Page 100 of Famous Last Words

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Cam

Cam is about to leave for a works drinks event, but, first, is reading Adam’s novel jumpily on her sofa.

The thing nobody knew is that someone else was killed that night. And our killers are not the same person. Things in crime are never as simple as they seem. I was ordered by Dad to kill our dealer. And then someone else killed me.

A text comes in from Libby, who is going to have Polly for the night while Cam and Charlie go to the work event.

Libby: You left yet?

Cam: Almost.

Cam goes to put Adam’s book away.

It might be perhaps too dark, but it’sreallygood, and Cam has that feeling when you know you have a sale on the horizon. It’s a different genre, but it’s a good book, which is all that ought to matter. She reads a paragraph more:

The supplier killed me, and then a bystander pulled him off me, punched him. And, in doing so, threw himbackwards, on to a street bollard, which injured the back of his head.

He would’ve got away with it if he’d left then, but he didn’t: he came back. His conscience got him, the way it does with good people.

Cam shivers and puts it away. She needs to take Polly to Libby’s.

It’s a clear evening but cooler, and Cam can’t help but feel that autumn is beckoning its fingers to her and Polly, the breeze sharp. Libby’s house is white-rendered, its front covered in a shaggy honey monster of ivy, and Cam takes a second to stare at it, her sister’s life contained within.

As Cam watches, she feels a longing for something she can’t name. This happens all the time, and she sometimes wonders if it is for the other life that might have played out. A bigger house, then another, then another. A sibling for Polly. A lit-up orange window in a family home, a row of shoes at the entrance. Or maybe it’s not that, and it’s just something everybody feels.

‘I shouldn’t be eating this,’ Libby says, opening the door and gesturing to a Mars bar in her hand. ‘Come on in,’ she says to Polly.

‘Can I have one?’

‘No,’ Cam says. ‘Dinner soon.’

‘But …?’ Polly says, but is quickly distracted by Libby’s nursery-in-waiting upstairs, where she heads to play with the dollhouse. As Cam watches her daughter ascend the steps, the heels of her bare feet fuzzy peaches, she feels a dart of guilt at her self-sufficient daughter, the only child.

In Libby’s hallway, their eyes meet. ‘I suppose it doesn’tmatter if I gain weight any more. I can be as fat as I like,’ Libby says.

‘You’re never fat.’

‘Yeah. Well. Anyway. I can do what I want,’ Libby says.

‘Oh?’ Cam says, the topic opened, as it often is, at random, unexpected moments. Some people invite conversation, Libby drops it right in your lap.

‘Doctor thinks I’m in peri – my levels are all dipping. I had a late period, was so excited I stopped drinking, but it was that.’ Her voice is low. Just off the hallway, her downstairs shower is running, a rainforest sound in the background. Beyond them, the TV hums on some house-hunting programme Si had been watching and had left on. She looks directly at Cam. ‘Isn’t that just fucking typical? Early menopause, to top everything off.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Cam says sincerely. She’s blindsided. Jesus. She can’t go now, can she? Just head to the drinks as planned. Sorry about your menopause and infertility. ‘I wish there was something I could do,’ she says.

‘Yeah, well,’ Libby says. They lapse into silence.

‘It never matters if you gain weight,’ Cam eventually adds, and Libby shrugs equivocally. ‘For fertility treatment, or otherwise.’

‘I can’t do it any more. You know?’ she says. And they stand there in Libby’s hallway and Cam wishes they weren’t having a conversation this important in these circumstances. Snatched time. She wishes she had gone to the appointment with Libby. Been a better sister to her.

‘I do know.’

‘And everyone talks about – I don’t know. Other options, like they’re easy and simple, but they’re not.’

‘Don’t listen to them,’ Cam says. ‘Do what you want to do.’

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