Page 235 of Troubled Blood

At Ted’s house there were cries of welcome, and hugs from his uncle, Lucy and Jack. Strike tried to look delighted to be there, in spite of his fatigue, and knowing he’d have to wait to sleep until everyone else had gone to bed. Lucy had made pasta for everyone, and when she wasn’t tending to everybody else’s needs, telling Luke off for kicking Adam or picking at her own plate, she teetered on the verge of tears.

“It’s so strange, isn’t it?” she whispered to her brother after dinner, while Greg and the boys, at Greg’s insistence, were clearing the table, “Being here without her?” And without a pause she hurried on, “We’ve decided we’re going to do the ashes in the morning, because the weather looks good, and then come back here for Easter lunch.”

“Sounds great,” said Strike.

He knew how much importance Lucy placed on arrangements and plans, on having everything done in the right way. She fetched the urn and admired the stylised white lily. Ted had already placed Joan’s ashes inside.

“That’s great. Joan would have loved it,” he said, with no idea whether that was true or not.

“And I’ve bought pink roses for all of us to throw into the water with it,” said Lucy, tears welling again.

“Nice touch,” said Strike, suppressing a yawn. He really did just want to shower, then lie down and sleep. “Thanks for sorting all this out, Luce. Oh, and I brought Easter eggs for the boys, where do you want them?”

“We can put them in the kitchen. Did you remember to get some for Roz and Mel, too?”

“Who?”

“Dave and Penny’s girls, they’ll be coming tomorrow, too.”

Fuck’s sake.

“I didn’t think—”

“Oh, Stick,” said Lucy, “aren’t you their godfather?”

“No, I’m not,” said Strike, doing his very best not to sound short tempered, “but fine, yeah, I’ll nip down the shops tomorrow morning and buy some more.”

Later, when he was at last alone in the dark sitting room, lying on the sofa with which he’d become so unwillingly familiar over the past year, his prosthetic leg propped against the coffee table, he checked his phone again. There were, he was pleased to see, no more messages from the unknown number, and, exhausted as he was, he managed to fall asleep quickly.

However, at shortly before four in the morning, the phone rang. Jerked out of a profound sleep, Strike groped for it, registered the time then raised it to his ear.

“Hello?”

There was a long silence, although he could hear breathing on the end of the line.

“Who is this?” he said, suspecting the answer.

“Bluey,” came a tiny whisper. “It’s me.”

“It’s four in the morning, Charlotte.”

“I know,” she whispered, and gave what might have been a giggle or a sob. She sounded strange; possibly manic. Strike stared up at the dark ceiling, his aunt’s ashes a mere twelve feet away.

“Where are you?”

“In hell.”

“Charlotte—”

She hung up.

Strike could hear his own heart beating with ominous force, like a kettle drum deep inside a cave. Red-hot threads of panic and dread darted through him.

How many more burdens was he supposed to bear? Had he not paid enough, given enough, sacrificed enough—loved enough? Joan seemed very close just now, in the darkness of her own sitting room, with her ornamental plates and her dried flowers, closer even than her dusty remains, in that vaguely ludicrous white lily, which would look so puny and insignificant bobbing away on the wide sea, like a discarded paper plate. He seemed to hear her last words as he lay there: “You’re a good man… helping people… I’m proud of you…”

Charlotte had called him from the same unknown number she’d texted from earlier. Strike’s exhausted mind now eddied around the known facts, which were that Charlotte had suicide attempts in her past, that she was married with children, and that she’d recently been committed to a mental facility. He remembered his resolution of weeks ago, to phone her husband if she sent him any more self-destructive messages, but Jago Ross wouldn’t be at his merchant bank at 4 a.m. on an Easter weekend. He wondered whether it would be cruelty or kindness to ignore the call, and how he’d bear the knowledge that she’d overdosed, if he didn’t respond. After a very long ten minutes, during which he half expected her to call him back, Strike sat up to compose a text.

I’m in Cornwall. My aunt’s just died. I think you need help, but I’m the wrong person to give it to you. If you’re alone, you need to get hold of someone and tell them how you’re feeling.