“You knew? Why didn’t you tell us?”

But Linda herself supplied the answer to that, as they drove. It neither soothed nor comforted Robin to have Linda storming about how outraged she’d been, when a neighbor told her that Matthew had been strolling hand in hand with Sarah through the middle of town. She didn’t feel comforted by strictures against her ex-husband’s morals and manners, nor did she appreciate having each family member’s reaction detailed to her (“Martin was all for punching him again”). Then Linda moved on to the divorce: what was going on? Why wasn’t it all settled yet? Did Robin honestly think mediation would work? Didn’t Matthew’s behavior, flaunting this woman in front of the whole of Masham, show how utterly lost to shame and reason he was? Why, oh why, hadn’t Robin agreed to let Harveys of Harrogate deal with it all, was she sure this London woman was up to it, because Corinne Maxwell had told Linda that when her daughter divorced without children it was all completely straightforward…

But at least there was little Annabel Marie, was the conclusion of Linda’s monologue, as they turned onto Robin’s parents’ street.

“Wait till you see her, Robin, just wait…”

The front door opened before the car came to a halt. Jenny and Stephen were standing on the threshold, looking so excited that an onlooker might have suspected it was they who were about to see their baby daughter for the first time, not Robin. Realizing what was expected of her, Robin hitched an eager smile onto her face, and within minutes found herself sitting on the sofa in her parents’ living room, a warm little sleeping body in her arms, wrapped up in wool, surprisingly solid and heavy, and smelling of Johnson’s baby powder.

“She’s gorgeous, Stephen,” Robin said, while Rowntree’s tail thumped against the coffee table. He was nosing at her, thrusting his head repeatedly under Robin’s hand, confused as to why he wasn’t receiving the fuss and love he was used to. “She’s gorgeous, Jenny,” Robin said, as her sister-in-law took photos of “Auntie Robin” meeting Annabel for the first time. “She’s gorgeous, Mum,” Robin said to Linda, who had come back with a tea tray and a craving to hear what Robin thought of their twenty-inch-long marvel.

“Evens things out, doesn’t it, having another girl?” said Linda delightedly. Her anger at Matthew was over now: her granddaughter was everything.

The sitting room was more cramped than usual, not only with Christmas tree and cards, but with baby equipment. A changing mat, a Moses basket, a pile of mysterious muslin cloths, a bag of nappies and an odd contraption that Jenny explained was a breast pump. Robin rhapsodized, smiled, laughed, ate biscuits, heard the story of the birth, admired some more, held her niece until she woke, then, after Jenny had taken back possession of the baby and, with a touch of new self-importance, settled herself down to breastfeed, said that she would nip upstairs and unpack.

Robin carried her bag upstairs, her absence unnoticed and unregretted by those below, who were lost in adoration of the baby. Robin closed the door of her old room behind her, but instead of unpacking, lay down on her old bed. Facial muscles aching from all her forced smiling, she closed her eyes, and allowed herself the luxury of exhausted misery.

29

Thus warred he long time against his will,

Till that through weakness he was forced at last

To yield himself unto the mighty ill,

Which, as a victor proud, ’gan ransack fast

His inward parts and all his entrails waste…

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

With three days to go before Christmas, Strike was forced to abandon the pretense that he didn’t have flu. Concluding that the only sensible course was to hole up in his attic flat while the virus passed through his system, he took himself to a packed Sainsbury’s where, feverish, sweating, breathing through his mouth and desperate to get away from the crowds and the canned carols, he grabbed enough food for a few days, and bore it back to his two rooms above the office.

Joan took the news that he wouldn’t be joining the festivities in Cornwall predictably hard. She went so far as to suggest that it would be fine for him to come, as long as they sat at opposite ends of the dinner table, but to Strike’s relief, Ted overruled her. Strike didn’t know whether he was being paranoid, but he suspected Lucy didn’t believe he was genuinely ill. If she did, her tone suggested that he might have caught flu deliberately. He thought he heard a trace of accusation when she informed him that Joan was now entirely bald.

By five o’clock in the afternoon of Christmas Eve, Strike had developed a cough that made his lungs rattle and his ribs ache. Drowsing on his bed in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, his prosthetic leg propped against a wall, he was woken abruptly by a loud noise. Footsteps seemed to be moving down the stairs, away from his attic door. A paroxysm of coughing seized him before he could call out to the person he thought had woken him. Struggling back into a sitting position to clear his lungs, he didn’t hear the second approach of footsteps until somebody knocked on his door. He greatly resented the effort it took to shout, “What?”

“D’you need anything?” came Pat’s deep, gravelly voice.

“No,” Strike shouted. The syllable emerged as a croak.

“Have you got food?”

“Yes.”

“Painkillers?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m leaving some things outside the door for you.” He heard her setting objects down. “There are a couple of presents. Eat the soup while it’s still hot. See you on the twenty-eighth.”

Her footsteps were clanging down the metal stairs before he could respond.

He wasn’t sure whether he’d imagined the mention of hot soup, but the possibility was enough to make him drag his crutches toward himself and make his way laboriously to the door. The chill of the stairwell added gooseflesh to his fever sweats. Pat had somehow managed to carry the old video projector upstairs for him, and he suspected that it was the sound of her setting this down that had woken him. Beside it lay the can of film from Gregory Talbot’s attic, a small pile of wrapped Christmas gifts, a handful of cards and two polystyrene tubs of hot chicken soup that he knew she must have walked to Chinatown to fetch. He felt quite pathetically grateful.

Leaving the heavy projector and the can of film where they were, he pulled and prodded the Christmas gifts and card across the floor into the flat with one of his crutches, then slowly bent down to pick up the tubs of soup.

Before eating, he took his mobile from the bedside table and texted Pat:

Thanks very much. Hope you have a good Christmas.

He then wrapped the duvet around himself and ate the soup straight out of the tubs, tasting nothing. He’d hoped the hot liquid would soothe his raw throat, but the cough persisted, and once or twice he thought he was going to choke everything back up again. His intestines also seemed unsure whether they welcomed food. Having finished the two tubs, he settled back down beneath the duvet, sweating while he looked at the black sky outside, guts churning, and wondering why he wasn’t yet on the mend.

After a night of intermittent dozing interrupted by prolonged coughing fits, Strike woke on Christmas morning to find his fever unabated, and sweaty sheets tangled about him. His normally noisy flat was unnaturally quiet. Tottenham Court Road was suddenly, weirdly devoid of traffic. He supposed most of the taxi drivers were at home with their families.

Strike was not a self-pitying man, but lying alone in bed, coughing and sweating, his ribs sore and his fridge now virtually empty, he was unable to prevent his thoughts roaming back over Christmases past, especially those spent at Ted and Joan’s in St. Mawes, where everything proceeded as it did on the television and in story books, with turkey and crackers and stockings.

Of course, today was far from the first Christmas he’d spent away from family and friends. There’d been a couple such in the army, when he’d eaten foil trays of tasteless turkey in field canteens, among camouflage-wearing colleagues wearing Santa hats. The structure he’d enjoyed in the military had then consoled him in the absence of other pleasures, but there was no camaraderie to sustain him today, only the dismal fact that he was alone, ill and one-legged, stuck up in a drafty attic, forced to endure the consequences of his own firm repudiation of any relationship that might offer support in moments of illness or sadness.