Page 20 of Famous Last Words

A weighty silence seems to settle between them, though Cam doesn’t know why. ‘That’s a good thing for us to offer up,’ Smith says.

Cam winces. Clearly, they want to entice him out, like he is … what? An animal? Prey? Cam feels dirty, as though she wants to shower this grubbiness off – no, go out and wash herself off in rain that, this summer, doesn’t seem to want to come. She’s giving them information, preferences.Things that they will use to bait her husband. How can Cam be complicit in this? It is these thoughts which she uses to justify it, keeping her secret Lewisham house to herself.

Smith disappears. ‘OK,’ Lambert says one last time into the phone, then hangs up.

‘This burglary,’ he says. And oh please, please let him say Luke found out who did it, is teaching them a lesson, something irrational but perhaps understandable, something that, if they can end the situation, he will recover from eventually, serve his time for. These are now Cam’s hopes, as surreal as they are.

‘Your husband didn’t report the burglary,’ he says, voice low: the tone of a man aware a woman’s husband has lied to her.

‘What?’

‘No phone call was made.’

‘That’s – that’s not … I was there,’ Cam says, but she immediately thinks that, actually, she wasn’t. He was in the garden: a strange place to make a call.

‘Did you ever follow up yourself?’

‘No. He did it all. Maybe he – was on hold, and thought he’d try later?’

‘I’m sorry. There’s no police record of it. No call, no crime number. Nothing.’

‘He did call. Isawhim. Surely it’s an – an admin error?’

‘And Vodafone say no call was made that afternoon.’

Cam pauses, stunned. ‘So – what? He pretended?’

A beat. ‘Yeah. Looks like it.’

The doorbell goes, interrupting Cam’s thoughts. ‘I’ll get it. Stay put,’ Smith says quickly, and Cam is surprised and thenshame-filled at the notion that she is no longer at liberty to answer her own front door.

She inches along the sofa and picks up Luke’s coat. A scarf is tucked in the pocket. Cam bought it for him. It’s merino, navy blue. She pulls it out and it runs between her hands as softly as running water. She holds it to her face. It smells of him. Earthy and clean. She stays there for a few minutes, scarf held to her chest, just trying to slow her breathing against his scent. It’s funny, she thinks: it hasn’t been coat weather for months.

She looks up, startled, as Smith arrives with Libby.

Tall, broad-shouldered, her sister is as safe a pair of hands as it is possible to be, and Cam can only think of one person she’d rather see more. She stands there on the threshold of the living room, hand still on the doorknob, and says, ‘Sorry, I—’ She looks at Smith, evidently feeling awkward. ‘I needed to – to grab the sling to carry Polly, when I collect her – sorry …’ A curl has sprung out from her ponytail, and she grabs at it scattily.

Cam moves towards her. She’s standing in a patch of sun in the living room, and molten heat runs down Cam’s back as she reaches her, her only other living relative. She feels her shoulders drop several inches. She relaxes into the hug in the way that happens sometimes when surrounded by people who have known you for all of your life.

Libby doesn’t say anything, just makes a funny kind of gesture as she releases Cam, hands spread slightly, like,What can I say?

Cam draws a breath in. ‘They say Luke – There’s a hostage situation in Bermondsey and they say – he’s caught up in it.’

Smith stands impassively by the door. Cam darts a lookover at her. Is this conversation being observed? Why can’t she even give her a moment’s privacy?

‘What?’ Libby says. Her lips blanch. Somewhere deep inside, Cam is touched by Libby’s concern for Luke, is ashamed that she is about to obliterate it.

‘They say he started it. He’s taken three hostages. With a gun.’ She pauses, then says it again, to affirm it to herself as much as to Libby. ‘He’s got a gun.’

‘What?’ Libby says again, and she says it, this time, bullishly, in the way she only does when truly shocked. Cam is perversely glad to see this surprises her sister as much as her. And something about this, the sunlight, her sister’s safe presence in her living room, it makes Cam double over, right there in front of Smith.

‘Tell me what to do,’ she says, breathing, panicking, her hands on her knees like an exhausted athlete. ‘Just tell me what to do.’ It’s a sentence that comes easily from her, the younger to the elder sibling.

‘For once I don’t know,’ Libby says, a flash of dark humour in her voice. She looks like their mother, something Cam finds comforting today. Both of their parents are dead, same as Luke’s. Something Cam used to find tragic but, today, she can’t quite locate that specific grief amid the shock.

‘I …’ Cam is, for once, lost for words. ‘I have to go,’ she says simply. ‘To the scene.’

‘I … Jesus, Cam,’ Libby says, and Cam is unsettled by her seriousness, how changed their relationship feels right now, one that is built on trading stupid texts and unconditional love.

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