He opened his document holder, spun it around on the polished table top and pushed it toward Judith, who read the document inside carefully.

“Yes,” she said finally, sliding the document sideways to Robin, who learned that Matthew was promising to transfer the money to Robin’s account within seven days of signature. “Happy?” Judith added in an undertone to Robin.

“Yes,” said Robin, slightly dazed.

What, she wondered, had been the point of dragging her here? Had it been one last demonstration of power, or had Matthew only decided that morning to give in? She reached into her handbag, but Judith was already holding out her own fountain pen, so Robin took it and signed. Judith passed the document back to Andrew Shenstone, who slid it over to Matthew, who scrawled a hasty signature. He glanced up at Robin when he’d done so, then looked quickly away again, and in that moment, Robin knew what had happened, and why he’d given her what she wanted.

“Very good,” said Andrew Shenstone again, and he slapped the table with his thick hand and laughed. “Well, short and sweet, eh? I think we’re…?”

“Yes,” said Judith, with a little laugh, “I think we are!”

Matthew and Robin rose and watched their lawyers gathering up their things and, in Judith’s case, pulling her coat back on. Disorientated by what had just happened, Robin again had the sensation of being a child with its parents, unsure how to quit the situation, waiting for the lawyers to release her.

Andrew Shenstone held the door open for Robin and she passed back into the corridor, heading toward the lobby. Behind her, the lawyers were talking about traffic again. When they paused in the lobby to take leave of each other, Matthew, after a brief word of thanks to Shenstone, walked straight out past Robin, into the street.

Robin waited for Andrew Shenstone to disappear inside the building again before addressing Judith.

“Thanks so much,” she said.

“Well, I didn’t really do much, did I?” said Judith, laughing. “But mediation often brings people to their senses, I’ve seen it happen before. Much harder to justify yourself in a room with objective observers.”

They shook hands, and Robin headed out into a spring breeze that blew her hair into her mouth. She felt slightly unsettled. Ten thousand pounds. She’d offered to give it back to her parents, knowing that they’d struggled to match Matthew’s parents’ contribution, but they’d told her to keep it. She’d have to settle her bill with Judith, of course, but the remainder would give her a buffer, maybe even help her back toward her own place.

She turned a corner and there, right in front of her, standing at the curb, his arm raised in his attempt to hail a taxi, was Matthew.

Catching sight of her, he stood frozen for a moment, his hand still raised, and the taxi he’d been trying to hail slowed ten yards away, and picked up a couple instead.

“Sarah’s pregnant, isn’t she?” said Robin.

He looked down at her, not quite as tall as Strike, but as good-looking as he’d been at seventeen, on the day he’d asked her out.

“Yeah.” He hesitated. “It was an accident.”

Was it hell, thought Robin. Sarah had always known how to get what she wanted. Robin realized at last how long a game Sarah had played: always present, giggling, flirting, prepared to settle for Matthew’s best friend to keep him close. Then, as her clutch tightened, but Matthew threatened to slip through it, there’d been the diamond earring she’d left in Robin’s bed and now, still more valuable, a pregnancy to make sure of him, before he could enter a dangerous state of singledom. Robin had a strong suspicion that this was what had lain behind the two postponements of mediation. Had a newly hormonal and insecure Sarah made scenes, frightened of Matthew coming face to face with Robin while he hadn’t yet decided whether he wanted either the baby or its mother?

“And she wants to be married before she has it?”

“Yeah,” said Matthew. “Well, so do I.”

Did the image of their own wedding flash across his mind, as it flashed across Robin’s? The church in Masham that both of them had attended since primary school, the reception in that beautiful hotel, with the swans in the lake that refused to swim together, and the disastrous reception, during which Robin had known, for a few terrifying seconds, that if Strike had asked her to leave with him, she’d have gone.

“How’re things with you?”

“Great,” said Robin.

She put up a good front. What you do, when you meet the ex, isn’t it? Pretend you think you did the right thing. No regrets.

“Well,” he said, as the traffic rolled past, “I need to…”

He began to walk away.

“Matt.”

He turned back.

“What?”

“I’ll never forget… how you were, when I really needed you. Whatever else… I’ll never forget that part.”

For a fraction of a second, his face worked slightly, like a small boy’s. Then he walked back to her, bent down, and before she knew what was happening, he’d hugged her quickly, then let go as though she was red hot.

“G’luck, Robs,” he said thickly, and walked away for good.

56

Whereas this Lady, like a sheepe astray,

Now drowned in the depth of sleepe all fearlesse lay.

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

At the precise moment Matthew turned to walk away from Robin in Holborn, Strike, who was sitting in his parked car three miles away, outside the familiar terraced house in Stoke Newington, decided to call his brother, lest Al sit in wait for him at the office all day. The detective’s anger was shot through with other, less easily identifiable feelings, of which the least painful to acknowledge was grudging admiration for Al’s persistence. Strike didn’t doubt that Al had come to the office for a last-ditch attempt to persuade Strike into some form of reconciliation with his father, preferably before or during the party to celebrate his father’s new album. Having always considered Al a fairly weak and sybaritic character, Strike had to admit he was showing guts, risking his older brother’s fury.

Strike waited until Elinor Dean had unloaded the foam and the cheap wood from her car and carried it all inside with the aid of her friend from Shifty’s gym, watched the front door close, then called Al’s number.

“Hi,” said Al, picking up after a single ring.

“Why are you in my office?” asked Strike.

“Wanted to see you, bruv. Talk face to face.”

“Well, I won’t be back there today,” lied Strike. “So I suggest you say whatever it is you’ve got to say now.”

“Bruv—”

“Who’s there with you?”

“Er—your secretary—Pat, is it?” Strike heard Al turn away from his mobile to check, and heard Pat’s caw of agreement, “and a bloke called—”

“Barclay,” said the Scot loudly, in the background.

“Right, well, go into my office for some privacy,” said Strike. He listened while Al told Pat what Strike had asked him to do, heard the familiar sound of his own office door closing, then said,

“If this is about what I think it’s about—”