Page 69 of Famous Last Words

‘No. What?’

‘Oh, I just got this weird text last week,’ Cam says. It burbles out of her, a secret she’s found it easy to keep to herself until time spent with somebody who loves her. Something about the underground location, the flickering candlelight … the fact that Libby is her only intimate acquaintance, everyone else pushed away.

‘Show me?’ Libby says, grabbing for Cam’s phone and scrolling without permission. ‘This one?’ She waves the phone, and Cam suddenly feels protective of it, of her archive with Luke, but of the spam text, too. The same way she felt when people passed Polly around when she was tiny.That’s mine.

‘What do you think?’

It doesn’t land as she hoped. ‘I don’t …’ Libby runs her fingertips up the stem of her wine glass as she reads the text, her gaze lingering on it. ‘Sorry – you’re not saying you think this was him, are you?’ she says, and it’s this precise language that rankles Cam.You think this was him. There’s a distance in those words, a severalty. The equivalent ofSorry if you think I have offended you.

‘No, I’m not saying anything,’ Cam replies, defensive. And she isn’t, not really.

Another pause. ‘Did you go?’

‘Yes.’

‘Cam!’

‘What?’ she says, irritated.

‘Was anyone there?’

‘No.’

‘Obviously. It’s clearly spam.’

‘Have you ever had that kind of spam?’

‘I get all sorts,’ Libby says. ‘I really like Charlie,’ she says, very deliberately changing the subject the way somebody might wrench the steering wheel from the passenger seat. ‘Hasn’t it been almost six months now?’ she asks, and Cam wonders if she makes the error deliberately.

‘Not even four,’ she says, voice clipped.

And, God,whydid Cam tell Libby, of all people? She knows Libby’s propaganda about moving on. She knows she’s a natural cynic, too. Cam’s eyes are wet. Suddenly, she wants a girl friend. Holly, her old friend. A real, true ally, who would tell her she was right even when she was far in the wrong.

‘Not exactly still in first-date territory,’ Libby remarks.

At the time, Cam had had two dreams in a row that Luke came back for her. The day after the second one, she met Charlie. Literally like some sort of romantic hero, tall, dark and handsome, and she thought it had been a sign. Where’s that optimism gone?

‘Mmm,’ Cam says, thinking that she does like Charlie, shedoes… ‘But …’

‘But what?’

‘I don’t know.’

Libby talks over her. ‘Declaring Luke dead is just absolutely the right next step. You could even move in with Charlie, in time,’ she says, and Cam sometimes wonders, the way people perhaps do about their families, if Libby would behave this way with someone she barely knew, a passing office acquaintance. And if not, why is the standard so much lower the higher the intimacy gets?

‘It doesn’t feel likethe right step,’ Cam says, hurt. Her sister may be caustic, but she hardly ever is to Cam. ‘It feels like second best.’

‘I get that,’ Libby says flatly. ‘You know – I had this dream about you. Ages ago.’

‘What dream?’ Cam says, thinking again of the dreams she has about Luke. Sometimes she just misses him: a figure disappearing into a crowd or boarding a train where the doors close too fast behind him. Sometimes she hears him, wakes and he isn’t there.

‘Well,’ Libby says, and Cam thinks that she doesn’t actually want to know, has that feeling of trepidation she gets when around somebody intent on telling her their opinion, collateral be damned. The wine will make it worse. That it’s her birthday will make it worse. Suddenly, Cam wants to escape.

‘You were with Charlie, properly with him. And you were just – you had moved on. You know? You smiled more. You shopped. You saw friends again. Had a different house. Took the piss.’

‘I do those things.’

‘Not like you once did. You still have his socks in his bedside table, Cam’

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