Page 142 of The Hallmarked Man
‘Takes it out of you, coming back.’
Robin, who didn’t see why it should take anything out of Matthew, turned her attention back to her phone –Did you mean Reata Lindvall? –but Matthew was talking again.
‘No kids yet, then?’
‘Nine,’ said Robin, trying to read about Reata Lindvall on her phone, but her vision was unaccountably blurred, ‘but I had them all adopted.’
He laughed again.
‘Not a bad idea. I’m going to be up all hours again, soon. Bloody nappies and—’
‘There you are.’
Sarah’s voice was icy. She was holding two coats. Robin looked at her, but the woman who’d slept with Robin’s husband in theirbedroom in Deptford, and left a diamond earring in the sheets for Robin to find, no longer wanted to look back.
‘I was just having a fag,’ said Matthew, throwing the cigarette away.
‘I’m tired,’ said Sarah, pushing her husband’s coat at him.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘See you,’ he said to Robin.
‘Bye,’ said Robin.
The Cunliffes walked away. Deciding that the effort to focus on her phone’s screen was too onerous in her present condition, Robin took a deep lungful of night air, then headed back into the pub.
40
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world’s not.
And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past:
The mischief is that ’twill not last.
A. E. Housman
LXII, A Shropshire Lad
Strike arrived at Lucy’s party in Bromley at half past nine. His objective had been to miss as much of the party as he could without being rude, and above all to avoid the painful early stage of every such gathering, where the crowd is sparse, small talk particularly laboured, and the choice of company so limited that you risked being trapped with a bore who’d then stick to you all evening.
However, he was later than he’d meant to be, because he’d lost track of time while trying to identify the blonde he believed had put the cipher note through the agency’s door. Frustratingly, immediately before he’d realised he was late, and been forced to set out for Bromley with a bag of presents and an overnight bag in the boot of his BMW, he’d found her.
Her professional name was Fyola Fay, and she’d featured with de Lion inI Know Who You Did Last SummerandDone Girl.Had Strike not promised to attend this bloody party he’d have been able to remain sitting at the partners’ desk in the office, working his way systematically through OnlyFans, Flickr, ModelHub and any of the other myriad places where a woman could make additional money selling nudes or camcorder footage online, looking for clues to Fay’s realname and ways of contacting her. Instead, he was trudging towards Lucy’s front door, passing the bare magnolia bush in the front garden, carrying his bags of clumsily wrapped presents and preparing, after an afternoon of staring at breasts, huge penises and orifices, both male and female, to fake an interest in other people’s jobs, houses and children.
He’d expected Lucy to be annoyed that he was late, but when his youngest nephew, Adam, opened the front door, Strike’s sister, who was further down the hall and wearing a pair of flashing antlers with her party dress, cried ‘Stick!’ and hurried past the women she’d been talking to, to hug him, and it occurred to him, with a slight stirring of guilt, that she was happy and relieved that he’d turned up at all. ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’ was pounding out of speakers in the sitting room. Resolving to behave as well as possible, Strike climbed the stairs to deposit his bags in the spare room, greeted his favourite nephew, Jack, who was in his own bedroom playing some kind of shoot-’em-up game on his PlayStation with three other boys of around the same age, then returned to the crowded ground floor, which was full of adults wearing Christmas sweaters and party dresses, and several small children Strike did his best not to step on or knock over as he made his way to the kitchen where, he assumed, there would be food and beer.
‘Here he is!’ said Greg, his brother-in-law, falsely enthusiastic.
Greg was standing with three other men, who raised their cans of lager simultaneously to their mouths as though they’d been practising the movement, all of them eyeing Strike with that brand of defiance certain men display upon coming face to face with a male who might in any way be considered their superior, whether in terms of size, fitness or worldly success.
‘We meet again!’ said a female voice behind Strike, and, turning, he saw a woman he had no memory of ever meeting: dark, overweight, greasy-skinned, wearing a kind of knee-length silver kaftan that made him think of Bacofoil, and angel earrings that flashed, like Lucy’s antlers. ‘Marguerite,’ she said, her face falling, when Strike’s expression remained blank. ‘We met here, at your birthday dinner, a few years ago. You brought your girlfriend, Nina.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ said Strike, now placing her: Lucy had invited Marguerite to meet her brother, not realising he was going to turn up with another woman. ‘How’re you?’
