Page 99 of Famous Last Words

Because I am, Niall thinks, emboldened by the beautiful dark green summer evening, the wine, and her.

‘Niall,’ she says, her voice gentle, empathetic. Everything. He loves everything about her. That, later, she will drink two pots of tea right before bed and get up twice in the night to wee. Her mad rescue cats. How long she put up with him, despite everything. ‘You are obsessed with work,’ she finishes, verbalizing what has gone unsaid.

‘Yes.’

‘You obsess over things generally,’ she says. ‘You won’t change.’

‘I know, and I’m trying – Viv, I really am – to work out how I might do both.’

‘Do both?’

‘Be with you – and with my job.’

She pauses for a long while, then reveals her truth to him. ‘I was your first obsession,’ she says, and Niall can’t help but find that interesting, as well as upsetting.

‘I see.’

‘I was.’

‘Look.’ He takes a steadying breath. And here it is, his truth, communicated – he hopes – well. ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t put you first. It is the biggest regret of my life, in fact.’ He’s chosen his words carefully, and Viv’s green eyes are immediately wet, but she doesn’t open her mouth; she clamps it tightly shut like a baby about to sob.

And he’s so vulnerable here. He had no idea this is howpeople feel when they’re telling the full, whole truth. ‘I’m so sorry. It was not fair on you.’

‘Thank you for saying that,’ she says tightly, bottom lip wobbling. She casts her gaze downwards, long lashes fanning over her cheeks. The one-eyed cat ambles into the garden, bumps into the table.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t before. If we were – if we were ever together again – it would be …’

‘Don’t say that. But thank you.’

They lapse into a silence that might be companionable, and might be a hopeless kind of closure. Ten minutes later, she sees him out.

Ten minutes afterthat, a work text comes through.

Claire: Text Anon has confirmed the coordinates were sent by an account linked to Deschamps’s email. I’ll leave it with you.

47

Anonymous Reporting on Camilla

‘It’s stale,’ I tell my brother. ‘I am really trying, but the information isn’t coming easily.’

‘What have you tried?’ he says.

We’re walking, today. London moves and sways beneath a patchwork blue-and-white sky. The sun on the water, the tourist shops and the narrow alleyways. Funny how hardly anyone knows just how much crime is carrying on all around them.

‘Been through her rubbish, even,’ I say. ‘I don’t know if she’s just an excellent secret-keeper, or what.’

‘This is taking a very long time,’ he says, and it’s the kind of blended menacing and factual statement that everyone around him fears him making. ‘If she’s in contact with him, and we miss it …’

‘I won’t miss it.’

‘How much of the time are you on her tail?’

‘As much as is possible.’

‘She have any idea?’

‘None.’

---