‘I know who you are,’ he said, in his deep, bass voice. ‘Oh Christ – she’s not here, is she?’
‘Decima?’ said Robin. ‘No, she’s in the UK.’
‘Does she—?’
‘She knows you’re working for a Clairmont hotel, but she doesn’t know which one. I guessed you were here. I knew Tish Benton came here out of season, and I thought she’d probably come to visit you.’
Fleetwood stared at her, frozen to the spot.
‘I’m not here to cause you trouble, Rupert,’ said Robin quietly, because a family at a nearby table were watching the waiter, intrigued by his strange, slack-jawed behaviour. ‘I just want to talk to you. When d’you get a break?’
She thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then, with an air of hopelessness, he muttered,
‘Three.’
‘Could we talk then, please? I promise I won’t contact anyone before then.’
He assented with a miserable nod.
So, at three o’clock, Robin and Rupert Fleetwood met on a shady terrace with a canopy of bright pink bougainvillea that was just coming into flower. Fleetwood brought coffees for both of them with him, but seemed unable to meet Robin’s eye. When she’d thanked him he nodded, then added sugar to his own without looking at her.
‘How is she?’ he said, staring at the surface of the coffee he was stirring.
‘Not great,’ said Robin.
‘I tried to… I called your partner.’
‘I know,’ said Robin.
‘So she’d know I was alive.’
‘Yes,’ said Robin, ‘but that was even more painful to her than the idea you were dead. She couldn’t understand why you’d just have left her like that, especially when she was pregnant.’
Rupert dropped his spoon with a tiny clang that reminded Robin of the brick hitting the Murdoch silver.
‘Did she have an abortion?’ he whispered.
‘No,’ said Robin. ‘You’ve got a son.’
‘Oh God,’ he said, putting his face in his hands.
‘He’s fine,’ said Robin. ‘He was born without problems.’
After a while it became clear that Rupert was crying, not loudly, like Danny de Leon or Murphy, but soundlessly, his shoulders quaking.
‘Rupert,’ said Robin, ‘I think I know why you left.’
‘You can’t,’ came his muffled voice.
‘I think I can,’ said Robin.
He looked up, his tear-stained face aghast.
‘How—?’
‘I read a magazine interview with Cosima and saw she’d taken a DNA test. Then I realised you all look a bit alike,’ said Robin. ‘Dino, Decima and you.’
Rupert wiped his face roughly on his white waiter’s sleeve, but tears were still leaking out of his eyes. He had, Robin thought, a very likeable face; not precisely handsome, but better-looking in person than he’d been in the photo she and Strike had been showing people connected to William Wright.
‘How did you find out?’ she asked.
After wiping his face a second time on his sleeve, Fleetwood reached into the breast pocket of his waistcoat, took out a packet of Marlboro Lights, lit one, and said croakily,
‘Valentine.’
‘He told you?’
‘Not… definitely,’ said Fleetwood.
Robin waited. Fleetwood smoked for a full minute without speaking, then said,
‘He was really fucking down on me and Decima from the start… one night, he got really pissed at Dino’s and told me Dino had slept with my mother, that they’d had an affair… said he caught them together on a sofa when he was a kid… then… I dunno, he probably panicked that he’d said too much… tried to backtrack, said he was joking, and staggered out of the club…
‘Next day, I rang him up and he told me he just wanted me to stay away from Dessie and he’d only said it to try and scare me off… but…’
Fleetwood took a deep drag on his cigarette, then said,
‘I looked at Dino that afternoon and I could… see it. Him and Dessie and me, all three of us have got round faces and kind of… shortish necks. I always knew I never looked like Peter Fleetwood… I don’t even look like my mum, except she was fair… so… the more I looked at myself in the mirror, the more I knew I looked far more like a Longcaster than a Fleetwood…’
‘Did you tell Decima?’
‘Shit, no,’ said Fleetwood, closing his eyes momentarily. ‘I just… I took one of those DNA tests… and yeah. It linked to the test Cosima took, online… it showed we were half-siblings… which made sense of
‘So you went to Sacha’s party because—?’