Page 83 of Troubled Blood

Charlotte had sent him a photograph. A naked photograph, of herself holding two coffees. The accompanying message said 6 years ago tonight. I wish it was happening again. Happy Birthday, Bluey x

Against his will, Strike stared at the body no sentient heterosexual man could fail to desire, and at the face Venus would envy. Then he noticed the blurring along her lower stomach, where she’d airbrushed out her Cesarean scar. This took care of his burgeoning erection. Like an alcoholic pushing away brandy, he deleted the picture and returned to Talbot’s notebook.

23

It is the mynd, that maketh good or ill,

That maketh wretch or happie, rich or poore:

For some, that hath abundance at his will,

Hath not enough, but wants in greatest store;

And other, that hath litle, askes no more,

But in that litle is both rich and wise.

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

Eleven days later, Robin was woken at 8 a.m. by her mobile ringing, after barely an hour’s sleep. She’d spent the night on another pointless vigil outside the house of the persecuted weatherman, and had returned to her flat in Earl’s Court to grab a couple of hours’ sleep before hurrying out again to interview Oonagh Kennedy with Strike, in the café at Fortnum & Mason. Completely disorientated, she knocked a couple of items off the bedside table as she groped in the dark for her phone.

“’Lo?”

“Robin?” said a happy shout in her ear. “You’re an aunt!”

“I’m what, sorry?” she muttered.

Wisps of her dreams still clung about her: Pat Chauncey had been asking her out to dinner, and had been deeply hurt that she didn’t want to go.

“You’re an aunt! Jenny’s just had the baby!”

“Oh,” said Robin, and very slowly her brain computed that this was Stephen, her elder brother, on the line. “Oh, that’s wonder­ful… what—?”

“A girl!” said Stephen jubilantly. “Annabel Marie. Eight pounds eight ounces!”

“Wow,” said Robin, “that’s—is that big? It seems—”

“I’m sending you a picture now!” said Stephen. “Got it?”

“No—hang on,” said Robin, sitting up. Bleary-eyed, she switched to speakerphone to check her messages. The picture arrived as she was peering at the screen: a wrinkled, bald red baby swaddled in a hospital robe, fists balled up, looking furious to have been forced from a place of quiet, padded darkness into the brightness of a hospital ward.

“Just got it. Oh, Stephen, she’s… she’s beautiful.”

It was a lie, but nevertheless, tears prickled in the exhausted Robin’s eyes.

“My God, Button,” she said quietly; it was Stephen’s childhood nickname. “You’re a dad!”

“I know!” he said. “Insane, isn’t it? When are you coming home to see her?”

“Soon,” Robin promised. “I’m back for Christmas. Give Jenny all my love, won’t you?”

“I will, yeah. Gonna call Jon now. See you soon, Robs.”

The call was cut. Robin lay in darkness, staring at the brightly lit picture of the crumpled baby, whose puffy eyes were screwed up against a world she seemed to have decided already was not much of a place. It was quite extraordinary to think of her brother Stephen as a father, and that the family now had one more member.

Robin seemed to hear her cousin Katie’s words again: It’s like you’re traveling in a different direction to the rest of us. In the old days with Matthew, before she’d started work at the agency, she’d expected to have children with him. Robin had no strong feelings against having children, it was simply that she knew, now, that the job she loved would be impossible if she were a mother, or at least, that it would stop being the job she loved. Motherhood, from her limited observation of those her age who were doing it, seemed to demand as much from a woman as she could possibly give. Katie had talked of the perennial tug on her heart when she wasn’t with her son, and Robin had tried to imagine an emotional tether even stronger than the guilt and anger with which Matthew had tried to retain her. The problem wasn’t that Robin didn’t think she’d love her child. On the contrary, she thought it likely that she would love that child to the extent that this job, for which she had voluntarily sacrificed a marriage, her safety, her sleep and her financial security, would have to be sacrificed in return. And how would she feel, afterward, about the person who’d made that sacrifice necessary?

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