‘Well, nobody made him do it,’ said Robin, whose throat was rapidly constricting. ‘Nobody forces him to sleep with women and dump them, just because they’re willing, and he wants a bit of no-strings fun.’
‘I know, but for it to blow up in his face like this…’
‘Ilsa,’ said Robin, who didn’t think she was going to be able to sustain the pretence that she was untroubled much longer, ‘I’m going to have to go, sorry.’
‘Oh,’ said Ilsa, sounding disconcerted. ‘Why – did you just call for a chat, or—?’
‘Oh God, sorry,’ said Robin, feigning absent-mindedness, though her traitorous throat was closing even as she spoke, and her eyes were stinging, ‘I just wondered if you were free for a drink some time this week.’
‘Not this week,’ said Ilsa, ‘I’m in court, we’re snowed under. Could I text you about the following week?’
‘Great,’ said Robin, but it came out as a kind of squeak.
‘Robin?’ said Ilsa.
She couldn’t immediately answer.
‘Robin?’ said Ilsa again, now sounding worried. ‘You did know everything I’ve just told you, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Robin forced herself to say, but there was no dissembling the fact that she was crying, now. ‘I just… it’s just a mess, like you said. Please don’t tell Strike I called you to talk about it, he’ll be annoyed… especially if he knows I got upset.’
‘No, of course I won’t tell him,’ said Ilsa sympathetically. ‘I’m really sorry, Robin, I know this is a nightmare for the agency, especially after those stories in the press.’
‘Yes,’ said Robin, ‘that’s the problem… but hopefully… well, we’ll wait and see what the DNA test says.’
‘I’ll call you about a drink, week after next,’ said Ilsa.
‘Great,’ said Robin. ‘Bye, then.’
She hung up, then slumped down onto the desk, face in her arms, and a dam broke inside her, and the unshed tears of months poured forth at last, as the confused tangle of feelings inside her, some acknowledged, but most long repressed, burst free of all constraint.
So Strike might have just become a father, along with Matthew, Stephen, Martin, Shah and Barclay, whereas she… she’d tried not to think about her baby, because it had been just a bunch of cells, hadn’t it? Not an actual human being that was hers, but still, she’d been robbed of what so many other women did deliberately and with ease, even if it meant a grubby tryst with a bit of slimy rubber in a bin; no, her child had been created through carelessness and ignorance, then there’d been agony for her, and death for the tiny person who’d lodged in her fallopian tube, forever barred from meeting its mother, and Robin hadn’t wanted that baby, but she mourned it now, full of shame that it had both lived and died…
And Strike, for whom she had feelings she ought not to have, feelings she’d tried to extinguish but which lately had been gaining power over her again – he’d given her that bracelet, and he harped on Charlotte’s suicide note, and he offered her loans for a Land Rover, simply to keep her bound to him and the agency; it was all cynical, he wasn’t honest with her, he didn’t warn her that fresh scandals were going to explode like landmines under her feet. He didn’t want what Murphy was offering her; no, all he wanted was to keep sneaking around and hiding massive secrets about other women, and maybe she’d find out in another year’s time that he’d slept with Kim Cochran, and there’d be more sordid fallout and another shattering discovery for Robin, who needed to stop, now, for ever, feeling anything other than friendship for him – though right now she barely felt that…
And she cried out of guilt, because she hid so many things from Murphy, especially the biggest of the lot: that she felt as she shouldn’t about her detective partner, there was no denying it now, but that had to end, today…
How many times was she going to torture herself about his real feelings, while he was busy concealing huge secrets from her? How much of her life was she going to put on hold, in hope and expectation – she was admitting it to herself, now – that Cormoran Strike would become sincere and straightforward, and tell her plainly what he wanted and felt? He’d
At last, taking deep breaths, Robin sat up, wiping her stinging, swollen eyes on the sleeve of her coat, then went to fetch toilet roll from the bathroom on the landing, to blow her nose and wipe the desk which was now smeared with tears and mascara. Then she sat back down, still hiccoughing occasionally, with a headache burgeoning and the long Tube ride home still to come.