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.”