‘Who’s Richard?’
‘Max’s new boyfriend,’ said Robin. Max was her flatmate and landlord, an actor who rented out a bedroom because he couldn’t make his mortgage repayments without a lodger. ‘I’m starting to wonder if it isn’t time to move out of Max’s,’ she added.
The waitress appeared and Strike ordered them both sandwiches before turning back to Robin.
‘Why’re you thinking of moving out?’
‘Well, the TV show Max is in pays really well and they’ve just commissioned a second series, and he and Richard seem very keen on each other. I don’t want to wait until they ask me to leave. Anyway’ – Robin took a sip of her fresh cocktail – ‘I’m thirty. It’s about time I was out on my own, don’t you think?’
Strike shrugged.
‘I’m not big on having to do things by certain dates. That’s more Lucy’s department.’
Lucy was the sister with whom Strike had spent most of his childhood, because they’d shared a mother. He and Lucy generally held opposing views on what constituted life’s pleasures and priorities. It distressed Lucy that Strike, who was nearly forty, continued to live alone in two rented rooms over his office, without any of the stabilising obligations – a spouse, children, a mortgage, parent-teacher associations, duty Christmas parties with neighbours – that their mother, too, had ruthlessly shirked.
‘Well, I think it’s about time I had my own place,’ said Robin. ‘I’ll miss Wolfgang, but—’
‘Who’s Wolfgang?’
‘Max’s dachshund,’ said Robin, surprised by the sharpness of Strike’s tone.
‘Oh… thought it was some German bloke you’d taken a shine to.’
‘Ha… no,’ said Robin.
She really was feeling quite drunk now. Hopefully the sandwiches would help.
‘No,’ she repeated, ‘Max isn’t the type to try and set me up with Germans. Makes quite a nice change, I must say.’
‘Do many people try and set you up with Germans?’
‘Not Germans, but… Oh, you know what it’s like. Vanessa keeps telling me to get myself on Tinder and my cousin Katie wants me to meet some friend of hers who’s just moved to London. They call him Axeman.’
‘Axeman?’ repeated Strike.
‘Yes, because his name’s… something that sounds like Axeman. I can’t remember,’ said Robin, with a vague wave of the hand. ‘He’s recently divorced, so Katie thinks we’d be perfect for each other. I don’t really understand why it would make two people compatible, just because they’ve screwed up a marriage each. In fact, if anything—’
‘You didn’t screw up your marriage,’ said Strike.
‘I did,’ Robin contradicted him. ‘I shouldn’t have married Matthew at all. It was a mess, and it got worse as we went on.’
‘He was the one who had the affair.’
‘But I was the one who didn’t want to be there. I was the one who tried to end it on the honeymoon, then chickened out—’
‘Did you?’ said Strike, to whom this was new information.
‘Yes,’ said Robin. ‘I knew, deep down, knew it was all wrong…’
For a moment she was transported back to the Maldives, and those hot nights she’d paced alone on the white sand outside their villa while Matthew slept, asking herself whether she was in love with Cormoran Strike.
The sandwiches arrived and Robin requested a glass of water. For a minute or so they ate in silence, until Strike said,
‘I wouldn’t go on Tinder.’
‘You wouldn’t, or I shouldn’t?’
‘Both,’ said Strike. He’d managed to finish one sandwich and start on his second before Robin had taken two bites. ‘In our line of work it’s not smart to put yourself online too much.’
‘That’s what I told Vanessa,’ said Robin. ‘But she said I could use a fake name until I got keen on someone.’
‘Nothing like lying about your own name to build a firm foundation of trust,’ said Strike and Robin laughed again.
Strike ordered more cocktails and Robin didn’t protest. The bar was more crowded now than when they’d first sat down, the hum of conversation louder, and the crystals hanging from the chandeliers were each surrounded by a misty aureole. Robin now felt an indiscriminate fondness for everyone in the room, from the elderly couple talking quietly over champagne and the bustling bartenders in their white jackets to the silver-haired man who smiled at her as she gazed around. Most of all, she liked Cormoran Strike, who was giving her a wonderful, memorable and costly birthday evening.
As for Strike, who genuinely hadn’t ogled the breasts of Scheherazade Campbell all those years ago, he was doing his best to extend the same courtesy to his business partner, but she’d never looked better to him: flushed with drink and laughter, her red-blonde hair shining in the diffused glow from the golden cupola above them. When she bent forward suddenly to pick up something on the floor, a deep cavern of cleavage was revealed behind the hanging opal.
‘Perfume,’ she said, straightening up, having retrieved the small purple bag she’d carried from Liberty, in which was Strike’s birthday present. ‘Want to put some on.’
She untied the ribbon, unwrapped the parcel and extracted the square white bottle, and Strike watched her spray a small amount on each wrist, and then – he forced himself to look away – down into the hollow between her breasts.
‘I love it,’ she said, wrist to her nose. ‘Thank you.’
He caught a small waft of perfume from where he sat: his sense of smell slightly impaired from long years of smoking, he nevertheless detected roses and an undertone of musk, which made him think of sun-warmed skin.
Fresh cocktails arrived.
‘I think she’s forgotten my water,’ said Robin, sipping her Manhattan. ‘This has got to be my last. I don’t wear heels much any more. Don’t want to faceplant in the middle of the Ritz.’
‘I’ll get you a cab.’
‘You’ve spent enough.’
‘We’re doing OK, money-wise,’ said Strike. ‘For a change.’
‘I know – isn’t it fantastic?’ sighed Robin. ‘We’ve actually got a healthy bank balance and tons of work coming in… Strike, we’re a success,’ she said, beaming, and he felt himself beaming back.
‘Who’d have thought?’
‘I would,’ said Robin.
‘When you met me I was well-nigh bankrupt, sleeping on a camp bed in my office and had one client.’
‘So? I liked that you hadn’t given up,’ said Robin, ‘and I could tell you were really good at what you did.’
‘The hell could you tell that?’
‘Well, I watched you doing it, didn’t I?’
‘Remember when you brought in that tray of coffee and biscuits?’ said Strike. ‘To me and John Bristow, that first morning? I couldn’t fathom where you’d got it all. It was like a conjuring trick.’
Robin laughed.
‘I only asked the bloke downstairs.’
‘And you said “we”. “I thought, having offered the client coffee, we ought to provide it.”’
‘Your memory,’ said Robin, surprised that he had the exact words on the tip of his tongue.
‘Yeah, well… you’re not a… usual person,’ said Strike.
He picked up his almost-empty drink and raised it.
‘To the Strike and Ellacott Detective Agency. And happy thirtieth.’
Robin picked up her glass, clinked it against his and drained it.
‘Shit, Strike, look at the time,’ she said suddenly, catching sight of her watch. ‘I’ve got to be up at five, I’m supposed to be following Miss Jones’s boyfriend.’
‘Yeah, OK,’ grunted Strike, who could happily have spent another couple of hours here in his comfy chair, bathed in golden light, the smell of rose and musk drifting across the table. He signalled for the bill.