‘Valentine.’
‘He told you?’
‘Not… definitely,’ said Fleetwood.
Robin waited. Fleetwood smoked for a full minute without speaking, then said,
‘He was really fucking down on me and Decima from the start… one night, he got really pissed at Dino’s and told me Dino had slept with my mother, that they’d had an affair… said he caught them together on a sofa when he was a kid… then… I dunno, he probably panicked that he’d said too much… tried to backtrack, said he was joking, and staggered out of the club…
‘Next day, I rang him up and he told me he just wanted me to stay away from Dessie and he’d only said it to try and scare me off… but…’
Fleetwood took a deep drag on his cigarette, then said,
‘I looked at Dino that afternoon and I could… see it. Him and Dessie and me, all three of us have got round faces and kind of… shortish necks. I always knew I never looked like Peter Fleetwood… I don’t even look like my mum, except she was fair… so… the more I looked at myself in the mirror, the more I knew I looked far more like a Longcaster than a Fleetwood…’
‘Did you tell Decima?’
‘Shit, no,’ said Fleetwood, closing his eyes momentarily. ‘I just… I took one of those DNA tests… and yeah. It linked to the test Cosima took, online… it showed we were half-siblings… which made sense of so fucking much. My aunt always hated me… she probably knew I wasn’t related to her at all, but she got lumbered with raising me. And she always fucking hated Dino Longcaster… it must’ve been disgusting for her, watching me growing up and looking more and more like him.’
‘So you went to Sacha’s party because—?’
‘I wanted to have it out with fucking Valentine,’ said Rupert. He took another lengthy drag on his cigarette, exhaled, then said, ‘I was so fucking angry. If he’d warned me and Dessie at the start, it wouldn’t have happened. Or even if he’d said it before she got pregnant… cowardly fucking prick. He didn’t want to upset Dino, that’s what it was. Let sleeping dogs fucking lie… I don’t know why the fuck Cosima was crying. Maybe she thought I was going to make a scandal in the papers or something. Dino fucking hates the press. Or she might’ve thought I’d have some claim on Dino’s estate, knowing her… worried she’d have to take a quarter, not a third…’
‘Who knows the truth?’ asked Robin. ‘Albie? Tish?’
‘Yeah, them,’ said Fleetwood, tears still leaking from the corners of his eyes. ‘Just them. I had to tell someone. I was going nuts… incest,’ he said, staring down at the table, and Robin heard the horror and shame she guessed had been eating at him for almost a year.
‘I’ve read that people who’re related but separated can be drawn to each other, when they meet,’ said Robin. ‘They can sense a connection, they can feel it. It isn’t either of your fault.’
‘That’s what Tish and Albie said, but that’s easy to say, when it’s not you… I slept with my sister, for fuck’s sake…’
Robin couldn’t think of anything to say to that. It felt strange and incongruous to be sitting amid so much beauty, with the teal sea sparkling in the distance and the bougainvillea all around them, and to discuss an ancient taboo, broken by two people who’d had no idea they were doing so.
‘S’pose you know about the nef, do you?’ muttered Fleetwood.
‘That you stole it and sold it to Lady Jenson? Yes,’ said Robin.
‘It was my mother’s,’ said Fleetwood in a low voice. ‘It belonged to the Legards. I’m still a Legard, nobody can take that away from me. Dino had no right to it. That’s all I’ll ever take from him, ever, but he owed me something. He fucking owed me.’
‘Rupert, Decima’s been torturing herself. She thinks you’re dead. She thinks it’s her fault—’
‘I died in the vault of a silver shop,’ said Fleetwood, closing his eyes briefly again. ‘I know, Albie told me. But I called your partner—’
‘She didn’t believe it was you. Rupert, it’d be far better – kinder – if you called Decima and explained everything yourself.’
He seemed to be thinking. Robin sipped her coffee considering the fact that, having found him so easily and quickly, she had no reason to postpone her return to London. With the Sardinian sun on her back and the bougainvillea fluttering overhead, she remembered Murphy asking why they’d never taken a foreign trip together and then, inevitably, the platinum and diamond ring he’d hidden in his briefcase. She was certain she had four days left before he offered it to her at the Ritz. Robin had done nothing to prevent the proposal, because she couldn’t see how to do so without revealing she’d searched his personal possessions.
‘See,’ said Fleetwood weakly, from across the table, ‘I still love her. I’ve been really trying not to… but I do.’
‘And she still loves you,’ said Robin, ‘but there’s a baby involved now, Rupert. The two of you have got to work something out. You can’t hide for ever.’
Rupert ground out his cigarette in the ashtray.
‘What’s she called him?’
‘Lion,’ said Robin.
‘Oh, Christ,’ said Rupert, putting his face in his hands again. ‘After bloody White Lion? It meant nothing, he was never my dad…’
‘Rupert,’ said Robin, ‘she went through the birth alone. She’s been in hell for months, blaming herself for your death. Please, call her and tell her the truth.’
126
My own hope is, a sun will pierce
The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;
That, after Last, returns the First,
Though a wide compass round be fetched;
That what began best, can’t end worst,
Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst.
‘In a way,’ said Decima Mullins, ‘I feel as though he did die.’
It was late on Friday afternoon and their erstwhile client had requested a final meeting with Strike and Robin, at the office. Decima was better groomed today than either detective had ever seen her; still too thin, but quietly attractive, though with haunted eyes. As she’d already explained, she’d moved back to London with her son and intended to resume work at her restaurant shortly, though part time.
Robin, who theoretically had the day off, had wanted to be present for the meeting and had arrived wearing the dusky pink dress and high heels she’d worn to the Goring. Strike had already glanced at her left hand. It remained ringless.
‘If he’d just told me…’ Decima said.
‘I think,’ said Robin, ‘he was so horrified by the discovery—’
‘But to just run out on me like that… he knew I was looking for him, Albie and Tish told him so…’
‘I’m not defending him taking off,’ said Robin. ‘I know he ought to have stayed and been honest.’
‘There are times I wish we’d never known,’ said Decima miserably. ‘It could’ve been fine if we’d never found out. What’s the use in knowing? He called me again last night, you know. We were on the phone for six hours.’
‘Six?’ said Robin.
‘Yes. It’s always like that, when we talk; we can’t stop talking,’ said Decima. ‘I was so angry… and then we both cried, and then… after a while, it was almost like it used to be, but I felt as if I was talking to his ghost. But it’s over, obviously. I’ve got to think about him completely differently… we’ll never… we can’t go back. It’s a filthy mess, all of it… he says he wants to come back to London, get a job here and help me with Lion. He wants a proper relationship with him…’