Famous Last Words

Chapter 28

28

Cam couldn’t feel less like going to a publishing do the next night, but it’s the launch of one of her newest client’s books, and she can’t miss it. She’s in the kitchen, with Polly sitting on the counter, swinging her legs and clapping her hands rhythmically in a way so affected Cam is sure it’s come from a new friend.

‘Auntie Libby’s here,’ Polly says suddenly, pointing to the front door, visible beyond the hallway and down the stairs.

Libby lets herself in and calls out, ‘I’m here, dudes!’

But Cam immediately notices that there is something odd and careful about her walk. God, it must be exhausting to be Libby. Everyone who knows her always scrutinizing her for signs of pregnancy.

Without saying anything more, Libby arrives in the kitchen and nudges Cam out of the way, putting two slices of bread into the toaster: Polly’s current pre-bed snack. Something about Libby knowing this makes Cam’s heart happy. The familiarity, the ease of it. It takes a village, and here is hers.

‘Good day?’ Cam says.

‘Surviving – sold a house. Well, Si did actually.’

‘Ooh, the messy one?’

‘Yes. Pair of rich twats. Too important to clean. Plus, the bin was full of their Deliveroos. Ever think you’re in the wrong job?’

‘What did they do?’

‘They work in oil or something – I pretended to understand.’

Cam smiles. ‘Let’s set up an oil rig,’ she says, and Libby snorts.

‘Si would love that,’ she says. ‘He described the house as being full of lovely natural lived-in accoutrements on the listing. He’d happily quit. Is it the romcom book? Tonight? I read the copy you gave me.’

‘It is,’ Cam says.

‘Boring one,’ Polly says, though she hasn’t read it. But – to Cam’s shame – her daughter thinks most books are tedious.

‘I liked it,’ Libby says. ‘I thought it was very well edited. Although – saccharine ending.’

‘You’re both the wrong readership,’ Cam says with a laugh. ‘For different reasons.’

Polly giggles, too, though in the way kids do when they don’t quite get the joke but want to.

‘Who’s the target readership? People with books all over their bed?’ Libby asks.

‘Yes. Exactly,’ Cam says, suddenly remembering that she was the exact same at university, studying English. Libby had arrived to visit, and said, ‘Er, why are you sharing a bed with D. H. Lawrence?’

Libby grabs the butter from the fridge. ‘Crusts off?’ she says to Polly. She looks at Cam. ‘It’s good you’re going out again,’ she says, her tone warm and genuine – for Libby – but Cam finds it threatening, like walking too close to an open fire.

Libby is of the view that Cam ought to have moved on. It began as advice for Cam’s own good but has segued into generalized tension if Cam doesn’t appear to be living quite normally, or is maudlin sometimes on anniversaries, or has let friendships slip (all true).

‘Well, it’s a client,’ Cam says. ‘But I appreciate the sentiment: your sad sister, finally getting out.’

‘No …’ Libby says, though she doesn’t seem to mean it.

Cam studies Libby closely. Is she being slightly tentative about her body, her stomach? She watches her. Yes, she is. It’s almost like she’s injured … and is guarding herself. Cam inhales, saying nothing, only hoping.

Suddenly, Cam wants to stay here. Find out where Libby’s at. Sit in loungewear and catch up. ‘God, I wish I didn’t have to go,’ she says.

Libby throws her a quick look. ‘No. We just said! It’s good for you to go.’

Cam shrugs, irritated. She can see the humanity in what Libby wants for her, but Cam was always introverted. Now more so, but it’s hardly like she used to go raving.

‘Use the babysitter,’ Libby says, finishing buttering the toast.

‘You’re not a babysitter,’ Cam says, and Libby’s dimples appear either side of her mouth. A small smile.

‘Libby, do you share a bed with Uncle Si?’ Polly says, from nowhere.

‘Polly, that’s very personal,’ Cam says.

‘It’s fine,’ Libby says with a laugh. ‘Yes, we do. A big bed.’

Cam’s body is tensed. Is this some sort of father chat rearing its head again? Or nothing? She glances at her sister, but her face is impassive, relaxed. It’s fine, she tells herself. The decision you have made not to tell Polly the full truth yet is fine: it’s better for her.

‘Every night?’ Polly presses.

‘Every night,’ Libby says, arranging the toast on to two plates. ‘Though less if he snores. Shall we have this in bed, then brush teeth?’ Her tone is bombastic, but she throws Cam a look. Just that, an interested look, but there’s curiosity in it, too.

Cam is standing next to a bookcase full of leather tomes and an editor from Simon the room swims slightly. She isn’t used to drinking much, but maybe she could be.

‘Our last meeting was only a few weeks before – everything,’ Adrienne says.

Cam glances up at her sharply. ‘He wasn’t working on anything I didn’t know about, was he?’ she asks.

‘He wasn’t working on anything controversial at all. He met me to allow me to ask a couple of questions about his singer. He agreed to blag a free lunch, I think.’

‘Of course,’ Cam says, unable to hide a small smile. That sounds like Luke all right.

‘He was the last person I’d have imagined to … He was – not … like that.’

Cam, previously breathing in the anecdote like a nostalgic perfume, recoils. The past tense slices through her like a guillotine. Sharp and fast, a clean beheading. Was . She wants to tell Adrienne that she really thinks Luke is alive out there somewhere, but doesn’t.

‘I know,’ she says quietly. She finishes her Prosecco and immediately looks for more. The main lights go off and a few lamps pop on here and there in the bookshop. The dim air smells of old paper, and at least Cam feels at home here.

‘He and I had a long chat over lunch,’ Adrienne continues. ‘I think about it often. I had had this non-fiction totally tank, lovely author, but it just didn’t land. Sold a hundred copies.’

‘Oh – jeez.’

‘Yeah, and I chatted to Luke about it, and he said, “I find it helpful, at times, to think of Cam, and how much fiction means to her. To real readers, sales don’t matter, prizes don’t matter. She sits in a chair every night and just has the time of her life.”’

Cam shivers there in the warm bookshop. Her husband’s unheard observation of her, reported back to her here, years after the event, seven years since he left. The information is old – so, so far in the deep past – but, nevertheless, it feels to Cam like Luke has made eye contact with her, somewhere. Tears mist over and then quickly clear. The crying lasts less time these days, but still comes so readily, the same brimming wateriness she’s carried for years, like all of her emotions are just closer to the surface: a river perpetually about to burst its banks and overflow.

‘That’s nice to hear,’ she says thickly as a waiter tops up her drink again. She stares down into the chain-linked bubbles, eyes wet, thinking of Charlie, and his cynicism about publishing.

Cam spots one of her authors’ books on a shelf nearby, spine out, and pulls it out and props it up, cover out. Every little bit does seem to help in these situations. Maybe it isn’t pointless. Maybe fiction is one of life’s great comforts. Maybe it does matter as much as she feels it does. Maybe Luke is out there somewhere, not just at a lunch in the past, talking about his wife. Maybe their story will get its third act.

‘I can’t believe you never found out – or you never found … what happened to him.’ Adrienne takes her drink and sips it again.

‘No,’ Cam says glumly. And she can feel herself unfurling, here in the bookshop, out of her sad and hard shell forged in a single day, seven years ago. ‘You think you will, or you’ll get over it, or even that you will learn to live with the uncertainty, but the reality is that you don’t. You just remain sad about it.’ She pauses, then adds: ‘Still searching.’ It’s the nearest she can come to telling the real, full, embarrassing truth.

‘I bet,’ Adrienne says softly. ‘I cannot, I really cannot imagine.’ She puts her hand to her chest, still holding her glass, looking dolefully at Cam. ‘I wish I’d got to see him again. He cancelled our last meeting for that funeral.’

‘What? What funeral?’ Cam says, her voice too sharp. She has no idea what Adrienne means; she is, all this time later, still looking for clues. ‘When?’

‘I don’t know,’ Adrienne says, curiosity crossing her brows, then opening her features in surprise. ‘Um … it must have been very close to – the siege.’

‘Nobody we knew had died,’ Cam says, thinking that you don’t use a funeral as an excuse. You use a doctor’s appointment, a meeting clash, childcare woes. A funeral is macabre, specific and taboo. She looks down, blinks, wants to tip the entire glass of Prosecco down her neck.

‘Right.’

‘Is there some way you can tell me when, precisely?’ Cam says. ‘Sorry to ask …’

Adrienne holds her glass and works her phone out of her pocket. ‘Sure,’ she says. ‘Yeah. My work calendar will – it’ll probably go back that far, won’t it? God, sorry about this,’ she says, and she does look mortified. ‘I didn’t mean to – throw a cat amongst the pigeons.’

‘It’s fine.’

Adrienne puts her glass on a nearby shelf and begins typing, two-handed, on her phone. And Cam thinks that something is happening, something is brewing. She can feel it as close as the storm outside.

Nothing for years. Nothing, nothing, nothing – just the steadfast trying to move on, like swimming against a current, putting in all that effort just to get nowhere. Reminding herself of what he did. A double murder of two anonymous souls.

But now this. Coordinates. Information. Cam knows somewhere deep inside her that it is significant.

She stares at Adrienne’s hammered silver thumb ring as she types. It throws little diamonds of light over the walls. She’s looking at her slim wrists, her purple-painted nails, thinking nothing. Trying to think nothing. Trying not to hope.

‘The sixteenth of June,’ Adrienne says. ‘Like I said. He said he had a funeral. He got his phone out to check his calendar. I think it said Whitechapel.’

‘That’s five days before the … the siege.’

‘I’m sorry – I … I didn’t think anything of it.’ The unsaid lingers in the air between them: And I didn’t think it mattered to you any more .

‘No. And why would you?’ Cam says.

‘I mean …’ Adrienne says, but the sentence goes nowhere.

‘I’d better go,’ Cam says. She’s had too much to drink; she’s said too much. Suddenly, the quaint surroundings feel menacing. Cam has always cautioned authors about running their mouth at publishing dos fuelled by alcohol, and here she is, doing just that herself. Oversharing. Asking for information. She’s forgotten herself.

‘Sure, nice to chat,’ Adrienne says lightly. ‘And yeah – I hope … I hope I haven’t upset you. I don’t know.’

Cam says goodbye to her client, leaves and heads out on to the wet, hot street. The air smells of evening petrichor and she takes the long way home, across Waterloo Bridge, thinking of those coordinates further north. Her head is swimming with Prosecco and the conversation she’s just had. A funeral.

Halfway across, she stops and stares down at where the deep, navy-blue water sits and sloshes. And right there, in the middle of the bridge, she googles it. Funeral 16 June 2017, Whitechapel . Maybe it’ll show something. Some archive somewhere.

And it does.