“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 metal 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.
“Huh,” said Barclay, hungrily eyeing the almost empty curry cartons, “what wus that? Compensation?”
“Exactly,” said Robin.
“Tha’ why neither of yiz have been answerin’ yer phones fer the last three hours?”
“Shit, sorry, Sam,” said Robin, pulling out her mobile and looking at it. She’d had fifteen missed calls from Barclay since muting her mother in the American Bar. She was also pleased to see that she’d missed a couple of texts from Morris, one of which seemed to have a picture attached.
“Beyond the call of duty to come in person,” said the slightly drunk Strike. He wasn’t sure whether he was more glad or annoyed that Barclay had interrupted, but on balance, he thought annoyance was uppermost.
“The wife’s at her mother’s wi’ the bairn overnight,” said Barclay. “So I thought I’d come deliver the good news in person.”
He helped himself to a poppadum and sat down on the arm of the sofa at the other end to Strike.
“I’ve found oot what SB gets up tae in Stoke Newington. All down tae Robin. You ready for this?”
“What?” said Strike, looking between Barclay and Robin. “When—?”
“Earlier,” said Robin, “before I met you.”
“Rang the doorbell,” said Barclay, “said I’d bin recommended by SB, wondered whether she could help me oot. She didnae believe me. I had to get a foot in the door to stop her slammin’ it on me. Then she says SB told her a Scottish guy talked him doon off Tower Bridge the other day.
“So I decide it’s cut our losses time,” said Barclay. “I said, yeah, that wuz me. I’m a friend. We know what ye’re up to in here. You’re gonnae wanna talk to me, if ye care aboot your client.
“So she let me in.”
Barclay ate a bit of poppadum.
“Sorry, starvin’. Anyway, she takes me in the back room, and there it all is.”
“There what all is?”
“Giant playpen she’s knocked up, out o’ some foam an’ MDF,” said Barclay, grinning. “Big old changin’ mat. Stack of adult nappies. Johnson’s baby powder.”
Strike appeared to have been struck momentarily speechless. Robin began to laugh, but stopped quickly, because it made her face hurt.
“Poor old SB gets aff on bein’ a baby. She’s only got one other client, that guy at the gym. Doesnae need any more, because SB pays her so much. She dresses ’em up. Changes ’em. Powders their fucking arses—”
“You’re having a laugh,” said Strike. “This can’t be real.”