Page 187 of Troubled Blood

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” muttered Strike.

He held her hand in a light clasp, scared of putting pressure on it. The arcus senilis outlining the irises of her pale eyes made the blue seem more faded than ever. He thought of all the times he could have visited, and hadn’t. All those missed opportunities to call. All those times he’d forgotten her birthday.

“… helping people…”

She peered up at him and then, making a supreme effort, she whispered,

“I’m proud of you.”

He wanted to speak, but something was blocking his throat. After a few seconds, he saw her eyelids drooping.

“I love you, Joan.”

The words came out so hoarsely they were almost inaudible, but he thought she smiled as she sank back into a sleep from which she was never to wake.

45

Of auncient time there was a springing well,

From which fast trickled forth a siluer flood,

Full of great vertues, and for med’cine good.

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

Robin was still at the office when Strike called that evening with the news that Joan had died.

“I’m sorry about this, but I think I’m going to have to stay down here until we get this funeral sorted,” said Strike. “There’s a lot to do and Ted’s in pieces.”

He’d just shared Joan’s plan for her funeral with Ted and Lucy, thereby reducing both of them to sobs at the kitchen table. Ted’s tears were for the poignancy of his wife making arrangements for his own comfort and relief, as she’d done for the fifty years of their marriage, and for the news that she’d wanted, at the end, to enter the sea and wait for him there. In Lucy’s case, the sobs were for the lost possibility of a grave she’d hoped to visit and tend. Lucy filled her days with voluntary obligations: they gave purpose and form to a life she was determined would never be like her flighty biological mother’s.

“No problem,” Robin reassured him. “We’re coping fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Completely sure.”

“There’s a backlog at the crematorium, because of the floods,” said Strike. “Funeral’s penciled in for March the third.”

This was the day Robin was planning to spend in Leamington Spa, so she could attend the opening of Paul Satchwell’s exhibition. She didn’t tell Strike this: she could tell that he had limited mental capacity right now for anything other than Joan, and his life in Cornwall.

“Don’t worry,” she repeated. “I’m so sorry, Cormoran,” she added.

“Thanks,” said Strike. “I’d forgotten what it’s like. Planning a funeral. I’ve already had to referee one argument.”

After he’d shared Joan’s plans for her send-off, and Lucy and Ted had mopped up their tears, Ted had suggested they ask mourners for donations to the Macmillan Cancer Support in lieu of flowers.

“… but Lucy says Joan would’ve wanted flowers,” Strike told Robin. “I’ve suggested we say either. Ted says that’ll mean people do both and they can’t afford it, but fuck it. Lucy’s right. Joan would want flowers, and as many as possible. That’s how she always judged other people’s funerals.”

After they’d bidden each other goodbye, Robin sat for a while at the partners’ desk, wondering whether it would be appropriate for the agency to send flowers to Strike’s aunt’s funeral. She’d never met Joan: she worried that it would seem odd, or intrusive, to send condolences. She remembered how, when she’d offered to pick Strike up from Joan’s house in St. Mawes the previous summer, he’d quickly cut her off, erecting, as ever, a firm boundary between Robin and his personal life.

Yawning, Robin shut down the computer, closed the completed file on Postcard, which she’d been updating, got to her feet and went to get her coat. At the outer door she stopped, her reflection blank-faced in the dark glass. Then, as though responding to an unheard command, she returned to the inner office, switched the computer back on and, before she could second-guess herself, ordered a sheaf of dark pink roses to be delivered to St. Mawes church on March the third, with the message “With deepest sympathy from Robin, Sam, Andy, Saul and Pat.”

Robin spent the rest of the month working without respite. She conducted a final meeting with the persecuted weatherman and his wife, in which she revealed Postcard’s identity, gave them Postcard’s real name and address, and took their final payment. She then had Pat contact their waiting list client, the commodities broker who suspected her husband of sleeping with their nanny and, next day, welcomed the woman to the office to take down her details and receive a down payment.

The commodities broker didn’t bother to hide her disappointment that she was meeting Robin instead of Strike. She was a thin, colorless blonde of forty-two, whose over-highlighted hair had the texture, close up, of fine wire. Robin found her unlikable until the end of the interview, when she talked about her husband, whose business had gone bankrupt and who now worked from home, giving him many long hours alone with the nanny.

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