Page 54 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

Blame not thou the faulting light

Nor the whispers of the night:

Though the whispering night were still,

Yet the heart would counsel ill.

A. E. Housman XVII, More Poems

Robin’s trip to the GP was difficult in ways she hadn’t anticipated.

All she’d really wanted was to find out whether the sharp pains in her lower right side were anything to be concerned about, and the short answer to that, according to the blunt young male locum she was forced to see, instead of the female doctor she’d requested, was ‘no’.

Having asked her whether she’d had symptoms of an infection, such as a raised temperature, and whether the incision site had healed well (she’d declined his offer to have a look at it), he said,

‘You’ve had an operation,’ as though she hadn’t realised, as though she’d slept through the shock and the pain and the morphine, ‘you’re still healing. Have you been very physically active since you left hospital?’

‘Reasonably,’ said Robin, remembering the dash along the pavement to Plug’s shed, and today’s sprint up the agency’s stairs.

‘Well, there you are,’ said the doctor.

‘Right,’ said Robin, bending to pick up her bag to leave, but the doctor was still talking.

‘I see they discussed IVF with you, at the hospital,’ he said, eyes on his computer monitor.

‘Yes, but—’

‘You’re thirty-two, right?’

‘Yes,’ said Robin.

‘While you’re still under thirty-five, you’ve got around a fifty-five per cent chance of a live birth via IVF,’ he said, ‘but the odds are lower with a first implantation. Wait until forty, and your odds drop to ten per cent.’

‘OK,’ said Robin, ‘well, thank—’

‘Women often think IVF’s a safety net. There are no guarantees. If that’s what you want, you need to be thinking about it—’

‘Sooner rather than later,’ said Robin. ‘Yes, the surgeon said.’

She didn’t mean to be rude, but she’d already had more than enough of the GP, his statistics, his monobrow and his air of patronage.

Maybe she’d imagined the air of judgement when he’d read ‘chlamydia’ aloud, off his screen, but she was damned if she was going to tell him how her fallopian tubes had come to be ruined.

Robin spent most of the four-hour drive to Masham feigning a cheerfulness she didn’t feel.

Murphy, who’d had the tact not to mention the article about Strike and Candy, was in high spirits because, at last, he and his team had secured three arrests in the case of the shot brothers: that of the man who’d fired the gun, the driver of the car from which he’d done so, and the girlfriend of the latter, who’d given both men a fake alibi.

Sincerely pleased for him, and for the mother of the boys, Robin was full of congratulations, and told herself it was the wrong moment to tell him about her visit to the GP.

When, exactly, would be the right moment to discuss that, Robin didn’t know.

She had a horrible feeling that if she told Murphy what the odds of a successful birth were via IVF he’d suggest they start trying for a child immediately, that his previous ‘you’re only thirty-two’ would turn rapidly into ‘you’re already thirty-two’.

Robin thought again of all the women in the world who’d be delighted that their boyfriend wanted to have children with them, and she asked herself what was wrong with her, that she felt panicked and stifled at the thought of what she’d once thought she wanted, before she’d been sent to a rundown office in Denmark Street as a temporary secretary, and everything had changed: the part of her she’d thought the rapist had taken away for ever had proven to be not dead, but dormant, just waiting for its chance, while something she’d taken for granted – that she could have children as and when she wished – was gone for ever, although she hadn’t then known it.

Don’t cry, Robin told herself, as the dark M11 slipped past the car windows, the Christmas songs played on the radio, and Murphy talked in detail about how he’d personally ground down the driver’s girlfriend, catching the woman out in contradictions in her story.

‘She’s a spice addict,’ he told Robin.

‘A what addict?’

‘Spice. Synthetic cannabis. It’s bloody everywhere. She was sweating like she was in a sauna. Spoke about three words a minute. Nearly five hours it took, to break her.’

Murphy took a swig of water, as though the memory of it made him hoarse.

‘Christ, I’m looking forward to this. I need a break.’

‘Me too,’ said Robin untruthfully. In fact, she’d have given almost anything to be driving in the opposite direction, back to her solitary flat and work, even if that was where the man who’d seized the back of her neck was. It’ll ’appen again unless you fuckin’ give this up.

They arrived at last, by darkness, at the old stone house in Masham where Robin had grown up.

Her father had strung white lights in the old lilac tree in the front garden.

When Robin pressed the doorbell there was a rush of welcome during which Betty the new puppy dashed outside and had to be rescued from the middle of the road by Murphy.

Here was Stephen, Robin’s eldest brother, and Jenny, his tall wife, in such an advanced state of pregnancy it took her three goes to get up out of her armchair to greet the newcomers, and Jonathan, Robin’s youngest brother, who’d now graduated from university and was working for a brand management consultancy in Manchester; Robin’s dark-haired father, in his horn-rimmed spectacles, and her mother, Linda, whose affection for Murphy meant he received just as warm a hug as Robin did.

The family had delayed dinner so Robin and her boyfriend could join them.

They all settled around the scrubbed kitchen table, on a floor covered in sheets of newspaper due to the presence of the so far un-housetrained Betty, whose tail caused her entire body to undulate as she wagged it non-stop.

With a slight raising of her spirits, Robin drank wine and ate the chicken and mushroom casserole her mother had cooked, and the news that her ex-husband, Matthew, was also in town for Christmas, with his second wife and son, caused her barely a tremor of emotion.

‘She’s pregnant again,’ Linda informed the family, ‘that Sarah. I saw her in the Co-op.’

‘Well, good luck to her,’ said Robin, determinedly offhand.

‘When are you due?’ Murphy asked Jenny.

‘Third of January,’ said Jenny, ‘but honestly, he can come tonight if he wants. I’m sick of the bloody heartburn.’

‘It’s a boy?’ said Robin, who hadn’t known this.

‘Yeah, and they reckon he’s going to be well over nine pounds,’ said Stephen.

‘I’m glad one of us is happy about that,’ said Jenny.

‘We’ve been worried,’ said Linda, mock-reproving, as she looked down the table at her daughter-in-law. ‘She was still working until a month ago,’ Linda told Robin.

‘Only the small stuff, Linda,’ said Jenny, who was a vet. ‘No horses or cattle.’

‘I thought Martin would be here,’ said Robin.

Martin was the third of the Ellacotts’ four children, who, until very recently, had lived with his parents, although he’d now moved in with his pregnant girlfriend in nearby Ripon.

‘No, they’re coming tomorrow,’ said Linda, with just that shade of reserve that told Robin there was a story that her mother didn’t want to share in front of company.

Robin was glad to get to bed in her old room.

Murphy fell asleep almost as soon as he lay down.

Robin listened to the sounds of the others going in and out of the bathroom, of Annabel’s parents checking on her in Martin’s old room, of Jonathan moving around in the attic conversion where, as the last-born, he’d had to sleep when young.

She wondered for a few minutes what was in the flat, square box Strike had given her for Christmas, which she’d left at the bottom of her holdall when unpacking, rather than taking it downstairs and putting it beneath the Christmas tree, as she and Murphy had done with the presents they’d bought the family, and each other.

Strike’s box had the size and weight appropriate to a piece of jewellery, but she could think of nothing less likely than her detective partner giving her something so personal, not when he’d been scared out of buying her perfume one year because the names had seemed too intimate.

The memory of Strike telling her he’d panicked at the idea of giving her a bottle labelled something like ‘Shaggable You’ made her smile in the dark.

It’ll be fine , she told herself, listening to Murphy’s slow breathing. It’s only four days .