Page 86 of Famous Last Words

‘It’s Niall Thompson here. I was …’

Cam’s body fizzes with surprise, as though somebody has plugged her right into the mains, lightning bolts around her head, hair shocked and standing on end. It’s physically painful, her limbs jangling and aching with the surge of it.

Shit.

Itisthe police. It must be about Madison. Why was she so foolish as to not disclose it?

‘… The hostage negotiator,’ she says to Niall. On the other side of the kitchen island, Charlie glances up, but he keeps his face impassive. As polite and kind as ever. He turns away from her and busies himself folding her tea towels. It doesn’t need doing. It would never need doing.

‘Yes, Camilla, would you be able to come and – have a chat?’

Or – worse. They’ve found him. They’ve found him. They’ve found his body. She clutches the edge of the kitchen island. It’s all over if they have. She thinks she might be sick.

‘Have you found him?’ she says, her voice shrill.

She crosses out of the kitchen, still holding her phone, and into the living room, where she closes the door.

‘Camilla,’ Niall’s voice says calmly, clearly, and everything comes back to Cam. The heat. The Wetherspoon’s. The forensics officers, the slow progress of the ambulance.

‘Have you found him?’ Cam asks again. She glances at her living-room door. God. What must Charlie be thinking? She rakes her hair back from her forehead, paces this way and that, in the same room the police interviewed her in, all those years ago. She should’ve moved. Changed her number. He’s going to be dead, and her heart is going to be fucking broken.She had no idea of the hope she had been holding. Imagining she saw him on the Tube. Imagining a spammy text came from him. Everything.

A pause. And then an answer: ‘No.’

Cam leans forward over the sofa, her body a ragdoll thrown on a heap. ‘Thank God,’ she says, thinking how stupid it is that she would rather this call be that the police want to investigate her for what happened to Madison than be told her murderous, absent husband is dead. Sometimes, the way we react to things can reveal so much about ourselves.

‘Don’t worry. It’s not …’ Niall starts.

‘Do you know something?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it where he is?’

‘No.’

‘Is it about Madison?’ she says, the words rattling out of her mouth before she can stop them. Relief: the most potent of emotions.

Another pause, this time longer. ‘Can we meet to talk, Camilla?’

‘So it is about Madison?’

A pause. ‘Yes,’ he says.

And that’s it. Thatyes. It is about Madison. And it is clearly about Luke. And maybe it’s about the worst of all things: that Luke is alive, and killing his enemies still.

‘But I’d really like to do this in person.’

‘Yes. OK. Whenever. Now,’ Cam answers, her head hitting her chest. She’s not thinking logistics. She’s numb.

A soft, understanding laugh. ‘Tomorrow? I’ll send you the address of a place where we can talk privately.’

‘Tomorrow,’ she agrees. She will have to ask Libby to have Polly.

Niall rings off, and Cam just sits there. She has somehow landed on her floor, though she doesn’t remember how. A candle is lit – she and Charlie were going to come in here – and she watches the flame bend and bow left and right.

It will be that Luke murdered Madison. She draws her knees to her chest, watching the wick and the wax.

Niall hasn’t found him, and he doesn’t know where he is. He is still a fugitive, on the run, her husband.

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