“D’you want to tell me about it?” Robin asked Stephen. “Or do I have to ask?”
“No,” he said hurriedly, “it wasn’t much—we were just pushing Annabel up to the Square and back, and we saw them coming toward us. Him and that—”
“Sarah,” supplied Robin. She could just imagine them hand in hand, enjoying the wintry morning, the picturesque town, sleepy in the frost and early sunshine.
“Yeah,” said Stephen. “He looked like he wanted to double back when he saw us, but he didn’t. Said, ‘Congratulations in order, I see.’”
Robin could hear Matthew saying it.
“And that was it, really,” said Stephen.
“I’d’ve liked to have kicked him in the balls,” said Jenny suddenly. “Smug bastard.”
But Linda’s eyes were on Robin’s phone.
“Who are you texting back and forth on Boxing Day?” she asked.
“I’ve just told you,” said Robin. “Morris. He works for the agency.”
She knew exactly what impression she was giving Linda, but she had her pride. Perhaps there was no shame in being single, but the pity of her family, the thought of Matthew and Sarah walking through Masham, everyone’s suspicion of her and Strike, and the fact that there was nothing whatsoever to tell about her and Strike, except that he thought he’d better start taking over some of her leads because she’d got no results: all made her want to clutch some kind of fig leaf to her threadbare dignity. Smarmy and overfamiliar as he might be, Morris was today, perhaps, more to be pitied than censured, and was offering himself up to save Robin’s face.
She saw her mother and brother exchange looks and had the empty satisfaction of knowing that they were already haring after her false scent. Miserable, she opened the fridge and took out half a bottle of carefully re-corked champagne left over from Christmas Day.
“What are you doing?” asked Linda.
“Making myself a mimosa,” said Robin. “Still Christmas, isn’t it?”
One more night and she’d be back on the train to London. Almost as though she had heard Robin’s antisocial thought, a cry of anguish issued through the baby monitor just behind her, making Robin jump, and what she was starting to think of as the baby circus relocated from the kitchen to the sitting room, Linda bringing a glass of water for Jenny to drink while breastfeeding and turning on the TV for her, while Stephen ran upstairs to fetch Annabel.
Drink, Robin decided, was the answer. If you splashed in enough orange juice, nobody had to know you were finishing off a bottle of champagne single-handedly, and those feelings of misery, anger and inadequacy that were writhing in the pit of your stomach could be satisfactorily numbed. Mimosas carried her through to lunchtime, when everyone had a glass of red, although Jenny drank “just a mouthful” because of Annabel, and ignored Robin’s suggestion that alcoholic breast milk might help her sleep. Morris was still texting, mostly stupid Christmas knock-knock jokes and updates on his day, and Robin was replying in the same mindless manner that she sometimes continued eating crisps, with a trace of self-loathing.
My mother’s just arrived. Send sherry and excuses not to talk to her WI group about policework.
What’s your mother’s name? Robin texted back. She was definitely a little bit drunk.
Fanny, said Morris.
Robin was unsure whether to laugh or not, or, indeed, whether it was funny.
“Robs, d’you want to play Pictionary?” asked Jonathan.
“What?” she said.
She was sitting on an uncomfortable hard-backed chair in the corner of the sitting room. The baby circus occupied at least half the room. The Wizard of Oz was on the television but nobody was really watching.
“Pictionary,” repeated Jonathan, holding up the box. “Oh, yeah, and Robs, could I come and stay with you for a weekend in February?”
I’m only kidding, texted Morris. Frances.
“What?” Robin said again, under the impression somebody had asked her something.
“Morris is obviously a very interesting man,” said Linda archly, and everyone looked around at Robin, who merely said,
“Pictionary, yes, fine.”
Got to play Pictionary, she texted Morris.
Draw a dick, came back the instant answer.
Robin set down her phone again. The drink was wearing off now, leaving in its wake a headache that throbbed behind her right temple. Luckily, Martin arrived at that moment with a tray full of coffees and a bottle of Baileys.
Jonathan won Pictionary. Baby Annabel screamed some more. A cold supper was laid out on the kitchen table, to which neighbors had been invited to admire Annabel. By eight o’clock in the evening, Robin had taken paracetamol and started to drink black coffee to clear her head. She needed to pack. She also needed, somehow, to shut down her day-long conversation with Morris, who, she could tell, was now very drunk indeed.
Mohter gone home, complaining not seeing grandchioldren enough. What shall we talk about now? What are you wearing?
She ignored the text. Up in her bedroom, she packed her case, because she was catching an early train. Please, God, let Matthew and Sarah not be on it. She resprayed herself with her mother’s Christmas gift. Smelling it again, she decided that the only message it conveyed to bystanders was “I have washed.” Perhaps her mother had bought her this boring floral antiseptic out of a subconscious desire to wipe her daughter clean of the suggestion of adultery. There was certainly nothing of the seductress about it, and it would forever remind her of this lousy Christmas. Nevertheless, Robin packed it carefully among her socks, having no wish to hurt her mother’s feelings by leaving it behind.
By the time she returned downstairs, Morris had texted another five times.
I was joking.
Tell me u know I was joking.
Fukc have I offended u
Have I?
Answer me either way fuck’s sake
Slightly riled, and embarrassed now by her stupid, adolescent pretense to her family that she, like Matthew, had found another partner, she paused in the hall to text back,
I’m not offended. Got to go. Need an early night.
She entered the sitting room, where her family were all sitting, sleepy and overfed, watching the news. Robin moved a muslin cloth, half a pack of nappies and one of the Pictionary boards from the sofa, so she could sit down.
“Sorry, Robin,” said Jenny, yawning as she reached out for the baby things and put them by her feet.
Robin’s phone beeped yet again. Linda looked over at her. Robin ignored both her mother and the phone, because she was looking down at the Pictionary board where Martin had tried to draw “Icarus.” Nobody had guessed it. They’d thought Icarus was a bug hovering over a flower.
But something about the picture held Robin fixated. Again, her phone beeped. She looked at it.
Are you in bed?
Yes and so should you be, she texted back, her mind still on the Pictionary board. The flower that looked like a sun. The sun that looked like a flower.
Her phone beeped yet again. Exasperated, she looked at it.
Morris had sent her a picture of his erect dick. For a moment, and even while she felt appalled and repulsed, Robin continued to stare at it. Then, with a suddenness that made her father start awake in his chair, she got up and almost ran out of the room.
The kitchen wasn’t far enough. Nowhere would be far enough. Shaking with rage and shock, she wrenched open the back door and strode out into the icy garden, with the water in the birdbath she’d unfrozen with boiling water already milky hard in the moonlight. Without stopping to pause for thought, she called Morris’s number.
“Hey—”
“How fucking dare you —how fucking dare you send me that?”
“Fuck,” he said thickly, “I di’n—I thought—‘wish you were here’ or—”
“I said I was going to bloody bed!” Robin shouted. “I did not ask to see your fucking dick!”
She could see the neighbors�
�� heads bobbing behind their kitchen blinds. The Ellacotts were providing rich entertainment this Christmas, all right: first a new baby, then a shouting match about a penis.
“Oh shit,” gasped Morris. “Oh fuck… no… listen, I di’n’ mean—”
“Who the fuck does that?” shouted Robin. “What’s wrong with you?”
“No… shit… fuck… I’m s’rry… I thought… I’m so f’king sorry… Robin, don’t… oh Jesus…”
“I don’t want to see your dick!”
A storm of dry sobs answered her, then Robin thought she heard him lay down the phone on some hard surface. At a distance from the mouthpiece he emitted moans of anguish interspersed with weeping. Heavy objects seemed to be falling over. Then there was a clatter and he picked up his mobile again.
“Robin, I’m so fuckin’ sorry… what’ve I done, what’ve I…? I thought… I should fucking kill myself… don’t… don’t tell Strike, Robin… I’m fuckin’ begging you… if I lose this job… don’t tell, Robin… I lose this, I lose fuckin’ everything… I can’t lose my little girls, Robin…”
He reminded her of Matthew, the day that she’d found out he was cheating. She could see her ex-husband as clearly as though he was there on the ice-crusted lawn, face in his hands as he gasped his apologies, then looking up at her in panic. “Have you spoken to Tom? Does he know?”
What was it about her that made men demand that she keep their dirty secrets?
“I won’t tell Strike,” she said, shaking more with rage than with cold, “because his aunt’s dying and we need an extra man. But you’d better never send me anything other than an update on a case again.”
“Oh God, Robin… thank you… thank you… you are such a decent person…”
He’d stopped sobbing. His gushing offended her almost as much as the picture of his dick.
“I’m going.”
She stood in the dark, barely feeling the cold, her mobile hanging at her side. As the light in the neighbor’s kitchen went off, her parents’ back door opened. Rowntree came lolloping over the frozen lawn, delighted to find her outside.
“You all right, love?” Michael Ellacott asked his daughter.
“Fine,” said Robin, crouching to fuss Rowntree to hide her sudden rush of tears. “It’s all fine.”
PART FOUR
Great enemy… is wicked Time…
Edmund Spenser
The Faerie Queene
31
Deare knight, as deare, as euer knight was deare,
That all these sorrowes suffer for my sake,
High heuen behold the tedious toyle, ye for me take…
Edmund Spenser
The Faerie Queene
Strike’s gastric upset added days to his illness, and he spent New Year’s Eve in bed, reliant on takeaway pizzas but hardly able to touch them when they arrived. For the first time in his life he didn’t fancy chocolate, because the truffles he’d consumed after his out-of-date chicken had been the first things to reappear during his prolonged vomiting. The only enjoyable thing he did was to watch the DVD of Tom Waits’s No Visitors After Midnight, the taped concerts Robin had bought him for Christmas, which he finally unwrapped on New Year’s Day. His text thanking her elicited a short “you’re welcome.”
By the time he felt fit enough to travel down to Cornwall, clutching his belated Christmas gifts, Strike had lost over a stone, and this was the first thing an anxious Joan commented on when he finally appeared at her house in St. Mawes, full of apologies for his absence at Christmas.
If he’d waited one more day to come down to Joan and Ted’s, he’d have been unable to reach them, because no sooner had he arrived than a vicious weather front crashed over the south of Britain. Storms lashed the Cornish coast, train services were suspended, tons of sand washed off the beaches and flooding turned the roads of coastal towns into freezing canals. The Cornish peninsula was temporarily cut off from the rest of England, and while St. Mawes had not fared as badly as Mevagissey and Fowey along the coast, sandbags had appeared at the entrances of buildings on the seafront. Waves smashed against the harbor wall, khaki and gunmetal gray. The tourists had melted out of sight like the seals: locals in sodden oilskins greeted each other with nods as they made their way in and out of local shops. All the gaudy prettiness of summertime St. Mawes was wiped away and, like an actress when the stage-paint is removed, the town’s true self was revealed, a place of hard stone and stiff backbone.
Though pelted with rain and pummeled by gales, Ted and Joan’s house was, mercifully, set on high ground. Trapped there, Strike remembered Lucy telling him he was better suited to a crisis than to keeping a commitment going, and knew that there was truth in the accusation. He was well suited to emergencies, to holding his nerve, to quick thinking and fast reactions, but found the qualities demanded by Joan’s slow decline harder to summon.
Strike missed the absence of an overriding objective, in pursuit of which he could shelve his sadness; missed the imperative to dismiss pain and distress in the service of something greater, which had sustained him in the military. None of his old coping strategies were admissible in Joan’s kitchen, beside the flowered casserole dishes and her old oven gloves. Dark humor and stoicism would be considered unfeeling by the kindly neighbors who wanted him to share and show his pain. Craving diversionary action, Strike was instead expected to provide small talk and homely acts of consideration.
Joan was quietly delighted: hours and days alone with her nephew were compensation for the Christmas he’d missed. Resigned, Strike gave her what she wanted: as much companionship as possible, sitting with her and talking to her all day long. Chemotherapy had been discontinued, because Joan wasn’t strong enough for it: she wore a headscarf over the wispy hair she had left, and her husband and nephew watched anxiously as she picked at food, and held themselves constantly ready to assist her when she moved between rooms. Either of them could have carried her with ease, now.
As the days went by, Strike noticed another change in his aunt that surprised him. Just as her storm-ravaged birthplace had revealed a different aspect in adversity, so an unfamiliar Joan was emerging, a Joan who asked open-ended questions that were not designed to elicit confirmation of her own biases, or thinly veiled requests for comforting lies.
“Why haven’t you ever married, Cormoran?” she asked her nephew at midday on Saturday morning, when they sat together in the sitting room, Joan in the comfiest armchair, Strike on the sofa. The lamp beside her, which they’d turned on because of the overcast, rainy day, made her skin look as finely translucent as tissue paper.
Strike was so conditioned to tell Joan what she wanted to hear that he was at a loss for an answer. The honest response he’d given Dave Polworth seemed impossible here. She’d probably take it as her fault if he told her that he wasn’t the marrying kind; she must have done something wrong, failed to teach him that love was essential to happiness.
“Dunno,” he said, falling back on cliché. “Maybe I haven’t met the right woman.”
“If you’re waiting for perfection,” said the new Joan, “it doesn’t exist.”
“You don’t wish I’d married Charlotte, do you?” he asked her. He knew perfectly well that both Joan and Lucy considered Charlotte little short of a she-devil.
“I most certainly don’t,” said Joan, with a spark of her old fight, and they smiled at each other.
Ted popped his head around the door.
“That’s Kerenza here, love,” he said. “Her car’s just pulled up.”
The Macmillan nurse, whom Strike had met on his first day there, was a blessing such as he could never have imagined. A slender, freckled woman his age, she brought into the house no aura of death, but of life continuing, simply with more comfort and support. Strike’s own prolonged exposure to the medical profession had inured him to a certain brand of hearty, impersonal cheerfulness, but Kerenza seemed to see Ted and Joan as individuals, not as simple-minded children, and he heard her talking to T
ed, the ex-lifeguard, about people trying to take selfies with their backs to the storm waves while she took off her raincoat in the kitchen.
“Exactly. Don’t understand the sea, do they? Respect it, or stay well away, my dad would’ve said… Morning, Joan,” she said, coming into the room. “Hello, Cormoran.”
“Morning, Kerenza,” said Strike, getting to his feet. “I’ll get out of the way.”
“And how’re you feeling today, my love?” the nurse asked Joan.
“Not too bad,” said Joan. “I’m just a bit…”
She paused, to let her nephew pass out of earshot. As Strike closed the door on the two women, he heard more crunching footsteps on the gravel path outside. Ted, who was reading the local paper at the table, looked up.
“Who’s that, now?”
A moment later, Dave Polworth appeared at the glass panel in the back door, a large rucksack on his back. He entered, rainswept and grinning.
“Morning, Diddy,” he said, and they exchanged the handshake and hug that had become the standard greeting in their later years. “Morning, Ted.”
“What’re you doing here?” asked Ted.
Polworth swung his rucksack off, undid it and lifted out a couple of polythene-wrapped, frozen dishes onto the table.
“Penny baked a couple of casseroles. I’m gonna get some provisions in, wanted to know what you needed.”
The flame of pure, practical kindness that burned in Dave Polworth had never been more clearly visible to Strike, except perhaps on his very first day at primary school, when the diminutive Polworth had taken Strike under his protection.
“You’re a good lad,” said Ted, moved. “Say thanks very much to Penny, won’t you?”
“Yeah, she sent her love and all that,” said Polworth dismissively.
“Wanna keep me company while I have a smoke?” Strike asked him.
“Go on, then,” said Polworth.
“Use the shed,” suggested Ted.
So Strike and Polworth headed together across the waterlogged garden, heads bowed against the strong wind and rain, and entered Ted’s shed. Strike lit up with relief.
Troubled Blood: A Cormoran Strike Novel Page 36