In this near fever state, a jumble of ideas circulated in Strike’s mind. He thought of categories and boundaries, of those we want to create and enforce, and those we seek to escape or destroy. He remembered the fanatic glint in Polworth’s eye as he argued for a harder boundary between his county and the rest of England. He fell asleep thinking about the spurious groupings of astrology, and dreamed of Leda, laying out her tarot cards in the Norfolk commune of long ago.

Strike was woken at five by his own aching body. Knowing that Ted would be awake soon, he got up and dressed, ready to take over the bedside vigil while his uncle ate breakfast.

Sure enough, hearing Strike’s footstep on the upstairs landing, Ted emerged from the bedroom in his dressing gown.

“Just made you tea,” whispered Strike. “It’s in the pot in the kitchen. I’ll sit with her for a bit.”

“You’re a good lad,” whispered Ted, clapping Strike on the arm. “She’s asleep now, but I had a little chat with her at four. Most she’s said for days.”

The talk with his wife seemed to have cheered him. He set off downstairs for his tea and Strike let himself quietly into the familiar room, taking up his position on the hard-backed chair beside Joan.

The wallpaper hadn’t been changed, so far as Strike knew, since Ted and Joan had moved into the house, their only home since he’d left the army, in the town where both had grown up. Ted and Joan seemed not to notice that the house had grown shabby over the decades: for all that Joan was meticulous about cleanliness, she’d equipped and decorated the house once and seemed never to have seen any need to do so again. The paper was decorated with small bunches of purple flowers, and Strike could remember tracing geometric shapes between them with his forefinger as a small child, when he climbed into bed with Ted and Joan early in the morning, when both were still sleepy and he wanted breakfast and a trip to the beach.

Twenty minutes after he’d sat down, Joan opened her eyes and looked at Strike so blankly that he thought she didn’t know him.

“It’s me, Joan,” he said quietly, moving his chair a little closer to her bed and switching on the lamp, with its fringed shade. “Corm. Ted’s having breakfast.”

Joan smiled. Her hand was a tiny claw, now. The fingers twitched. Strike took it into his own. She said something he couldn’t hear, and he lowered his large head to her face.

“What did you say?”

“… you’re… good man.”

“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.