How to get previous property value in "OnAfterChange"? / How to pass value from "OnBeforeChange" to "OnAfterChange"?

I have an item on the server where I can set a property. When the property changes,  I want to have some logic (related items to be created).

I currently have the code for this in the "OnBeforeChange" event method, but this doesn't work for new items that are being added, probably because the item doesn't properly exist yet.
I can implement the logic in "OnAfterChange" instead - but there I don't have information about the previous value, so I don't know if it has changed.

I have tried adding a temporary property to the item, but that does not work, apparently the OnAfterChange method gets its own copy of the item.
Is there a better solution to this than adding a new property "previous_value" where I can store the value? Because I don't really need the value afterwards, it's just for this logic.