Famous Last Words

Chapter 48

48

Cam

Cam is about to leave for a works drinks event, but, first, is reading Adam’s novel jumpily on her sofa.

The thing nobody knew is that someone else was killed that night. And our killers are not the same person. Things in crime are never as simple as they seem. I was ordered by Dad to kill our dealer. And then someone else killed me.

A text comes in from Libby, who is going to have Polly for the night while Cam and Charlie go to the work event.

Libby: You left yet?

Cam: Almost.

Cam goes to put Adam’s book away.

It might be perhaps too dark, but it’s really good, and Cam has that feeling when you know you have a sale on the horizon. It’s a different genre, but it’s a good book, which is all that ought to matter. She reads a paragraph more:

The supplier killed me, and then a bystander pulled him off me, punched him. And, in doing so, threw him backwards, on to a street bollard, which injured the back of his head.

He would’ve got away with it if he’d left then, but he didn’t: he came back. His conscience got him, the way it does with good people.

Cam shivers and puts it away. She needs to take Polly to Libby’s.

It’s a clear evening but cooler, and Cam can’t help but feel that autumn is beckoning its fingers to her and Polly, the breeze sharp. Libby’s house is white-rendered, its front covered in a shaggy honey monster of ivy, and Cam takes a second to stare at it, her sister’s life contained within.

As Cam watches, she feels a longing for something she can’t name. This happens all the time, and she sometimes wonders if it is for the other life that might have played out. A bigger house, then another, then another. A sibling for Polly. A lit-up orange window in a family home, a row of shoes at the entrance. Or maybe it’s not that, and it’s just something everybody feels.

‘I shouldn’t be eating this,’ Libby says, opening the door and gesturing to a Mars bar in her hand. ‘Come on in,’ she says to Polly.

‘Can I have one?’

‘No,’ Cam says. ‘Dinner soon.’

‘But …?’ Polly says, but is quickly distracted by Libby’s nursery-in-waiting upstairs, where she heads to play with the dollhouse. As Cam watches her daughter ascend the steps, the heels of her bare feet fuzzy peaches, she feels a dart of guilt at her self-sufficient daughter, the only child.

In Libby’s hallway, their eyes meet. ‘I suppose it doesn’t matter if I gain weight any more. I can be as fat as I like,’ Libby says.

‘You’re never fat.’

‘Yeah. Well. Anyway. I can do what I want,’ Libby says.

‘Oh?’ Cam says, the topic opened, as it often is, at random, unexpected moments. Some people invite conversation, Libby drops it right in your lap.

‘Doctor thinks I’m in peri – my levels are all dipping. I had a late period, was so excited I stopped drinking, but it was that.’ Her voice is low. Just off the hallway, her downstairs shower is running, a rainforest sound in the background. Beyond them, the TV hums on some house-hunting programme Si had been watching and had left on. She looks directly at Cam. ‘Isn’t that just fucking typical? Early menopause, to top everything off.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Cam says sincerely. She’s blindsided. Jesus. She can’t go now, can she? Just head to the drinks as planned. Sorry about your menopause and infertility. ‘I wish there was something I could do,’ she says.

‘Yeah, well,’ Libby says. They lapse into silence.

‘It never matters if you gain weight,’ Cam eventually adds, and Libby shrugs equivocally. ‘For fertility treatment, or otherwise.’

‘I can’t do it any more. You know?’ she says. And they stand there in Libby’s hallway and Cam wishes they weren’t having a conversation this important in these circumstances. Snatched time. She wishes she had gone to the appointment with Libby. Been a better sister to her.

‘I do know.’

‘And everyone talks about – I don’t know. Other options, like they’re easy and simple, but they’re not.’

‘Don’t listen to them,’ Cam says. ‘Do what you want to do.’

Libby shrugs, then says, ‘Not everyone gets their happy ending, right?’

‘Right,’ Cam says softly. But something is bugging her, like a floater at the edge of her vision … something nagging … her mind imploring her to make some connection or other.

‘Anyway.’ Libby motions her inside, and Cam steps into her living room, unable to refuse. On a drinks caddy in the corner of Libby and Si’s living room is a vase of fake, bright pink flowers and a golden pineapple ornament. This cabinet changes seasonally. It will be a knitted pumpkin soon.

‘I’m sorry about the hormones,’ Cam says, and she is about to say she’s experienced the same, recently – a feeling of mounting anxiety, sometimes; feeling hot at night; periods late and early – but she doesn’t. Sometimes, you have to put aside your own feelings when someone else’s are worse, that’s all.

‘Yeah. Me too.’

Cam can hear Polly’s footsteps above them.

‘Weird to think this saga has been rumbling on since you had Polly, and she’s upstairs playing by herself,’ Libby says. ‘You can achieve a lot in seven years, or nothing at all.’

‘You have achieved a lot,’ Cam says. And she doesn’t know whether or not it’s the right thing, but she says it anyway, ‘You tried really, really hard to have your baby.’

‘I know,’ Libby says.

‘They would have been lucky to have you,’ she says, and Libby reaches over to grasp her hand, just briefly.

Libby sits down on the sofa, gesturing for Cam to do the same. ‘I think I’ve been a bit of a bitch to you,’ Libby says, looking directly at Cam.

‘What?’ Cam says, surprised.

‘About everything. I don’t know. Giving up on IVF has – I don’t know. It’s made me feel like I can reflect.’

‘I see.’

‘I’m sorry. I know it wasn’t easy for you to just give up on Luke. I know I made it seem – like it should be simple, maybe.’

‘You helped a lot, actually,’ Cam says, which is a lie. The frantic decluttering was born out of wanting to move on, but she hasn’t actually done so. ‘You knew I needed to move on. You were right.’ A second lie.

‘I was harsh with you,’ Libby says. She sinks back into the sofa, her arm slung along its back. ‘I was … well. Do you know something?’ she says, and she laughs a little, but it isn’t a genuine laugh. It’s sardonic: darkness contained within it.

‘What?’ Cam says, wary, knowing she is not telling the whole truth to her sister and not wanting to receive the opposite in return, not ready to.

‘I was expecting you to move on from what is a grief. But the truth is …’

‘What?’

‘I am so fucking jealous of you,’ Libby says. ‘Infertility makes you just – so jealous. Some days, my whole body hurts with it. You know?’

‘I know,’ Cam says, watching her sister mess with a pale, fluffy throw.

‘I guess …’ Libby continues. ‘It was – like, before Luke, you had everything.’

‘Did I?’ Cam says.

‘Yeah.’

And Cam could argue that things are not always how they seem, that everyone has problems behind the scenes – that look how she and Luke ended up – but it would be the wrong thing to do. Doesn’t she know more than anyone that she really did have it all, if only for the briefest of moments? Nine sweet months, then gone.

‘I wanted to hurt you,’ Libby says. ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry. You had the great job and the baby.’ On this last word, her voice cracks, and Cam fully feels it.

‘I don’t think either of us has had a good hand,’ she says truthfully, thinking she knows who she’d rather be: she’d choose this life every time, with Polly. And something about this realization helps her. Whatever happens, she’s still got her daughter, singing something tuneless upstairs to herself.

‘Well, I’m sorry, regardless,’ Libby says. ‘You can talk to me about Luke. You can.’

‘It’s fine,’ Cam says, thinking, It’s not that simple.

‘I wanted him not to come back,’ Libby says. ‘At times. I’m sorry. Infertility – it really fucks you up. Makes you wish for bad things to happen to everyone all the time. Or maybe that’s just how I am.’

‘It’s not you,’ Cam says, truthfully this time. ‘I have wished for that a lot, too, over the years.’ After all, who hasn’t sat and wished for bad things to happen to other people, beautiful people, successful people? It’s just that people don’t usually admit it, that’s all. ‘That’s just grief, I think,’ she adds, hoping the use of this word might be held by her sister in the way that she intends it.

‘I bet,’ Libby says, and she scoots closer to Cam on the sofa. ‘You deserved better than cantankerous old me, in those years.’

‘Likewise, I’m sure.’ She hesitates, wanting to tell Libby she was jealous of her, too, but decides not to.

‘And I know there are options,’ Libby continues obliviously. ‘That’s what everyone says.’

‘ Have you thought about that?’ Cam asks tentatively.

Libby goes to answer, but Polly interrupts, walking into the room, holding her hairbrush out. ‘Can my mane be brushed, before dinner?’ she says. ‘It feels tangled.’ For a second, Cam thinks she’s asking Libby, but she isn’t: she’s asking Cam, of course she is. Her mother. ‘What’re you talking about?’ she asks, and, internally, Cam cringes.

‘Well, why I don’t have any children, and what I’m going to do about that,’ Libby says, her voice matter-of-fact.

Polly’s footsteps stop, her hand extended, frozen in the air, holding her hairbrush out, and Cam thinks about the power of honesty. About how they’ve tried to cover so much stuff up, but look: isn’t it better to just be honest? Polly’s nearly eight, not two. She can handle more than Cam thinks.

‘Oh,’ she says slowly. ‘I see. I didn’t know you wanted to have children.’

‘Very much.’

‘Oh no,’ Polly says, her expression verging on horrified.

‘But do you know what?’

‘What?’

‘If I had had my own, I wouldn’t have spent quite so much time with you.’

Cam’s eyes mist over, right there in Libby’s quiet and calm sitting room. Seven years of trying, but look. Look at them. Polly crosses to Libby, hands her the brush instead, Libby in loco parentis to Cam’s fatherless daughter. Perhaps sometimes you can make the best of things. It doesn’t mean you didn’t want something else, but …

‘Well, that’s – what’s that word? Like when something good happens out of something bad?’ Polly asks, and Cam smiles, thinking of all the years and years and years that have rushed by in what now feels like an instant.

‘A silver lining,’ Libby says, and Cam thinks about how Libby and Polly wouldn’t be so close if Luke hadn’t gone, thinking about how Libby feels as if Polly is her own in a way she might not otherwise, wondering if Luke misses Polly, if he is alive out there somewhere, and thinking, thinking, thinking whether all this pain has been worth it, or if that is just something people who experience tragedies tell themselves in order to survive.

Later, on the street, Cam looks up at the house. In the window, Libby bends her head down towards Polly’s. Cam stares for a few more moments, looking in at the dimly lit room. They have the same profile. She’d never noticed.

The drinks reception is less salubrious than a rooftop party sounds: a few neglected plants in pots, a small area. Nice views, but, really, a few concrete slabs. The agency has done its best, and a man at an ice-cream-style cart is serving cocktails.

Stuart is there, Charlie not yet, and Cam wanders over to him. Not only because she feels unsafe all the time these days, but because she wants refuge from her own thoughts.

‘Adam’s here,’ Stuart says, pointing. He grabs a miniature doughnut from a passing waiter. ‘Not big enough,’ he says, gesturing with it.

‘So he is,’ Cam says. ‘He’s delivered the next,’ she says in a low voice. ‘It’s really good. Kind of experimental.’

Stuart looks at Adam, and Cam sees him through Stuart’s eyes in the way that you do sometimes. She isn’t sure her boss ever met him properly. Adam is slightly scruffy, but in a good way; Luke once described him as a bit neurotic-looking . The kind of person who looks self-conscious doing nothing.

‘How?’

‘Not his style really. A very dark thriller. I hope they will like it, though, and he can just be … who he is. One of those writers who can do it all.’

‘How dark is dark?’

‘Fairly. A kid from some crime family mixed up in drugs, then he’s murdered and narrates his own investigation,’ she says, thinking how funny it is how art sometimes mirrors life, but something is creeping up behind her, some insistent, niggling thought. ‘He’s just revealed that someone killed his killer, too.’

‘A double murder,’ Stuart says, and something begins to tick in Cam’s mind, an insistent, metronome-like sound. ‘Well, crime sells,’ he adds, smiling impassively. Cam sips her Bloody Mary and gazes at London’s skyline, not saying anything. She doesn’t care enough about what sells. She cares about what is good.

‘I hope the next gap won’t be as long.’

‘I’ve seen worse,’ Stuart says. ‘Plus, when they’ve written the tricky second novel, they often regain the confidence, you know? Third comes quickly.’

The rooftop is beginning to fill up. Cam sees Charlie arrive, a tall, thin form who helps himself to a drink somehow ironically. Cam hides a smile: he doesn’t want to be here, either. Her cynical sometimes-boyfriend. It’s just past seven thirty, still warm, and one of Cam’s colleagues has put fairy lights up, winding them around the railings at the edge of the building. They are white, bright, the sky blue behind them. Cam lets a breath out.

‘Have you finished it?’ Stuart says.

‘No!’ Cam says. ‘I might have to go into hiding. I’ve been so slack with it. It’s been – I don’t know. It’s quite a scary book. But I’ve been busy.’ Stuart – famed for his brilliant notes that sometimes take months – nods, takes another canapé from a waiter who offers them. He swallows it whole, unself-conscious, while Cam’s eyes keep going back to Adam. He’s standing, looking out over London, his back to her, body language somewhat tense-looking, which is normal for him. He’s wearing a messenger bag slung cross-body, holding a proof he must have picked up. ‘I’d better go and fess up,’ she says. ‘Notes to follow, as they say …’

Stuart raises his eyebrows to her, and she says, ‘I’ll come and find you in a bit. Rescue me, if it escalates!’

‘Ha.’ He moves off to talk to somebody else, taking another doughnut for the road.

Charlie joins Cam as she is moving through the throng to Adam. ‘How long before we escape?’ he says.

‘I reckon we need to do an hour,’ she says, struck by how nice it is to know someone who is not unlike herself. Luke would have wanted to stay at this party until the very end. ‘Then to mine?’

Charlie dimples a smile.

‘Come meet Adam,’ she says.

‘The Jiffy bag client!’

‘The very same.’

‘Adam,’ Cam says, arriving at his side. They’re seven floors up, the drop to the ground beneath them vertiginous. Tiny cars and people move below them, appearing slow, their details blurred, and Cam will never not think of warehouse roofs.

‘Aha,’ Adam says. ‘I’m sorry – I’ve been in hiding.’

‘This is Charlie,’ she says. She doesn’t add further detail. To categorize him is overly complicated.

Charlie shakes Adam’s hand, and Cam thinks how overwhelming it must be to post your soul through someone’s letter box. ‘How’s things?’ she asks him. And something about seeing him – he is the most reclusive of her clients – brings it all back. That manuscript she first read on maternity leave, in snatched night-time hours. The bidding war from almost every imprint in the industry that she missed in the aftermath of Luke disappearing. Its publication day just after her return to work, the bittersweetness of it. Mired in grief, Cam had been almost surprised – and perhaps slightly relieved – that she had been expected to carry on with life. Launching books, doing laundry, making dinners. And that book – that book which Cam had seen like a nugget of gold in the rubble. The book she found on maternity leave. The book she launched after the siege. That book that became so huge, that everybody had loved so much. It had been like a little party every day at work for a while, but obviously much more fun, for Cam.

‘It’s odd,’ Cam says. ‘I have been thinking about Out of Sight a lot, lately. Kind of life-affirming, when you look back.’ She glances to Charlie. ‘It was a real ride.’

Charlie raises his palms. ‘I’ve actually read it,’ he says. ‘Loved it.’

‘Oh, God,’ Adam says, grimaces. ‘Sometimes I hate that book.’

‘No!’ Cam says.

‘No, really. I think all novelists feel that way about a huge, huge hit.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t,’ she says. ‘You wrote that book and you’re still you, so you can do it again.’

A slightly awkward silence seems to settle between the three of them, and Cam decides to acknowledge it head on, rather than ignore it. This year, no matter what happens with Luke, has been about facing things. Moving house, moving on. Telling Charlie her biggest secret. Working with Niall. They’ve tried their hardest to find the truth, and maybe that is what matters most.

‘I’m loving what I’ve read so far,’ she says to Adam.

‘She really is,’ Charlie backs her up. ‘Reading at all hours.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I have no feedback for you. Yet.’

Adam sips what looks like a mojito, saying nothing, but doesn’t take his eyes off her. ‘What d’you mean?’ he says eventually, his tone strange. He gestures to the view. ‘Was hoping for some inspiration here.’

‘Inspiration?’ Cam says, wondering why this conversation feels so confused, and so loaded, too.

‘For the next book.’

‘Slow down,’ Cam says. ‘The next next book can wait. Surely?’ She’s surprised by the sentiment: Adam took almost seven years to deliver the second book. She can’t pretend she wouldn’t like the third sooner, but …

He catches her eye. ‘It’s been seven years?’ he says, a guffaw escaping. ‘ Slow down – isn’t the agent’s advice usually to speed up?’

Charlie’s brow begins to furrow, wondering perhaps if he ought to be privy to this sort of strategic conversation between agent and client.

‘Well, yes, but … I mean, by all means, write your third if you’re happy to!’

It’s Adam’s turn to frown, now. ‘What?’ he says. He downs his drink, and Cam suddenly wonders if he might think she’s baiting him or something. Maybe he doesn’t want to discuss his long break in books here and now, is embarrassed to do so.

She waves a hand as Stuart drifts by, talking to somebody in foreign rights. ‘Let’s talk about something else,’ she says. ‘Whatever you want.’

‘My third?’ he asks. ‘I haven’t written my second.’ He says it slowly, like she is an idiot.

Cam stares at Adam, dumbfounded. ‘You posted me your book,’ she says. ‘Your crime novel …’

‘No I didn’t,’ Adam says.

‘Oh,’ Charlie says awkwardly. ‘Someone else, maybe? Something unsolicited?’ he says, clearly trying to smooth things over.

Adam blinks, perplexed and – clearly – ashamed.

‘But …’ Cam says. ‘It was sent in a Jiffy bag. Like you did with the first. In Baskerville,’ she adds lamely, though it occurs to her that this is a common font. ‘I said thank you for your book at the bookshop launch!’

‘I wondered what you meant by that,’ he says. ‘I thought you meant my debut … I didn’t send you a book, Cam,’ he says.

And, distantly, in Cam’s mind, she’s aware she’s committed a social faux pas. But she doesn’t care. Can’t seem to. Because of the implications of what he’s saying.

He didn’t write that anonymous book.

Somebody else did. And they wanted her, and only her, to see it.