Page 186 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

No signal crackings, no thin jets or streams from the green immensity beyond.

Just one universal collapse, one chaotic climacteric, begun and ended in the same instant, as the crust of the chamber, no longer supported by the in-pent air, dissolved under the irresistible pressure of the sea.

John Oxenham A Maid of the Silver Sea

Robin’s heels were making so much noise on the metal stairs she didn’t realise her partner had followed her until she heard him call her name. Turning, she saw him standing above her on the dingy landing. To her surprise, he said nothing, but just looked at her.

‘What?’ she said.

Strike descended a couple of steps.

‘Don’t make the same mistake twice.’

‘What?’ said Robin, confused.

‘Just because Murphy’s been decent over – you know – you don’t owe him.’

Robin, who felt nothing but astonishment, stared up at him. Then, suddenly, realisation hit her.

‘You know ?’

‘Know what?’ said Strike.

‘That Ryan’s going to propose.’

‘So you know?’ he said, descending another step, trying to read her expression.

‘How—?’

‘He told Iverson. She told Wardle.’

Robin suddenly felt a powerful, inexplicable urge to cry.

She hated the idea that people, especially Strike, knew the proposal was about to happen; it added almost unbearable pressure, when she had less than an hour in which to decide what on earth she was going to say when Murphy reached for the ring box in his pocket.

‘I’ve got to go,’ she said, and turned to leave.

‘Robin.’

‘What?’ she said, yet again.

‘You need to – I want to say something.’

Strike descended one more step, so that they stood only two apart, and the blood was pounding in his ears, exactly as it had the morning he’d found out Charlotte was dead. The seconds ticked past, until, almost aggressively, he said,

‘I’m in love with you.’

Robin neither moved nor spoke, but somewhere inside she felt a cold eruption, and couldn’t have told whether it was shock, pleasure or pain, and nothing occurred to her except to say for the fourth time, ‘What?’

‘I’m in love with you,’ Strike repeated.

Robin’s expression was entirely blank, her face a little paler than usual, but unreadable.

The silence stretched on, and Robin simply stared.

She couldn’t believe what she’d just heard, but the conclusion she’d reached over the last few, excruciatingly painful months finally decided her to say in a clipped voice,

‘I know exactly what you’re doing.’ It was taking every ounce of her self-possession not to break down. ‘You’re scared I’ll leave the agency if I marry—’

‘Bullshit, that’s not—’

‘Then why say this tonight? Because you think you’re about to lose me,’ she said, before he could answer. ‘Well, you needn’t worry, I’m not going any—’

‘This isn’t about the agency. It isn’t,’ he insisted, before she could contradict him.

‘ I’ll leave this fucking agency before you do.

I’ve been trying to find the right time to say it for months.

This wasn’t the plan,’ he said, gesturing at the dingy stairwell.

‘I was going to say it in the Lake District, and then on Sark—’

‘I don’t believe you,’ said Robin, with difficulty, because her throat seemed to have swollen.

She didn’t know whether this was out of anger – at Strike, at herself, at Murphy – or because of the terrible twisting pain in her heart.

‘If you genuinely – if this was real – I’ve got to go,’ she repeated, and she began to hurry down the stairs, leaving Strike where he stood.

He listened to her footsteps and debated following her, and was still standing there, undecided, when he heard her coming back up the stairs, and when she rounded the corner of the stairs she looked flushed and angry, but Strike, who believed a woman who had no feelings for him deeper than friendship would have been slamming the street door at this moment, suddenly knew hope.

‘You’ve had ages,’ said Robin, who was now shivering with anger. ‘ Years. I was single. I was free. Every single time we got – even slightly close to – you pushed me away and went off screwing other women.’

‘Not lately,’ said Strike.

‘No, because it was safe to push the boundaries, now I’m with Ryan!’

‘You think I’ve been pissing around for my own amusement, do you?’

‘Maybe,’ said Robin, tears of fury now brightening her eyes. ‘Telling me Charlotte thought you were in love with me – what was I supposed to say to that? You’ve just been trying to make up your mind what you want – you’ve had years ,’ she said, her voice rising, ‘and you said nothing !’

‘I was scared of fucking it up, fucking everything up—’

‘The agency, it’s always—’

‘It wasn’t just the agency, it was this, us , the friendship—’

‘Well, I’m still your friend, so you needn’t—’

‘I don’t want to be your fucking friend,’ said Strike, his own voice rising now, ‘that’s what I’m fucking telling you. I’m in love with you. Everyone else can see it, why can’t you?’

‘And you expect me to just throw away a two-year relationship, so I can be the latest woman you get bored with after a couple of months, do you?’ said Robin, her voice echoing around the stairwell.

‘It’s been seven years and I’ve never been bored. You think I’d be saying this if I just wanted a fuck? I’m not asking you to cheat, I don’t want an affair. I want to be with you. Permanently. Marry me.’

Strike hadn’t expected to hear himself say that. Robin let out something between a laugh and a gasp.

‘You’re – you’re insane,’ she said, numb with shock. ‘You’re literally – you’ve lost your mind. We’ve never so much as—’

‘Easily remedied.’

Strike descended the stairs, and had placed his hands on her upper arms and pulled her towards him when she placed a fist on his chest and pushed him away.

‘No!’ she said, trembling at the contact, and angry at herself for doing so. ‘I’m not that person – I won’t do to Ryan what Matthew did to me!’

‘I had to tell you,’ said Strike. ‘You had to know.’

Robin struggled to find something to say and failed. At last, she turned and hurried downstairs, her heels clattering on the metal, and this time Strike heard her reach the hall, the sound of the street door opening, then slamming behind her.

He stood for a full minute, hoping to hear it open again, but it didn’t.

Fuck.

He turned and, heaving himself along with the aid of the banister, climbed the stairs back towards the second floor, then came to a sudden halt. Pat was standing on the landing.

‘I needed the loo,’ she said defensively.

If Strike had wondered whether his and Robin’s voices had carried through the bathroom door, he didn’t have to wait long for the answer.

‘Don’t worry,’ she growled. ‘I won’t gossip.’

Unable to think of anything to say, Strike walked past Pat into the office and dropped down into her chair. It was a few seconds before he sensed he wasn’t alone and looked up. Pat had followed him.

‘’Course, he’s very good-looking, Murphy,’ she said, in her gravelly baritone.

‘There’s the shot in the arm I needed,’ said Strike bitterly.

‘But she hasn’t seemed happy lately. Not happy at home.’

Strike didn’t say anything.

‘You don’t propose like that, shouting at a woman on the stairs, because her boyfriend’s about to ask,’ said Pat.

‘I didn’t mean – it just came out.’

‘Well, don’t go telling her that,’ said Pat sharply. ‘Bad enough, without backtracking.’

Strike emitted a low groan and put his head in his hands. If he’d been looking at her, Strike might have seen a slight softening of Pat’s simian face.

‘You can’t expect her to say it back tonight, can you?’

‘Why not?’

‘For a clever man, you can’t half be thick,’ said Pat, exasperated. ‘What’s she supposed to do, when her boyfriend’s waiting for her round the corner with a ring in his pocket? Anyway, you’ve messed her around, haven’t you?’

‘How’ve I—?’

‘You waited till another man wants to marry her before saying anything. ’Course she thinks you’re saying it to stop her going off.’

‘I didn’t plan it this way.’

‘Need a new plan, then, don’t you?’ said Pat bracingly. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ve got people coming over for bridge.’

She turned and departed, closing the door behind her. Strike was left looking at the glass panel, on which was etched Strike and Ellacott Detective Agency.

This wasn’t like waking up in hospital minus half his leg, nor was it like finding out that Charlotte had killed herself.

This time, he was no mere victim of fate: he himself had voluntarily brought about the seismic and possibly catastrophic change.

Staring at the door, it occurred to him that while he’d always considered himself master of his own destiny, he’d really been good at rolling with punches he’d been forced to take.

Three times, in his entire life, he’d made a conscious, unforced, life-changing decision he could blame on nobody and nothing else.

The first time, he’d crossed a crowded room as a student at Oxford, drunk and expecting a rebuff, to talk to the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

The second, he’d started this detective agency, braving humiliation and financial ruin to do it.

Tonight was the third. He’d finally, and perhaps too late, found something he wanted more than solitude and safety, and he supposed all he could do now was wait to find out whether Robin Ellacott decided whether she wanted it, too.

The phone on the desk in front of him began to ring. Strike let the answering service get it. As he dragged his vape pen from his pocket, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. The black fish called Cormoran was again flailing helplessly at the top of the tank.

‘Stupid arsehole,’ he snarled. ‘You’ve done it to your fucking self.’

The phone stopped ringing. Strike sat in the silence for another minute, vaping, then pushed himself into a standing position, ear and knee both throbbing.

In the absence of anything else he could do to improve his present situation, he set off for the attic to fetch the empty margarine tub, and some peas.