Famous Last Words

Chapter 54

54

Cam

Charlie is making them coffees and all Cam can think about is that her husband’s story lies on her sofa in her living room. It seems to glow and throb in there like an ancient talisman. Cam is desperate to read it, but doesn’t yet want Charlie to leave, either, in case somebody is waiting for her outside.

‘I used to be able to have caffeine and go to sleep,’ Charlie chatters, ‘but I just can’t, after turning forty. Will be up all night.’

‘I used to drink buckets of the stuff with Luke,’ Cam replies, her husband’s presence so vibrant in the room with her that she can’t not mention him. ‘Hardly do now.’

In the living room, Charlie turns on the lamp himself, fingers scurrying up the pole to find the switch by the bulb. Something about it momentarily unsettles Cam, but she’s distracted by the light it provides, which illuminates the bound manuscript, right there on the sofa. Bright white pages, black text. So mundane. The perfect disguise.

Neither of them mentions it, even though Cam is itching to. Charlie overheard the conversation, but has clearly decided not to pry.

Darkness fully closes in outside. Charlie beckons Cam towards him on the sofa. ‘Anyway,’ she says, injecting a note of finality into her tone. ‘It’s been so nice. Let’s have the coffees and then I think I need to get an early night.’

Charlie’s face betrays some strong emotion Cam hasn’t seen in his eyes before. A flash, like the lightning just after the thunder. Blink and you’d miss it.

‘I thought I’d stay – at least for a while,’ he says. ‘That person outside, I …’

‘Really, it’s fine,’ she says, thinking only: the book, the book, the book.

‘Let’s see how you feel when I’ve finished.’ He raises the mug to her. He takes a sip, his eyes on her. ‘Wait – I forgot to stir it.’ He grimaces as he swallows.

‘I’ll do it,’ she says, taking the cup.

In the kitchen, the tiles are cool underneath her feet, the window cracked open, a long strand of wisteria attempting to snake its way in. It’s a female kitchen, with a pink toaster that Polly wanted. A paperback proof Cam has been reading is splayed on the side. She misses, suddenly, a man’s touch. A discarded tie, a wallet, a set of cufflinks. She stirs Charlie’s coffee, staring at the swirling topography of the bitter blackness and milk as they mix. Is she delusional? Is this book merely nothing? An unsolicited manuscript, meant to be packaged up and sold, nothing more than that?

Charlie is sitting where he was in the living room when she brings in the coffee, inclined back on to the cushions, his legs crossed at the ankles on the table.

But the book. The book, so central in Cam’s mind it may as well be the North Star, the book has moved. At least a foot along the sofa, its pages slightly rifled-looking, the front cover sheet now skewed: he’s read something in it.

Her footsteps slow. Charlie turns his head to her.

And their eyes connect. He tilts his head, just a fraction. The slightest movement. You’d miss it, if you weren’t looking for it.