Page 394 of The Hallmarked Man
‘I know,’ said Robin.
‘So she’d know I was alive.’
‘Yes,’ said Robin, ‘but that was even more painful to her than the idea you were dead. She couldn’t understand why you’d just have left her like that, especially when she was pregnant.’
Rupert dropped his spoon with a tiny clang that reminded Robin of the brick hitting the Murdoch silver.
‘Did she have an abortion?’ he whispered.
‘No,’ said Robin. ‘You’ve got a son.’
‘Oh God,’ he said, putting his face in his hands.
‘He’s fine,’ said Robin. ‘He was born without problems.’
After a while it became clear that Rupert was crying, not loudly, like Danny de Leon or Murphy, but soundlessly, his shoulders quaking.
‘Rupert,’ said Robin, ‘I think I know why you left.’
‘You can’t,’ came his muffled voice.
‘I think I can,’ said Robin.The pair of ’em looked like Tweedledum and Tweedledee together – just imagine the moon-faced children.‘You found out Decima’s your half-sister.’
He looked up, his tear-stained face aghast.
‘How—?’
‘I read a magazine interview with Cosima and saw she’d taken a DNA test. Then I realised you all look a bit alike,’ said Robin. ‘Dino, Decima and you.’
Rupert wiped his face roughly on his white waiter’s sleeve, but tears were still leaking out of his eyes. He had, Robin thought, a very likeable face; not precisely handsome, but better-looking in person than he’d been in the photo she and Strike had been showing people connected to William Wright.
‘How did you find out?’ she asked.
After wiping his face a second time on his sleeve, Fleetwood reached into the breast pocket of his waistcoat, took out a packet of Marlboro Lights, lit one, and said croakily,
‘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 ofso 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 fuckinghatedDino Longcaster… it must’ve beendisgustingfor 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 wasso 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…’
