“Excuse me,” she asked a harried-looking woman selecting marzipan fruits for a client, “d’you sell anything for children in—?”

“Third floor,” said the woman, already moving away.

The small selection of children’s goods available were, in Robin’s view, exorbitantly priced, but as Annabel’s only aunt, and only London-based relative, she felt a certain pressure to give a suitably metropolitan gift. Accordingly, she purchased a large, cuddly Paddington bear.

Robin was walking away from the till with her duck-egg carrier bag when her mobile rang. Expecting it to be Strike, she saw instead an unknown number.

“Hi, Robin here.”

“Hi, Robin. It’s Tom,” said an angry voice.

Robin couldn’t for the life of her think who Tom was. She mentally ran through the cases the agency was currently working on—Two-Times, Twinkletoes, Postcard, Shifty and Bamborough—trying in vain to remember a Tom, while saying with what she intended to be yes-of-course-I-know-who-you-are warmth,

“Oh, hi!”

“Tom Turvey,” said the man, who didn’t appear fooled.

“Oh,” said Robin, her heart beginning to beat uncomfortably fast, and she drew back into an alcove where pricey scented candles stood on shelves.

Tom Turvey was Sarah Shadlock’s fiancé. Robin had had no contact with him since finding out that their respective partners had been sleeping together. She’d never particularly liked him, nor had she ever found out whether he knew about the affair.

“Thanks,” said Tom. “Thanks a fucking bunch, Robin!”

He was close to shouting. Robin distanced the mobile a little from her ear.

“Excuse me?” she said, but she suddenly seemed to have become all nerves and pulse.

“Didn’t bother fucking telling me, eh? Just walked away and washed your hands, did you?”

“Tom—”

“She’s told me fucking everything, and you knew a year ago and I find out today, four weeks before my wedding—”

“Tom, I—”

“Well, I hope you’re fucking happy!” he bellowed. Robin removed the phone from her ear and held it at arm’s length. He was still clearly audible as he yelled, “I’m the only one of us who hasn’t been fucking around, and I’m the one who’s been fucked over—”

Robin cut him off. Her hands were shaking.

“Excuse me,” said a large woman, who was trying to see the candles on the shelves behind Robin, who mumbled an apology and walked away, until she reached a curving iron banister, beyond which was a large, circular expanse of thin air. Looking down, she saw the floors had been cut out, so that she was able to see right into the basement, where compressed people were criss-crossing the space with baskets laden with expensive hams and bottles of wine. Head spinning, hardly aware of what she was doing, Robin turned and headed blindly back toward the department exit, trying not to bump into tables piled with fragile china. Down the red carpeted stairs she walked, trying to breathe herself back to calm, trying to make sense of what she’d just heard.

“Robin.”

She walked on, and only when somebody said “Robin” again did she turn and realize Strike had just entered the store via a side door from Duke Street. The shoulders of his overcoat were studded with glimmering raindrops.

“Hi,” she said, dazed.

“You all right?”

For a split-second she wanted to tell him everything: after all, he knew about Matthew’s affair, he knew how her marriage had ended and he’d met Tom and Sarah. However, Strike himself looked tense, his mobile gripped in his hand.

“Fine. You?”

“Not great,” he said.

The two of them moved aside to allow a group of tourists into the store. In the shadow of the wooden staircase Strike said,

“Joan’s taken a turn for the worse. They’ve readmitted her to hospital.”

“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” said Robin. “Listen—go to Cornwall. We’ll cope. I’ll interview Oonagh, I’ll take care of everything—”

“No. She specifically told Ted she didn’t want us all dashing down there again. But that’s not like her…”

Strike seemed every bit as scattered and distracted as Robin felt, but now she pulled herself together. Screw Tom, screw Matthew and Sarah.

“Seriously, Cormoran, go. I can take care of work.”

“They’re expecting me in a fortnight for Christmas. Ted says she’s desperate to have us all at home. It’s supposed to be just for a couple of days, the hospital thing.”

“Well, if you’re sure…” said Robin. She checked her watch. “We’ve got ten minutes until Oonagh’s supposed to be here. Want to go to the café and wait for her?”

“Yeah,” said Strike. “Good thinking, I could use a coffee.”

“God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” trilled from the speakers as they entered the realm of crystallized fruits and expensive teas, both lost in painful thought.

24

… my delight is all in ioyfulnesse,

In beds, in bowres, in banckets, and in feasts:

And ill becomes you with your lofty creasts,

To scorne the ioy, that Ioue is glad to seeke…

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

The café was reached by a flight of stairs that placed it on a higher level than the shop floor, which it overlooked. Once he and Robin had sat down at a table for four by the window, Strike sat silently looking down into Jermyn Street, where passers-by were reduced to moving mushrooms, eclipsed by their umbrellas. He was a stone’s throw from the restaurant in which he’d last seen Charlotte.

He’d received several more calls from her since the nude photograph on his birthday, plus several texts, three of which had arrived the previous evening. He’d ignored all of them, but somewhere at the back of his anxiety about Joan scuttled a familiar worry about what Charlotte’s next move was going to be, because the texts were becoming increasingly overwrought. She had a couple of suicide attempts in her past, one of which had almost succeeded. Three years after he’d left her, she was still trying to make him responsible for her safety and her happiness, and Strike found it equally infuriating and saddening. When Ted had called Strike that morning with the news about Joan, the detective had been in the process of looking up the telephone number of the merchant bank where Charlotte’s husband worked. If Charlotte threatened suicide, or sent any kind of final message, Strike intended to call Jago.

“Cormoran,” Robin said.

He looked round. A waiter had arrived at the table. When both had ordered coffee, and Robin some toast, each relapsed into silence. Robin was looking away from the window toward the shoppers stocking up on fancy groceries for Christmas down on the shop floor and re-running Tom Turvey’s outburst in her head. The aftershocks were still hitting her. Four weeks before my fucking wedding. It must have been called off. Sarah had left Tom for Matthew, the man she’d wanted all along, and Robin was sure she wouldn’t have left Tom unless Matthew had shown himself ready to offer her what Tom had: diamonds and a change of name. I’m the only one of us who hasn’t been fucking around. Everyone had been unfaithful, in Tom’s opinion, except poor Tom… so Matthew must have told his old friend that she, Robin, had been sleeping with someone else (which meant Strike, of course, of whom Matthew had been perennially jealous and suspicious from the moment Robin had gone to work for him). And even now that Tom knew about Matthew and Sarah, after his old friend’s duplicity and treachery had been revealed, Tom still believed the lie about Robin and Strike. Doubtless he thought his current misery was all Robin’s fault, that if she hadn’t succumbed to Strike, the domino effect of infidelity would never have been started.