” she said. “How’s Marley?”

She couldn’t help herself. She had to know how he was coping.

“Still here,” Emma said. “Barely. But still here, so far. Autumn, there are times when he breaks his heart so hard it’s as if he might literally cough it out. There is no getting through to him. He won’t go anywhere near Bowie’s bedroom, won’t let any of us mention his name in his presence, won’t let us sort through any of his things or move any of his stuff. He barely speaks and I can’t get him to eat. He keeps telling me he wants to die but he’s too afraid to kill himself. He says he can’t get the image of Bowie and the way he looked that night out of his head, but he won’t agree to go to therapy either. I don’t know what else there is to do but wait.”

Autumn had been battling ugly flashbacks too. When they’d found Marley alive after the night his brother had died, she and Maddie had left Marley lying on Bowie’s bed. He had been clinging to Bowie and begging him to come back. Holding each other up, Autumn and Maddie had crept into his parents’ bedroom to tell them he had gone. His mother had known the second she’d seen them step into the room. She’d screamed and bolted out of bed, pushing aside a trembling Pip and Bluebell — who’d heard Marley wailing, and beaten their mother to Bowie’s bedside — to throw herself manically onto her lifeless son, clutching desperately at his face, his arms, his neck, and sobbing into his pyjamas. She’d read and re-read Bowie’s suicide note, clutching it to her heart and shaking her head in disbelief.

Before they’d called anyone, Maddie had explained that it was better for everyone, including Bowie, if they didn’t tell anyone he’d committed suicide. She’d explained that would lead to a coroner’s inquest, which could take months. Instead, she’d insisted they call the family doctor, who she’d been sure would sign off Bowie’s death on the basis he had been very sick. That would mean they could bury him sooner. Emma had objected at first.

“I want to know what he took and what happened to him,” she’d said. “I need to know if he was in any pain.”

“Then he’ll have to have an autopsy,” Maddie told her. Emma shook her head, and that was that. There was no way she’d let them cut Bowie open, so they hid his suicide note and did as Maddie said.

They'd given Emma and Marley plenty of time to kiss Bowie and hold him in their arms, to touch every bit of the man they could not imagine living without, and then Maddie called Bowie’s GP and an undertaker. When the funeral director arrived in the afternoon, he found Emma, Marley and Ben still hysterical with loss. Ben was gradually coaxed into Pip’s arms with gentle encouragement and support from his kids, but they had to physically pry Emma’s arms from around Bowie’s neck and Marley’s fingers from Bowie’s wrist as they pleaded with Autumn, Maddie and Bluebell not to take him from them, not to leave him all on his own, he needed them, he was cold, they said. Autumn would never forget the way Bowie’s body rocked rigidly from side to side when she helped Maddie and Bluebell drag their devastated mother and brother away from him, nor how cold his skin felt against her fingertips. The GP’s medical certificate of cause of death concluded non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Autumn never found out what happened to the suicide note after it was hidden.

Autumn pulled herself back into the present. Emma was still talking about Marley.

“I can’t lose another child. I can’t. I just can’t, Autumn.”

Her words caught in her throat. As Autumn listened to the sound of her crying, she tried to imagine what it must be like to love that fiercely. She let her fingers roam tentatively across her pelvis and told Emma it would all be OK, but she knew that her words sounded empty. She wasn’t actually sure that any of them would ever feel OK ever again, especially not Emma. Still, she didn’t know what else she could say.

“I hope so.” She sighed. “I’ll let you go, my love. You know where we are if you need us.”

“I do. Tell them all I love them.”

“I will. And they know,” Emma said. “I’ll call you again in a couple of days. We love you, darling. Bye.”

* * *

A fortnight later, Autumn found herself inexplicably craving the outside world. She dressed and let her feet carry her to the nearest coffee shop.

“Hey, it’s your season,” said the barista. Autumn blinked at him blankly.

“Excuse me?”

“Autumn, right?”

He seemed so sure of her name, but Autumn didn’t recognise him.

“I gave you a free coffee that time you forgot your purse. Months ago now. Back in winter.”

“Right!” Autumn said. The morning she’d met Bluebell. A couple of months before she’d met Bowie. January then. It seemed like years had passed. “I remember.”

“You haven’t been back here in a while,” he said. “Been busy?”

“A bit, yes,” she said. She winced.

“Can I buy you another drink?” he asked her coyly. “I’m almost done for the day. I could join you for a coffee?”

Autumn nodded numbly. He was cute and she was feeling lonely. His name was Toby and he was a medical student. He had thick, black, curly hair and nice teeth. He was from Los Angeles. He had two brothers and a sister, and called his mother every day. He asked Autumn about herself, but she deflected his questions flirtatiously. She let him hold her hand across the table for an hour or so, then invited him back to her apartment. She dragged him through the front door by his shirt collar and slammed his back against it. He kissed her hungrily.

Autumn had been by herself in New York for almost a fortnight, though she knew that Walter knew she was home. He’d left a note tied to her staircase, along with a number of donations of ham sandwiches that she’d had to throw away. She would get around to speaking to him at some point, but she had been busy. She’d spent the first week editing the second draft of her second novel and telling herself there was no pregnancy. The book was with her publisher now and she’d had nothing to focus on since, other than how desperately alone she felt, and how time was running out for her to make a decision about whether she’d show up at the clinic appointment she’d made for the following week.

It had been weeks since she had felt any sexual urge at all, but she’d masturbated, with thoughts of Bowie in her mind, for three days in a row. She was frustrated and had been left feeling empty. She’d needed more. Someone to hold her. She’d gone out looking to meet someone, but she knew as soon as Toby kissed her that she’d made a mistake. He was nothing like Bowie at all. His lips were rough, his kisses uncaring and self-centred. He reached clumsily for her groin as though he’d never touched a woman before. His hands on her felt wrong. The way he touched her was wrong. She produced a condom from her bedside table and made sure he put it on, then jammed her eyes shut, forcing herself not to think about how wrong it all was until he was finished.

Afterwards he wanted to hug her, but Autumn asked him not to. He looked offended. They lay side by side in uncomfortable silence and she wished he would just leave.

“Why did you invite me here if you aren’t interested?” he asked her.

She lied. “I was. I am.”

He shook his head and rolled his eyes.

“It isn’t right to treat anyone like they’re disposable, Autumn. Anyone.”

“I know,” Autumn said. “I am sorry.”

She wanted to tell him that her boyfriend had died, but thought it might sound preposterous in the circumstances. She wanted to confess that she was struggling to cope, that dark thoughts danced through her mind and she didn’t know how to stop them. She wanted to ask for help, but he was angry with her and had every right to be. He didn’t even know her. She offered him the money for the drinks that he had given her, but he shook his head and hastily pulled his clothes on, clearly upset. She apologised again, but he ignored her. She let him leave her there, listening to his footsteps as he headed for the door. She felt emptier than she ever had before.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, talking to Bowie. He’d told her never to do that, never to imagine that he might be there to accept an apology for anything she did to try to move on, but she’d still found that it helped her to speak to him. She did it all the time. Autumn heard Toby pull the door open.

“Good luck, man,” he said. She barely knew him, but she knew that he was not the type to call a woman ‘man’. He was talking to someone else. She sat up. By now he’d made his way down the stairs, but he had left her door open. He had let someone into her apartment.

“Walter?” she called. She heard the door click closed behind whoever it was. Walter was a little hard of hearing, but that didn’t reassure Autumn’s pounding heart. She felt low enough to wonder if it might be easier to just let the intruder kill her, but she pulled a bedsheet up and around her in a hopeless attempt to protect her dignity. She had no idea where her dressing gown was, or where that guy had thrown her clothes. She winced as she moved, feeling sore and bruised. Toby had taken her clumsily, and her mind had been so distant from the act that she had barely realised it until now.

She yelled out a warning. “I have a knife in here.”

Marley pushed the bedroom door open with his boot and stared at her.

“Put some fucking clothes on,” he said.

* * *

She dressed slowly, pulling on a pair of jeans and a baggy white T-shirt Bowie had given her. She could hear Marley moving around in the kitchen and she knew he’d found the alcohol in her cereal cupboard.

She braced herself to face him. He held out a mug of red wine and they stared, silently, at each other. She deliberated momentarily, then took it. What could be the harm? Her appointment was in just a few days. She sipped it, watching him going through her cupboards, presumably in search of food. She didn’t have the energy to tell him she hadn’t bothered to buy anything since she’d first got back. She barely ate these days. She had the prominent hip bones and ribcage to prove it.

Marley looked a mess. His hair was shaggy and overgrown, his skin unhealthily dull, and he smelled like he hadn’t been near a shower in weeks. He turned suddenly and leaned back against the kitchen counter, eyeing her over the cracked tumbler he was drinking neat gin from.

“How did they let you on a plane looking like that?” she asked.

“I’ve been back for three days,” he said. “Which you’d know, if you’d bothered to answer my mother’s calls.”

Autumn grimaced. She’d been ignoring Emma’s calls for over a week. Autumn had justified her behaviour to herself. Emma’s voice made her feel even more sorrowful and Autumn couldn’t bear how much she was missing this woman. Whenever they spoke, two things happened: first, Autumn would feel so incredibly desperate to make Emma happy that she would contemplate telling her that she was having a baby, and, secondly, she would start to reason that perhaps it wasn’t so complicated after all. She’d start to wonder exactly why it was that she couldn’t simply tell them that she was having Bowie’s baby, move back to England and have this child. It would make them happy and she’d started to feel as if it might make her happy too. She was certain that her mental turmoil was, at least in part, due to the reality of the termination she’d arranged. She had no choice, because she had no way of knowing whose baby she was carrying, but she felt like she was decaying from the inside out. If she could guarantee that the baby belonged to Bowie, she was fairly certain she would keep it, but it wasn’t that simple, wouldn’t ever be that simple. The reason for that complication, that confusion she was feeling, was standing in front of her right now, drunkenly sinking glass after glass of any liquor he had managed to find. She wondered what he might do if she were to tell him the truth. Could she depend on him to keep their secret? To submit to acting as uncle to a child he may have fathered, for the rest of their lives? She could not be sure and it wouldn’t be right of her to ask that of him, nor would it be fair on the person growing inside her. She couldn’t see how she could bring a human into the world and tell them their father had passed away, when he could, in fact, be sitting across from them at the family dinner table.

“You’re a shitty person, Autumn.” Marley slurred his words. “My mum is devastated.”

“Why are you here?”

“Couldn’t bear being in that house anymore,” he said. “Ran off. Called them when I landed. Told them where I was.”

“Aren’t they furious with you?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “But glad that I can check in on you. We thought you were dead, Autumn.”

He sank his gin, glaring at her. “You owe my parents more than this,” he said. “After everything they’ve done for you.”

Emma had once promised Autumn that they would never throw the love they had shown her back in her face, but Marley clearly had no qualms about doing so on their behalf. Especially not in the state that he was in.

“You’re one to talk,” she said. “Don’t you think you owe them more than what you’re putting them through?”

He laughed bitterly, tipping the last of the gin into his glass. Autumn was sure he was close to collapse.

“You’re scaring them,” she said. “And you’re scaring me.”

He swallowed hard and shuddered, swaying unsteadily from side to side. He was tall and imposing, but he looked like a lost and frightened little boy. She was suddenly overcome with a longing to hold him in her arms. She had missed him so much.

“Please don’t drink any more,” she whispered instead. Her gentleness had the desired effect. His face softened. He put his cup down on her countertop, took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and held one out to her. She hid the mug of wine he had given her behind her back and accepted his offering. She wasn’t sure quite how she could get out of smoking it and didn’t want to think about why it seemed so important to her that she did.

“Who was that guy?” Marley asked. Autumn had been hoping he wouldn’t. She inhaled from the cigarette, held the smoke in her mouth for a few seconds and then released a cloud of it dramatically into the air. That was not how she typically smoked and she was glad that he was drunk and unlikely to be paying too much attention.

“Just some guy,” she said.

“Classy.” He leered at her. She glared at him.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” she said. She suspected that his comment was driven by jealousy rather than judgement. There had been something possessive in the way he’d told her to put her clothes on when he’d burst into her bedroom.

“I’m trying not to fall apart here,” Autumn said.

It was the closest she’d come to telling anyone she wasn’t coping. That she’d had frightening moments where she’d thought about throwing herself out of the window, or slitting her wrists, or jumping in front of a subway train. She willed him to ask her if she needed his help. His eyes met hers. She saw recognition in them, a deep understanding, and then he shrugged any compassion he might’ve shown her away.

“You can’t use your groin to fight depression,” he said. “Trust me, I’ve been trying.”

“What do I do then?” she asked, stubbing out her cigarette without a second drag. “How am I supposed to do this, Marley?”

“You wait,” he said. “Either it will beat you eventually, or it won’t.”

“I don’t want it to beat me,” she said. “I want to live.”

“Then don’t kill yourself,” he said. “It’s that simple.”

He rocked on his feet again and looked as though he might be sick. Autumn moved to steady him this time. She placed one hand on each of his upper arms, hoping that he wouldn’t fall forward and bracing her elbows protectively in front of her stomach in case he did. She stared up at him. He was taller than she remembered. She saw his eyes focus on her lips in response.

“Don’t.” She turned her face away. He sighed, pulling her into an unsteady hug. She leaned rigidly against his chest at first and then let herself relax into his embrace. She felt immensely cared for, just as she had whenever Bowie held her. She wound her hands around him and over his back. He cradled her tightly, stroking her hair. She started to cry.

“I’m not him,” he whispered.

“I know,” she said, burying her gulping sobs in his coat.

“You can pretend I am whenever you need me to be,” he said. “I won’t mind.”

She knew that the offer, although weird, was coming from the right place. She grabbed his hand and led him to her bedroom to get some sleep. He let her push him down onto the duvet and tried to persuade her to get into bed with him when she took off his shoes and socks. She refused, instead kneeling on the floorboards beside the bed to stroke his hair. He watched her intently and then closed his eyes.

“I miss him so much, Autumn,” he whispered. He drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Autumn sat beside him all night. Every now and then, he’d stir and look at her. Sometimes he’d murmur something unintelligible. She’d reach out to stroke his cheek gently and he’d smile and slip swiftly back into a deep, drunken slumber.

At first light, Autumn clambered to her feet and stretched out her limbs. Her back ached and her hips were sore. She’d longed, hour after hour, to lie on the mattress beside Marley, but had resisted climbing into bed beside him. Still, she had not felt strong enough to tear herself away from him to sleep on the sofa. He had not exactly been great company, but his presence had already been a comfort to her lonely heart.

Autumn craved food for the first time in a while, so she pulled on her jacket and searched for her purse. She would make breakfast for them both. It would give her something to do while she waited for him to wake and they could talk seriously about how they were going to survive this when he did. She swallowed her pride and called his mother from the supermarket.

“Are you OK, Autumn?” Emma asked, forgoing any greeting.

“I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Honestly, Emma. I’m just so sorry.”

Emma accepted her apology with a sigh saturated with irritation. Autumn was surprised to hear such exasperation from such a typically forgiving woman, but she couldn’t blame Emma.

“What are you two trying to do to me?” Emma asked. There was a tinkle of amusement in her tone this time. “You and Marley? You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you? Damn you both. It’s a conspiracy. It’s the only explanation that makes sense to me.”

Autumn heard herself laugh out loud. She apologised again, from the bottom of her heart.

“Marley is sleeping in my apartment,” she added. “And I’m quite sure that we’re both going to be fine. Eventually.”

Emma sounded incredibly relieved. “In all seriousness, my love, you are both going to need therapy.”

“I know that now,” Autumn said.

“It’s been really helping Ben and I to look at things,” Emma said. “To focus on the things we did have and do have, instead of the things we don’t.”

“I’ll get some help. And I’ll make sure Marley does too.”

“Did he say anything about coming home?” Emma asked hopefully.

“No,” Autumn said. “Just that he couldn’t stand being in the house any longer.”

She knew that it would hurt Emma to hear it, but thought it best not to lie to her about his frame of mind.

“Maybe we should come back out there?” Emma wondered this aloud. “Although I don’t know if I can bear to leave Bowie just yet, in all honesty.”

They’d been given permission to bury Bowie’s body in their garden. Autumn hadn’t even known such things were possible, but, apparently, they were if you had the right permissions. It had seemed like a lovely idea at the time, sweet and sentimental, but the temptation to sit beside his headstone when they missed him was overwhelming, and Autumn was quite sure that feeling that he was so close by would not be of help to any of them in trying to move forward.

“Bowie’s gone,” Autumn said softly. Emma inhaled sharply. “Marley needs you now.”

She had listened to Emma lecture her on the importance of appreciating the difference between what you had and what had gone, and she knew Emma would never forgive herself if Marley hurt himself while she sat by the headstone of the son who was already lost to her.

“Yes,” Emma whispered. “You’re right. Of course, Autumn, love, you’re right.”

Autumn reached the till, her hands full of avocados, tomatoes and seeded loaves.

“Hang on a minute,” she muttered to Emma. “How much is that?”

“That’ll be fourteen dollars and thirty-six cents.”

“Autumn, where are you?” Emma asked, suddenly anxious.

“Buying breakfast.” Autumn smiled enthusiastically at the cashier, handing her a twenty-dollar bill and hoping that the young lady serving her would forgive her for continuing her conversation. She wasn’t normally so rude, but this was important.

“Did you leave Marley on his own?” Emma asked. Something in her tone made Autumn spin on her heel.

“Yes,” she said. “Why?”

Somebody behind Emma was shrieking hysterically. Autumn was fairly certain it was Bluebell.

“Emma?” she shouted into the telephone. She was suddenly afraid.

Emma gasped. “Autumn, run! Go home now, and run.”

* * *

Autumn howled for help, taking the stairs two at a time, as a stream of concerned strangers followed her up to the very top floor of her building.

“My friend has hurt himself,” she shouted. “Please help me.”

At least, that’s what she feared. As she’d sprinted from the supermarket, Emma was screeching something about a sorrowful text message Marley had just sent to Bluebell, and begging her desperately to run faster. Autumn hadn’t heard much. She’d taken her phone away from her ear and focused everything she had on reaching him as quickly as she could, quite sure that Emma was still waiting on the end of the line.

He’d used the deadbolt inside to stop her from opening the door. She threw herself at it in desperation. It didn’t move at all.

“Marley!” She screamed his name as she kicked the door. Fuelled by her love for this man and the terror she felt at losing him, she had beaten everybody to the top floor by quite a way, but others were joining her now. A stout man reached her first, pulling her back by her arms.

“Move right away,” he said. He threw himself forward and, although the door shook, it did not open.

“Call an ambulance.” Autumn shouted at the top of her voice. Walter, who had been watching from the door of his apartment, stepped out into the hallway.

“You’ll never break it down if it’s deadbolted,” he said. “It’s reinforced steel.”

The man thrust himself at it again. Nothing happened. Autumn shook her head, holding her hand out to prevent him from trying again. They were never going to get to him this way. They needed to persuade him to open the door.

“Marley, please, it’s me, let me in. It’s Autumn. Please don’t do this.”

She listened hard, but could hear nothing. She knew there was a real chance he might already be dead. An image of him, his body rocking rigidly from side to side the way Bowie’s had, came into her mind unbidden. She felt her legs buckle and her hands flew protectively to her stomach. A middle-aged man caught her before she fully passed out and fell. The crowd watching her gasped. As she came round, someone called out for her to be taken to the hospital.

“No, no, I’m OK,” she said, hoping to silence them. She was convinced she’d heard Marley’s voice, she was sure of it. He was there, just behind the door. Somehow, despite her shakiness, she found her feet and, at her insistence, two strangers supported her gingerly back up the staircase.

“Marley, I know you’re there. I heard you. I know you can hear me. Please open the door.”

She laid her hand flat against the steel, willing him, with all her heart, to speak to her again.

“I can’t,” he said. He sounded sad and frightened.

“Yes, you can, my love, you can.”

“It’s too late,” he said weakly. She panicked at this.

“Marley! Please.” She hit the door with the flat of her hand.

“No.”

His voice was so weak she could barely hear it as she knelt on the concrete floor and wailed.

“Open the fucking door!” He fell silent. Autumn was filled with a terrible desperation. Marley, her best friend, was dying. The door was all that separated them. She pounded on it with the palm of her hand, willing it to break open and, before she could stop herself, she heard herself screaming.

“I’m pregnant. I’m fucking pregnant and I need you.”

Her hand flew across her mouth. She listened, but could hear nothing. She laid her hand on the cold metal again and began to howl, hoping against all hope that he had not slipped into unconsciousness. She was feeling faint again.

“Please let me in,” she said through sobs. “I need you, Marley. Please, please don’t leave me. I can’t do this on my own.”

She heard his fingers graze the lock and shuffled back in shock and relief, swiping at the tears streaming down her face.

“Just you,” he whispered from behind the door. “Promise me. Only you, Autumn.”

“I promise,” she said urgently.

The man beside her moved to betray him, but Autumn shook her head, no. It was not worth the risk. Once she was inside, she’d be able to open the door for the paramedics when they arrived.

“I promise, Marley. Just me. Please. Open the door.”

Slowly, the door opened just a crack and she slipped rapidly inside. He was standing in the middle of the room, his face entirely expressionless. He had slashed his wrists and was holding them out to her as though they were a gift. He was fully clothed but soaking wet. She presumed he had been laying in the bath when he had hurt himself. He was covered in blood.

“Jesus Christ!” she murmured, walking warily towards him. She was still carrying her phone and the line was still connected to Emma.

“Emma, I’m with him now. The paramedics are coming. I’ll call you back.”

She disconnected the call, reaching out to grab him by his arms.

“I’m sorry,” he said dumbly. “I woke up feeling so sad, Autumn.”

“It’s OK, Marley,” she said. “Come here.”

She sat him down on her dressing-table stool and held her fingers tightly around his wrists, whipping her top over her head and using it to hold his skin together as best she could. His blood oozed through her fingers and dripped persistently onto the floor. Outside, she heard sirens approaching.

“It hurts, Autumn. I don’t feel very well,” he said. “I think I might need to lie down.”

“No.” She shook her head vehemently. “No, Marley, you mustn’t. Just focus on staying awake, for me, OK?”

He nodded woozily, then swayed to one side without warning. Autumn reached for him, but he was too heavy and he fell to the floor. She straddled him, picking up his wrists and raising them up with her hands. His eyes had closed.

“Marley! Marley! You have to stay awake!” She was bawling into his face. He groaned in response, and she whimpered.

“Please don’t die. I need you, Marley.”

His eyes were suddenly wide and he looked at her as though he was seeing her for the first time.

“Is there really a baby?” he mumbled. She nodded. With no energy to speak left in him, he nodded too, looking at her intently. She knew that he was fighting with all of his might now.

She held on to his wrists and cried.

* * *

“Is it true?” Emma asked Autumn directly. They were sitting side by side in a deserted hospital canteen, surrounded by chairs mounted upside down on plastic tables. It was the middle of the night. The Whittles, in varying degrees of jet-lagged hysteria, had arrived an hour or so before, and Autumn had led them to Marley’s bedside and left them alone. She was more tired than she’d ever felt in her whole life and wasn’t able to cope with the noises they were making: crying, sobbing, exclamations of love and relief. She’d told them she was going to get herself a coffee and, although she’d bought one, it was sitting untouched on the table in front of her. She was looking out at the city lights from the window, picking thoughtfully at the congealed blood beneath her fingernails, when Emma had come to join her. Autumn hadn’t yet been able to bring herself to look at her. She forced herself to respond with a sombre nod.

“Look at me, my darling.”

Autumn shook her head, staring down at her nails. She knew Emma would be ready to fall in love with this baby that she thought was Bowie’s, and couldn’t bear to see that in his mother’s eyes. Emma stood and knelt down at Autumn’s feet, taking both her hands in her own. Autumn avoided her gaze. Emma sighed.

“Nobody knows but me, Autumn. I’ll keep it that way if you want me to.”

“Marley knows,” Autumn said.

“He won’t tell anyone either, my love,” Emma said. “He will know that this decision is yours to make. We both do. Even if Bowie were alive, this would still be your decision, darling.”

A whole host of emotions flooded through Autumn’s body. She had known that Emma, liberal as she was, would never seek to remove Autumn’s right to an abortion if that was her choice. Still, she’d expected her to try to influence her decision. As far as Emma knew, this baby was the only bit of Bowie they had left.

“I know what it’s like to be pregnant and scared witless,” Emma said gently, sitting back down beside Autumn. “Bowie and Marley are the best thing that ever happened to me, but they weren’t part of my plan. Oh God, Autumn, if you could’ve seen the way I reacted when I found out I was having two. I absolutely lost my shit. I howled as if the world was ending. The truth was, I’d barely talked myself into having one baby at that point, I didn’t know I would love being a mother so much and I knew I might be doing it on my own . . .”

She stopped. She had forgotten herself and she frowned down at the floor. Autumn knew she was searching for something to say that wouldn’t reveal that Ben was not Bowie and Marley’s biological father, and that Maddie wasn’t her daughter by birth.

“I know that Ben isn’t their dad, Emma,” Autumn watched Emma leaping to the wrong conclusion. “Bowie didn’t tell me. Maddie did.”

“Ah.” Emma breathed a sigh, looking relieved. “That’s different, then. Bowie’s biological father was a selfish man. I loved him, but not half as much as he loved himself. I chose to go ahead and have the twins, despite what I knew about him. I hoped that having them might change him, but I was always prepared that it might not work out that way. I knew I might end up on my own with them one day and I was one hundred per cent sure that I would find a way to manage by myself if I had to. I loved being a mum so much that I went on to have Bluebell even when things didn’t improve between us. They were all accidents, but I wanted them. I wanted them so much nothing else mattered. That’s the conclusion you need to come to. We’ll be there, but when your baby cries, or they’re being bullied, or they’re ill, or scared of monsters under the bed, or someone breaks their precious heart, it’s their mother they’re going to want. He or she should be all you care about from the moment you choose to keep this baby. If you can’t give it at least that, then you’re not ready. Nobody can, nor should, tell you how you feel in your heart of hearts.”

“What if I choose the wrong thing?” Autumn aired her greatest fear, her eyes wide with panic.

“You can’t, Autumn, not if you listen to yourself. Don’t be distracted by anything or anyone else. Deep down, you already know what it is you want.”

They fell into a comfortable silence. Autumn thought carefully. More than once in recent weeks, every time she had felt despair about what would happen next, her imagination had strayed to the fantasy life she’d dreamed up with Bowie in the bed they might have conceived a baby on in a hotel somewhere in London. To the cottage and the vegetable patch and the library full of books. Every time, there had been a baby Bowie resting on her hip. There was no question in her mind anymore ― if there was a way to guarantee that this baby was his, she would keep him or her in a heartbeat.

For the first time now, as she sat with Bowie’s mother in the chilly canteen, she let herself wonder what she might do if she knew, for certain, that Marley was her baby’s father. She realised, to her surprise, that she would probably still want to keep it. They would have to tell the Whittles what they’d done, but that uncomfortable conversation didn’t warrant her terminating this pregnancy.

Really, it was the unknown she was afraid of. She couldn’t know who had fathered her baby until after she’d given birth. But she could know, eventually. There’d be months of internal torture, but she would get her answer, one day. It was complex, sure, but it didn’t have to be. She wondered if she might be overcomplicating things. If the baby was Bowie’s — and it probably was, because they’d made love twice around conception time versus three minutes of whatever that thing was with Marley — then there’d be no harm done. If it was Marley’s, they would deal with it. But it probably wasn’t.

“I need to get back to my boy, love.” Emma stirred beside her. She sank Autumn’s cold coffee theatrically, raising her eyebrows at her cheekily. Autumn groaned in disgust. Emma smiled warmly, holding her arms open and inviting Autumn into them. They held one another tightly.

“I have no idea what you’re thinking,” Emma murmured into Autumn’s hair. “But will you let me tell you one more thing? People usually want most whatever their head is trying its best to talk their heart out of.”

Autumn pulled away, smiling meekly.

“Are you coming too?” Emma asked. Autumn nodded. She didn’t need more time to think. She knew what she wanted to do.

* * *

Marley had made a terrible mess of himself. He’d calmly drawn a bath, then sat in it and slit his wrists with a kitchen knife. It looked as though he’d attempted to make vertical cuts, but he’d managed crooked slashes instead. He swore that he could hardly remember what he had been doing and his despair had completely taken him over. He’d have bled out eventually, but it would have been a slow death. Autumn felt such terrible guilt about leaving him alone, knowing how depressed he was. Marley begged and begged her to stop blaming herself. He’d inexplicably found a strength he hadn’t had before. After they’d stitched him up, he’d confessed to the hospital counsellor that he’d been exploring different options to end his life since he’d been back in New York. He’d been on a suicide mission, he said. It wasn’t her fault. Nevertheless, Autumn knew she’d never make that mistake with someone so vulnerable ever again.

“How are you feeling?” she asked him the following morning. Knocked out by sedatives and painkillers, he’d been sleeping when she’d visited with Emma the evening before, so she’d curled up on a bench outside of his bedroom and tried to rest herself. She had insisted to the Whittles that she’d needed her own bed and had planned to return to her apartment, until she’d remembered that the entire place was smeared with Marley’s blood. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to go home.

“Hungover to fuck,” was his immediate response. She smiled. His skin was pasty, he looked utterly exhausted and Autumn could see that he was shivering. He swallowed a few times, his mouth obviously dry, and rubbed his lips together. She poured him a glass of water, but he struggled to hold it when she offered it to him.

“Here,” she said, holding it to his mouth.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, taking a sip. He looked down at his bandages. “Well, that was a botched job.”

“I’m so glad.” She sat down in the chair by his bed.

“Me too.” He nodded, closing his eyes. “When I used to threaten to kill myself when Bowie was dying, I really thought it would be easy. I had all these ideas in my head about how I would do it. There was never any mess the way I imagined it. Or fear. Or pain. It was never going to be painful. Turns out, it isn’t like that.”

She reached out to touch his hand. He wrapped his fingers around hers, opening his eyes.

“This isn’t a movie,” she said. “If you try to kill yourself, you leave a mess.”

They sank into an awkward silence. She could feel his pulse in his hand as she held it. She marvelled at the strength of it. Yesterday, for more than a minute, she had been quite sure that he’d died in front of her on her living room floor. She’d held his wrists together and felt his heartbeat fade to a point where she couldn’t feel it anymore. She had gone insane with hysteria. Losing Marley, watching him die so soon after Bowie, would have been too much for her to live through, she was quite sure of it.

He was staring at her. She knew what he wanted to talk to her about. She narrowed her eyes at him sadly, urging him to talk. He fidgeted uncomfortably under her gaze.

“We never have to tell anyone about what happened,” he whispered.

“Marley—”

“I know it might not be the right thing to do. I’m just telling you that we could keep it between the two of us. Everyone would just think it was Bowie’s—”

“It might be Bowie’s,” Autumn said. “You do know that, don’t you? Close to the end, a couple of times . . .”

Marley paled, so Autumn stopped. The last thing she needed was him fainting on her. She wondered if he’d suspected she and Bowie had managed to make love in the days before he’d passed away, and concluded he probably hadn’t. His face confirmed her suspicion. He was learning for the very first time just how complicated this really was. She eyed him sheepishly, allowing him a moment to come to terms with everything.

Eventually, he shrugged. “It’s still an option.”

“No, it isn’t,” she said. “This is an actual person we are talking about. We can’t do that to them.”

“He’d be so loved. He’d never want for anything. Do you know how rare that is?”

She did know, all too well. Her baby would never yearn for a safe place to sleep or know what it felt like to be hungry or wonder whether anybody actually cared for them. Regardless of which twin was the father of her child, Autumn thought this must be the luckiest foetus that had ever existed.

“What about you?” she asked. “How could you pretend to be its uncle when you might be its father?”

“I could do it,” he said. “It would be hard, but I would do it.”

“Well, just because we could doesn’t mean that we should,” she said. He sighed and shook his head, pointedly drawing his hand away from hers. His head dropped back onto his pillow in defeat.

“Don’t you get tired of doing the right thing all the time?” he asked after a minute. “Can’t you just be a dick for once like everyone else?”

Autumn laughed, covering her face with one hand and reaching out to grab his hand gently again with the other. He accepted her gesture but couldn’t raise a smile for her.

“I was a massive dick the night I got us into this,” she whispered. Between her turmoil over what to do about her pregnancy and her grief over Bowie, for a while Autumn had found their betrayal shamefully easy to forget. She’d realised more than once, to her horror, that she’d even felt sorry for herself. She’d had to remind herself that she’d been irresponsible and deserved the torture that came with the consequences of their mistake.

“We,” he said, correcting her. “There were two of us there, remember?”

“I kissed you first.” She forced herself to stare into his forlorn eyes. She couldn’t remember making that first move, but she had always trusted that Marley had been telling her the truth when he’d spat those words at her the morning after their indiscretion.

“I’m so sorry, Marley.”

“We were both to blame.” He shook his head, his eyes fixed on hers. “I practically asked you to kiss me. I was a split second behind you. It was just mutual stupidity. Autumn, please. Please don’t cry.”

She held her face in both hands, shaking her head and sobbing inconsolably. She was overwhelmed by a sudden want for Bowie. She was frightened of how strongly she felt it. Nobody had warned her that her heart, to protect her, would, in quiet moments, force her mind to forget that he was gone every time she thought about something else for even a minute. The gut-wrenching, terrifying realisation of his absence she’d spent weeks trying to accept so that she no longer had to feel the shock of his death over and over again had been halted almost as soon as she’d realised she was pregnant. Now, she felt devastated all over again. He was really gone. Marley had misinterpreted her distress and she was glad.

“Only you can decide,” he said. “But don’t make a rash decision just because you’re scared of being on your own. I’ll be there. I’ll get up in the night and change nappies if that’s what you want. I’ll teach him to play the guitar. I’ll help him to become a good person. I’ll be there all the time for you both, I promise. You won’t ever be alone, Autumn.”

“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.”