Page 59 of Famous Last Words

‘Oh,’ Cam says. And, immediately, she’s looking for the exit, blocked by umbrellas.

But Adrienne stretches a hand out to Cam. ‘No – no. I really liked him. Our paths crossed because he needed to know a bit about something he was working on. The singer – I was working on a companion book for him, so we had a few meetings.’

‘I see.’

‘He was lovely.’

Cam sighs. The thing people don’t realize is if they ignore Luke, Cam feels bad. But if they mention him, she feels blindsided. They can’t win.

She steadies her breathing, looking out on to the street. If you could ignore the people passing by with lit-up smartphones, the hum of traffic a few hundred yards away, you really could be in a Dickens novel, a place Cam finds comfort.Suddenly, she wants to read and acquire some great historical fiction. Disappear into an armchair and into the past.

A passing waiter wordlessly tops up their Prosecco, and Cam downs half of it, cool pine needles in her throat.

Cam tilts her head back slightly, exhaling through her nose like a smoker; the room swims slightly. She isn’t used to drinking much, but maybe she could be.

‘Our last meeting was only a few weeks before – everything,’ Adrienne says.

Cam glances up at her sharply. ‘He wasn’t working on anything I didn’t know about, was he?’ she asks.

‘He wasn’t working on anything controversial at all. He met me to allow me to ask a couple of questions about his singer. He agreed to blag a free lunch, I think.’

‘Of course,’ Cam says, unable to hide a small smile. That sounds like Luke all right.

‘He was the last person I’d have imagined to … He was – not … like that.’

Cam, previously breathing in the anecdote like a nostalgic perfume, recoils. The past tense slices through her like a guillotine. Sharp and fast, a clean beheading.Was. She wants to tell Adrienne that she really thinks Luke is alive out there somewhere, but doesn’t.

‘I know,’ she says quietly. She finishes her Prosecco and immediately looks for more. The main lights go off and a few lamps pop on here and there in the bookshop. The dim air smells of old paper, and at least Cam feels at home here.

‘He and I had a long chat over lunch,’ Adrienne continues. ‘I think about it often. I had had this non-fiction totally tank, lovely author, but it just didn’t land. Sold a hundred copies.’

‘Oh – jeez.’

‘Yeah, and I chatted to Luke about it, and he said, “I findit helpful, at times, to think of Cam, and how much fiction means to her. To real readers, sales don’t matter, prizes don’t matter. She sits in a chair every night and just has the time of her life.”’

Cam shivers there in the warm bookshop. Her husband’s unheard observation of her, reported back to her here, years after the event, seven years since he left. The information is old – so, so far in the deep past – but, nevertheless, it feels to Cam like Luke has made eye contact with her, somewhere. Tears mist over and then quickly clear. The crying lasts less time these days, but still comes so readily, the same brimming wateriness she’s carried for years, like all of her emotions are just closer to the surface: a river perpetually about to burst its banks and overflow.

‘That’s nice to hear,’ she says thickly as a waiter tops up her drink again. She stares down into the chain-linked bubbles, eyes wet, thinking of Charlie, and his cynicism about publishing.

Cam spots one of her authors’ books on a shelf nearby, spine out, and pulls it out and props it up, cover out. Every little bit does seem to help in these situations. Maybe it isn’t pointless. Maybe fiction is one of life’s great comforts. Maybe it does matter as much as she feels it does. Maybe Luke is out there somewhere, not just at a lunch in the past, talking about his wife. Maybe their story will get its third act.

‘I can’t believe you never found out – or you never found … what happened to him.’ Adrienne takes her drink and sips it again.

‘No,’ Cam says glumly. And she can feel herself unfurling, here in the bookshop, out of her sad and hard shell forged in a single day, seven years ago. ‘You think you will, or you’ll get over it, or even that you will learn to live with the uncertainty,but the reality is that you don’t. You just remain sad about it.’ She pauses, then adds: ‘Still searching.’ It’s the nearest she can come to telling the real, full, embarrassing truth.

‘I bet,’ Adrienne says softly. ‘I cannot, I really cannot imagine.’ She puts her hand to her chest, still holding her glass, looking dolefully at Cam. ‘I wish I’d got to see him again. He cancelled our last meeting for that funeral.’

‘What? What funeral?’ Cam says, her voice too sharp. She has no idea what Adrienne means; she is, all this time later, still looking for clues. ‘When?’

‘I don’t know,’ Adrienne says, curiosity crossing her brows, then opening her features in surprise. ‘Um … it must have been very close to – the siege.’

‘Nobody we knew had died,’ Cam says, thinking that you don’t use a funeral as an excuse. You use a doctor’s appointment, a meeting clash, childcare woes. A funeral is macabre, specific and taboo. She looks down, blinks, wants to tip the entire glass of Prosecco down her neck.

‘Right.’

‘Is there some way you can tell me when, precisely?’ Cam says. ‘Sorry to ask …’

Adrienne holds her glass and works her phone out of her pocket. ‘Sure,’ she says. ‘Yeah. My work calendar will – it’ll probably go back that far, won’t it? God, sorry about this,’ she says, and she does look mortified. ‘I didn’t mean to – throw a cat amongst the pigeons.’

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