Troubled Blood

“Right,” said Robin, smiling back with as much warmth as she could muster.

They walked up the steps together into a small lobby area, where a stocky, suited man with a haircut like Caesar’s came forward with a perfunctory smile, his hand outstretched to Judith.

“Ms. Cobbs? Andrew Shenstone. Ms. Ellacott? How d’you do?”

His handshake left Robin’s hand throbbing. He and Judith walked ahead of Robin through double doors, chatting about London traffic, and Robin followed, dry-mouthed and feeling like a child trailing its parents. After a short walk up a dark corridor, they turned left into a small meeting room with an oval table and a shabby blue carpet. Matthew was sitting there alone, still wearing his overcoat. He readjusted himself in his chair when they entered. Robin looked directly into his face as she sat down, diagonally opposite him. To her surprise, Matthew looked instantly away. She’d imagined him glaring across the table, with that strange muzzle-like whitening around his mouth he’d worn during arguments toward the end of their marriage.

“Right then,” said Andrew Shenstone, with another smile, as Judith Cobbs opened the file she’d brought with her. He had a leather document holder sitting, closed, in front of him. “Your client’s position remains as stated in your letter of the fourteenth, Judith, is that correct?”

“That’s right,” said Judith, her thick black glasses perched on the end of her nose as she scanned a copy of said letter. “Ms. Ellacott’s perfectly happy to forgo any claim on your client, except in respect of the proceeds from the sale of the flat in—um—”

Hastings Road, thought Robin. She remembered moving into the cramped conversion with Matthew, excitedly carrying boxes of pot plants and books up the short path, Matthew plugging in the coffee machine that had been one of their first joint purchases, the fluffy elephant he’d given her so long ago, sitting on the bed.

“—Hastings Road, yes,” said Judith, scanning her letter, “from which she’d like the ten thousand pounds her parents contributed to the deposit, upon purchase.”

“Ten thousand,” repeated Andrew Shenstone. He and Matthew looked at each other. “In that case, we’re agreeable.”

“You’re… agreeable?” said Judith Cobbs, as surprised as Robin herself.

“My client’s circumstances have changed,” said Shenstone. “His priority now is securing the divorce as speedily as possible, which I think your client has indicated is also preferable to her, except-ing the ten thousand pounds? Of course,” added Shenstone, “we’re almost at the requisite two years, so…”

Judith looked at Robin, who nodded, her mouth still dry.

“Then I think we can conclude things today. Very good indeed,” said Andrew Shenstone complacently, and it was impossible to escape the suspicion that he was addressing himself. “I’ve taken the liberty of drawing up…”

He opened his document holder, spun it around on the polished table top and pushed it toward Judith, who read the document inside carefully.

“Yes,” she said finally, sliding the document sideways to Robin, who learned that Matthew was promising to transfer the money to Robin’s account within seven days of signature. “Happy?” Judith added in an undertone to Robin.

“Yes,” said Robin, slightly dazed.

What, she wondered, had been the point of dragging her here? Had it been one last demonstration of power, or had Matthew only decided that morning to give in? She reached into her handbag, but Judith was already holding out her own fountain pen, so Robin took it and signed. Judith passed the document back to Andrew Shenstone, who slid it over to Matthew, who scrawled a hasty signature. He glanced up at Robin when he’d done so, then looked quickly away again, and in that moment, Robin knew what had happened, and why he’d given her what she wanted.

“Very good,” said Andrew Shenstone again, and he slapped the table with his thick hand and laughed. “Well, short and sweet, eh? I think we’re…?”

“Yes,” said Judith, with a little laugh, “I think we are!”

Matthew and Robin rose and watched their lawyers gathering up their things and, in Judith’s case, pulling her coat back on. Disorientated by what had just happened, Robin again had the sensation of being a child with its parents, unsure how to quit the situation, waiting for the lawyers to release her.

Andrew Shenstone held the door open for Robin and she passed back into the corridor, heading toward the lobby. Behind her, the lawyers were talking about traffic again. When they paused in the lobby to take leave of each other, Matthew, after a brief word of thanks to Shenstone, walked straight out past Robin, into the street.

Robin waited for Andrew Shenstone to disappear inside the building again before addressing Judith.

“Thanks so much,” she said.

“Well, I didn’t really do much, did I?” said Judith, laughing. “But mediation often brings people to their senses, I’ve seen it happen before. Much harder to justify yourself in a room with objective observers.”

They shook hands, and Robin headed out into a spring breeze that blew her hair into her mouth. She felt slightly unsettled. Ten thousand pounds. She’d offered to give it back to her parents, knowing that they’d struggled to match Matthew’s parents’ contribution, but they’d told her to keep it. She’d have to settle her bill with Judith, of course, but the remainder would give her a buffer, maybe even help her back toward her own place.

She turned a corner and there, right in front of her, standing at the curb, his arm raised in his attempt to hail a taxi, was Matthew.

Catching sight of her, he stood frozen for a moment, his hand still raised, and the taxi he’d been trying to hail slowed ten yards away, and picked up a couple instead.

“Sarah’s pregnant, isn’t she?” said Robin.

He looked down at her, not quite as tall as Strike, but as good-looking as he’d been at seventeen, on the day he’d asked her out.

“Yeah.” He hesitated. “It was an accident.”

Was it hell, thought Robin. Sarah had always known how to get what she wanted. Robin realized at last how long a game Sarah had played: always present, giggling, flirting, prepared to settle for Matthew’s best friend to keep him close. Then, as her clutch tightened, but Matthew threatened to slip through it, there’d been the diamond earring she’d left in Robin’s bed and now, still more valuable, a pregnancy to make sure of him, before he could enter a dangerous state of singledom. Robin had a strong suspicion that this was what had lain behind the two postponements of mediation. Had a newly hormonal and insecure Sarah made scenes, frightened of Matthew coming face to face with Robin while he hadn’t yet decided whether he wanted either the baby or its mother?

“And she wants to be married before she has it?”

“Yeah,” said Matthew. “Well, so do I.”

Did the image of their own wedding flash across his mind, as it flashed across Robin’s? The church in Masham that both of them had attended since primary school, the reception in that beautiful hotel, with the swans in the lake that refused to swim together, and the disastrous reception, during which Robin had known, for a few terrifying seconds, that if Strike had asked her to leave with him, she’d have gone.

“How’re things with you?”

“Great,” said Robin.

She put up a good front. What you do, when you meet the ex, isn’t it? Pretend you think you did the right thing. No regrets.

“Well,” he said, as the traffic rolled past, “I need to…”

He began to walk away.

“Matt.”

He turned back.

“What?”

“I’ll never forget… how you were, when I really needed you. Whatever else… I’ll never forget that part.”

For a fraction of a second, his face worked slightly, like a small boy’s. Then he walked back to her, bent down, and before she knew what was happening, he’d hugged her quickly, then let go as though she was red hot.

“G’luck, Robs,” he said thickly, and walked away for good.



56



Whereas this Lady, like a sheepe astray,

Now drowned in the depth of sleepe all fearlesse lay.

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene