Page 102 of Famous Last Words

‘I wanted him not to come back,’ Libby says. ‘At times. I’m sorry. Infertility – it really fucks you up. Makes you wish for bad things to happen to everyone all the time. Or maybe that’s just how I am.’

‘It’s not you,’ Cam says, truthfully this time. ‘I have wished for that a lot, too, over the years.’ After all, who hasn’t sat and wished for bad things to happen to other people, beautiful people, successful people? It’s just that people don’t usually admit it, that’s all. ‘That’s just grief, I think,’ she adds, hoping the use of this word might be held by her sister in the way that she intends it.

‘I bet,’ Libby says, and she scoots closer to Cam on the sofa. ‘You deserved better than cantankerous old me, in those years.’

‘Likewise, I’m sure.’ She hesitates, wanting to tell Libby she was jealous of her, too, but decides not to.

‘And I know there are options,’ Libby continues obliviously. ‘That’s what everyone says.’

‘Haveyou thought about that?’ Cam asks tentatively.

Libby goes to answer, but Polly interrupts, walking into the room, holding her hairbrush out. ‘Can mymanebe brushed, before dinner?’ she says. ‘It feels tangled.’ For a second, Cam thinks she’s asking Libby, but she isn’t: she’s asking Cam, of course she is. Her mother. ‘What’re you talking about?’ she asks, and, internally, Cam cringes.

‘Well, why I don’t have any children, and what I’m going to do about that,’ Libby says, her voice matter-of-fact.

Polly’s footsteps stop, her hand extended, frozen in the air, holding her hairbrush out, and Cam thinks about the power of honesty. About how they’ve tried to cover so much stuff up, but look: isn’t it better to just be honest? Polly’s nearly eight, not two. She can handle more than Cam thinks.

‘Oh,’ she says slowly. ‘I see. I didn’t know you wanted to have children.’

‘Very much.’

‘Oh no,’ Polly says, her expression verging on horrified.

‘But do you know what?’

‘What?’

‘If I had had my own, I wouldn’t have spent quite so much time with you.’

Cam’s eyes mist over, right there in Libby’s quiet and calm sitting room. Seven years of trying, but look. Look at them. Polly crosses to Libby, hands her the brush instead, Libbyin loco parentisto Cam’s fatherless daughter. Perhaps sometimes you can make the best of things. It doesn’t mean you didn’t want something else, but …

‘Well, that’s – what’s that word? Like when something good happens out of something bad?’ Polly asks, and Cam smiles, thinking of all the years and years and years that have rushed by in what now feels like an instant.

‘A silver lining,’ Libby says, and Cam thinks about how Libby and Polly wouldn’t be so close if Luke hadn’t gone, thinking about how Libby feels as if Polly is her own in a way she might not otherwise, wondering if Luke misses Polly, if he is alive out there somewhere, and thinking, thinking, thinking whether all this pain has been worth it, or if that is just something people who experience tragedies tell themselves in order to survive.

Later, on the street, Cam looks up at the house. In the window, Libby bends her head down towards Polly’s. Cam stares for a few more moments, looking in at the dimly lit room. They have the same profile. She’d never noticed.

The drinks reception is less salubrious than arooftop partysounds: a few neglected plants in pots, a small area. Nice views, but, really, a few concrete slabs. The agency has done its best, and a man at an ice-cream-style cart is serving cocktails.

Stuart is there, Charlie not yet, and Cam wanders over to him. Not only because she feels unsafe all the time these days, but because she wants refuge from her own thoughts.

‘Adam’s here,’ Stuart says, pointing. He grabs a miniature doughnut from a passing waiter. ‘Not big enough,’ he says, gesturing with it.

‘So he is,’ Cam says. ‘He’s delivered the next,’ she says in a low voice. ‘It’s really good. Kind of experimental.’

Stuart looks at Adam, and Cam sees him through Stuart’s eyes in the way that you do sometimes. She isn’t sure her boss ever met him properly. Adam is slightly scruffy, but in a good way; Luke once described him asa bit neurotic-looking. The kind of person who looks self-conscious doing nothing.

‘How?’

‘Not his style really. A very dark thriller. I hope they will like it, though, and he can just be … who he is. One of those writers who can do it all.’

‘How dark is dark?’

‘Fairly. A kid from some crime family mixed up in drugs, then he’s murdered and narrates his own investigation,’ she says, thinking how funny it is how art sometimes mirrors life, but something is creeping up behind her, some insistent, niggling thought. ‘He’s just revealed that someone killed his killer, too.’

‘A double murder,’ Stuart says, and something begins to tick in Cam’s mind, an insistent, metronome-like sound. ‘Well, crime sells,’ he adds, smiling impassively. Cam sips her Bloody Mary and gazes at London’s skyline, not saying anything. She doesn’t care enough about what sells. She cares about what is good.

‘I hope the next gap won’t be as long.’

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