“I want to. I can have another smoke.”
But when they reached the exit, Strike walked on with her, away from the huddled smokers, past the ambulances and the car park that seemed to stretch for miles, roofs glimmering like the backs of marine creatures, surfacing through a dusty haze.
“How did you get here?” he asked, once they were away from the crowds, beside a patch of lawn surrounded by stocks whose scent mingled with the smell of hot tarmac.
“Bus, then cab.”
“Let me give you the cab fare—”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Seriously, no.”
“Well… thanks, Robin. It made all the difference.”
She smiled up at him.
“’S’what friends are for.”
Awkwardly, leaning on his crutches, he bent towards her. The hug was brief and she broke away first, afraid that he was going to overbalance. The kiss that he had meant to plant on her cheek landed on her mouth as she turned her face towards him.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“Don’t be silly,” she said again, blushing.
“Well, I’d better get back.”
“Yes, of course.”
He turned away.
“Let me know how he is,” she called after him, and he raised one hand in acknowledgment.
Robin walked away without looking back. She could still feel the shape of his mouth on hers, her skin tingling where his stubble had scratched her, but she did not rub the sensation away.
Strike had forgotten that he had meant to have another cigarette. Whether because he was now confident that he would be able to take his nephew to the Imperial War Museum, or for some other reason, his exhaustion was now stippled with a crazy light-heartedness, as though he had just taken a shot of spirits. The dirt and heat of a London afternoon, with the smell of stocks in the air, seemed suddenly full of beauty.
It was a glorious thing, to be given hope, when all had seemed lost.
27
They cling to their dead a long time at Rosmersholm.
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
By the time Robin found her way back across London to the unfamiliar cricket ground, it was five in the afternoon and Matthew’s charity match was over. She found him back in his street clothes in the bar, fuming and barely speaking to her. Matthew’s side had lost. The other team was crowing.
Facing an evening of being ignored by her husband, and having no friends among his colleagues, Robin decided against going on to the restaurant with the two teams and their partners, and made her way home alone.
The following morning, she found Matthew fully dressed on the sofa, snoring drunkenly. They argued when he woke up, a row that lasted hours and resolved nothing. Matthew wanted to know why it was Robin’s job to hurry off and hold Strike’s hand, given that he had a girlfriend. Robin maintained that you were a lousy person if you left a friend alone to cope with a possibly dying child.
The row escalated, attaining levels of spite that had never yet been reached in a year of marital bickering. Robin lost her temper, and asked whether she was not owed time off for good behavior, after a decade spent watching Matthew strut around various sports fields. He was genuinely stung.
“Well, if you don’t enjoy it, you should have said!”
“Never occurred to you I might not, did it? Because I’m supposed to see all your victories as mine, aren’t I, Matt? Whereas my achievements—”
“Sorry, remind me what they are again?” Matthew said, a low blow he had never thrown at her before. “Or are we counting his achievements as yours?”
Three days passed, and they had not forgiven each other. Robin had slept in the spare room every night since their row, rising early each morning so she could leave the house before Matthew was out of the shower. She felt a constant ache behind the eyes, an unhappiness which was easier to ignore while at work, but which settled back over her like a patch of low pressure once she turned her footsteps homewards each night. Matthew’s silent anger pressed against the walls of their house, which, while twice the size of any space they had shared before, seemed darker and more cramped.
He was her husband. She had promised to try. Tired, angry, guilty and miserable, Robin felt as though she were waiting for something definitive to happen, something that would release them both with honor, without more filthy rows, with reasonableness. Over and again, her thoughts returned to the wedding day, when she had discovered that Matthew had deleted Strike’s messages. With her whole heart, she regretted not leaving then, before he could scratch himself on coral, before she could be trapped, as she now saw it, by cowardice disguised as compassion.
As Robin approached the House of Commons on Wednesday morning, not yet focused on the day ahead, but pondering her marital problems, a large man in an overcoat peeled away from the railings where he had been mingling with the first tourists of the day and walked towards her. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with thick silver hair and a squashed, deeply pitted and lined face. Robin did not realize that she was his object until he halted right in front of her, large feet placed firmly at right angles, blocking her onward progress.
“Venetia? Can I have a quick word, love?”
She took a panicked half-step backwards, looking up into the hard, flat face, peppered with wide pores. He had to be press. Did he recognize her? The hazel contact lenses were a little more discernible at close quarters, even through her plain-lensed glasses.
“Just started working for Jasper Chiswell, haven’t you, love? I was wondering how that came about. How much is he paying you? Known him long?”
“No comment,” said Robin, trying to sidestep him. He moved with her. Fighting the rising feeling of panic, Robin said firmly, “Get out of my way. I need to get to work.”
A couple of tall Scandinavian youths with rucksacks were watching the encounter with clear concern.
“I’m only giving you a chance to tell your side of the story, darling,” said her accoster, quietly. “Think about it. Might be your only chance.”
He moved aside. Robin knocked into her would-be rescuers as she pushed past them. Shit, shit, shit… who was he?
Once safely past the security scanner, she moved aside in the echoing stone hall where workers were striding past her and called Strike. He didn’t pick up.
“Call me, please, urgently,” she muttered to his voicemail.
Rather than heading for Izzy’s office, or the wide echoing space of Portcullis House, she took refuge in one of the smaller tearooms, which without its counter and till would have resembled a dons’ common room, paneled in dark wood and carpeted in the ubiquitous forest green. A heavy oak screen divided the room, MPs sitting at the far end, away from the lesser employees. She bought a cup of coffee, took a table beside the window, hung her coat on the back of her chair and waited for Strike to call her. The quiet, sedate space did little to calm Robin’s nerves.
It was nearly three-quarters of an hour before Strike phoned.
“Sorry, missed you, I was on the Tube,” he said, panting. “Then Chiswell called. He’s only just rung off. We’ve got trouble.”
“Oh God, what now?” said Robin, setting her coffee down as her stomach contracted in panic.
“The Sun think you’re the story.”
And at once, Robin knew whom she had just met outside the Houses of Parliament: Mitch Patterson, the private detective the newspaper had hired.
“They’ve been digging for anything new in Chiswell’s life, and there you are, good-looking new woman in his office, of course they’re going to check you out. Chiswell’s first marriage split up because he had an affair at work. Thing is, it isn’t going to take them long to find out you aren’t really his goddaughter. Ouch—fuck—”
“What’s the matter?”
“First day back on two legs and Dodgy Doc’s finally decided to go and meet a girl on the sly. Chelsea Physic Garden, Tube to Sloane Square and a bugger of a walk. Anyway,” he panted, “what’s your bad news?”