Page 95 of Famous Last Words

It’s still early July, and yet there’s just the most indistinct autumn chill in the air, hardly yet noticeable, except to Cam, who looks forward to it. Blustery green leaves rustling up ahead, a glass fragility to the blue sky, an orange tint to the light.

She scurries down the street towards Libby’s, trying to hurry Polly but also trying not to spook her, thinking of the men who wanted Luke dead, of Madison, too. Of the strangerwho stood at her garden fence several days ago, so still and quick and quiet she wonders now if he was even real.

‘Mum! What’s the rush?’ Polly says, of course not missing a trick.

‘No rush.’ Cam glances over her shoulder, just once, before Libby’s house looms into view.

‘You’re here!’ Libby says when they reach it, and Cam immediately spots it: lemonade in a wine glass in her hand. It’s colourless. Her eyes stray to it, then to Libby’s, who says nothing, and so neither does Cam.

‘We are here,’ Polly says to Libby. ‘The best guests of your life.’

‘Polly!’ Cam guffaws.

‘It’s true!’ she says, and Cam thinks how funny she is. Her daughter, grown into this happy sunbeam in the most shitty of circumstances; her asphalt flower, pushing up through the dust in a bright pink explosion.

It’s four thirty on the dot.A late-afternoon sort of thing, Libby had said.Tea and cake, etc., whatever. Libby wanted Cam to invite Charlie, and so Cam had texted earlier, hoping he might read it too late to come, hoping he might arrive, too. The mixed-up emotions in the upside-down world with a husband who might be dead, and who might be bad, and who might be good. Charlie’s coming, anyway, and Cam is glad of it.

‘Happy birthday,’ Cam says. ‘How’re the stress levels?’ she adds, peering beyond her sister and into the throng. You’d be forgiven for thinking it was a kids’ party: Libby’s friends all have children. Cam doesn’t know how she can stand it. Cam was blessed with fertility and still had to quit the NCT group when everyone’s babies slept except hers.

Cam follows Libby in and gulps at the crowds, feeling embarrassed, a very special toxic kind of celebrity feeling,same as at the school gate. A couple of people glance over at her, Libby’s friends, who Cam half knows but doesn’t see often, and Cam drops her gaze.

‘God, feeling very sorry for myself,’ Libby says. ‘We dropped the cake on the floor. Then we realized M&S didn’t deliver the wine, so, feeling a bit woe is me.’

‘Ah, very sweepy,’ Cam says immediately, using her and Luke’s term without thought.

‘Huh?’

‘Woe is me. Luke and I used to call that sweepy,’ Cam says, unable to resist. ‘Feeling sweepy.’

Libby’s brow lowers and she steps aside, beckoning Cam and Polly in. Perhaps it’s the esoteric word, perhaps the evidence that Luke is still alive and well in Cam’s memory, but Libby says nothing further. A criminal husband is more taboo than death and divorce put together, a fact Cam finds astonishing. Grief is not a permitted emotion within macabre mysteries.

‘Is Charlie coming?’ she asks Cam, perhaps pointedly.

‘Yep.’ Cam grabs a non-M&S wine and stands underneath a red-and-white awning that her sister has erected over the patio, sipping her wine, alone. Behind her, she hears one of Libby’s friends say, ‘Her. I think her husband is in prison?’ And Cam sort of wishes he was. That she could visit him sometimes – Saturday mornings: she wouldn’t ask for much.

Charlie arrives later, around half past five. ‘Welcome,’ she says, stepping aside to let him in, and as the word leaves her mouth, she sees his face change from impassive to optimistic, pleased. He makes a gesture towards her, both hands on either of her shoulders. Not a hug. More the kind of greeting you’d give a small child, one whom you were excited to see.

Later, much later – have only hours gone by, or actual years? – most of Libby’s friends have left, and it’s just Cam and Charlie, Libby and Si, and Si’s brother, Max. Cam is leaving. It’s late. Polly has gone to sleep on a bed upstairs because it’s a school night, and something about that simple fact fills Cam with nostalgia for her own childhood. Other people’s spare beds and the cold crunch of a sleeping bag and midnight feasts that they had to keep hushed.

She’s in Libby’s Victorian living room. Libby paid an interior designer to do her whole house up –I can’t be bothered myself; I have had enough of houses by the end of each day– something Cam had laughed with her over but which she is actually quite jealous of. The walls and ceiling are a dark navy, the lights brass, the mirror a sunburst – Cam knows it’s hung too high for Libby to look at herself in it, but she doesn’t move it because itkind of looks right and I don’t care.

‘God, I’m bloody knackered,’ Libby says, flopping on to the sofa and topping up Cam’s wine. None for her. Cam wants to ask, is so desperate to ask, but doesn’t. ‘Stay if you want.’

‘No, it’s fine,’ Cam says listlessly, ‘we’re going, I need to get Polly now,’ she adds, glad it’s walking distance.

‘I’ll walk you home,’ Charlie says, ‘then go to mine.’

Cam throws him a grateful glance, trying to ignore the fact that what she’s grateful for is his lack of imposition.

Si crosses and uncrosses his legs. He’s about eight beers down. And, God, Cam misses those carefree times. She doesn’t drink often now because she’s always in sole charge of Polly, but she also doesn’t drink because she thinks she would cry and overshare her secrets. Again.

‘Not seen you in ages,’ Si says to Cam. Indeed, the last time they spoke was about the form.

‘Mmm,’ Cam says in response. Libby gets up and wandersoff down the hallway, leaving them alone together. Suddenly, the sitting room feels sinister. The dark walls and ceiling like a night sky, the air black outside beyond the window. Cam shivers with it, with something, some feeling that she can’t name.

‘How’re you doing?’ Si adds, Cam thinks warmly. She looks up at him. His cheeks are pink, like a teething baby’s.

‘Not bad,’ Cam says, feeling exposed, sitting there in front of Si, who knows she tried to get her husband declared dead recently, but won’t broach that directly. In front of Charlie, who knows the full story, although Si doesn’t know that.

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