Famous Last Words

Chapter 33

33

Libby: Gordon’s.

Libby: Just us two??

Cam: Sure

Libby: Can you be less enthusiastic?

Cam: Sure!!!!!!

It’s the beginning of Libby’s fortieth celebrations, but as Cam approaches Gordon’s Bar that evening, she finds she’d rather be anywhere else. Polly is with a sitter; Libby and Cam always spend their birthdays together, something Luke and Si used to complain about.

Cam’s mind is swirling with new information. The unknown woman approaching her, then not arriving at their meeting point, and tenuous links to funerals and the slightly grubby feeling of having been to a graveside that has nothing to do with her.

Libby has already got herself a glass of wine. Cam clocks it and understands immediately: the IVF is not up for discussion. It is a semaphore, a message conveyed without words. Cam feels a guilty stab that Libby feels she has to do this, still, all these years into it. She points to it as Cam arrives. ‘You and I are going to get fucking pissed.’

‘Any particular reason?’

‘Just birthday.’

Cam sits down, her insides cringing. She doesn’t want to get drunk, stay out late.

Gordon’s is London’s oldest wine bar. It is underground, candlelit, the walls porous, the ceilings above great semi-circles over their heads, built into the old Tube. Even though it’s still light outside, down here it’s night-time, which suits Cam just fine.

‘But firstly,’ Libby says.

‘What?’

‘We were phoned today about your application. Seems they reach out to everybody to verify Luke is really gone,’ Libby says, but to her credit she does say it cagily.

‘Oh,’ Cam says. She gestures to the wine. ‘OK – yes. Load me up. What did they want to know?’

‘Basically, if he’s ever made contact.’

‘Oh, great,’ Cam says drily. ‘Just stick it on the form if he reaches out to you, right?’

‘Sure will,’ Libby says. ‘I don’t know how you put up with the admin over this – it’s so dystopian.’

‘No choice.’

‘Still.’

‘I’ll probably never move, now. Not for ages, anyway. I don’t get the impression it’ll be a quick process,’ Cam says, but what she doesn’t add is that she’s glad of this. That the moving on can be protracted and painful. Let it be so. Let his side of the bedroom stay the way it is, for ever.

They sit and sip. Neither of them can hold their drink but, really, Cam just wants to sink into it now that Luke’s come up. This candlelit night, this artificial liquid happiness, the past.

‘They’ve asked for our recollection of the events. I guess to check they match yours,’ Libby continues.

‘Hmm,’ Cam says, and perhaps something betrays her on her face, perhaps her sister just knows her well, she isn’t sure which, but Libby says:

‘What?’ She swirls her drink like a wine taster, red staining the edges of the glass.

‘Nothing.’

‘No. What?’

‘Oh, I just got this weird text last week,’ Cam says. It burbles out of her, a secret she’s found it easy to keep to herself until time spent with somebody who loves her. Something about the underground location, the flickering candlelight … the fact that Libby is her only intimate acquaintance, everyone else pushed away.

‘Show me?’ Libby says, grabbing for Cam’s phone and scrolling without permission. ‘This one?’ She waves the phone, and Cam suddenly feels protective of it, of her archive with Luke, but of the spam text, too. The same way she felt when people passed Polly around when she was tiny. That’s mine.

‘What do you think?’

It doesn’t land as she hoped. ‘I don’t …’ Libby runs her fingertips up the stem of her wine glass as she reads the text, her gaze lingering on it. ‘Sorry – you’re not saying you think this was him, are you?’ she says, and it’s this precise language that rankles Cam. You think this was him . There’s a distance in those words, a severalty. The equivalent of Sorry if you think I have offended you .

‘No, I’m not saying anything,’ Cam replies, defensive. And she isn’t, not really.

Another pause. ‘Did you go?’

‘Yes.’

‘Cam!’

‘What?’ she says, irritated.

‘Was anyone there?’

‘No.’

‘Obviously. It’s clearly spam.’

‘Have you ever had that kind of spam?’

‘I get all sorts,’ Libby says. ‘I really like Charlie,’ she says, very deliberately changing the subject the way somebody might wrench the steering wheel from the passenger seat. ‘Hasn’t it been almost six months now?’ she asks, and Cam wonders if she makes the error deliberately.

‘Not even four,’ she says, voice clipped.

And, God, why did Cam tell Libby, of all people? She knows Libby’s propaganda about moving on. She knows she’s a natural cynic, too. Cam’s eyes are wet. Suddenly, she wants a girl friend. Holly, her old friend. A real, true ally, who would tell her she was right even when she was far in the wrong.

‘Not exactly still in first-date territory,’ Libby remarks.

At the time, Cam had had two dreams in a row that Luke came back for her. The day after the second one, she met Charlie. Literally like some sort of romantic hero, tall, dark and handsome, and she thought it had been a sign. Where’s that optimism gone?

‘Mmm,’ Cam says, thinking that she does like Charlie, she does … ‘But …’

‘But what?’

‘I don’t know.’

Libby talks over her. ‘Declaring Luke dead is just absolutely the right next step. You could even move in with Charlie, in time,’ she says, and Cam sometimes wonders, the way people perhaps do about their families, if Libby would behave this way with someone she barely knew, a passing office acquaintance. And if not, why is the standard so much lower the higher the intimacy gets?

‘It doesn’t feel like the right step ,’ Cam says, hurt. Her sister may be caustic, but she hardly ever is to Cam. ‘It feels like second best.’

‘I get that,’ Libby says flatly. ‘You know – I had this dream about you. Ages ago.’

‘What dream?’ Cam says, thinking again of the dreams she has about Luke. Sometimes she just misses him: a figure disappearing into a crowd or boarding a train where the doors close too fast behind him. Sometimes she hears him, wakes and he isn’t there.

‘Well,’ Libby says, and Cam thinks that she doesn’t actually want to know, has that feeling of trepidation she gets when around somebody intent on telling her their opinion, collateral be damned. The wine will make it worse. That it’s her birthday will make it worse. Suddenly, Cam wants to escape.

‘You were with Charlie, properly with him. And you were just – you had moved on. You know? You smiled more. You shopped. You saw friends again. Had a different house. Took the piss.’

‘I do those things.’

‘Not like you once did. You still have his socks in his bedside table, Cam’

‘I don’t need to hear this,’ Cam says, raising a hand in warning. ‘I have always been an introvert. And I’ll get rid of his clothes when I’m ready.’

‘And I was so happy for you,’ Libby continues and – oh. That slices through Cam, cutting her into ribbons. ‘We had a barbecue, in the dream. We texted all the time again.’

‘We do text all the time!’

‘OK then, you initiated it,’ and Cam thinks, Ouch. ‘I was so fucking happy for you,’ Libby repeats, and Cam is shocked to see her eyes have a sheen to them. Perhaps, in all of this, Libby feels she’s lost her sister, rather than her brother-in-law. ‘You know what,’ Libby says, and Cam wonders if she’s drunk already. ‘Don’t you think seven years is so long for this?’

And Cam wants to rant, suddenly, words bursting through her as powerful as the heat of the summer. How, exactly, do you move on? she wants to say. Tell me. Tell me how to stop searching for answers. Tell me how to be fine with abandonment. Tell me how to embrace being a single parent. It isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, not in these circumstances, not when you’re alone and disciplining and cooking and bedtiming and lying to your child every single day about who their father truly is.

But she doesn’t say all of this. She takes a breath, instead.

A scented summer breeze gusts its way down into the cellar. The candles dart and dance but don’t go out, although the rising and falling light lends the bar a confessional feel.

‘What does Polly think about moving?’ Libby says, evidently trying to push Cam into the future and not back into the past.

‘Haven’t told her yet – I’m waiting to see what happens …’

Libby pours more wine for both of them. Cam wonders, if she gets very drunk now, whether she might be able to forget the things that were said before.

‘She will probably google him at some point.’

Cam’s back prickles in anger and something else. She hates the advice single parenthood attracts, even from her sister. ‘Well,’ she says, but then stops, not knowing what to say. ‘I know that,’ she adds lamely.

Cam avoids most confrontation and so she stares at her hands, wondering how much time must pass until she can look up and change the subject. She decides a full minute, sitting there feeling foolish, thinking that even though she doesn’t have the whole story about Luke, he’s still gone, still left, still stayed far away.

‘You could just try,’ Libby says, her voice soft.

‘To what?’

‘To stop looking. To really, truly, move on.’ She catches Cam’s gaze, and Cam thinks she’s going to crack a joke, to ease the tension, but she doesn’t. Not this time.

‘Do you know, I actually don’t know how to do that, Libby,’ Cam says honestly.

‘It’s a mindset thing.’

‘I know.’

‘You could be happy again. Not in limbo.’ She pauses. ‘If nothing ever changes – do you think you will still want to be where you are in ten years’ time?’

And something about this question and its simplicity actually makes Cam want to change something. This isn’t fiction. This isn’t a story. Luke really may never come back. Can Cam dedicate her whole life to finding somebody who killed two men – maybe more? Maybe was involved in another double murder, two months before the seige.

To consign Luke to the past, and the secrets he holds with him. To leave him behind.

To stop bothering grieving people in Whitechapel. To leave those loose threads loose, and find happiness with someone else. Maybe somewhere else, too.

‘We could value the house tomorrow. For when the form is sorted.’

‘Maybe.’

‘They’ll want to know its value to determine Luke’s share for his estate.’

‘Yeah,’ Cam says.

They lapse into silence.

‘You haven’t even said happy birthday,’ Libby says eventually.

Cam bites her lip. ‘I’m sorry. Happy birthday,’ she says, shame-faced and sad, trying to inject some heartfelt meaning into her tone.

God, she wants to leave, suddenly, be somewhere silent: the bath, her ears underwater. Something about the bright weather outside up above, the dingy underground, her upside-down house that she is desperate to leave, the inverted world she now lives in, they spook her. Who sent that text? Who killed Alexander Hale and James Lancaster? Why would Luke have attended the funeral? Where is the unknown woman from the school gate?

‘When I said the bugger didn’t stick around,’ Libby says, raising her glass, ‘I meant I was pregnant from the IVF. Two pink lines. Then I lost it. Six weeks. I didn’t say sooner … I couldn’t say. It was too …’

‘Oh,’ Cam says, a long, drawn-out emotion that she can’t name emerging which blows their table candle out, dancing this way and then that before dying in a plume of smoke that smells like winter. Happiness, sadness, blindsidedness rush up through Cam. The way Libby was guarding her stomach: it was due to loss, not life. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I thought you meant – what they implanted …’ Oh, God, is that wording insensitive? ‘I’m so sorry, Libby.’

‘Me, too,’ Libby says. She sinks the glass, pours another. ‘Least I can drink.’

‘True.’

‘Lots.’

‘Yes. Will you …’

‘I don’t know, Cam. It’s like – it’s one thing not getting pregnant. It’s another thing to lose … It’s like a death. It is a death.’ Somehow, this is yet more evidence, to Cam, that the world is a mean, upside-down sort of place.

Cam nods, her mouth set in a grim line. ‘Of course. I understand.’

‘You don’t really,’ Libby says, but she says it without feeling or resentment in her voice. Cam shrugs, giving Libby the freedom to lash out if she wants to. She understands, now. She will talk to somebody else about Luke. Or probably nobody. It doesn’t matter.

‘It’s just been so long,’ Libby says. More wine down. And it’s true. Rounds and rounds of IVF. A few months of the contraceptive pill to regulate a cycle, a procedure to flush out the Fallopian tubes, two cycles for that to heal … suddenly, years and years and years pass by. ‘I didn’t get all the early scans,’ Libby says. ‘Thought it would be buying into fear.’

‘Well, I buy into fear all the time,’ Cam says.

‘Ha. We tried steroids this time. The guy thinks I’ve got natural killer cells that attack the embryo. But no dice.’

‘I wish it had worked out,’ Cam says simply, thinking how fortunate she is, how tight she will hold Polly tonight, later, when the sitter leaves. She makes a mental note not to mention her to Libby for the rest of the night.

‘Yeah. Well. Do you know, I really tell myself I don’t expect it to. But the sad thing is, actually, every time I do.’

‘I do, too,’ Cam lies quietly.

They spend the rest of the evening discussing Si’s business, Libby’s work, not Luke, and not Polly, either.

Outside, in the evening heat, they stand for a few seconds. Just as they are about to hug goodbye, Libby speaks, but a passing bus drowns out what she says.

‘Huh?’ Cam asks.

‘The form asked about the last time I saw him.’

‘Oh …’

‘I don’t know if I ever told you. You were napping. We called in to see Polly; he said he didn’t want to wake you. And all I remember is him there on the doorstep, holding her. His feet were bare and he said he was about to have an ice cream.’

Something that feels like home joins Cam right there out on terra firma, the lights of London all around her.

‘I didn’t know that,’ she says softly. ‘But it sounds like Luke.’

‘I know. Take care,’ Libby says, something Cam isn’t sure she’s ever said to her. It’s an apology of sorts, an olive branch.

Cam leaves, walks to the Underground, glad she didn’t lash out at her sister.

She boards the Tube, and thinks suddenly how much she appreciates that small nugget of a memory about her husband. That he had enjoyed an ice cream that day, while holding their daughter close. It was real. It had happened. Something she didn’t know about him, didn’t know that he had experienced. Something new to her, as though he hasn’t gone at all, is just outside, just round the corner, just – somewhere. Waiting for her.

Finally home, Cam stands in her kitchen, thinking, Damn Libby. Damn her directness. And damn her dream, too, containing that other Cam existing somewhere, the one who has managed to move on. Attending barbecues with her sister and boyfriend. Somebody who feels joy. Who sends silly texts. Who isn’t afraid at the school gate. Ten years from now: where does she want to be?

And maybe Libby’s memory of Luke is a poignant parting shot. Maybe it’s a way to say goodbye to him. To feel his existence but to let him go.

Cam lets a huge gust of air out of her lungs and allows it to propel her.

She begins to go around with a bin liner, ridding herself of the last of Luke. She knows it’s mad, but she doesn’t care. Fuck it, she thinks, finding the things she has been too afraid to throw out. She starts on his side of the bedroom, where his possessions largely lie preserved. She takes the book he was reading and ceremoniously adds it to the bin bag. Partially to prove something to Libby, partially to herself. His old T-shirt he slept in. A box of cufflinks. Take the lot of it.

Say she does proceed with getting him declared dead. Say she does sell. She’ll need to move on then. Luke wouldn’t even know her new address to find her. No matter that he could find her through work. No matter that they’d reunite, somehow. This simple fact matters to Cam.

She feels like she’s motor-powered, can’t stop. She sweeps through the kitchen, slinging into the bag a pint glass he stole from a pub, his dressing gown, a framed photo of the two of them. She checks his office cabinets, their television unit, the kitchen drawer that’s full of batteries and elastic bands and lightbulbs. Anything to do with him. Anything at all. It’s gone. And, with those objects, Cam is trying to rid herself of herself, too. Sad, introverted her. Be gone, Cam, and get a life.

And that’s where she finds it, at the back of his bedside table, the place that has remained the most Luke . tucked between it and the wall. A scrap of paper she’s not seen before. And on it, undoubtedly, her husband’s handwriting.

H. Grace – 0203 1393934 .

Cam hesitates. She can’t help but trace a finger over the numbers, inscribed by Luke over seven years ago. He was here. He was real, she thinks, touching their blue imprints. So much of their relationship was writing. Representing him, reading him, texting him. And now here is all that remains: a relic.

Cam stands at the fork in the road. Moving on will be hard, she tells herself. Fraught with challenges and decisions. It has to be intentional: time has not cured this problem in seven years. Behaviour will. This is the first challenge, and she must rise above it, throw this note away.

But she can’t do it. The compulsion rears up, and she can’t resist it.

She googles Grace and the number, but no results come up for it. Without much to lose, she withholds her number and her pride, then dials, standing at the patio doors, looking out into the dark garden.

‘Hello,’ a male voice answers immediately, despite the late hour, despite how much time has passed since her husband must have written it down. Cam paces away from the windows, seeing moving shadows, and speaks. ‘I wondered—Sorry, I found your number in my husband’s things, and …’

He waits, saying nothing, which unnerves Cam. ‘And I … I wondered, sorry, because of some circumstances around my husband, I wondered – would you mind telling me …’ She lets her voice trail off in the silence. ‘The circumstances in which he was in touch with you?’

He pauses. Cam can hear his breathing. ‘I wouldn’t be at liberty to discuss that,’ he says. ‘Sorry.’

‘Why?’ she asks. ‘Sorry – you’re Mr Grace …?’

‘Harry.’ Something begins to percolate in Cam’s brain. Harry … Harry.

‘Why can’t you discuss it?’

‘Business,’ he answers.

‘Business?’ she echoes.

A dial tone. Cam pulls the phone away from her ear, shocked, calls back, but he doesn’t answer. Three rings then voicemail: a dismissal.

There are never any answers. None. She’s a fool.

She stands there, her back to the patio doors, still clueless.

God. She is a joke. What does it matter?

She vowed to move on ten minutes ago, and now what is she doing? Calling dodgy businessmen who may or may not have known her husband, the criminal. She’s sullied herself, once more. Been to metaphorical Shadwell in search of answers. If Luke were here, they’d immediately adopt this as a moniker. Going to Shadwell: when you have a failure of willpower.

The rest of the night heralds the beginning of a downward descent for Cam. Into the history of all of her devices, searching for clues. Googling his number.

And then the rest.

Within seconds, under the sheets, she is existing only in data, and in memories: her old emails to him; their ancient texts. She is no longer searching. She’s merely immersing. Everything is preserved in the Cloud – at her end, at least – for her to visit whenever she needs to: a private museum of them.

She scrolls through their iMessages, the last things he said to her, that chicken salad he asked for, and back and back and back through the days preceding the siege. The things the iPhones remember: every thought, every moment of married life, it sometimes feels like.

Crickets chirp outside and what used to be a noisy, traffic-filled road is quieter these days, electric vehicles creeping by like silent cats.

Luke: What do you think of these trainers: cool or Sad Dad act?

Cam: Sad Dad act.

Luke: No?!

Cam: Sorry pal.

The trainers he wanted – Vejas – came into fashion and then went out again. The café where she bought the salad has now closed.

Cam’s eyes begin to burn as more texts load, and she continues to scroll up and up, climbing a ladder to the past, wondering if she might see something hidden somehow, somewhere. Something that connects everything: the burglary, the siege, the hostages, the disappearance, the bodies, Alexander Hale, James Lancaster, Harry Grace, the coordinates …

She moves backwards through time, through their digital footprint. After half an hour, she has scrolled up so far that her phone has become slow, stilted as she tries to force it to go further. Eventually, it freezes, and she panics. ‘No, no, no,’ she says. ‘No.’ If it won’t scroll up, they’re lost for ever, that beautiful life that they had thought was mundane, annoying, even.

We got milk?

And:

Bath time is sooo irritating – half an hour of stone cold drudgery x

Is it a black or green bin week?

And:

Yes, always yes to coffee, a caramel latte please, just peeling the potatoes!

And now:

Just this. Blankness.

Nothing before February 2017. It’s as far as her phone will go. She sits up, throwing the duvet off her head, her chest clammy with sweat. She can’t lose their old texts. There must be some way to export them, somewhere, to some place safe.

She can’t move on. She can’t do it. She panics, her phone not responding. She lets it drop down the side of the bed, like a bungee jumper who doesn’t return.