He closed Kea’s tumblr page, which he’d found unattractively mawkish, and lay motionless on his bed for another minute, looking up at the ceiling, before getting to his feet and limping towards the bathroom. While peeing, he remembered that Charlotte had once given him a cane as welclass="underline" antique, made of Malacca, with a silver handle. She’d claimed it had been her great-grandfather’s, but who knew whether that was true; it might just as easily have been bought from an antique shop. In any case, it had been useless; far too short for Strike, and when they’d split for the final time Charlotte had kept it.
Staring at the bathroom wall, waiting for his bladder to drain, Strike felt he might be on the verge of coining an aphorism about what seemed attractive in times of trouble versus what a man actually needed, what was of value as opposed to what cost a lot, but his tired brain, rendered sluggish by the whisky, refused to turn neat phrases. He therefore turned instead to the more practical issues of taking off his false leg, rubbing cream onto the end of his stump and falling into bed.
30
But if I can cheat my heart with the old comfort,
that love can be forgotten,
is it not better?
Champagne and her chat with Ilsa had temporarily lifted Robin’s spirits, but she felt them sagging again now that she was heading home in a taxi. Aftershocks from the revelation that Strike was in a relationship kept hitting her in the solar plexus. Ilsa had wanted to give her hope: hope that Strike would miraculously change and want a real relationship with the woman he called his best friend, but that would jeopardise the agency and the spartan, self-sufficient life in his attic flat he’d never shown the slightest sign of wishing to exchange for a less lonely existence. Ilsa might have known Strike a long time, but Robin suspected she knew the man he was now better than Ilsa did. Whether or not Ilsa was right about his reasons for hiding the relationship with Madeline, it sprang from a habit of self-protective compartmentalisation Robin doubted Strike was likely ever to give up.
Staring out of the taxi window watching dark shops slide past, some of them still with their lit neon signs above their blackened windows, she told herself, You need to fall out of love. It’s that simple.
But how exactly she was to do that, she had no idea. There’d been no effort required with her ex-husband: love had slowly been eroded by an incompatibility hidden by circumstance, until at last she’d realised it had vanished and his betrayal had set her free.
As though she’d willed it to happen, onto the taxi radio came ‘Wherever You Will Go’ by The Calling. It had been her and Matthew’s song, the first dance at their wedding, and even though she tried to find humour in the coincidence, tears pricked Robin’s eyes. The song had still been playing when she’d run out on her first dance to pursue Strike, who’d left the reception, thereby setting the tone (or so it seemed to Robin in retrospect) for her short, doomed marriage.
‘Ridiculous,’ Robin whispered to herself, wiping the tears away, then she did exactly what her business partner had done an hour previously, and turned to work as a better refuge than drink.
Opening Twitter, she saw she’d had two more direct messages from her would-be flirt, @jbaldw1n1>>.
@jbaldw1n1>>
not even gonna fkn answer?
@jbaldw1n1>>
fuck u then you snobby fkn bitch
Closing her direct messages, Robin checked Anomie’s Twitter feed and saw that a new tweet had been posted while she’d been at the restaurant.
Anomie
@AnomieGamemaster
This is how much the ‘protector of the flame’ cares about The Ink Black Heart and its fans
Grant Ledwell
@gledwell101
A brief message to thank fans for their condolences.
Edie Ledwell’s family are committed to developing and protecting #TheBlackInkHeart as Edie would have wished.
11.15 pm 10 April 2015
Robin had now spent long enough immersed in the world of Ink Black Heart fandom to have predicted the uproar Anomie’s retweet of Grant’s words would cause.
DrekIsMySpiritAnimal @playDreksgame
replying to @AnomieGamemaster @gledwell101
Fkn prick can’t even get the title right
Belle @Hell5!Bell5!
replying to @AnomieGamemaster @gledwell101
try getting the title right you moron
LepinesDisciple @LepinesD1sciple
replying to @AnomieGamemaster @gledwell101
hey Grunt, your wife looks like the stuff left in the bucket after liposuction
Black Hart @sammitchywoo
replying to @AnomieGamemaster @gledwell101
we listen to Josh not you. He knows the title, for one thing #notoMaverick #IstandwithJosh
Zozo @inkyheart28
replying to @AnomieGamemaster @gledwell101
omfg josh is tweeting again . Josh is askin people not , to attack the Ledwells
Josh Blay @realJoshBlay
replying to @AnomieGamemaster
Please leave the Ledwells alone. Please stop what you’re doing.
LepinesDisciple @LepinesD1sciple
replying to @inkyheart28 @realJoshBlay
@AnomieGamemaster @gledwell101
that’s not him he’s a vegetable now. it’ll be some little PR tit from Maverick
Streetlights cast sliding orange bars across the taxi seat and the screen of Robin’s phone. Feeling a sudden revulsion against Twitter, Robin closed the app and instead tried to enter Drek’s Game again, but couldn’t get in. As she watched Harty smiling and shrugging, Robin concluded that Strike was right: Anomie didn’t want anyone new in the game right now.
And then, quite suddenly, the solution to their problem came to her as though it had been whispered in her ear by one of the devas Allan Yeoman had mentioned. They’d get in by being somebody who wasn’t new. Depression lifting in a sudden rush of adrenalin, Robin tried to remember the night’s rota. Barclay was watching Cardew, Shah was tailing Montgomery, so Midge was surely on Fingers. She pressed Midge’s number, and the latter answered on the second ring.
‘Wassup?’
‘Oh good, you’re awake.’
‘Yeah, still in Belgravia with a bunch of arseholes.’
‘Midge, I need a favour. The agency will reimburse you, if it takes money.’
‘Go on.’
‘Strike and I still haven’t been able to get into Anomie’s game. It looks like they aren’t admitting anyone new. So, I was wondering—’