Page 57 of Famous Last Words

Cam cringed. Later, she’d brought it up with Polly. Had asked what Miss Ashcroft had said. Polly waved a hand: ‘Oh, something about dads,’ she said. The in-the-moment life of a seven-year-old. Cam had let a breath out: on borrowed time, still, but she didn’t care.

Nothing happens today. Miss Ashcroft has passed by.Isobel’s child comes out with extra spellings to work on and Cam feels a grim spark ofSchadenfreude.

As they leave, Polly looks across the street, exclaims, and points. ‘Look!’

‘What?’ Cam says, following her gaze. And it’s the man. The man in the dark clothes and beanie she’s sure she saw ducking away from the school gate.

‘He was staring at us!’ Polly says, and Cam watches him go, not looking at them, darting back into the Tube station, body language furtive.

‘Oh – no, he’s fine,’ she reassures her daughter. She wishes she could believe her own words.

Cam is looking at the many books in her bedroom and thinking that it’s funny how she had craved this alone time, this me-time, when Polly was little, and she never got it. And now, single, she has far too much of it. Swathes and swathes of these slow-moving evening hours. She moves Luke’s AirPods off his bedside table and fiddles them absentmindedly.

She drags Adam’s Jiffy bag on to her lap, her treat, and pulls the manuscript out. She hasn’t started it yet, has been saving it in the way you don’t quite want to crack open a perfectly smooth Easter egg. But now she peels back the first page.

It started with a task.

Good opener.

The air was cold as gunmetal and the moon was up out ahead, a snowball thrown into the sky and forgotten. I left my house with a job to do set by my father. I’d debatedwhether to take it, and in the end had decided to. It turned out to be the worst decision of my life.

He’s done it. Cam can feel it. The book feels propulsive and intentional to her. And it’s so delicious, the slide into make-believe, that she can almost feel it on her skin like a warm embrace.

28

Cam couldn’t feel less like going to a publishing do the next night, but it’s the launch of one of her newest client’s books, and she can’t miss it. She’s in the kitchen, with Polly sitting on the counter, swinging her legs and clapping her hands rhythmically in a way so affected Cam is sure it’s come from a new friend.

‘Auntie Libby’s here,’ Polly says suddenly, pointing to the front door, visible beyond the hallway and down the stairs.

Libby lets herself in and calls out, ‘I’m here, dudes!’

But Cam immediately notices that there is something odd and careful about her walk. God, it must be exhausting to be Libby. Everyone who knows her always scrutinizing her for signs of pregnancy.

Without saying anything more, Libby arrives in the kitchen and nudges Cam out of the way, putting two slices of bread into the toaster: Polly’s current pre-bed snack. Something about Libby knowing this makes Cam’s heart happy. The familiarity, the ease of it. It takes a village, and here is hers.

‘Good day?’ Cam says.

‘Surviving – sold a house. Well, Si did actually.’

‘Ooh, the messy one?’

‘Yes. Pair of rich twats. Too important to clean. Plus, the bin was full of their Deliveroos. Ever think you’re in the wrong job?’

‘What did they do?’

‘They work in oil or something – I pretended to understand.’

Cam smiles. ‘Let’s set up an oil rig,’ she says, and Libby snorts.

‘Si would love that,’ she says. ‘He described the house as beingfull of lovely natural lived-in accoutrementson the listing. He’d happily quit. Is it the romcom book? Tonight? I read the copy you gave me.’

‘It is,’ Cam says.

‘Boring one,’ Polly says, though she hasn’t read it. But – to Cam’s shame – her daughter thinks most books are tedious.

‘I liked it,’ Libby says. ‘I thought it was very well edited. Although – saccharine ending.’

‘You’re both the wrong readership,’ Cam says with a laugh. ‘For different reasons.’

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