Page 112 of Famous Last Words

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, sheknows 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.Doeshe 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. Theticking 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 ofinstructions, 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.

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