Page 103 of Famous Last Words

‘I’ve seen worse,’ Stuart says. ‘Plus, when they’ve written the tricky second novel, they often regain the confidence, you know? Third comes quickly.’

The rooftop is beginning to fill up. Cam sees Charlie arrive, a tall, thin form who helps himself to a drink somehow ironically. Cam hides a smile: he doesn’t want to be here, either. Her cynical sometimes-boyfriend. It’s just past seven thirty, still warm, and one of Cam’s colleagues has put fairy lights up, winding them around the railings at the edge of the building. They are white, bright, the sky blue behind them. Cam lets a breath out.

‘Have you finished it?’ Stuart says.

‘No!’ Cam says. ‘I might have to go into hiding. I’ve been so slack with it. It’s been – I don’t know. It’s quite a scary book. But I’ve been busy.’ Stuart – famed for his brilliantnotes that sometimes take months – nods, takes another canapé from a waiter who offers them. He swallows it whole, unself-conscious, while Cam’s eyes keep going back to Adam. He’s standing, looking out over London, his back to her, body language somewhat tense-looking, which is normal for him. He’s wearing a messenger bag slung cross-body, holding a proof he must have picked up. ‘I’d better go and fess up,’ she says. ‘Notes to follow, as they say …’

Stuart raises his eyebrows to her, and she says, ‘I’ll come and find you in a bit. Rescue me, if it escalates!’

‘Ha.’ He moves off to talk to somebody else, taking another doughnut for the road.

Charlie joins Cam as she is moving through the throng to Adam. ‘How long before we escape?’ he says.

‘I reckon we need to do an hour,’ she says, struck by how nice it is to know someone who is not unlike herself. Luke would have wanted to stay at this party until the very end. ‘Then to mine?’

Charlie dimples a smile.

‘Come meet Adam,’ she says.

‘The Jiffy bag client!’

‘The very same.’

‘Adam,’ Cam says, arriving at his side. They’re seven floors up, the drop to the ground beneath them vertiginous. Tiny cars and people move below them, appearing slow, their details blurred, and Cam will never not think of warehouse roofs.

‘Aha,’ Adam says. ‘I’m sorry – I’ve been in hiding.’

‘This is Charlie,’ she says. She doesn’t add further detail. To categorize him is overly complicated.

Charlie shakes Adam’s hand, and Cam thinks how overwhelming it must be to post your soul through someone’sletter box. ‘How’s things?’ she asks him. And something about seeing him – he is the most reclusive of her clients – brings it all back. That manuscript she first read on maternity leave, in snatched night-time hours. The bidding war from almost every imprint in the industry that she missed in the aftermath of Luke disappearing. Its publication day just after her return to work, the bittersweetness of it. Mired in grief, Cam had been almost surprised – and perhaps slightly relieved – that she had been expected to carry on with life. Launching books, doing laundry, making dinners. And that book – that book which Cam had seen like a nugget of gold in the rubble. The book she found on maternity leave. The book she launched after the siege. That book that became so huge, that everybody had loved so much. It had been like a little party every day at work for a while, but obviously much more fun, for Cam.

‘It’s odd,’ Cam says. ‘I have been thinking aboutOut of Sighta lot, lately. Kind of life-affirming, when you look back.’ She glances to Charlie. ‘It was a real ride.’

Charlie raises his palms. ‘I’ve actually read it,’ he says. ‘Loved it.’

‘Oh, God,’ Adam says, grimaces. ‘Sometimes I hate that book.’

‘No!’ Cam says.

‘No, really. I think all novelists feel that way about a huge, huge hit.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t,’ she says. ‘You wrote that book and you’re still you, so you can do it again.’

A slightly awkward silence seems to settle between the three of them, and Cam decides to acknowledge it head on, rather than ignore it. This year, no matter what happens with Luke, has been about facing things. Moving house, movingon. Telling Charlie her biggest secret. Working with Niall. They’ve tried their hardest to find the truth, and maybe that is what matters most.

‘I’m loving what I’ve read so far,’ she says to Adam.

‘She really is,’ Charlie backs her up. ‘Reading at all hours.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I have no feedback for you. Yet.’

Adam sips what looks like a mojito, saying nothing, but doesn’t take his eyes off her. ‘What d’you mean?’ he says eventually, his tone strange. He gestures to the view. ‘Was hoping for some inspiration here.’

‘Inspiration?’ Cam says, wondering why this conversation feels so confused, and so loaded, too.

‘For the next book.’

‘Slow down,’ Cam says. ‘The nextnextbook can wait. Surely?’ She’s surprised by the sentiment: Adam took almost seven years to deliver the second book. She can’t pretend she wouldn’t like the third sooner, but …

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