At last they were left alone. Still, Strike did not speak. He intended to leave the moment her color improved, or her sister arrived. All around them sat well-heeled diners, enjoying wine and pasta amid tasteful wood, leather and glass, with black and white prints on the geometric white and red wallpaper.

“You think I arranged this,” mumbled Charlotte again.

Strike said nothing. He was keeping lookout for Charlotte’s sister, whom he had not seen for years and who doubtless would be appalled to find them sitting together. Perhaps there would be another tight-lipped row, hidden from their fellow diners, in which fresh aspersions would be cast upon his personality, his background and his motives in escorting his wealthy, pregnant, married ex-girlfriend to her dinner date.

Charlotte took a breadstick and began to eat it, watching him.

“I really didn’t know you were going to be there today, Corm.”

He didn’t believe it for a second. The meeting at Lancaster House had been chance: he had seen her shock when their eyes met, but this was far too much of a coincidence. If he hadn’t known it to be impossible, he would even have supposed that she knew he had split up with his girlfriend that morning.

“You don’t believe me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, still scanning the street for Amelia.

“I got a real shock when Lucinda said you were there.”

Bollocks. She wouldn’t have told you who was in the office. You already knew.

“This happens a lot lately,” she persisted. “They call them Braxton Hicks contractions. I hate being pregnant.”

He knew he had not disguised his immediate thought when she leaned towards him and said quietly:

“I know what you’re thinking. I didn’t get rid of ours. I didn’t.”

“Don’t start, Charlotte,” he said, with the sensation that the firm ground beneath his feet was starting to crack and shift.

“I lost—”

“I’m not doing this again,” he said, a warning note in his voice. “We’re not going back over dates from two years ago. I don’t care.”

“I took a test at my mother’s—”

“I said I don’t care.”

He wanted to leave, but she was if anything paler now, her lips trembling as she gazed at him with those horribly familiar, russet-flecked green eyes, now brimming with tears. The swollen belly still didn’t seem part of her. He would not have been entirely surprised had she lifted her T-shirt to show a cushion.

“I wish they were yours.”

“Fuck’s sake, Charlotte—”

“If they were yours, I’d be happy about it.”

“Don’t give me that. You didn’t want kids any more than I did.”

Tears now tipped over onto her cheeks. She wiped them away, her fingers shaking more violently than ever. A man at the next table was trying to pretend that he wasn’t watching. Always hyperaware of the effect that she was having on those around her, Charlotte threw the eavesdropper a look that made him return hurriedly to his tortellini, then tore off a piece of bread and put it in her mouth, chewing while crying. Finally she gulped water to help her swallow, then pointed at her belly and whispered:

“I feel sorry for them. That’s all I’ve got: pity. I feel sorry for them, because I’m their mother and Jago’s their father. What a start in life. In the beginning I tried to think up ways of dying without killing them.”

“Don’t be so fucking self-indulgent,” Strike said roughly. “They’re going to need you, aren’t they?”

“I don’t want to be needed, I never did. I want to be free.”

“To kill yourself?”

“Yes. Or to try and make you love me again.”

He leaned in towards her.

“You’re married. You’re having his children. We’re finished, it’s over.”

She leaned in, too, her tear-stained face the most beautiful he had ever seen. He could smell Shalimar on her skin.

“I’ll always love you better than anyone in this world,” she said, stark white and stunning. “You know that’s the truth. I loved you better than anyone in my family, I’ll love you better than my children, I’ll love you on my deathbed. I think about you when Jago and I—”

“Keep this up and I’m leaving.”

She leaned back in her seat again and stared at him as though he were an approaching train and she was tied to the tracks.

“You know it’s true,” she said hoarsely. “You know it is.”

“Charlotte—”

“I know what you’re going to say,” she said, “that I’m a liar. I am. I am a liar, but not on the big things, never on the big ones, Bluey.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“You didn’t love me enough—”

“Don’t you dare fucking blame me,” he said, in spite of himself. Nobody else did this to him: nobody even came close. “The end—that was all you.”

“You wouldn’t compromise—”

“Oh, I compromised. I came to live with you, like you wanted—”

“You wouldn’t take the job Daddy—”

“I had a job. I had the agency.”

“I was wrong about the agency, I know that now. You’ve done such incredible things… I read everything about you, all the time. Jago found it all on my search history—”

“Should have covered your tracks, shouldn’t you? You were a damn sight more careful with me, when you were screwing him on the side.”

“I wasn’t sleeping with Jago while I was with you—”

“You got engaged to him two weeks after we finished.”

“It happened fast because I made it happen fast,” she said fiercely. “You said I was lying about the baby and I was hurt, furious—you and I would be married now if you hadn’t—”

“Menus,” said a waiter suddenly materializing beside their table, handing one to each of them. Strike waved his away.

“I’m not staying.”

“Take it for Amelia,” Charlotte instructed him, and he pulled the menu out of the waiter’s hand and slapped it down on the table in front of him.

“We have a couple of specials today,” said the waiter.

“Do we look like we want to hear specials?” Strike growled. The waiter stood for a second, frozen in astonishment, then wound his way back through the crowded tables, his back view affronted.

“All this romantic bullshit,” Strike said, leaning in to Charlotte. “You wanted things I couldn’t give you. Every single fucking time, you hated the poverty.”

“I acted like a spoiled bitch,” she said, “I know I did, then I married Jago and I got all those things I thought I deserved and I want to fucking die.”

“It goes beyond holidays and jewelry, Charlotte. You wanted to break me.”

Her expression became rigid, as it so often had before the worst outbursts, the truly horrifying scenes.

“You wanted to stop me wanting anything that wasn’t you. That’d be the proof I loved you, if I gave up the army, the agency, Dave Polworth, every-bloody-thing that made me who I am.”