Page 395 of The Hallmarked Man
‘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 mysister, 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. Hefucking 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.
Robert Browning
Apparent Failure
‘In a way,’ said Decima Mullins, ‘I feel as though hediddie.’
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.
