Page 140 of The Hallmarked Man

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 thoughthe 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.

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 maleattention, 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.