Famous Last Words

Chapter 56

56

Cam

‘Why has the book moved?’ Cam says.

‘What book?’

‘The book? The book … that Adam …’ She points to it. ‘Did you read it?’

‘The Jiffy bag book?’

‘Yes.’

‘No,’ Charlie says, his expression a perfect picture of mild curiosity. And he’s a good liar, Cam thinks. Exceptional, in fact. But he is lying. Because the book has moved. And there is only one person in the room who could have moved it.

‘Shall we watch something?’ Charlie says, perhaps too quickly. ‘I’ve got the jitters already from one sip of coffee! I need to relax.’

His neck is flushed, a corned-beef pattern creeping across it. Cam’s never seen that before on cool, collected him.

She stares mutely, not saying anything, a hundred thousand thoughts happening internally but none making it out of her mouth and into the real world. Maybe he was only curious. Maybe he’s embarrassed by that. But why, really, would he lie like this? Why would he flush so red?

‘Sure,’ she says, buying time while she thinks.

He fiddles with the remote control. ‘First the boiling water tap, then your telly,’ he says, jabbing buttons.

Cam blinks, looks back down at the sofa. There’s the book, and, just along from it, his phone. As she’s staring at it, it lights up.

She takes a step towards it, her body full of fizzy and sharp adrenaline, thinking that the world is upending in the most domestic of settings, the way it always seems to do for her.

The text previews, and she can just about read it, standing behind the sofa, squinting at it.

George: Thank you. We’re heading to Dungeness now. Keep Camilla there.

A hundred spiders walk their way up Cam’s spine. She takes a step backwards, two, her teeth chattering like she has a fever.

Keep Camilla there .

We’re heading to Dungeness now .

Charlie’s been sent to keep an eye on her. To infiltrate her. All this time.

He looks up at her, perhaps oblivious, perhaps only pretending to be. And Cam realizes, the truth slowly falling into place, that she can’t leave. He may be her Charlie, in his burgundy shirt, fiddling with her television, so his presence seems benign – but it isn’t. She is not tied up. She is not bound and gagged. But she is his hostage, no doubt about it. And, meantime, her husband is in danger.

Her husband is alive and in Dungeness.

And Cam is trapped here. She’s got to get to him. But she’s got to save herself, too. If she lets on, who knows what Charlie might do? And what he might tell Luke’s enemies?

She doesn’t try to look at the book. In fact, she plays an Oscar-winning role at being normal while she summons all the thrillers she’s ever read to try to work out how she is going to get out of here, and go to Dungeness.

She doesn’t know whether Charlie saw her read the text message, but they talk about his prior relationship, again, and about Libby. Neither of them mentions Luke or the book. And perhaps it’s the lack of mention that is more damning than the text: Charlie knows. And he knows Cam knows, too.

She’s on borrowed time. She’s got to leave.

And it comes to her as she thinks of the book, Luke’s book, his private love note to her, and then she knows. She knows what she is going to do to get out of this.

‘Bed?’ Cam says, and she’s sure Charlie looks at her in surprise. But she has a plan.

Cam undresses in the bathroom, the way she sometimes does with him. She doesn’t know if Charlie has tracked her phone, so she contacts nobody. When she emerges in a T-shirt and shorts he is lying on her bed, on Luke’s side. He’s stayed over only a few times, his presence unfamiliar, and now sinister, too. She sits down next to him, her Judas, her enemy, the man whose job it is to keep her here.

‘All right?’ he says, turning to her. And, he’s going to want to … Cam begins to shiver, the skin on her body tightening, hairs rising. Her limbs, her nerves: they know she is in danger.

She lies facing him, and he runs a hand along her hip, as soft and as tickling as a feather. Won’t he know if she doesn’t …

Cam stares down at his hand, those square, neat fingernails. She knows them so well, but, it turns out, she doesn’t at all.

He’s staring at her body, his eyes wet pools.

Cam looks back at him, and she knows she should, she knows it will help her, knows he might fall deeply asleep afterwards, but she can’t, she just can’t do it. Not with him. Not now she knows. And not with Luke – perhaps – alive somewhere … relying on her to get this right.

‘Ah, maybe tomorrow morning,’ she says to him, trying to imbue her rejection with wry humour, but it doesn’t work, the tone of it is all wrong, hitting a flat note when she meant a sharp. ‘I had too many canapés.’

‘Oh, for sure,’ he says, withdrawing his hand and avoiding eye contact.

‘I’m just – I also keep thinking about work,’ she says. ‘I feel like …’ Her mind spins, trying to make up something credible. ‘I don’t know. Just a bit like I don’t fit in there any more.’ She’s babbling, killing time. Faking intimacy.

‘How come?’ Charlie says, and they’re still half clothed, still lying on her bed facing each other, but something indistinct has settled between them like a mist they can sense but not see. Does he know? Does he know she’s worked it out?

‘Just – maybe it’s time to make a move to another agency,’ she says, though she doesn’t feel this whatsoever.

‘Maybe,’ he says, and she slides under the covers and places her back to him, even though every single animal instinct in her tells her not to do this. Some limbic alarm system, do not turn your back on him , on the enemy. But she does it, and he puts his arms around her, and she tries not to think of them as a trap. Tries to relax and slow her breathing down.

‘What do you think?’ she asks. ‘It’s just … I’ve been there so long, and Luke is never coming back – I don’t know, I …’

As the words leave her mouth, she feels it. His body tenses, just for a microsecond, then relaxes again, and he draws her closer. His warm thighs against the backs of hers. The ticking of a clock out in the hallway. She’s been here so many times, felt so safe and, all the while, he was her antagonist.

‘Maybe moving would be good,’ he says. ‘Moving house and moving job.’ He is mumbling, his voice sleepy, and Cam drops her shoulders, exhales slowly, willing him to tip over into unconsciousness and release his grip on her so she can figure out what to do.

She thinks back to how they met. Him walking into her agency. A new research assistant who didn’t – actually – seem to have much idea of how publishing worked. A man in his forties embarking on a job like that. It’s all … so obvious. He was a stooge. Sent to infiltrate her life.

But why? And why then? She is forced to wait half an hour, mind whirring, until Charlie’s breathing becomes, finally, even. He is not asleep, she doesn’t think, but he at least has stopped anticipating her escape.

Cam lies next to the man sent to capture her and watches the shadows fast-moving across the ceiling like shapes at the bottom of the ocean. Charlie rolls on to his back, but she feels his hand come near to her wrist. If he shifted just a little, he could grab her arm. Stop her from getting out of bed. Stop her … She wonders if he fell in love, even just slightly. She wonders if she meant anything at all to him.

And then she remembers it. The paragraph in Luke’s book that made her shiver. She hadn’t quite known why, at the time, but …

If anything …

The same phrase he used on his final note to her. If anything . Was this his final clue to her?

That, if anything … if anyone ever wanted to escape the family business, the weapon I always used was buried in the garden.

Luke’s book isn’t only an explanation: it is a series of instructions, encoded just for her. He said once, if she were ever drowning, he would rescue her. And he is trying to.

And everything that has been leading up to this moment lines up like dominos, their rectangular bodies so perfectly arranged that they fall one after another after another. The book. His words. The upside-down house she has been so afraid of is her final saviour. There is a door, right there, to the garden, less than two feet from her. The person watching her isn’t outside: he’s in. It’s all ready for her. She just needs to do it.

Fast or slow, she has to decide, and in the end she goes with fast. She vaults out of bed, running, in just a T-shirt and shorts, thankful for a pair of flip-flops by the door, and for the endless summer heat, and wrenches open the door. Within seconds, he’s on his feet, too, alert, but her head start mattered.

She turns on her phone’s torch, looking for disturbed earth. But Charlie’s right behind her, grabbing at her waist. He misses, and Cam lunges randomly.

And she sees it. A mound, by one of her rosebushes. Luke must have been here the night the security light clicked on. Knew that sending the book was a risk. Knew she was endangered by him. Protected her, the way he will always have wanted to do.

It’s a pistol, barely buried. Loaded and heavy, the metal cool and just becoming dewy. She is lying stretched across the lawn with her hands on it. And all she is thinking is that she was right he is alive.

Cam takes it, lifts it, her body knowing what to do. She turns around and Charlie sees it. He gives up, lets his arms fall to his sides, looking at her in the security light’s white-hot beam.

‘Cam …’ he says, and his voice becomes pleading.

‘Stop,’ she shouts. ‘How could you?’

‘I was – I was told to. It wasn’t …’

‘Why?’ Cam says. ‘Why then?’

Charlie drops his head, seems to deliberate, then speaks: ‘He started getting careless,’ he says. ‘When you started to look into selling the house. He knew about it. He came back … he came here one night, and one of our associates doing a drop-off saw someone matching his description. We were on his tail within moments. We thought he might try to contact you again. And he did … with the coordinates. You told me yourself.’

And that’s what makes Cam do it. Not the danger she’s in. Not how he lunges at her as she cocks the gun, but because of how coldly he said that. That her husband, alive and well, was going to come back for her. That he tried to.

And, as though it was always, always going to end this way, consequences be damned, Cam shoots, just once.

Her aim is true.