Page 38 of Famous Last Words

After who knows how long, she walks into the living room.

She checks her phone. She dimly registers that Penguin has offered a six-figure sum in a two-book deal for Adam’s novel that she doesn’t even open beyond the preview.

She ignores everyone, looks at her texts from yesterday with Luke, from before they went to the café, from before before before.

Cam: Are you working very hard or can you have Polly while I have a five minute peaceful wee?!

Luke: Absolutely! Hang on!

Cam: It was a good wee. Thank you.

Luke: xx

But then she spies the volume of other texts she’s had. Over sixty.

Holly: OMG – just seen the news. Are you OK?

Stuart: Don’t worry about work. All here if you need us.

There are more. She becomes quickly overwhelmed by them. They don’t make sense to her, don’t seem to mean anything. Friend after friend after friend and relatives and distant acquaintances. Holly: her closest friend, a former commissioning editor, now freelance, saying she’s seen the news. A text Cam herself might send, but is furious at receiving.

The police must have told the media his name. Cam blinks dumbly on the sofa.

So everyone knows. Everyone knows what he’s done.

How can she go on? She holds her phone to her chest. How can she?

She checks BBC News. There’s a live feed.

15:50Siege ends in dramatic shooting

15:55Plea for information: Suspect at large and dangerous named as Luke Deschamps

17:01RECAP: How did we get here?

18:10BREAKING: Last note left by criminal husband seen by press

Cam can’t help but open the final item, and there it is. Her private communication, his last words to her, beamed as large as if projected on to the night sky for all to see. Insult added to injury after injury.

‘It’s been so lovely with you both’ is the cryptic message left from husband to bewildered wife the morning he chose to take three hostages in a siege that gripped London, it reads. Cam clicks off it in disgust. How could they? It might as well be a diary entry. Her cheeks heat with shame. Everyone will have read it. Everyone will know.

#LondonSiege is the top trending topic on Twitter.

Absolutely disgusting, innocent people taken, one user has written.

They should have just gone in and blown him up – terrorists are terrorists, another comment says. Cam’s chest seems to expand and contract, a cartoon heart beating in shock.

Did anyone see THE NOTE he left his wife? WTF?? #LondonSiege

She flips the phone face down on to the sofa, where it creates a pale white rim of light, and sits forward, unable to bear it.

She wanders through her house. Their belongings are disturbed, put together but not quite right, which makes Cam feel uneasy, like when a hotel room has been cleaned without your knowing.

The search has been thorough, most things looked through. Cam leafs listlessly through a notepad on the hall table, at the John le Carré novel he was reading, at their calendar hanging on the wall in the kitchen. Nothing. No clues left remaining. What did she expect?

She pads downstairs again and into the nursery, where Polly is sleeping. On her stomach, bottom in the air, blonde hair mussed all over the place like whipped meringues. Cam traces a finger down her cheek, just once, thinking that this is how. This is how she goes on. Your father is a murderer, Cam thinks. Poor, poor you. Worse off than me.

She picks her up, unable to resist, her daughter a warm, sweet-scented heavy sack. She still has that newborn scrunch, at times: legs held up near her body like a frog; and Cam presses her baby to her abdomen, the way she grew her, nuzzles her nose into her daughter’s neck.

---