I thought today was Valentine’s day but I’ve just realized it’s the 15th. They’ve got me on so many drugs in here I can hardly remember my name. I’m in a place again. This isn’t my phone. There’s another woman here who’s allowed one & she lent it to me. Yours is the only mobile number I know by heart. Why didn’t you ever change it? Was it because of me or is that my vanity. I’m so full of drugs I cant feel anything but I know I love you. I wonder how much they’d have to give me before that went too. Engouh to kill me I suppose.

The next message, from the same number, read:

How did you spent valentines day. Did you have sex. I’m here partly because I don’t want sex. I cant stand him touching me and I know he wants more kids. Id rather die than have more. Actually I’d rather die than most things. But you know that about me. Will I ever see you again? You could come and see me here. Today I imagined you walking in, like I did when your leg. I imagined you telling them to let me go because you loved me and you’d look after me. I cried and

The third message continued:

the psychiatrist was pleased to see me crying because they like emotion. I don’t know what the whole address is but it’s called Symonds House. I love you don’t forget me whatever hpapens to me. I love you.

A fourth and final message read:

It’s Charlotte in case that isn’t obvious.

Strike read the entire thread through twice. Then he closed his eyes, and like millions of his fellow humans, wondered why troubles could never come singly, but in avalanches, so that you became increasingly destabilized with every blow that hit you.

43

And you faire Ladie knight, my dearest Dame,

Relent the rigor of your wrathfull will,

Whose fire were better turn’d to other flame;

And wiping out remembrance of all ill,

Graunt him your grace…

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

To Robin’s relief, her three guests got up early the next morning, because they wanted to spend a full day in London. All were subdued after what Robin thought of as the Nightmare Dinner. She dreaded a tearful plea for forgiveness from Courtney, who seemed especially low, so Robin faked a cheery briskness she certainly didn’t feel, making recommendations for cheap places to eat and good things to see before waving the students off. As Robin was due to run surveillance on Elinor Dean overnight, she’d given Jonathan a spare key, and wasn’t sorry that she’d probably still be in Stoke Newington when the students returned to Manchester, because they intended to catch a mid-morning Sunday train.

Not wanting to be alone with Max, in case he wanted a post-mortem on the previous evening, Robin made herself a voluntary prisoner in her own bedroom all day, where she continued to work on her laptop, attempting to block out waves of anger toward Strike, and a tearfulness that kept threatening to overcome her. Hard as she tried to concentrate on finding out who’d been living in Jerusalem Passage when Margot had disappeared, however, her thoughts kept returning to her partner.

Robin wasn’t in the least surprised not to have heard from him, but was damned if she’d initiate contact. She couldn’t in good conscience retract a word of what she’d said after watching him vomit in the gutter, because she was tired of being taken for granted in ways Strike didn’t recognize.

But as the afternoon wore on, and the rain continued to fall outside her window, and while she hadn’t been nearly as drunk as Strike, she developed a dull headache. Equal parts of misery and rage dragged at her every time she remembered last night’s dinner, and all the things she’d shouted at Strike in the street. She wished she could cry, but the tightness in her chest prevented her doing so. Her anger boiled anew every time she remembered the drunk Strike attacking her guests, but then she found herself re-running Courtney and Kyle’s arguments in her head. She was sure none of the students had ever brushed up against the ugliness Robin had encountered, not merely under that dark stair in her hall of residence, but during her work with Strike: battered women, raped girls, death. They didn’t want to hear Strike’s stories, because it was so much more comforting to believe that language alone could remake the world. But none of that made her feel more kindly to her partner: on the contrary, she resented agreeing with him. He’d been looking for someone or something to attack, and it was she who’d paid the price.

Robin forced herself to keep working, because work was her one constant, her salvation. By eight in the evening, Robin was as sure as a thorough perusal of online records could make her that nobody living in Jerusalem Passage had been there for forty years. By this time, she was so hungry that she really did need to eat something, which she feared meant facing Max, and discussing Strike.

Sure enough, when she reached the living area, she found Max sitting watching TV with Wolfgang on his lap. He muted the news the moment he saw her, and Robin’s heart sank.

“Evening.”

“Hi,” said Robin. “I’m going to make myself something to eat. D’you want anything?”

“There’s still a bit of casserole, if you want it.”

“Strike didn’t finish it all, then?”

She mentioned him first in the spirit of getting it over with. She could tell that Max had things to say.

“No,” said Max. He lifted the sleepy Wolfgang onto the sofa beside him, stood up and moved to the kitchen. “I’ll heat it up for you.”

“There’s no need, I can—”

But Max did so, and when Robin was settled at the table with her food and a drink, he sat down at the table with her with a beer. This was highly unusual and Robin felt suddenly nervous. Was she being softened up for some kind of unwelcome announcement? Had Max decided, after all, to sell up?

“Never told you how I ended up in such a nice flat, did I?” he said.

“No,” said Robin cautiously.

“I had a big payout, five years ago. Medical negligence.”

“Oh,” said Robin.

There was a pause. Max smiled.

“People usually say, ‘Shit, what went wrong?’ But you never probe, do you? I’ve noticed that. You don’t ask a lot of questions.”

“Well, I have to do a lot of that at work,” said Robin.

But that wasn’t why she hadn’t asked Max about his finances, and it wasn’t why she didn’t ask now what had gone wrong with his body or his treatment, either. Robin had too many things in her own past that she didn’t want endlessly probed to want to cause other people discomfort.

“I was having palpitations seven years ago,” Max said, examining the label on his beer. “Arrhythmia. I got referred to a heart specialist and he operated: opened me up and ablated my sinus node. You probably don’t know what that is,” he said, glancing up at Robin, and she shook her head. “I didn’t either, until they ballsed mine up. Basically, they knackered my heart’s ability to beat for itself. I ended up having to be fitted with a pacemaker.”

“Oh no,” said Robin, a bit of beef suspended in mid-air on her fork.

“And the best bit was,” said Max, “none of it was necessary. There wasn’t anything wrong with my sinus node in the first place. Turned out I hadn’t been suffering from atrial tachycardia at all. It was stage fright.”

“I—Max, I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t good,” said Max, taking a sip of his beer. “Two unnecessary open-heart surgeries, endless complications. I lost jobs, I was unemployed for four years and I’m still on anti-depressants. Matthew said I had to pursue a claim against the doctors. I probably wouldn’t have done, if he hadn’t nagged me. Lawyers’ fees. Ton of stress. But I won in the end, got a big payout, and he persuaded me to sink it all into a decent property. He’s a barrister, he earns great money. Anyway, we bought this place.”

Max pushed his thick blond hair out of his face and glanced down at Wolfgang, who’d trotted to the table to savor the smell of casse-role once more.

“A week after we moved in, he sat me down and told me he was leaving. The ink was barely dry on the mortgage. He said he’d struggled against it, because he felt a loyalty to me, because of what I’d been through, but he couldn’t fight his feelings any longer. He told me,” said Max, with a hollow smile, “he’d realized pity wasn’t love. He wanted me to keep the flat, didn’t want me to buy him out—as if I could have done—so he signed over his half. That was to make him feel less guilty, obviously. And off he went with Tiago. He’s Brazilian, the new guy. Owns a restaurant.”