Page 125 of The Hallmarked Man

Interviewers, as Strike knew, generally concurred that Sacha Legard was not only an outstanding talent, but a man of uncommon sweetness and generosity of spirit. Strike, who knew better, had avoided reading their fawning comments for years; he ate quite enough fried food, and didn’t need the increase in blood pressure. Strike now let his silence speak for him. Did Legard want to puncture his charming public image by figuring as a man unwilling to help a distressed woman? Did he really want to seem indifferent to the whereabouts of his young cousin?

‘Well, if it’ll help put Dessie’s mind at ease,’ said Legard finally, ‘of course.’

‘Great,’ said Strike. ‘Tomorrow suit you? I’m free all day.’

‘Sure. Come to the National Theatre at three. It’s our last night of—’

‘Fine, I’ll see you then,’ said Strike, and he achieved some small sublimation of his continuing urge to punch someone by hanging up before Sacha Legard could tell him which undoubtedly well-reviewed play he was currently starring in.

34

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 carwindows, 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.