She left Strike’s present behind, untouched, in Max’s kitchen, before boarding the crowded train to Harrogate next morning. As she traveled north in her mercifully pre-booked seat, Robin tried to tell herself that her feeling of emptiness was merely tiredness. Christmas at home would be a wonderful break. She’d be meeting her new niece for the first time; there’d be lie-ins and home-cooked food and hours in front of the telly.

A toddler was shouting at the back of the carriage, his mother trying just as loudly to entertain and subdue him. Robin pulled out her iPod and put on headphones. She’d downloaded Joni Mitchell’s album, Court and Spark, which Oonagh had mentioned as Margot Bamborough’s favorite. Robin hadn’t yet had time to listen to it, or, indeed, to any other music, for weeks.

But Court and Spark didn’t soothe or cheer her. She found it unsettling, unlike anything she had ever listened to before. Expecting melodies and hooks, Robin was disappointed: everything felt unfinished, left open, unresolved. A beautiful soprano voice tumbled and swooped over piano or guitar chords that never led to anything as mundane as a chorus that you could settle into, or tap your foot to. You couldn’t hum along, you couldn’t have joined in unless you, too, could sing like Mitchell, which Robin certainly couldn’t. The words were strange, and evoked responses she didn’t like: she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt the things Mitchell sang about, and this made her feel defensive, confused and sad: Love came to my door, with a sleeping roll and a madman’s soul…

A few seconds into track three, she turned off the iPod and reached instead for the magazine she had brought with her. At the back of the carriage, the toddler was now howling.

Robin’s mood of mild despondency persisted until she got off the train, but when she saw her mother standing on the platform, ready to drive her back to Masham, she was overtaken by a wave of genuine warmth. She hugged Linda, and for almost ten minutes afterward, while they wended their way, chatting, toward the car, passing a café out of which jangling Christmas music was emanating, even the dour gray Yorkshire skies and the car interior, which smelled of Rowntree the Labrador, felt comforting and cheery in their familiarity.

“I’ve got something to tell you,” Linda said, when she had closed the driver’s door. Instead of turning the key in the ignition, Linda turned to Robin, looking almost fearful.

A sickening jolt of panic turned Robin’s stomach upside down.

“What’s happened?” she said.

“It’s all right,” Linda said hastily, “everyone’s well. But I want you to know before we get back to Masham, in case you see them.”

“See who?”

“Matthew,” said Linda, “has brought… he’s brought that woman home with him. Sarah Shadlock. They’re staying with Geoffrey for Christmas.”

“Oh,” said Robin. “Christ, Mum, I thought someone had died.”

She hated the way Linda was looking at her. Though her insides had just grown cold, and the fragile happiness that had briefly kindled inside her had been snuffed out, she forced a smile and a tone of unconcern.

“It’s fine. I knew. Her ex-fiancé called me. I should’ve guessed,” she said, wondering why she hadn’t, “they might be here for Christmas. Can we get home, please? I’m dying for a cup of tea.”

“You knew? Why didn’t you tell us?”

But Linda herself supplied the answer to that, as they drove. It neither soothed nor comforted Robin to have Linda storming about how outraged she’d been, when a neighbor told her that Matthew had been strolling hand in hand with Sarah through the middle of town. She didn’t feel comforted by strictures against her ex-husband’s morals and manners, nor did she appreciate having each family member’s reaction detailed to her (“Martin was all for punching him again”). Then Linda moved on to the divorce: what was going on? Why wasn’t it all settled yet? Did Robin honestly think mediation would work? Didn’t Matthew’s behavior, flaunting this woman in front of the whole of Masham, show how utterly lost to shame and reason he was? Why, oh why, hadn’t Robin agreed to let Harveys of Harrogate deal with it all, was she sure this London woman was up to it, because Corinne Maxwell had told Linda that when her daughter divorced without children it was all completely straightforward…

But at least there was little Annabel Marie, was the conclusion of Linda’s monologue, as they turned onto Robin’s parents’ street.

“Wait till you see her, Robin, just wait…”

The front door opened before the car came to a halt. Jenny and Stephen were standing on the threshold, looking so excited that an onlooker might have suspected it was they who were about to see their baby daughter for the first time, not Robin. Realizing what was expected of her, Robin hitched an eager smile onto her face, and within minutes found herself sitting on the sofa in her parents’ living room, a warm little sleeping body in her arms, wrapped up in wool, surprisingly solid and heavy, and smelling of Johnson’s baby powder.

“She’s gorgeous, Stephen,” Robin said, while Rowntree’s tail thumped against the coffee table. He was nosing at her, thrusting his head repeatedly under Robin’s hand, confused as to why he wasn’t receiving the fuss and love he was used to. “She’s gorgeous, Jenny,” Robin said, as her sister-in-law took photos of “Auntie Robin” meeting Annabel for the first time. “She’s gorgeous, Mum,” Robin said to Linda, who had come back with a tea tray and a craving to hear what Robin thought of their twenty-inch-long marvel.

“Evens things out, doesn’t it, having another girl?” said Linda delightedly. Her anger at Matthew was over now: her granddaughter was everything.

The sitting room was more cramped than usual, not only with Christmas tree and cards, but with baby equipment. A changing mat, a Moses basket, a pile of mysterious muslin cloths, a bag of nappies and an odd contraption that Jenny explained was a breast pump. Robin rhapsodized, smiled, laughed, ate biscuits, heard the story of the birth, admired some more, held her niece until she woke, then, after Jenny had taken back possession of the baby and, with a touch of new self-importance, settled herself down to breastfeed, said that she would nip upstairs and unpack.

Robin carried her bag upstairs, her absence unnoticed and unregretted by those below, who were lost in adoration of the baby. Robin closed the door of her old room behind her, but instead of unpacking, lay down on her old bed. Facial muscles aching from all her forced smiling, she closed her eyes, and allowed herself the luxury of exhausted misery.

29

Thus warred he long time against his will,

Till that through weakness he was forced at last

To yield himself unto the mighty ill,

Which, as a victor proud, ’gan ransack fast

His inward parts and all his entrails waste…

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

With three days to go before Christmas, Strike was forced to abandon the pretense that he didn’t have flu. Concluding that the only sensible course was to hole up in his attic flat while the virus passed through his system, he took himself to a packed Sainsbury’s where, feverish, sweating, breathing through his mouth and desperate to get away from the crowds and the canned carols, he grabbed enough food for a few days, and bore it back to his two rooms above the office.