His sister Lucy had once said to him in exasperation, ‘Why do you put up with it? Why? Just because she’s beautiful?’
And he had answered: ‘It helps.’
She had expected him to say ‘no’, of course. Though they spent so much time trying to make themselves beautiful, you were not supposed to admit to women that beauty mattered. Charlotte was beautiful, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and he had never rid himself of a sense of wonder at her looks, nor of the gratitude they inspired, nor of pride by association.
Love, Michael Fancourt had said, is a delusion.
Strike turned the page on a picture of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s sulky face without seeing it. Had he imagined things in Charlotte that had never been there? Had he invented virtues for her, to add lustre to her staggering looks? He had been nineteen when they met. It seemed incredibly young to Strike now, as he sat in this pub carrying a good two stone of excess weight, missing half a leg.
Perhaps he had created a Charlotte in her own image who had never existed outside his own besotted mind, but what of it? He had loved the real Charlotte too, the woman who had stripped herself bare in front of him, demanding whether he could still love her if she did this, if she confessed to this, if she treated him like this… until finally she had found his limit and beauty, rage and tears had been insufficient to hold him, and she had fled into the arms of another man.
And maybe that’s love, he thought, siding in his mind with Michael Fancourt against an invisible and censorious Robin, who for some reason seemed to be sitting in judgement on him as he sat drinking Doom Bar and pretending to read about the worst winter on record. You and Matthew… Strike could see it even if she could not: the condition of being with Matthew was not to be herself.
Where was the couple that saw each other clearly? In the endless parade of suburban conformity that seemed to be Lucy and Greg’s marriage? In the tedious variations on betrayal and disillusionment that brought a never-ending stream of clients to his door? In the wilfully blind allegiance of Leonora Quine to a man whose every fault had been excused because ‘he’s a writer’, or the hero worship that Kathryn Kent and Pippa Midgley had brought to the same fool, trussed like a turkey and disembowelled?
Strike was depressing himself. He was halfway down his third pint. As he wondered whether he was going to have a fourth, his mobile buzzed on the table where he had laid it, face down.
He drank his beer slowly while the pub filled up around him, looking at his phone, taking bets against himself. Outside the chapel, giving me one last chance to stop it? Or she’s done it and wants to let me know?
He drank the last of his beer before flipping the mobile over.
Congratulate me. Mrs Jago Ross.
Strike stared at the words for a few seconds, then slid the phone into his pocket, got up, folded the newspaper under his arm and set off home.
As he walked with the aid of his stick back to Denmark Street he remembered words from his favourite book, unread for a very long time, buried at the bottom of the box of belongings on his landing.
… difficile est longum subito deponere amoren,
difficile est, uerum hoc qua lubet efficias…
… it is hard to throw off long-established love:
Hard, but this you must manage somehow…
The restlessness that had consumed him all day had gone. He felt hungry and in need of relaxation. Arsenal were playing Fulham at three; there was just time to cook himself a late lunch before kick-off.
And after that, he thought, he might go round to see Nina Lascelles. Tonight was not a night he fancied spending alone.
42
MATHEO:… an odd toy.
GIULIANO: Ay, to mock an ape withal.
Ben Jonson, Every Man in His Humour
Robin arrived at work on Monday morning feeling tired and vaguely battle-weary, but proud of herself.
She and Matthew had spent most of the weekend discussing her job. In some ways (strange to think this, after nine years together) it had been the deepest and most serious conversation that they had ever had. Why had she not admitted for so long that her secret interest in investigative work had long pre-dated meeting Cormoran Strike? Matthew had seemed stunned when she had finally confessed to him that she had had an ambition to work in some form of criminal investigation since her early teens.
‘I’d have thought it would’ve been the last thing…’ Matthew had mumbled, tailing off but referring obliquely, as Robin knew, to the reason she had dropped out of university.
‘I just never knew how to say it to you,’ she told him. ‘I thought you’d laugh. So it wasn’t Cormoran making me stay, or anything to do with him as a – as a person’ (she had been on the verge of saying ‘as a man’, but saved herself just in time). ‘It was me. It’s what I want to do. I love it. And now he says he’ll train me, Matt, and that’s what I always wanted.’
The discussion had gone on all through Sunday, the disconcerted Matthew shifting slowly, like a boulder.
‘How much weekend work?’ he had asked her suspiciously.
‘I don’t know; when it’s needed. Matt, I love the job, don’t you understand? I don’t want to pretend any more. I just want to do it, and I’d like your support.’
In the end he had put his arms around her and agreed. She had tried not to feel grateful that his mother had just died, making him, she could not help thinking, just a little more amenable to persuasion than he might usually have been.
Robin had been looking forward to telling Strike about this mature development in her relationship but he was not in the office when she arrived. Lying on the desk beside her tiny tinsel tree was a short note in his distinctive, hard-to-read handwriting:
No milk, gone out for breakfast, then to Hamleys, want to beat crowds. PS Know who killed Quine.
Robin gasped. Seizing the phone, she called Strike’s mobile, only to hear the engaged signal.
Hamleys would not open until ten but Robin did not think she could bear to wait that long. Again and again she pressed redial while she opened and sorted the post, but Strike was still on the other call. She opened emails, the phone clamped to one ear; half an hour passed, then an hour, and still the engaged tone emanated from Strike’s number. She began to feel irritated, suspecting that it was a deliberate ploy to keep her in suspense.
At half past ten a soft ping from the computer announced the arrival of an email from an unfamiliar sender called [email protected], who had sent nothing but an attachment labelled FYI.
Robin clicked on it automatically, still listening to the engaged tone. A large black-and-white picture swelled to fill her computer monitor.
The backdrop was stark; an overcast sky and the exterior of an old stone building. Everyone in the picture was out of focus except the bride, who had turned to look directly at the camera. She was wearing a long, plain, slim-fitting white gown with a floor-length veil held in place by a thin diamond band. Her black hair was flying like the folds of tulle in what looked like a stiff breeze. One hand was clasped in that of a blurred figure in a morning suit who appeared to be laughing, but her expression was unlike any bride’s that Robin had ever seen. She looked broken, bereft, haunted. Her eyes staring straight into Robin’s as though they alone were friends, as though Robin were the only one who might understand.
Robin lowered the mobile she had been listening to and stared at the picture. She had seen that extraordinarily beautiful face before. They had spoken once, on the telephone: Robin remembered a low, attractively husky voice. This was Charlotte, Strike’s ex-fiancée, the woman she had once seen running from this very building.
She was so beautiful. Robin felt strangely humbled by the other woman’s looks, and awed by her profound sadness. Sixteen years, on and off, with Strike – Strike, with his pube-like hair, his boxer’s profile and his half a leg… not that those things mattered, Robin told herself, staring transfixed at this incomparably stunning, sad bride…
The door opened. Strike was suddenly there beside her, two carrier bags of toys in his hands, and Robin, who had not heard him coming up the stairs, jumped as though she had been caught pilfering from the petty cash.
‘Morning,’ he said.
She reached hastily for the computer mouse, trying to close down the picture before he could see it, but her scramble to cover up what she was viewing drew his eyes irresistibly to the screen. Robin froze, shamefaced.
‘She sent it a few minutes ago, I didn’t know what it was when I opened it. I’m… sorry.’
Strike stared at the picture for a few seconds then turned away, setting the bags of toys down on the floor by her desk.
‘Just delete it,’ he said. He sounded neither sad nor angry, but firm.
Robin hesitated, then closed the file, deleted the email and emptied the trash folder.
‘Cheers,’ he said, straightening up, and by his manner informed her that there would be no discussion of Charlotte’s wedding picture. ‘I’ve got about thirty missed calls from you on my phone.’
‘Well, what do you expect?’ said Robin with spirit. ‘Your note – you said—’
‘I had to take a call from my aunt,’ said Strike. ‘An hour and ten minutes on the medical complaints of everyone in St Mawes, all because I told her I’m going home for Christmas.’