He lay back down to sleep, thinking that the year had, after all, started on a positive note, and already planning strategic manoeuvres that had nothing whatsoever to do with the missing Niall Semple.
43
A. E. Housman
Several days after returning from Masham and having worked almost non-stop since, Robin still felt as she had done ever since she’d unwrapped Strike’s bracelet: anxious and guilty. Her nervousness resembled the state in which a person waited for exam results, or the outcome of medical tests. When, from time to time, her unruly subconscious made suggestions as to what she might be anticipating, or dreading – she wasn’t sure which – she quelled them as best she could.
Strike’s bracelet was now hidden inside her only evening bag in her wardrobe, but it was hard to forget what she’d drunkenly thought on first examining it. Moreover, she knew that if another woman had shown her the bracelet, and explained the significance of the charms, she’d have responded, ‘I think he might be trying to tell you he’s in love with you.’ What man would give a present so intimate, so full of meaning only two people could understand, without knowing how it might be interpreted?
Yet the gift had been given by Cormoran Strike, he who voluntarily lived in two rooms over his office, alone and self-sufficient. Yes, the recent references to Charlotte’s suicide note might suggest a desire to open a conversation they’d only once before come close to having, while eating curry at the office, when Strike had told her she was his best friend, and she’d thought he might be about to say more, to acknowledge what both of them, she remained convinced, had felt on the day they’d hugged at Robin’s wedding, when she could have sworn he’d considered asking her to run away with him, and leave Matthew standing on the dancefloor…
But he hadn’t spoken at the wedding, had he? Nor in the office, over whisky and curry. In the midst of her guilty deliberations about what might be going on inside Strike’s head, Robin kept bumping back against the conclusion she’d reached in the bathroom of the Prince of Wales pub: that Strike, whether consciously or unconsciously, was playing some kind of game intended to weaken her ties to Murphy, lest she contemplate leaving the agency for a more settled existence.
The thing she’d thought, when sitting, drunk, on her parents’ bathroom floor, felt like a betrayal of the man with whom she was now supposed to be setting up house. She loved Murphy, didn’t she? She’d certainly told him so, and she thought – knew – she did. Barring his two recent cobra strikes of anger, one born of stress, one of jealousy, and both entwined with his own history of drinking and the failure of his marriage, they hardly ever argued. He was kind and intelligent, and she couldn’t have asked more of him in the aftermath of the ectopic pregnancy. He’d never expressed an opinion on how much she earned, or complained about the old Land Rover, or what everyone else seemed to see as her rackety career. Their now-resumed sex life was far more enjoyable than the one Robin had had with Matthew, because Murphy seemed to actually care whether Robin was enjoying herself, whereas Matthew, she realised in retrospect, had mostly wanted applause. He was generous, too: she was currently wearing the opal earrings he’d bought her for Christmas, which matched the pendant her parents had given her for her thirtieth. Most importantly of all, Murphy was open and honest. He didn’t play games, didn’t lie, didn’t compartmentalise his life so that Robin didn’t really know where she stood.
So she owed him similar honesty and transparency, didn’t she? Yet she was increasingly feeling as she supposed unfaithful spouses must do as their lies snowballed and they were kept in a constant state of alertness for the slip that might lead to discovery. If Murphy found out she and Strike were interviewing relatives of other possible William Wrights, he’d know they were investigating the body in the vault, not just trying to find the missing Rupert.