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“Do you want to know what I think?” Pat offers, as he hands her the files.
“No thank you.” Strike says. Thank you is polite. Robin would be proud.
“I think you should tell her.”
I think you should mind your effing business, Strike wants to respond, but that’s definitely not polite. He grits his teeth.
“I appreciate your concern, Pat, but this is not something I want to discuss.”
Pat shakes her head.
“Anyone can see you’ve got a soft spot for her,” she says, “But for the sake of the business, you’ve got to be up front about it.”
He’s been fearing something like this ever since he overheard Pat refer to them as “Bogey and Bacall” to Barclay the other day, but that definitely oversteps the mark.
“The business always comes first,” he splutters. “Did it never occur to you that’s why I haven’t told her?”
Aggravatingly, Pat starts examining her nails as she continues.
“You’ve made a lot of sacrifices for this business, I get it. You’ve built up a reputation and you want to do the right thing.” She winces, as if the effort of paying him a compliment has given her a hernia. “But you’ve waited long enough for this.”
He is fairly sure that the percentage of time devoted to relationship counselling in Pat’s contract is exactly none, and he has no desire to encourage it any further.
Although she does sort of have a point.
“It’s - complicated, Pat.”
“Oh, of course it’s a sensitive situation - she’s been put through the mill with that good-for-nothing young man,” Pat concurs, “But you’ve earned this, you and Robin.”
She starts clacking pointedly on the keys, the next part delivered in a low mutter that Strike knows he’s still meant to hear.
“You’re as bad as each other, you two. Always worrying about other people.” Her face cracks into what might pass for a smile. “We all know how you feel.” She purses her lips. “Look, somebody here has to tell it like it is.”
All through his childhood, and most of his adult life, his private life has been trawled through tabloid news and gossip columns. This office is the refuge where his personal business is off limits, and this attack on his last bastion of privacy is making his hackles rise.
“Pat - ” he says, sharply, but she’s clearly hit her stride, and carries on regardless.
“How can she decide what she wants to do if you don’t say anything?”
“Pat - ” he says, a dangerous edge in his voice.
“I’m just saying, she has a right to know.”
“I am not going to tell her!” Strike fumes, infuriated.
“Tell who what?” Robin says, walking in.
Pat opens her mouth to speak but Strike cuts her off in exasperation.
“Pat here thinks I should make you some kind of grand love declaration. Robin, you’re the best thing that ever happened to me, and when I’m working with you everything feels right, and I am so afraid of screwing that up even though I want that - want you - in all the other parts of my life too. That kind of thing.”
Silence - a heavy, awkward silence - descends on the office, and for a long moment the three of them look at each other.
Pat coughs.
“Actually, what I was meaning was that you should tell Mrs Jeffries that her cheque bounced again.”
Mrs Jeffries. The elderly widow who’d hired them to find her long-lost son, only to part with the best part of her savings paying off his gambling debts. It had left her unable to pay her bill at the time, and given the not exactly favourable outcome, he hadn’t the heart to chase it. Mrs Jeffries, whose file, he now notices, was top of the pile he’d handed to Pat.
What has he done?
He’s watched Robin turn pink, and then red, and then white, and all the while say nothing, but is that a hint of laughter he can see flickering in her eyes?
Pat gets up, picking up her coat from the back of her chair, and carefully avoiding meeting either of them in the eye.
“I...ehem...I’m just going to take this to the post.”
Strike stares hard at a spot on the floor as Pat shuts the door behind her, the sound echoing round the office. If only they could just pretend this never happened. He looks up, tentatively.
“Can we rewind?”
Robin looks at him a moment, and a slow smile spreads across her face as she steps towards him.
“Exactly what I was going to suggest,” she says, that smile widening every second and an unmistakable light glowing in her eyes. “Tell me, what is it Pat thinks again?”