Page 61 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts

Grow, with a certain humming in my ears,

About the life before I lived this life…

Robert Browning The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church

Robin had the inevitable row with Murphy quietly, in their room, once he’d returned from his run.

Now showered, and wearing a sweater Jenny had bought her, which Robin had thought it tactful to bring home for Christmas, she told her boyfriend exactly what she thought of him talking to Linda behind her back, and demanded why, if he had questions about the Candy story, he couldn’t have asked them of her.

‘You know why,’ Murphy said, also keeping his voice low.

He’d been apologetic at first, flushed and sweaty after his run, but in the face of Robin’s anger had become increasingly irate himself.

‘Because you won’t hear a bloody word against Strike and the last time I mentioned I’d seen him in the paper, I got the silent treatment. ’

‘I’ve told you multiple times Strike can be an annoying sod,’ said Robin, who was sure she must have done. She’d thought it often enough.

‘You must’ve said it when I had headphones on,’ retorted Murphy. ‘You always keep as quiet about him to me as you do me to him.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘“I’m on my way to look at another house.”’

‘What?’

‘That’s what you said to Strike, when we were on the way to see the house in Wood Green. “I’m on my way to look at another house.”’

‘Well, we were on the way to see a h—’

‘Yeah. We were.’

‘I d—’

‘ We were,’ said Murphy, no longer keeping his voice down. ‘You and me. “ We. ”’

‘Lunch!’ called Jonathan up the stairs.

As might have been expected, the atmosphere around the kitchen table hummed with undercurrents as the family consumed a large pasta bake.

Linda was unusually quiet, but fortunately Annabel’s artless chatter filled the spaces where Robin’s conversation with her mother and boyfriend might have been, and Betty provided a distraction by producing a large turd right beside the Aga.

As Linda was taking an apple crumble out of the Aga, Robin’s third brother, Martin, banged on the back door. Like his father, Martin had dark hair and eyes, though he had neither Michael Ellacott’s sweetness of nature, nor his conscientious approach to work.

‘Isn’t Carmen with you?’ said Linda anxiously.

‘Coming later,’ said Martin, his expression sullen.

Robin spent most of the afternoon with Jenny and Annabel in the sitting room, while all male members of the family, plus Murphy, were talking football in the kitchen.

Annabel was playing nurse with a rag doll, who’d apparently fallen out of a tree and broken all her bones, and while Robin helped wrap the doll in a lot of toilet roll and gave her medicine out of a plastic cup, Jenny told Robin the history of Martin and Carmen to date, which already included three break-ups and reconciliations.

‘Your mum’s worried sick,’ Jenny whispered.

‘When’s Carmen due?’ asked Robin, who’d never met the woman, but knew she’d fallen pregnant after only three months of dating Martin.

‘February,’ said Jenny quietly. ‘I’d like to put it all down to her hormones, but they’re so alike. ’

‘Oh God,’ said Robin.

Martin’s employment history was patchy and his boredom threshold very low.

What he enjoyed most was drinking and betting; money had always slipped through his fingers like water, and Robin’s previous suggestion that fatherhood ‘might be the making of him’ had been offered more in hope than expectation.

‘Anyone want a cup of tea?’ said Murphy, appearing in the doorway of the sitting room.

Remembering how she’d so recently refused coffee made by Kim, Robin said,

‘Yes, please, I’d love one. Thanks, Ryan,’ and she saw, as she’d intended, a slight softening of Murphy’s stony expression.

It was decided by six o’clock that evening that the four Ellacott siblings and Murphy, though not Jenny, because she was so tired, would go for a drink at the Bay Horse, the local the brothers and sister had frequented growing up.

Robin was glad to get out of her mother’s vicinity, because the latter was wearing an air of martyrdom that was deepening rather than alleviating her daughter’s ire.

Robin was also craving alcohol, which she thought might put her in a better festive spirit than she could achieve at home.

A very old Nissan Micra pulled up in the chilly darkness just as they were leaving the house, and from the fact that Martin immediately jogged across the street towards it, Robin assumed it was being driven by his girlfriend.

‘Better keep going,’ muttered Jonathan, ‘just in case they’re about to go off on one.’

‘Is it that bad?’ Robin asked, as she and Jonathan fell into step behind Stephen and Murphy, who were roaring with laughter at some joke Robin had missed.

‘It’s non-stop. She’s rough as hell.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Tattoos, drinks like a fish and every other word’s “fucking”. You can imagine how that goes down with Mum.’

Given her current feelings about Linda, Robin found herself more than ready to give Carmen the benefit of the doubt.

It was only as they entered the road where the Bay Horse lay that Robin, for the first time in her life, wondered why it was called Silver Street.

Thoughts of masonic centrepieces, mauls and set squares filled her thoughts again as they joined the throng inside the pub where she’d had her first legal drink and, later, celebrated her A-level results, little realising how short her university career would be, and why.

The pub had three sections, two either side of the main door and a room at the back, and, as was predictable on Christmas Eve, it was packed.

When Murphy bellowed that he’d get the first round in, Robin asked for whisky.

The last three times she’d drunk it had been with Strike.

On all three occasions she’d needed the sharp, immediate relief of spirits, firstly, because he’d just given her a nosebleed and two black eyes, secondly, because she’d made what she’d feared would be a catastrophic mistake in a case, and lastly, because she’d been interviewed under caution.

The Scotch had its usual welcome effect as she gulped it down, burning her throat, starting to relax the hard, tight knot in her chest. It was easier, now, to reach out and to clasp Murphy’s hand, and he returned the pressure, then bent to kiss her on the mouth, and they smiled at each other, and Robin thought, he is lovely, really , and, still holding hands, they stood beneath the Christmas streamers, and Robin waved at a couple of schoolfriends who’d never left Masham, and was relieved when they didn’t come to speak to her.

‘Robin,’ bellowed Martin in Robin’s ear, ‘this is Carmen.’

Robin turned to see a woman taller than herself, with the sides of her head shaved and the rest of her hair dyed a vibrant tomato red and tied back in a pony tail.

She was wearing a leather jacket over a clinging vest dress, and the skin above her breasts was a solid mass of tattoos: the wreck of a galleon at sunset, with mermaids on rocks.

Her pregnant belly seemed not, quite, to be part of her, the rest was so skinny.

‘Hi,’ shouted Robin, as Slade began to sing ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ over the speakers. ‘Lovely to meet you.’

‘And you,’ Carmen shouted back.

‘No, I’ll get this round,’ Robin said loudly to Jonathan, when she saw him fumbling for his wallet. ‘Carmen, what would you like?’

She expected the woman, seven months pregnant as she was, to say fruit juice, but Carmen said, ‘Double vodka on the rocks, please.’ Robin released Murphy’s hand to go to the bar.

Yet another pregnant woman was standing in line at the bar; she was blonde, with a bob, and her face was somehow puffy yet drawn, just like Jenny’s, back at the house.

The woman glanced at Robin as the latter drew alongside her, and only then, with a shock of surprise, did Robin recognise Sarah Shadlock, her ex-husband’s old university friend, mistress and, now, second wife.

‘Hi, Sarah,’ said Robin automatically.

Sarah mumbled, ‘Hi’, and moved into the empty space left by a man who’d moved away from the bar, clutching four pints in his huge farmer’s hands.

‘Lemme help,’ said Murphy in Robin’s ear, and when she turned, smiling, he kissed her on the mouth again.

She might have thought he was as tipsy as the men singing along with Slade in the corner, he looked so happy that their row was over, and she saw Sarah glance back at them, before placing her drinks order.

In the warm, fuzzy glow engendered by Robin’s second double whisky, she thought she might seek a reconciliation with Linda early the next day, before everyone else was up.

Carmen and Martin were bellowing into each other’s ears, and it was hard to tell whether they were exchanging endearments or insults, but they’d probably work it all out in the end, Robin thought, before asking Stephen, whose round it was, for a third whisky.

He and Murphy were getting on particularly well; laughing at another joke Robin hadn’t heard, but wasn’t this what Christmas was supposed to be about?

She felt a blanket goodwill towards everyone right now, and what was needed was more whisky, to keep this going, and when Stephen thrust her third double Scotch into her hand, she said, ‘I love you, Button,’ and he laughed at her, and said, ‘You’re pissed, Bobbin,’ which was his old childhood nickname for her, as Button was hers for him.