Page 56 of Famous Last Words

‘Where are you?’ Cam asks, not answering directly.

‘Oh, nowhere as nice as that. I love it there, the little houses with the bedrooms downstairs?’

‘That’s it,’ Cam says, and she’s got to get out of here. She doesn’t know these women, and so the scales are unevenly balanced. They know where she lives: what if they know who she is? She knows it is irrational, but she can’t help it. She turns away from them, folding her arms across her body. And, she swears, she canfeelit: the look they exchange about her.

Come on, Polly, she thinks, willing her daughter to get moving.

Cam checks her email. She needs more immersion than her phone will afford. She has a submission from a debut author called Jenny, about a woman who discovers her son is a member of an incel group online. Interesting pitch, she thinks, and opens the manuscript right there at the school gate.

It’s bone cold on the Saturday when I decided to finally follow Nate. He doesn’t notice at all, his lit-up gaze drawn downwards always to the bright mobile phone in his hand. We go like this, me a few hundred yards behind him, for the mile to the bus stop. There is nowhere to hide in the blank-skied winter, but he doesn’t look over his shoulder. Not even once.

Cam’s breathing instantly slows. She’s away from the heat, the school gate, and she’s there. Somewhere else, someoneelse. She requests the full manuscript immediately. Anything that grips her she requests: that’s her rule. As simple as that. Notworried about genre, about saleability. Good books find a home with Cam.

Polly stops talking and eventually arrives, and Cam puts her phone away, rushing to her, squatting down to her level. ‘What’s new?’ she says to her, one of their phrases, and Polly beams at Cam.

‘Sandwiches for lunch, Sam has a cat, my new friend has moved into a house called the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ she says in her typical Polly way, streams of information bursting forth like a geyser.

Polly reaches her arms out to Cam, and there is something so wholesome about this, so pure, it makes Cam forget everything: parenthood is an exercise in mindfulness that you didn’t even know you needed.

Cam holds her to her chest. ‘And a butterfly came into the class!’ Polly exclaims so loudly, right into Cam’s ear. Cam’s eyes film with tears as she finds herself having the thought she manages mostly to keep at bay: Luke would love her. He would have loved whoever they made, but he wouldlovePolly.

‘Right,’ Kelly says. ‘I need to get home to chop vegetables. Scintillating life I lead.’

As she leaves with her child in tow, Cam thinks that her own behaviour is so sad, it’s so very sad: Kelly and Isobel probably only want Cam to be their friend.

Miss Ashcroft comes out now, heading for Cam, who winces but relaxes as she passes her, off to talk to some poor other parent. Luke has come up only once, in an incident six months ago.

‘Got a second?’ Miss Ashcroft had said on a freezing cold December day. It was almost four, twilight, Christmas lights entwined around the school fence, and Camfeltthosethree words so vividly that she could almost see them written in the air, her breath hot-dust white, a warning flare in the night.

They headed inside, down a corridor that smelled of lemon floor wax, plasticine and stale lunchboxes, and into Polly’s classroom.

Polly was still with the teaching assistant, being encouraged to tidy her tray. Cam had eyed the two of them, half amused. It was not surprising that Polly was messy, and Cam smiled as she watched the TA try to extract loose pencils and wax crayons and curled sugar paper in order to pull the tray out. Funny how genes worked. Somewhere, on some DNA strand deep in her husband’s and her daughter’s bodies, was coded:I’d really rather be having fun than tidying up.

‘Fathers came up today,’ Miss Ashcroft said, as if reading Cam’s mind. ‘Who has daddies, who has two mummies, and so on. One of the kids asked about something they’d seen on TV about single-parent families.’

‘Right,’ Cam said.

‘So Polly asked ifIknew where her father was?’ Miss Ashcroft said. ‘She says you say the police say he’s bad, that he had to go away. But nothing more? Obviously, Mr Daniels has advised me … but – well. We wondered when you intended to tell Polly the full truth.’

And with that, an arrow was fired right into Cam’s heart. She remained standing there, listening, but her real self was speared against the back wall in the Christmas bauble display, blood splattered everywhere.

She met Miss Ashcroft’s gaze. ‘When do you advise?’ she asked her. Too direct, too acerbic, but she couldn’t help herself. Anger at the police, anger at Luke, anger at even the anonymous dead bodies … it all spills out sometimes, on toteachers, her sister and, most of all, herself. For marrying him, but being so lovelorn that she doesn’t even regret that. That she lives with hope that he will one day come back, or that she will receive an explanation. The conflicting emotions of it all.

‘Why was it being discussed?’ she added, an unreasonable question, but she needed to set out her stall: off limits. He is off limits. Cam’s stance is not that it didn’t happen, but rather that he simply still belongs to her. His memory belongs to her. Don’t take him from me.

Cam had glanced over at Polly. Her eyes were the same as Luke’s; her hair was the same. Cam loved it: she could still see him every day. Could pretend he was still here, and, in many ways, Cam is sure that he is. She’d know if he were dead. Shewould.

‘It’s natural for us to discuss fathers in school,’ Miss Ashcroft said. ‘The management and I are aware of your situation and try our best.’

Cam had to disclose it when Polly started school. There’s a form you have to fill in – another one – where you have anunusual family circumstance. That one didn’t have the right boxes for Cam to fill in, either.

‘Obviously,’ Cam continues, ‘the truth is very delicate.’

‘I know.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said Polly should speak to you.’

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