Famous Last Words

Chapter 50

50

Cam

Cam makes her excuses to Adam and tries to leave, weaving her way across the rooftop, past authors and agents and people serving drinks.

‘Shit,’ she says, under her breath to Charlie.

‘I know – really awkward,’ he says.

Her mind is reeling.

All this time. All this time. That book’s been in her house. She tells herself it’s a general submission, some author who’s found her address.

But she doesn’t think so.

The kid selling the drugs. From a crime family.

One of the murdered teens. The double murder.

The other teen, from a rival crime family.

The Hales and the Lancasters.

The man who killed the narrator’s killer accidentally, in trying to help. The good Samaritan returns to the scene, and is spotted.

Luke, driving that night to Whitechapel. Using more fuel than she expected. Covering up his locations. Crying over onions. Attending a funeral.

The family of one of the dead teenagers finds out who he is.

Luke, who had people break in to ID him, in a burglary that wasn’t. Luke, who had two men sent to kill him.

She opens her eyes. Could it be? She didn’t notice. She’d been so sure it was Adam’s manuscript. And maybe this was his aim. A dead narrator. The story not told from Luke’s perspective. A disguise.

It could be about him.

It could be from him.

She.

Has.

Got.

To.

Get.

That.

Book.

And, if it’s his … he was definitely alive to deliver it to her. She blinks. This thought is too huge, like she’s staring at a close-up and can’t see the whole picture.

She needs to get out of here.

‘Shall we go?’ she says to Charlie.

‘Definitely,’ he says, oblivious to her internal turmoil, not having connected the dots himself.

‘Are you going?’ Stuart says to her as they’re on their way out, unaware. ‘Can I introduce you to one of my newest authors?’ He is standing with a woman in her mid-thirties, who is wearing a long slip skirt and a nervous expression on her face.

‘Sure,’ Cam says, distracted, not wanting to leave work things early again, not wanting to appear still unhinged, still stuck in the past. ‘Hi,’ she says. Charlie’s arm is around her waist, and all she can think about is how she can renege on their plans, her child-free night, and be alone with that book.

‘What are you writing?’ she asks Stuart’s author mechanically.

‘Well,’ she starts, but Cam doesn’t listen to the rest.

She stands there, rictus grin, thinking, My husband wrote his story down for me.

‘… hoping to reach readers who like Lisa Jewell,’ the woman finishes, and Cam is smiling and nodding along. A rights assistant joins them, and Stuart tells her Adam’s delivered his manuscript, and Cam can’t bear to correct him.

Stuart pats her on the shoulder as she leaves, and she’s glad of him, her colleague of over a decade who’s never once asked too much of her.

Cam is silent on the walk from the Tube to her house. She hasn’t found a way to tell Charlie he isn’t coming in, after all. She needs to find an excuse, and quick. She’ll tell him she’s changed her mind about everything.

At her front door, she turns to him, but he’s looking behind him. ‘What was that?’ he says.

‘Huh?’

‘I’m sure I saw someone go into the alley behind yours.’

Cam’s back goes cold. Her face feels numb with fear. All those times she thought she was being watched.

‘Will you look?’ she says, the book temporarily forgotten.

Charlie nods once, expression serious, and Cam lets herself inside, stands nervously in the hallway, waiting for him. Hoping he’s wrong.

‘Couldn’t get them. I saw someone leaving, but they ran,’ Charlie says, letting himself in five minutes later, cheeks red with exertion.

‘So weird.’

‘Really.’

He pauses, then says, ‘Coffee?’ and she thinks, Yes, OK. He can stay, and keep her safe. The book is more valuable than she could have imagined. Somebody might want it.

And as she joins Charlie in her kitchen, all she is thinking is what better way for Luke to tell her his side of the story – if he remains in danger – than to disguise it in fiction? It even fooled her. Names changed for legal reasons. Her husband, writing it from the perspective of a teenager now deceased. She should’ve guessed: her husband, the ghostwriter.