“I’m very grateful for you seeing me,” said Strike, also rising, though with difficulty, and picking up his walking stick again. “Could I ask one last thing?”
“Certainly,” said Drummond, pausing.
“Do you understand anything by the phrase ‘he put the horse on them’?”
Drummond appeared genuinely puzzled.
“Who put what horse… where?”
“You don’t know what that might mean?”
“I’ve really no idea. Terribly sorry, but as you’ve heard, I’ve got a client waiting.”
Strike had no alternative but to follow Drummond back into the gallery.
In the middle of the otherwise deserted gallery stood Lucinda, who was fussing over a dark, heavily pregnant woman sitting on a high chair, sipping water.
As he recognized Charlotte, Strike knew that this second encounter could not be a coincidence.
50
… you have branded me, once for all—branded me for life.
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
“Corm,” she said weakly, gaping at him over the rim of her glass. She was pale, but Strike, who would have put nothing past her to stage a situation that she could use to her advantage, including skipping food or applying white foundation, merely nodded.
“Oh, you know each other?” said Drummond, surprised.
“I must go,” mumbled Charlotte, getting to her feet while the concerned Lucinda hovered. “I’m late, I’m meeting my sister.”
“Are you sure you’re well enough?” said Lucinda.
Charlotte gave Strike a tremulous smile.
“Would you mind walking me up the road? It’s only a block.”
Drummond and Lucinda turned to Strike, clearly delighted to offload responsibility for this wealthy, well-connected woman onto his shoulders.
“Not sure I’m the best person for the job,” said Strike, indicating his stick.
He felt Drummond and Lucinda’s surprise.
“I’ll give you plenty of warning if I think I’m actually going into labor,” said Charlotte. “Please?”
He could have said “No.” He might have said, “Why don’t you get your sister to meet you here?” A refusal, as she knew well, would make him appear churlish in front of people he might need to talk to again.
“Fine,” he said, keeping his voice just the right side of brusque.
“Thanks so much, Lucinda,” said Charlotte, sliding down from the chair.
She was wearing a beige silk trench coat over a black T-shirt, maternity jeans and sneakers. Everything she wore, even these casual things, was of fine quality. She had always favored monochrome colors, stark or classic designs, against which her remarkable beauty was thrown into relief.
Strike held open the door for her, reminded by her pallor of the occasion when Robin had turned white and clammy at journey’s end, after deftly steering a hire car out of what could have been a disastrous crash on black ice.
“Thank you,” he said to Henry Drummond.
“My pleasure,” said the art dealer formally.
“The restaurant’s not far,” Charlotte said, pointing up the slope as the gallery door swung shut.
They walked side by side, passersby perhaps assuming that he was responsible for her bulging stomach. He could smell what he knew was Shalimar on her skin. She had worn it ever since she was nineteen and he had sometimes bought it for her. Once again, he remembered walking this way towards the argument with her father in an Italian restaurant so many years ago.
“You think I arranged this.”
Strike said nothing. He had no desire to become enmeshed in disagreement or reminiscence. They had walked for two blocks before he spoke.
“Where is this place?”
“Jermyn Street. Franco’s.”
The moment she said the name, he recognized it as the very same one in which they had met Charlotte’s father all those years previously. The ensuing row had been short but exceedingly vicious, for a vein of incontinent spite ran right through every member of Charlotte’s aristocratic family, but then she and Strike had gone back to her flat and made love with an intensity and urgency that he now wished he could expunge from his brain, the memory of her crying even as she climaxed, hot tears falling onto his face as she shouted with pleasure.
“Ouch. Stop,” she said sharply.
He turned. Cradling her belly with both hands, she backed into a doorway, frowning.
“Sit down,” he said, resenting even having to make suggestions to help her. “On the step there.”
“No,” she said, taking deep breaths. “Just get me to Franco’s and you can go.”
They walked on.
The ma?tre d’h?tel was all concern: it was clear that Charlotte was not well.
“Is my sister here?” Charlotte asked.
“Not yet,” said the ma?tre d’ anxiously, and like Henry Drummond and Lucinda, he looked to Strike to share responsibility for this alarming and unsought problem.
Barely a minute later, Strike was sitting in Amelia’s seat at the table for two beside the window, and the waiter was bringing a bottle of water, and Charlotte was still taking deep breaths, and the ma?tre d’ was putting bread down between them, saying uncertainly that Charlotte might feel better if she ate something, but also suggesting quietly to Strike that he could call an ambulance at any moment, if that seemed desirable.
At last they were left alone. Still, Strike did not speak. He intended to leave the moment her color improved, or her sister arrived. All around them sat well-heeled diners, enjoying wine and pasta amid tasteful wood, leather and glass, with black and white prints on the geometric white and red wallpaper.
“You think I arranged this,” mumbled Charlotte again.
Strike said nothing. He was keeping lookout for Charlotte’s sister, whom he had not seen for years and who doubtless would be appalled to find them sitting together. Perhaps there would be another tight-lipped row, hidden from their fellow diners, in which fresh aspersions would be cast upon his personality, his background and his motives in escorting his wealthy, pregnant, married ex-girlfriend to her dinner date.
Charlotte took a breadstick and began to eat it, watching him.
“I really didn’t know you were going to be there today, Corm.”
He didn’t believe it for a second. The meeting at Lancaster House had been chance: he had seen her shock when their eyes met, but this was far too much of a coincidence. If he hadn’t known it to be impossible, he would even have supposed that she knew he had split up with his girlfriend that morning.
“You don’t believe me.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, still scanning the street for Amelia.
“I got a real shock when Lucinda said you were there.”
Bollocks. She wouldn’t have told you who was in the office. You already knew.
“This happens a lot lately,” she persisted. “They call them Braxton Hicks contractions. I hate being pregnant.”
He knew he had not disguised his immediate thought when she leaned towards him and said quietly: “I know what you’re thinking. I didn’t get rid of ours. I didn’t.”
“Don’t start, Charlotte,” he said, with the sensation that the firm ground beneath his feet was starting to crack and shift.
“I lost—”
“I’m not doing this again,” he said, a warning note in his voice. “We’re not going back over dates from two years ago. I don’t care.”
“I took a test at my mother’s—”
“I said I don’t care.”
He wanted to leave, but she was if anything paler now, her lips trembling as she gazed at him with those horribly familiar, russet-flecked green eyes, now brimming with tears. The swollen belly still didn’t seem part of her. He would not have been entirely surprised had she lifted her T-shirt to show a cushion.
“I wish they were yours.”
“Fuck’s sake, Charlotte—”
“If they were yours, I’d be happy about it.”