“About a year,” she muttered.
“Been getting help with them?”
“Yes. I was in therapy for a bit. Now I do CBT exercises.”
“Do you, though?” Strike asked mildly. “Because I bought vegetarian bacon a week ago, but it’s not making me any healthier, just sitting there in the fridge.”
Robin began to laugh and found that she couldn’t stop. More tears leaked from her eyes. Strike watched her, not unkindly, smoking his cigarette.
“I could have been doing them a bit more regularly,” Robin admitted at last, mopping her face again.
“Anything else you fancy telling me, now we’re getting into things?” asked Strike.
He felt he ought to know the worst now, before he gave her any advice on her mental condition, but Robin seemed confused.
“Any other health matters that might affect your ability to work?” he prompted her.
“Like what?”
Strike wondered whether a direct inquiry constituted some kind of infringement of her employment rights.
“I wondered,” he said, “whether you might be, ah, pregnant.”
Robin began to laugh again.
“Oh God, that’s funny.”
“Is it?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, “I’m not pregnant.”
Strike now noticed that her wedding and engagement rings were missing. He had become so used to seeing her without them as she impersonated Venetia Hall and Bobbi Cunliffe that it had not occurred to him that their absence today might be significant, yet he didn’t want to pose a direct question, for reasons that had nothing at all to do with employment rights.
“Matthew and I have split up,” Robin said, frowning at the passing traffic in an effort not to cry again. “A week ago.”
“Oh,” said Strike. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
But his concerned expression was at total odds with his actual feelings. His dark mood had lightened so abruptly that it was akin to having moved from sober to three pints down. The smell of rubber and dust and burned grass recalled the car park where he had accidentally kissed her, and he drew on his cigarette again and tried hard not to let his feelings show in his face.
“I know I shouldn’t have spoken to Geraint Winn like that,” said Robin, tears now falling again. “I shouldn’t have mentioned Rhiannon, I lost control and—it’s just, men, bloody men, judging everyone by their bloody selves!”
“What happened with Matt—?”
“He’s been sleeping with Sarah Shadlock,” said Robin savagely. “His best friend’s fiancée. She left an earring in our bed and I—oh bugger.”
It was no use: she buried her face in her hands and, with a sense of having nothing to lose now, cried in earnest, because she had thoroughly disgraced herself in Strike’s eyes, and the one remaining piece of her life that she had been seeking to preserve had been tainted. How delighted Matthew would be to see her falling apart on a motorway verge, proving his point, that she was unfit to do the job she loved, forever limited by her past, by having, twice, been in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong men.
A heavy weight landed across her shoulders. Strike had put his arm around her. This was simultaneously comforting and ominous, because he had never done that before, and she was sure that this was the precursor to him telling her that she was unfit to work, that they would cancel the next interview and return to London.
“Where have you been staying?”
“Vanessa’s sofa,” said Robin, trying frantically to mop her streaming eyes and nose: snot and tears had made the knees of her jeans soggy. “But I’ve got a new place now.”
“Where?”
“Kilburn, a room in a shared house.”
“Bloody hell, Robin,” said Strike. “Why didn’t you tell me? Nick and Ilsa have got a proper spare room, they’d be delighted—”
“I can’t sponge off your friends,” said Robin thickly.
“It wouldn’t be sponging,” said Strike. He jammed his cigarette in his mouth and started searching his pockets with his free hand. “They like you and you could stay there for a couple of weeks until—aha. I thought I had one. It’s only creased, I haven’t used it—don’t think so, anyway—”
Robin took the tissue and, with one hearty blow of her nose, demolished it.
“Listen,” Strike began, but Robin interrupted at once:
“Don’t tell me to take time off. Please don’t. I’m fine, I’m fit to work, I hadn’t had a panic attack in ages before that one, I’m—”
“—not listening.”
“All right, sorry,” she muttered, the sodden tissue clutched in her fist. “Go on.”
“After I got blown up, I couldn’t get in a car without doing what you’ve just done, panicking and breaking out in a cold sweat and half suffocating. For a while I’d do anything to avoid being driven by someone else. I’ve still got problems with it, to tell the truth.”
“I didn’t realize,” said Robin. “You don’t show it.”
“Yeah, well, you’re the best driver I know. You should see me with my bloody sister. Thing is, Robin—oh, bollocks.”
The traffic police had arrived, pulling up behind the abandoned Land Rover, apparently puzzled as to why the occupants were sitting fifty yards away on the verge, to all appearances unconcerned with the fate of their poorly parked vehicle.
“Not in too much of a hurry to get help, then?” said the portlier of the two sarcastically. He had the swagger of a man who thinks himself a joker.
Strike removed his arm from around Robin’s shoulders and both stood up, in Strike’s case, clumsily.
“Car sickness,” Strike told the officer blandly. “Careful, or she might puke on you.”
They returned to the car. The first officer’s colleague was peering at the tax disk on the ancient Land Rover.
“You don’t see many of this age still on the roads,” he commented.
“It’s never let me down yet,” said Robin.
“Sure you’re all right to drive?” Strike muttered, as she turned the ignition key. “We could pretend you’re still feeling ill.”
“I’m fine.”
And this time, it was true. He had called her the best driver he knew, and it might not be much, but he had given her back some of her self-respect, and she steered seamlessly back onto the motorway.
There was a long silence. Strike decided that further discussion of Robin’s mental health ought to wait until she wasn’t driving.
“Winn said a name at the end of the call there,” he mused, taking out his notebook. “Did you hear?”
“No,” muttered Robin, shamefaced.
“It was Samuel something,” Strike said, making a note. “Murdoch? Matlock?”
“I didn’t hear.”
“Cheer up,” said Strike bracingly, “he probably wouldn’t have blurted it out if you hadn’t been yelling at him. Not that I recommend calling interviewees thieving perverts in future…”
He stretched around in his seat, reaching for the carrier bag in the back. “Fancy a biscuit?”
62
… I do not want to see your defeat, Rebecca.
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
The car park at Newbury Racecourse was already jam-packed when they arrived. Many of the people heading for the ticket marquee were dressed for comfort, like Strike and Robin, in jeans and jackets, but others had donned fluttering silk dresses, suits, padded waistcoats, tweed hats and corduroy trousers in shades of mustard and puce that reminded Robin of Torquil.
They queued for tickets, each lost in their thoughts. Robin was afraid of what was coming once they reached the Crafty Filly, where Tegan Butcher worked. Certain that Strike had not yet had his full say on her mental health, she was afraid that he had merely postponed the announcement that he wanted her to return to a desk job in the office.