Page 62 of The Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike #8)

And then, through a gap in the crowd, Robin spotted her ex-husband sitting at a table in the corner.

Her eyes might have slid right past him, had Sarah not been there: he’d put on weight, and looked grey around the eyes.

As Robin looked away again, ‘Not Tonight Santa’ began to play and, with an unpleasant inner shudder, she remembered the year the song had come out: she’d been twenty-one, and the man sitting in the far corner of this familiar pub, who’d later proved himself duplicitous, intensely materialistic, coercive and unfaithful, had been her one guarantee that men who wanted sex with you weren’t all monsters.

That had been in the aftermath of that shattering rape, which, unbeknownst to her, had left an infection inside her that would quietly eat away her ability to do what Sarah, Jenny and Carmen had done so easily, and conceive a child the natural way, whereby no men with monobrows, armed with statistics and censorious lectures, need involve themselves at all.

‘Are you Robin Ellacott?’

‘What?’ said Robin stupidly, to the girl who’d asked the question.

She was a stranger, baby-faced, wearing a dress that looked like a skimpy nightgown and false eyelashes so thick they resembled the furry caterpillars Robin and Stephen had caught and tried, unsuccessfully, to raise in bowls full of lettuce, when they were children.

‘Are you Robin Ellacott?’ repeated the young woman.

No stocking this morning

But that don’t make me blue…

‘Yes,’ said Robin.

‘How can you, like, work with him, if he does stuff like that?’

‘What?’ said Robin loudly.

‘Like’ – the girl stood on tiptoes to shout into Robin’s ear – ‘how can you be with someone, if he forces girls to have sex with him?’

‘I don’t know what—’

On a slight delay, Robin realised what the girl was talking about.

‘It didn’t happen,’ she shouted.

‘What?’

‘ It – didn’t – happen! You shouldn’t believe everything you read!’

She watched the girl turn and relay her response to two friends, who were also wearing scanty clothes with very thick make-up.

They probably went to the same school Robin had attended, too long ago to have been there at the same time.

Robin turned her back on them, gulping down more whisky, and saw Martin and Carmen, now unmistakeably arguing, over by the wall where beer barrel lids were displayed.

Robin looked away; she didn’t want to see it, or worry about it, tonight.

Murphy had been absorbed into a group of men Stephen knew, but here was Jonathan, thank God, holding out another double whisky.

‘Thanks, Jon,’ she said, and there ensued another shouted conversation with her youngest brother, which she was fairly certain was about his work, because she’d caught the words ‘challenge’ and ‘difficult’, and she’d noticed earlier, at the house, how he assumed a portentous tone when talking about his first real job.

‘Great,’ she said, at random, and Jonathan said, ‘What d’you mean, great?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Robin, confused. She hadn’t eaten much pasta at lunch, because of the atmosphere, and she’d now consumed around a third of a bottle of neat whisky.

‘I said,’ yelled Jonathan in her ear, ‘ she’s got cancer. ’

‘Shit, who has?’ said Robin, alarmed.

‘My boss,’ yelled Jonathan.

‘Oh,’ said Robin, trying not to look too relieved that it was nobody she knew. ‘That’s terrible!’

‘I know,’ said Jonathan, and he kept talking, but Robin could only make out one syllable in four, and the three young girls with caterpillar-ed eyes, who hadn’t succeeded in attracting any male attention, were instead very obviously talking about that dreadful older woman, who worked with a notorious pervert, but pretended he wasn’t one.

Robin wondered if they’d read about her rape online, or whether her past history had trickled down into local lore, without her realising it.

‘Just going to get a bit of fresh air,’ Robin shouted at Jonathan.

‘What?’

‘I’ll be back in a bit,’ she shouted, even louder, and Jonathan, doubtless assuming she was heading for the bathroom, turned away, so he didn’t see her making her way towards the exit, with the dregs of her whisky in her hand.

It was very cold out on Silver Street, but Robin was grateful to be out of the crowd.

She leaned back against the whitewashed wall of the pub, thinking that this would sober her up, and then she’d go back inside.

She tossed back the last of her fourth whisky, then, through force of habit, drew her phone out of her pocket to see whether Strike had texted her, but of course he hadn’t, because he was at Lucy’s party.

It was Christmas. There was no work to be done.

Her good mood had vanished; she ought to have stopped at two whiskies, or have eaten more at lunch.

Her breath rose in a cloud on the wintry air as she looked right, towards Chapman Lane, and then, with a funny inward start, she thought what a coincidence that was; strange, how you took things for granted when they were familiar, and didn’t question them, and it took distance to make you look back, and wonder why, and how, and whether it was all chance, or there was meaning there…

Strike would laugh at her, for that… mystic mumbo jumbo…

She had to make it up with her mother, especially now that she’d seen Martin and Carmen together…

Linda.

Rita Linda.

Asked if we knew ’er.

Rita Linda.

’E knew what ’appened to ’er.

Ritalin-da.

Robin raised her phone to eye level and typed in ‘Rita Linda’.

Linda Rita Clay was a hairdresser in Nantwich. Rita Linde was a German composer. Linda Mae Ritter lived in Detroit and had seven children, including a set of triplets.

Robin tried different spellings. Reeta Linder. Reena Lynda. Reata Lindar.

Did you mean Reata Lindvall?

‘All right, Rob?’

Robin looked round. Her ex-husband was standing there, a packet of Marlboro Lights in his hand. He’d smoked occasionally as a student, but never afterwards, at least while they were together.

‘Hi,’ said Robin.

He lit up.

‘Working?’ he said, with a half-smile.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Huh,’ said Matthew.

They stood in silence for a while. The church where they’d got married, where Strike had gatecrashed the ceremony, knocking over one of the flower arrangements, was barely five minutes’ walk away from where they stood.

‘Who’s the Paul Newman lookalike?’

‘What? Oh – Ryan? He’s a CID officer.’

‘Ah,’ said Matthew, nodding as he blew out smoke. ‘I always thought you’d end up with Strike.’

‘You hid that well,’ said Robin sarcastically. Matthew laughed.

‘How long you home for?’

‘Until the twenty-ninth.’

‘We’re here till New Year.’

When Robin didn’t respond, he added,

‘Takes it out of you, coming back.’

Robin, who didn’t see why it should take anything out of Matthew, turned her attention back to her phone – Did you mean Reata Lindvall? – but Matthew was talking again.

‘No kids yet, then?’

‘Nine,’ said Robin, trying to read about Reata Lindvall on her phone, but her vision was unaccountably blurred, ‘but I had them all adopted.’

He laughed again.

‘Not a bad idea. I’m going to be up all hours again, soon. Bloody nappies and—’

‘There you are.’

Sarah’s voice was icy. She was holding two coats. Robin looked at her, but the woman who’d slept with Robin’s husband in their bedroom in Deptford, and left a diamond earring in the sheets for Robin to find, no longer wanted to look back.

‘I was just having a fag,’ said Matthew, throwing the cigarette away.

‘I’m tired,’ said Sarah, pushing her husband’s coat at him.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘See you,’ he said to Robin.

‘Bye,’ said Robin.

The Cunliffes walked away. Deciding that the effort to focus on her phone’s screen was too onerous in her present condition, Robin took a deep lungful of night air, then headed back into the pub.