Chapter Twenty #4
They danced on the spot for a moment, twirling slowly around and around.
Maddie was no longer hiding her face, she was distracted from her embarrassment at being on display by torturous thoughts about James.
This time tomorrow, he would no longer be there to help her block the world out.
There would be no nook to protect her, nobody to whisper sweet nothings against her skin.
James would be away for at least three months before he could visit her for a weekend.
It could be potentially longer, if the agency said they needed him to stay.
This moment, right now, was a new ‘time before’.
They had but a few precious hours left to spend together.
She knew this was a wedding and she was supposed to socialise, but she just wanted to be with James.
She was irritated that Pip was interrupting them.
Her brother seemed to read her mind. “I’ll give you back to him in a minute, but I need to talk to you first.”
Maddie sighed and shook her head, fairly sure she knew what this was about.
She had sensed last night that Pip wasn’t content with the conclusion of their chat in her bedroom.
She was so tired of having this conversation.
She wished they would all leave her alone.
Right now, their repetitive arguments felt like a real waste of time.
“Please don’t, Pip,” Maddie said, her eyes filling with frustrated tears.
“You know I normally wouldn’t, Maddie — but in Bowie’s absence, I have to.” Maddie was thrown by the mention of their older brother. She blinked her tears away, using her eyes to question him.
“What has Bowie got to do with this?” she asked, breathless. Tired and irritated, she found herself angry at Pip for bringing him up.
“I know what you did for him, the night he died,” Pip said.
Maddie’s eyes went wide. Her heart quickened, the world slowed down, the room felt small. She was no longer sure whether she was swaying because she was dancing or because she was going to faint.
Pip held her a little tighter, holding her up on her feet. His mouth was set in a hard straight line, but his eyes were soft, his expression gentle. “You did the right thing,” he reassured her. “I have never, ever doubted that for a single second.”
“I don’t understand . . .”
“I was going to do what you did,” Pip said, sighing deeply.
“That night, when he was begging us to help him, I wanted to. I couldn’t stand listening to him in pain anymore, watching him slowly suffer and die, so I went to bed with everyone else and then I sneaked downstairs and tried to find his tablets, but they had already gone.
I crept to his bedroom, and I heard you, Autumn and Marley in there with him, so I went back to bed, and I waited. ”
“Why didn’t you come in?” Maddie asked. Silent tears of shame and sadness slid down her cheeks. She knew they would alarm anyone who saw them, so she hid her face from view, turning her brother so that she was facing the wall.
“I didn’t really want to see it,” Pip said, wincing guiltily. “I knew it would fuck me up. I was doing it to help him, but he had you guys. He wasn’t going to suffer anymore, and that was all that mattered.”
Maddie whispered Pip’s name. She was dangerously close to sobbing. Her brother had been so incredibly young back then, just eighteen years old. She couldn’t believe he had borne this burden alone all this time.
“Why didn’t you tell me you knew?” she asked. She could tell by his smile that Pip already had an answer for that.
“Ever since we lost him, whenever I’ve been in a situation where I didn’t know what to do, I ask myself what Bowie would do.
Marley does the same thing, and I know why.
It helps me. It’s been my way of keeping him alive, I guess.
In the depths of my grief, when I really wanted to tell you that I knew, I’d ask myself what he would do, and I felt like he would stay silent and support you from afar.
Like he would keep what he knew to himself, unless he really needed to come clean. ”
Maddie agreed. She could not recall a single time Bowie had inserted himself in a situation that did not require his input.
The biggest interference he’d ever orchestrated was bringing Marley and Autumn together, and he’d only done that for their own good.
Stubborn and damagingly independent, Autumn and Marley needed each other, but they would never have found their way to each other on their own.
“I’m doing the same thing now,” Pip said, drawing her attention back to him. “Calling on Bowie to stop you from making the biggest mistake of your life, Mads.”
Maddie gazed up at him, realising all at once that she had not been imagining it in her bedroom the day before.
Pip was making a concerted effort to be more like Bowie, and it looked good on him.
He was more extroverted than Bowie, more brash and insistent, but the steady attentiveness and calm delivery of advice her older brother had deployed was being expertly emulated by the youngest Whittle sibling.
Maddie found herself trusting him, and interested in hearing what he had to say.
“I know why you’re doing what you’re doing,” Pip continued. “It’s the same reason you let Bowie go that night. You’re trying to do what is best for someone you love. But this isn’t Bowie all over again. Bowie wanted to go. James does not.”
Maddie closed her eyes in a poor attempt to stop her tears. She wished she could explain how ardently she longed to vacate her own head. She desperately wanted to let go of her fear that she would make someone she loved unhappy, but she didn’t know how to. Right on cue, Pip started talking again.
“Look at him,” he said, squeezing her hands in an effort to encourage her to open her eyes.
He was watching James, who now sat at a table in the corner on his own, his shoulders slumped low, his eyes sparkling with emotion.
Maddie followed his gaze. Her heart sank at the sight of him. “Does he look happy to you?” Pip asked.
Maddie shook her head.
“That’s why you’re doing this, right?” he asked her.
Maddie nodded, her heartbeat quickening. “He doesn’t want an ordinary life,” she said. “He wants adventure...”
She stopped because Pip was shaking his head and she knew, somehow, that her little brother — who she had loved mainly because he was vivacious and silly and unserious up until this point — was about to spell this out to her in a way that would make her feel like she’d made a big deal of something that was nothing.
He was going to save her from herself. And she would love him all the more because of it.
Pip gestured to the middle of the room, where Marley and Autumn danced, their eyes locked on each other, their foreheads pressed together, their faces glowing with adoration.
Maddie’s face broke into an involuntary smile.
She had never seen two people look more giddy at the sight of each other.
It made her heart swell. “Look at them,” Pip said.
“On the face of it, Marley has given up so much for Autumn. Remember Mum’s reaction when he told us he was leaving what we considered his dream job, after he’d struggled for years for a way back in?
Remember his insistence that we should leave him alone, that he was making a decision based on what was best for his family?
Well, he’s never been happier, and I can absolutely guarantee that’s because Autumn and Benjamin and the life they have built together is the real dream.
Their happiness as a unit is the ultimate goal.
The three of them together, as a family, that’s the real adventure. ”
Maddie had never thought of it that way. It was true, her brother’s heart had always been on the stage, but she had never seen him happier than he was right now.
“You can have that,” Pip whispered, gesturing once more to James.
“What if he resents me in the future?” Maddie spoke her fears aloud.
“Autumn could say the same thing about Marley,” Pip said.
“Marley wouldn’t do that, though.”
“Neither would James,” Pip said. Maddie gazed up at him, searching for any hint of uncertainty, but there was nothing.
He seemed completely resolute. “We all agree on this,” Pip said, gazing pointedly around the room.
“Even Autumn, though I know she hasn’t said it to you.
We’re your family, we love you, we trust you to make your own decisions, but we also want you to be happy.
We all think James means what he says. That he’s the right man for you.
Even Dad, despite how worried he is. And if he were here, Maddie, Bowie would, too. ”
Maddie felt her eyes fill with tears. Pip smiled gently down at her, his lip quivering tellingly.
“Please, for your own sake, go and put him out of his misery,” Pip whispered, his eyes flitting to a forlorn-looking James.
Maddie followed his gaze, her heart soaring at the sight of the man she loved.
Pip squeezed her hands and looked down at her.
He had the same dopey smile spread across his face that Bowie had so often gifted her with when they had chatted.
“If this is about making him happy, then you have to change your mind — I can absolutely guarantee that man will never be happy ever again unless he has your permission to be by your side,” Pip said, with a satisfied nod.
Maddie was crying, but she smiled in spite of herself.
Somehow, Pip had done it. Maddie no longer felt that sending James away was the right thing to do for either of them.
In fact, it felt utterly absurd. She resisted the urge to drop her brother and run to James to tell him she had changed her mind, pulling him into a hug, instead.
“Thank you, Pip,” she whispered, holding him close.
He squeezed her tight and kissed her head. “Don’t thank me,” he said. “Thank Bowie.”