“Oh God, Cormoran,” said Robin quietly.
“Well,” said Strike, “you’ve got to give him points for honesty. He walked out. We went home.
“For a while afterward, I held out a bit of hope he’d regretted what he’d said. It was hard to let go of the idea he wanted to see me, deep down. But nothing.”
While the sun was far from setting, the room was becoming steadily darker. The high buildings of Denmark Street cast the outer office into shadow at this time of the evening, and neither detective had turned on the interior lights.
“Second time we met,” said Strike, “I made an appointment with his management. I was eighteen. Just got into Oxford. We hadn’t touched any of Rokeby’s money for years. They’d been back to court to put restrictions on what my mother could do with it, because she was a nightmare with cash, just threw it away. Anyway, unbeknownst to me, my aunt and uncle had informed Rokeby I’d got into Oxford. My mother got a letter saying he had no obligations to me now I’d turned eighteen, but reminding her I could use the money that had been accumulating in the bank account.
“I arranged to see him at his manager’s office. He was there with his long-time lawyer, Peter Gillespie. Got a smile off Rokeby this time. Well, I was off his hands financially now, but old enough to talk to the press. Oxford had clearly been a bit of a shock to him. He’d probably hoped, with a background like mine, I’d slide quietly out of sight forever.
“He congratulated me on getting into Oxford and said I had a nice little nest egg all built up now, because my mother hadn’t spent any of it for six, seven years.
“I told him,” said Strike, “to stick his fucking money up his arse and set fire to it. Then I walked out.
“Self-righteous little prick, I was. Didn’t occur to me that Ted and Joan were going to have to stump up if Rokeby didn’t, which is what they did… I only realized that later. But I didn’t take their money long. After my mother died, midway through my second year, I left Oxford and enlisted.”
“Didn’t he contact you after your mum died?” asked Robin quietly.
“No,” said Strike, “or if he did, I never got it. He sent me a note when my leg got blown off. I’ll bet that put the fear of God into him, hearing I’d been blown up. Probably worried sick about what the press might make of it all.
“Once I was out of Selly Oak, he tried to give me the money again. He’d found out I was trying to start the agency. Charlotte’s friends knew a couple of his kids, which is how he got wind of it.”
Robin felt something flip in her stomach at the sound of Charlotte’s name. Strike so rarely acknowledged her existence.
“I said no, at first. I didn’t want to take the money, but no other fucker wanted to lend a one-legged ex-soldier without a house or any savings enough money to set up a detective agency. I told his prick of a lawyer I’d take just enough money to start the agency and pay it back in installments. Which I did.”
“That money was yours all along?” said Robin, who could remember Gillespie pressing Strike for repayment every few weeks, when she’d first joined the agency.
“Yeah, but I didn’t want it. Resented even having to borrow a bit of it.”
“Gillespie acted as though—”
“You get people like Gillespie round the rich and famous,” said Strike. “His whole ego was invested in being my father’s enforcer. The bastard was half in love with my old man, or with his fame, I dunno. I was pretty blunt on the phone about what I thought about Rokeby, and Gillespie couldn’t forgive it. I’d insisted on a loan agreement between us, and Gillespie was going to hold me to it, to punish me for telling him exactly what I thought of the pair of them.”
Strike pushed himself off the sofa, which made its usual farting noises as he did so, and began helping himself to curry. When they both had full plates, he went to fetch two glasses of water. He’d already got through a third of the whisky.
“Cormoran,” said Robin, once he was settled back on the sofa and had started eating. “You do realize, I’m never going to gossip about your father to other people? I’m not going to talk to you about him if you don’t want to, but… we’re partners. You could have told me he was hassling you, and let off steam that way, instead of punching a witness.”
Strike chewed some of his chicken jalfrezi, swallowed, then said quietly,
“Yeah, I know.”
Robin ate a bit of naan. Her bruised face was aching less now: the ice pack and the whisky had both numbed her, in different ways. Nevertheless, it took a minute to marshal the courage to say,
“I saw Charlotte’s been hospitalized.”
Strike looked up at her. He knew, of course, that Robin was well aware who Charlotte was. Four years previously, he’d got almost too drunk to walk, and told her a lot more than he’d ever meant to, about the alleged pregnancy Charlotte had insisted was his, which had broken them apart forever.
“Yeah,” said Strike.
And he told Robin the story of the farewell text messages, and his dash to the public payphone, and how he’d listened until they’d found Charlotte lying in undergrowth in the grounds of her expensive clinic.
“Oh my Christ,” said Robin, setting down her fork. “When did you know she was alive?”
“Knew for sure two days later, when the press reported it,” said Strike. He heaved himself back out of his chair, topped up Robin’s whisky, then poured himself more before sitting back down again. “But I’d concluded she must be alive before that. Bad news travels faster than good.”
There was a long silence, in which Robin hoped to hear more about how being drawn into Charlotte’s suicide attempt, and by the sounds of it, saving her life, had made him feel, but Strike said nothing, merely eating his curry.
“Well,” said Robin at last, “again, in future, maybe we could try that talking thing, before you die of a stress-induced heart attack or, you know, end up killing someone we need to question?”
Strike grinned ruefully.
“Yeah. We could try that, I s’pose…”
Silence closed around them again, a silence that seemed to the slightly drunk Strike to thicken like honey, comforting and sweet, but slightly dangerous if you sank too far into it. Full of whisky, contrition and a powerful feeling he preferred at all times not to dwell upon, he wanted to make some kind of statement about Robin’s kindness and her tact, but all the words that occurred to him seemed clumsy and unserviceable: he wanted to express something of the truth, but the truth was dangerous.
How could he say, look, I’ve tried not to fancy you since you first took off your coat in this office. I try not to give names to what I feel for you, because I already know it’s too much, and I want peace from the shit that love brings in its wake. I want to be alone, and unburdened, and free.
But I don’t want you to be with anyone else. I don’t want some other bastard to persuade you into a second marriage. I like knowing the possibility’s there, for us to, maybe…
Except it’ll go wrong, of course, because it always goes wrong, because if I were the type for permanence, I’d already be married. And when it goes wrong, I’ll lose you for good, and this thing we’ve built together, which is literally the only good part of my life, my vocation, my pride, my greatest achievement, will be forever fucked, because I won’t find anyone I enjoy running things with, the way I enjoy running them with you, and everything afterward will be tainted by the memory of you.
If only she could come inside his head and see what was there, Strike thought, she’d understand that she occupied a unique place in his thoughts and in his affections. He felt he owed her that information, but was afraid that saying it might move this conversation into territory from which it would be difficult to retreat.
But, from second to second, sitting here, now with more than half a bottle of neat whisky inside him, a different spirit seemed to move inside him, asking himself for the first time whether determined solitude was what he really wanted, for evermore.
Joanie
reckons you’re gonna end up with your business partner. That Robin girl.
All or nothing. See what happens. Except that the stakes involved in making any kind of move would be the highest of his life; higher by far than when he’d staggered across a student party to chat up Charlotte Campbell, when, however much agony he’d endured for her later, he’d risked nothing more than minor humiliation, and a good story to tell.
Robin, who’d eaten as much curry as she could handle, had now resigned herself to not hearing what Strike felt for Charlotte. She supposed it had been a forlorn hope, but it was something she was very keen to know. The neat whisky she’d drunk had given the night a slight fuzziness, like a rain haze, and she felt slightly wistful. She knew that if it hadn’t been for the alcohol, she might feel simply unhappy.
“I suppose,” said Strike, with the fatalistic daring of a trapeze artist, swinging out into the spotlight, only black air beneath him, “Ilsa’s been trying to matchmake, your end, as well?”
Across the room, sitting in shadow, Robin experienced something like an electric shock through her body. That Strike would even allude to a third party’s idea of them being romantically involved was unprecedented. Didn’t they always act as though nothing of the sort could be further from anyone’s mind? Hadn’t they always pretended certain dangerous moments had never happened, such as when she’d modeled that green dress for him, and hugged him while wearing her wedding dress, and felt the idea of running away together pass through his mind, as well as hers?
“Yes,” she said, at last. “I’ve been worried… well, embarrassed about it, because I haven’t…”
“No,” said Strike quickly, “I never thought you were…”
She waited for him to say something else, suddenly acutely aware, as she’d never been before, that a bed lay directly above them, barely two minutes from where they sat. And, like Strike, she thought, everything I’ve worked and sacrificed for is in jeopardy if I take this conversation to the wrong place. Our relationship will be forever marred by awkwardness and embarrassment.
But worse than that, by far: she was scared of giving herself away. The feelings she’d been denying to Matthew, to her mother, to Ilsa and to herself must remain hidden.
“Well, sorry,” said Strike.
What did that mean, Robin wondered, her heart thumping very hard: she took another large gulp of whisky before she said,
“Why are you apologizing? You’re not—”
“She’s my friend.”
“She’s mine, too, now,” said Robin. “I… don’t think she can help herself. She sees two friends of the opposite sex getting on…”
“Yeah,” said Strike, all antennae now: was that all they were? Friends of the opposite sex? Not wanting to leave the subject of men and women, he said,
“You never told me how mediation went. How come he settled, after dragging it out all this time?”
“Sarah’s pregnant. They want to get married before she has it… or before she gets too big for a designer dress, knowing Sarah.”
“Shit,” said Strike quietly, wondering how upset she was. He couldn’t read her tone or see her clearly: the office was now full of shadow, but he didn’t want to turn on the lights. “Is he—did you expect that?”
“S’pose I should have,” said Robin, with a smile Strike couldn’t see, but which hurt her bruised face. “She was probably getting annoyed with the way he was dragging out our divorce. When he was about to end their affair, she left an earring in our bed for me to find. Probably getting worried he wasn’t going to propose, so she forgot to take her pill. It’s the one way women can control men, isn’t it?” she said, momentarily forgetting Charlotte, and the baby she claimed to have lost. “I’ve got a feeling she’d just told him she was pregnant when he canceled mediation the first time. Matthew said it was an accident… maybe he didn’t want to have it, when she first told him…”
“Do you want kids?” Strike asked Robin.
“I used to think so,” said Robin slowly. “Back when I thought Matthew and I were… you know. Forever.”
As she said it, memories of old imaginings came to her: of a family group that had never existed, but which had once seemed quite vivid to her. The night that Matthew had proposed, she’d formed a clear mental picture of the pair of them with three children (a compromise between his family, where there had been two children, and her own, which had had four). She’d seen it all quite clearly: Matthew cheering on a young son who was learning to play rugby, as he’d done himself; Matthew watching his own little girl onstage, playing Mary in the school nativity play. It struck her now how very conventional her imaginings had been, and how much Matthew’s expectations had become her own.
Sitting here in the darkness with Strike, Robin thought that Matthew would, in fact, be a very good father to the kind of child he’d be expecting: in other words, a little boy who wanted to play rugby, or a little girl who wanted to dance in a tutu. He’d carry their pictures around in his wallet, he’d get involved at their schools, he’d hug them when they needed it, he’d care about their homework. He wasn’t devoid of kindness: he felt guilty when he did wrong. It was simply that what Matthew considered right was so heavily colored by what other people did, what other people considered acceptable and desirable.
“But I don’t know, any more,” said Robin, after a short pause. “I can’t see myself having kids while doing this job. I think I’d be torn… and I don’t ever want to be torn again. Matthew was always trying to guilt me out of this career: I didn’t earn enough, I worked too many hours, I took too many risks… but I love it,” said Robin, with a trace of fierceness, “and I don’t want to apologize for that any more…
“What about you?” she asked Strike. “Do you want children?”
“No,” said Strike.
Robin laughed.
“What’s funny?”
“I give a whole soul-searching speech on the subject and you’re just: no.”
“I shouldn’t be here, should I?” said Strike, out of the darkness. “I’m an accident. I’m not inclined to perpetuate the mistake.”
There was a pause, then Robin said, with asperity,
“Strike, that’s just bloody self-indulgent.”
“Why?” said Strike, startled into a laugh. When he’d said the same to Charlotte, she’d both understood and agreed with him. Early in her teens, her drunken mother had told Charlotte she’d considered aborting her.
“Because… for God’s sake, you can’t let your whole life be colored by the circumstances of your conception! If everyone who was conceived accidentally stopped having kids—”
“We’d all be better off, wouldn’t we?” said Strike robustly. “The world’s overpopulated as it is. Anyway, none of the kids I know make me particularly keen to have my own.”
“You like Jack.”
“I do, but that’s one kid out of God knows how many. Dave Polworth’s kids—you know who Polworth is?”
“Your best mate,” said Robin.
“He’s my oldest mate,” Strike corrected her. “My best mate…”
For a split-second he wondered whether he was going to say it, but the whisky had lifted the guard he usually kept upon himself: why not say it, why not let go?
“… is you.”
Robin was so amazed, she couldn’t speak. Never, in four years, had Strike come close to telling her what she was to him. Fondness had had to be deduced from offhand comments, small kindnesses, awkward silences or gestures forced from him under stress. She’d only once before felt as she did now, and the unexpected gift that had engendered the feeling had been a sapphire and diamond ring, which she’d left behind when she walked out on the man who’d given it to her.
She wanted to make some kind of return, but for a moment or two, her throat felt too constricted.
“I… well, the feeling’s mutual,” she said, trying not to sound too happy.
Over on the sofa, Strike dimly registered that somebody was on the m
etal staircase below their floor. Sometimes the graphic designer in the office beneath worked late. Mostly Strike was savoring the pleasure it had given him to hear Robin return his declaration of affection.
And now, full of whisky, he remembered holding her on the stairs at her wedding. This was the closest they’d come to that moment in nearly two years, and the air seemed thick with unspoken things, and again, he felt as though he stood on a small platform, ready to swing out into the unknown. Leave it there, said the surly self that coveted a solitary attic space, and freedom, and peace. Now, breathed the flickering demon the whisky had unleashed, and like Robin a few minutes previously, Strike was conscious that they were sitting mere feet from a double bed.
Footsteps reached the landing outside the glass outer door. Before either Strike or Robin could react, it had opened.
“Is the power oot?” said Barclay, and he flicked on the light. After a moment in which the three blinked at each other in surprise, Barclay said,
“You’re a friggin’ genius, R—the fuck happened tae yer face?”
59
The warlike Britonesse…
… with such vncouth welcome did receaue
Her fayned Paramour, her forced guest,
That being forst his saddle soone to leaue,
Him selfe he did of his new loue deceaue:
And made him selfe then ample of his follie.
Which done, she passed forth not taking leaue,
And left him now as sad, as whilome iollie,
Well warned to beware with whom he dar’d to dallie.
Edmund Spenser
The Faerie Queene
Blinking in the bright light, Robin reached again for the ice pack.
“Strike hit me. Accidentally.”
“Jesus,” said Barclay. “Wouldnae wanna see what he can do deliberately. How’d that happen?”
“My face got in the way of his elbow,” said Robin.
Troubled Blood: A Cormoran Strike Novel Page 76
