Page 259 of The Hallmarked Man

He’d noticed that the strain between them had lifted. He was in too much pain to analyse why the change had happened, but he intended to make the most of it.

Robin imagined getting on a plane and flying to Sark. Perspective, light, the sea…

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘OK.’

She restarted the car. Strike’s eyes were still stinging and swollen, his thigh wound was becoming progressively more painful, he probably needed a tetanus shot, but he was suddenly happier than he’d been in months.

PART SEVEN

‘The silver’s there all right,’ he said, time and again, ‘it only wants finding,’ and he pushed ahead, here and there, wherever he thought the chances most favourable.

John Oxenham

A Maid of the Silver Sea

81

See, therefore, that first controlling your own temper, and governing your own passions, you fit yourself to keep peace and harmony among other men, and especially the brethren.

Albert Pike

Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Scottish Freemasonry

It took a full forty-eight hours for the whites of Strike’s eyes to recover from the pepper spray, during which time he had an emergency tetanus shot and passed his video footage of the dog fight, and the names and addresses of Plug and his friends, to police in Ipswich. The bites to Strike’s inner thigh meant walking was even more painful than usual, yet his mood remained buoyant throughout. Not only had Robin agreed to go to Sark with him, she’d chosen not to answer Murphy’s phone call on Valentine’s Day, and her feelings towards Strike seemed to have reverted to their usual state. Admittedly, Strike didn’t know exactly what that state was, but their friendship, at least, appeared to have been mysteriously and completely repaired. The universe had apparently decided that, instead of being the butt of a cruel cosmic joke, Strike was to be granted a modicum of hope, and so elated was he, both by the restoration of normal relations with Robin and the fact that he hadn’t fathered a daughter, he was now daring to wonder whether he might have a chance to make the declaration he’d so recently deemed impossible, at some propitious point on the island of Sark.

The earliest he and Robin could travel to the island was on Wednesday of the following week, because the ferry from Guernsey didn’t carry passengers on Monday or Tuesday in the off-season. Pathad booked the detectives rooms at the Old Forge, the only B&B open in February, and Strike had looked up the house online. It might not have quite the views of that Lake District hotel he’d chosen with such high hopes, but possessed its own rustic charm. Better yet, he and Robin would be completely alone in the remote house: the owner, and provider of breakfast, lived off-site.

Meanwhile, Robin and Murphy had done a lot of talking since Valentine’s Day. Murphy had offered a full apology for having become antagonistic in the aftermath of the gazumping, which made Robin feel obliged to make a concession of her own, so she told him with only partial honesty that she’d dragged her feet over looking for a suitable place to live, not because she didn’t want to cohabit, but because both their lives were currently busy and stressful even without the addition of house-hunting. She said she was happy to make an increased offer on the two-bedroomed house if Murphy was, and tried to ignore the way her spirits sank slightly when he agreed. Murphy then took the conversation back to children, only, he emphasised, because he wanted them to be completely honest with each other, not because he was pressuring her for a decision. Out of an obscure desire for propitiation, and because she felt guilty about her recent half-truths and outright falsehoods, Robin disclosed for the first time that she’d been to the GP for a check-up, and learned there that the odds of a live birth with IVF were far lower than she’d have guessed. Murphy did a poor job of concealing his happiness that she’d talked to a doctor at all, clearly imagining this meant she was contemplating imminent egg freezing. Hoping to capitalise on this goodwill, Robin told him she’d be going to Sark the following week, for work.

Murphy took this news well enough, but when they met for a takeaway at Robin’s flat on Monday evening, two days before she was due to fly out to Guernsey with Strike, Murphy pointed out, apropos of nothing, that the two of them had never yet taken a foreign holiday together. Robin agreed that this would be a nice thing to do and hoped the subject might rest there.

Shortly after they’d got into bed and Robin had turned out the light, there was a silence that felt laden with the unspoken. Robin felt certain something was coming that she wouldn’t want to hear. Then Murphy said in the darkness,

‘What would you have wanted to do, if it hadn’t been ectopic?’

‘What?’ said Robin, although she’d heard him quite clearly.

‘What if the pregnancy had been viable? What would you have wanted to do?’

Robin felt as though the bed had melted away beneath her. It was the question she’d dreaded, the question she hadn’t dared ask herself, and she knew why he’d posed it when they couldn’t see each other’s faces. Every second seemed to span an hour. At last she said,

‘That’s not a fair question.’

She waited for him to speak, but he didn’t, so she said,

‘I didn’t know until it was all over. I had no choice. It – the embryo – whatever it was – it was dead before I knew.’

‘But if it hadn’t been. If you’d had the choice.’

‘That’s not a fair question.’

Robin’s voice had wavered out of control.

‘It was an accident,’ she said. ‘A mistake. It shouldn’t have happened at all.’

‘But if—’

‘I don’t know, Ryan. I don’t know how I’d feel if I got pregnant accidentally with a baby that could survive, and I’m nevergoingto know, am I?’