Page 15 of Famous Last Words

And so feeling sweepy became a term used for when one is feeling disheartened, down or small. Cam felt sweepy when the baby cried too much, when she ran out of day and didn’t get to do anything she really wanted to. Luke felt sweepy when, years after his first book came out, his publisher sent him 63p in royalties, and even sweepier when Cam took her commission off.

‘And that was yesterday. So this morning you …’ Lambert continues, putting her phone down.

‘Took my daughter to nursery.’

‘There someone who can pick her up?’ he says, and Cam’s heart snaps in two right there like a fortune cookie.

‘It’s her first day. No, I …’ Cam says, panicked. Polly will think she’s abandoned her. Died.

‘You will be needed throughout today, Camilla.’ And his ominous tone is enough to make her do it.

He gestures to her phone, and Cam scrabbles for it, calling Libby. It connects immediately. Despite their near-constant texts, Cam and Libby do not ever call each other – they both hate the phone – which is why Libby answers with a panicked ‘You OK?’

‘I need you to collect Polly,’ Cam says woodenly. ‘From nursery.’

‘What? Why?’ Libby says. This is not something Cam would ordinarily ask: Libby has been trying to have a baby herself for five years. Two years of trying, two failed rounds of IUI, she and her husband, Si, are now about to embark on their first round of IVF. Cam supposes that the relationship with Polly might be a step too close for Libby, who always looks slightly wounded when she sees her, who once said on text,I sometimes think she looks like me. It had been so unexpected, and so loaded for her caustic sister, who only ever deflects pain with humour, that Cam hadn’t known what to say back.

‘Well, if you think I’m the best person to ask, then …’ Libby says.

And Libby doesn’t know it, but she is. There are friends, there are colleagues, but when the police are standing over you, you really only want your family.

Cam breathes down the line. ‘Luke is – The police are …’ She dry-gulps on the words. ‘They’re investigating something they say he’s done.’

Cam sees Lambert’s facial expression flicker at her careful wording.

Libby heeds the family emergency, and snaps into pragmatism, the way she always does. ‘What do I need to do?’ she asks, and Cam closes her eyes in gratefulness. A heart of gold sits in her sister’s chest.

‘You need to get to the nursery for five. It’s – it’s the one on my road. You need a code word. I set it up – hang on …’ Cam puts her hand to her forehead, trying to think. What was that word? God, Libby will be so triggered by this. She should have asked someone else. ‘It’s upside-down,’ she says. ‘The phrase you need to say.’ She puts Libby on speaker, then fiddles with the app for the nursery, clicking the button to say someone else will be collecting Polly.

‘OK.’ Libby hesitates, the pause tinny in Cam’s living room, and she leans into it, this sisterly, supportive silence that travels down the line to her. ‘You OK?’ she says. Cam takes her off speaker, embarrassed.

‘Yeah,’ Cam lies. ‘Yeah.’

‘OK. Stay in touch – if you can,’ she says, and Cam is so, so thankful Libby doesn’t ask what Luke’s been said to have done.

Smith walks into the room and picks up Luke’s laptop. She’s put her hair in a bun on the top of her head, looks slightly exerted from searching, flushed. She is holding several items in clear plastic bags. Cam squints at them. His toothbrush. Two notebooks. But it’s the toothbrush that really gets to her: DNA. A private, intimate ablution, swabbed.

Two more officers thunder past her, one of them holding Luke’s wallet and passport. He didn’t even take his wallet … surely that must mean that he didn’t intend to leave for long? Or go far?

Or that he didn’t intend to go to work for the day at all …

Cam suddenly wants to take off and hide everything. Grab their things and go. Keep his secrets for him. This morning, she had a happy marriage. Now, she’s supposed to hand him over to the police, together with everything she knows about him.

‘There,’ Cam says, pointing to the armchair where his laptop sits. Smith heads to it, but picks up his coat first, searches the pockets. She brings out a clutch of receipts and a letter. She scrutinizes them for a few seconds, then looks at Cam, who immediately stands up and looks at them. Smith doesn’t stop her doing so, but she doesn’t acknowledge it at all, leaving Cam feeling like a creep at a party.

RECEIPT 21/04

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RECEIPT 23/04

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