Page 71 of Famous Last Words

God, she wants to leave, suddenly, be somewhere silent: the bath, her ears underwater. Something about the bright weather outside up above, the dingy underground, her upside-down house that she is desperate to leave, the inverted world she now lives in, they spook her. Who sent that text? Who killed Alexander Hale and James Lancaster? Why would Luke have attended the funeral? Where is the unknown woman from the school gate?

‘When I said the bugger didn’t stick around,’ Libby says, raising her glass, ‘I meant I was pregnant from the IVF. Two pink lines. Then I lost it. Six weeks. I didn’t say sooner … I couldn’t say. It was too …’

‘Oh,’ Cam says, a long, drawn-out emotion that she can’t name emerging which blows their table candle out, dancing this way and then that before dying in a plume of smoke that smells like winter. Happiness, sadness, blindsidedness rush up through Cam. The way Libby was guarding her stomach: it was due to loss, not life. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I thought you meant – what they implanted …’ Oh, God, is that wording insensitive? ‘I’m so sorry, Libby.’

‘Me, too,’ Libby says. She sinks the glass, pours another. ‘Least I can drink.’

‘True.’

‘Lots.’

‘Yes. Will you …’

‘I don’t know, Cam. It’s like – it’s one thing not getting pregnant. It’s another thing to lose … It’s like a death. Itisadeath.’ Somehow, this is yet more evidence, to Cam, that the world is a mean, upside-down sort of place.

Cam nods, her mouth set in a grim line. ‘Of course. I understand.’

‘You don’t really,’ Libby says, but she says it without feeling or resentment in her voice. Cam shrugs, giving Libby the freedom to lash out if she wants to. She understands, now. She will talk to somebody else about Luke. Or probably nobody. It doesn’t matter.

‘It’s just been so long,’ Libby says. More wine down. And it’s true. Rounds and rounds of IVF. A few months of the contraceptive pill to regulate a cycle, a procedure to flush out the Fallopian tubes, two cycles for that to heal … suddenly, years and years and years pass by. ‘I didn’t get all the early scans,’ Libby says. ‘Thought it would be buying into fear.’

‘Well, I buy into fear all the time,’ Cam says.

‘Ha. We tried steroids this time. The guy thinks I’ve got natural killer cells that attack the embryo. But no dice.’

‘I wish it had worked out,’ Cam says simply, thinking how fortunate she is, how tight she will hold Polly tonight, later, when the sitter leaves. She makes a mental note not to mention her to Libby for the rest of the night.

‘Yeah. Well. Do you know, I really tell myself I don’t expect it to. But the sad thing is, actually, every time I do.’

‘I do, too,’ Cam lies quietly.

They spend the rest of the evening discussing Si’s business, Libby’s work, not Luke, and not Polly, either.

Outside, in the evening heat, they stand for a few seconds. Just as they are about to hug goodbye, Libby speaks, but a passing bus drowns out what she says.

‘Huh?’ Cam asks.

‘The form asked about the last time I saw him.’

‘Oh …’

‘I don’t know if I ever told you. You were napping. We called in to see Polly; he said he didn’t want to wake you. And all I remember is him there on the doorstep, holding her. His feet were bare and he said he was about to have an ice cream.’

Something that feels like home joins Cam right there out on terra firma, the lights of London all around her.

‘I didn’t know that,’ she says softly. ‘But it sounds like Luke.’

‘I know. Take care,’ Libby says, something Cam isn’t sure she’s ever said to her. It’s an apology of sorts, an olive branch.

Cam leaves, walks to the Underground, glad she didn’t lash out at her sister.

She boards the Tube, and thinks suddenly how much she appreciates that small nugget of a memory about her husband. That he had enjoyed an ice cream that day, while holding their daughter close. It was real. It had happened. Something she didn’t know about him, didn’t know that he had experienced. Something new to her, as though he hasn’t gone at all, is just outside, just round the corner, just – somewhere. Waiting for her.

Finally home, Cam stands in her kitchen, thinking, Damn Libby. Damn her directness. And damn her dream, too, containing that other Cam existing somewhere, the one who has managed to move on. Attending barbecues with her sister and boyfriend. Somebody who feels joy. Who sends silly texts. Who isn’t afraid at the school gate. Ten years from now: where does she want to be?

And maybe Libby’s memory of Luke is a poignant partingshot. Maybe it’s a way to say goodbye to him. To feel his existence but to let him go.

Cam lets a huge gust of air out of her lungs and allows it to propel her.

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