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He nearly missed the first sprig.
The agency had been so busy since the conclusion of the Bamborough case that Strike hadn’t particularly registered the arrival of November until Robin, arriving moments after he’d ordered them both a coffee, pointed out the early and irrefutable sign of the impending festive season.
“Bit early for that, isn’t it?” she greeted him with a tired smile, nodding at the space above their table.
They were meeting in a café near Covent Garden, in a break between surveillance jobs that had seen them at opposite ends of the city since the week after her birthday, with their primary means of communication occurring via phone-calls and text messages exchanged at odd, intimate hours of the night.
He followed the direction of her nod to the small bunch of mistletoe hanging above them. Looking around, he noticed similar bunches suspended over each table.
“Druids.”
“What?” Robin glanced up from her coffee.
“Druidic symbol of fertility, isn’t it?” He glanced back up as he elaborated, dredging through vague memories of Leda’s brief flirtation with the religion.
“No idea,” replied Robin, with a shrug. “Dad won’t have it in the house. Mum used it to decorate the presents one year and he had to take Rowntree to the emergency vet because the silly bugger ate it.”
Strike barked out a laugh, amused by the vivid mental image and the contrast between it and some of his own, distinctly less wholesome, memories of childhood Christmases.
They spent what felt like the most pleasant forty minutes of his week filling each other in on their respective cases before departing the café; Robin heading back to Earl’s Court to catch up on some sleep, he on to Denmark Street.
She was barely out of sight, he hadn’t even finished the cigarette he’d lit up, when he realised he was considering asking her about a joint surveillance shift the following week. His phone was in his hand, the text half composed before he thought better of it, pocketing the device and heading into the Tube.
On the train the stations flickered by, the carriage rhythmically emptying and filling with early morning commuters and Strike found his thoughts drifting repeatedly back to Christmas. As he contemplated his own murky reflection in the window opposite, he realised that those thoughts were, for some reason, tangled up in thoughts of Robin; how much he had liked how she’d looked that morning, how he had enjoyed listening to her musings about last night’s mark and whether she had already begun making plans to return to Masham in December.
******
The second sprig had been in the unlikeliest of places.
“All right lovebirds,” the cabbie smiled, as they climbed in. “Where to?”
They had been hired by the manager of a private security company to investigate an allegation of drug dealing by one of his employees. Strike and Robin had been tailing the lead suspect through Kentish Town earlier that evening and had narrowly missed being spotted by him as he had handed over a small package to a girl not much older than sixteen down a side-street. He had advanced on the terrified teen, backing her into a corner, and Robin had started forward, as if to intervene. Icy panic had flared in Strike, and he had seized her shoulder, pulling her back and causing her to let out an involuntary, startled yelp. Distracted, their target had glanced around, and the girl had taken the opportunity to bolt from the scene. Strike had seized Robin’s hand in his as their suspect advanced towards them down the dark alley, and they had made a hasty exit.
Neither of them had noticed that they were still holding hands as they had climbed into the taxi, but now Robin dropped Strike’s as if it had suddenly burst into flames.
“Denmark Street, please,” she instructed, before turning her face to watch London slip by the window.
“Ooh, dog-house is it, mate?”
The driver addressed Strike, who tried hard not to roll his eyes and ignored him. He preferred his taxi drivers surly and unspeaking, although the man’s patter was helping distract him from the warm imprint Robin’s hand had left on his.
“Give ‘im a kiss and make up, love. I bet ‘e didn’t mean it, whatever it was.”
This was directed at Robin, who caught the cabbie’s eye in the mirror and saw that he was indicating the hook beside the handle over the passenger door, to which he had attached a piece of plastic mistletoe.
It was hard, Strike reflected, to remain frustrated with her for the stunt she had been about to pull, when she had turned such a delicate shade of pink at the driver’s suggestion.
******
The third sprig had been hard to miss, dangled over his head by his preferred nephew.
He had gone round to Lucy and Greg’s for Sunday lunch and was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, chatting to his sister about the family’s plans to go to Cornwall when the boys broke up from school, whilst she organised lunch boxes for the following day.
“Why’ve you got that?” he asked Jack suspiciously, his eyes on the bundle of mistletoe in the boy’s hand.
“It’s for you.”
Jack held his offering out to Strike, as if presenting him with the keys to the kingdom.
Strike cast a glance at his sister, who was doing an excellent job of pretending not to be paying any attention to her son as she bustled around the kitchen gathering apples and bananas.
“Why’re you giving me mistletoe, Jack?”
The curly-haired boy looked at him, all wide-eyed innocence.
“Well. Dad asked Mum the other night if you and Robin kissed on your birthdays-,”
Strike snorted violently into his mug.
Utterly oblivious to the incriminating nature of his tale, Jack continued, “-and Mum said she didn’t think you would have kissed Robin. She thinks you probably need a bit of help,” he added, unaware of the bus he had just unwittingly thrown his mother under.
“Does she?” Strike shot an infuriated look at Lucy’s back as she carried on with a very convincing impression of a woman absorbed in buttering sandwiches.
“And in school we were talking about how people kiss under mistletoe. I thought it might help.”
Strike could tell from his sister’s shaking shoulders that she was supressing laughter. Jack looked between them, perplexed.
“What?” he asked, a little defensive that neither adult appeared to think his suggestion worthy of much merit. “It’s a tradition. Robin’s okay for a girl. It’d be good if you kissed.”
Lucy had stopped buttering sandwiches, so forcefully were her shoulders shaking. Strike cleared his throat and fixed his nephew with a look that he hoped conveyed the gravity that Jack seemed to expect.
“Right. Well…thanks, Jack.”
“Go tell your brothers to get off the Playstation please, Jack,” Lucy commanded, her back still to her brother.
After his nephew had left the room, Strike drained his mug and his sister turned to face him, her face glowing and pink with mirth.
“Jesus Christ, Luce.”
“You know what they say, Stick,” she shrugged, her smile unfamiliar and worryingly devilish; an expression that would have looked more at home on Ilsa’s face than Lucy’s. “Out of the mouths of babes.”
******
The fourth piece of mistletoe appeared the very next day, suspended from the doorframe between outer and inner offices, from where it would be able to taunt him no matter where he placed himself in the two rooms.
“What’s that?” he asked Pat, leaning against the kitchenette counter as he waited for the kettle to boil and eyeing the foliage as if it had personally offended him.
“Thought some decorations would cheer the place up a bit.”
“There aren’t any other decorations up, Pat.”
Pat didn’t reply and instead held out a mug in exchange for the stack of post beside Strike on the counter. The electronic cigarette dangled from her lips and, when her eyes met his, she raised her brows knowingly.
“Fuck sake,” he muttered, retreating to the inner office and closing the door over as far as the mistletoe would allow.
Robin arrived later that morning and, when Pat left to pick up lunch, removed the mistletoe from its ominous location.
She didn’t make any mention of it, but Strike noticed that she didn’t get rid of it entirely. Instead, she set it in an empty jar of instant coffee that she filled with water and placed on her side of the partner’s desk, next to her monitor.
It sat there for several days, slowly wilting and turning brown, and directing his thoughts more frequently than he liked towards opportunities presented and missed.
******
The fifth sprig seemed to be a source of some amusement between his employees.
They had decided to close up shop early on the twenty-third of December and head to the Tottenham for an impromptu office party. Now, standing at the bar with Robin, Strike noticed that his partner was wearing an expression of mild irritation, her eyes flicking back to the table at which their office manager and sub-contractors were sitting. Glancing back, he noticed Barclay and Michelle’s broad grins, their gazes directed some inches above the heads of Robin and Strike, as they waited for the first round of drinks. He glanced up, suspecting that he already knew what had caught their attention.
Beside him, Robin gave a long-suffering sigh and Strike nudged her with his shoulder, offering a bracing smile.
“They’d bloody love that, wouldn’t they?”
It was a new approach to the suggestions, hints and unspoken questions pertaining to any sort of romantic entanglement between them; one of outright acknowledgement and total honesty. They were not beleaguered colleagues or set upon friends, awkwardly avoiding the topic that everyone else appeared obsessed with, but best mates, laughing at how everyone else could have gotten things so wrong.
Strike was not expecting Robin to lean over and bestow a quick peck on his cheek as the barman deposited gin goblets and pints in front of them. It was brief; briefer even than the kiss outside Liberty that he spent a disproportionate amount of time trying not to think about. A graze of lips against stubble, the slightly tacky sensation of lip-gloss on skin and then gone. So quickly that were it not for a faint smudge on her chin, he could have been convinced that he’d imagined it.
She winked and picked up three of the glasses, heading back to the table and Strike took his time paying for the round, relishing the warmth that curled through his stomach and hoping that his face would not betray how much he had liked the tiny gesture.
**********
He didn’t even bother to call Ilsa out on the meaning behind the sixth sprig.
He and Robin were slumped beside each other on the sofa in the Herbert’s living room, a film on in the background, having just put away enormous plates of Christmas dinner.
“Have an okay day?” he asked her. “Must be a bit strange; first Christmas away from Masham.”
“Last year was pretty dreadful,” she shrugged. “So far this is a major improvement on crying babies and dick pics.”
“’Not as bad as Morris’ dick’” he said, framing the words in mid-air, and she laughed.
“What about you?” Robin asked, stretching her legs out to the coffee table and sliding further down the sofa with a groan and a hand on her stomach. “Not worried about Ted?”
“Nah.” He shook his head. “Lucy and Greg were taking the boys down for the holiday. They’ll have him well looked after. I’ll go down in the new year. He’s bound to have a bit of a slump when the house is empty again.”
“You’re a good nephew,” Robin said through a yawn.
“Oh, I dunno about that,” Strike replied.
“You are though,” she argued, and he was too full and sleepy and pleased by what she’d said to put up any more of an argument.
They watched the film in companionable quiet for several minutes, until Robin glanced briefly at the open living room door, through which they could hear the clinking of plates and glasses being loaded into the dishwasher.
“We should probably go and help.”
“I wouldn’t bother. They put away a whole bottle of champagne between ‘em-,” Strike grinned. “-you’ll only interrupt them snoggin’ the faces off each other.”
Robin laughed and settled back down to her almost horizontal position once more.
“I love this film,” she yawned again.
“Bit long,” he grunted.
“Strike-,” she laughed. “Frank Capra’s cinematic masterpiece and all you can say is ‘bit long’?”
“Prefer the Muppets, don’t I?”
“My backside you do.”
“You’re missing the film, Robin.”
She tutted him but fell silent. On the screen George Bailey was tearing manically through Bedford Falls.
‘Merry Christmas you wonderful old Building and Loan!’
Strike started slightly when Robin’s head hit his shoulder. Leaning down, he saw that she had dozed off, her neck tilted at an uncomfortable angle. He continued watching the film, failing to remain oblivious to the way her body sagged against his as she dozed.
Lulled, no doubt, by Christmas Eve’s late night, the pleasantly warm room, a stomach full of good food and no small amount of wine after a busy week, Strike felt his own eyelids become heavy and gave in to the urge to rest them, just for a moment.
When he awoke, some indeterminate amount of time later, it was to discover that his head was resting on top of Robin’s, that It’s a Wonderful Life had been replaced by Gremlins, and that Ilsa had placed a small trimming from her mistletoe wreath on his stomach whilst he’d napped.
******
It was New Year’s Eve. Max had insisted both on a party, and on Strike’s attendance, and had made a casserole to guarantee the senior partner’s presence. Everyone had eaten and drank, danced and drank, chatted in increasingly loud tones and drank and, finally, watched Jools Holland ringing in the dawning of a new year. As the party had swirled around them, house guests and Hootenanny guests singing Auld Lang Syne in varying degrees of tunefulness, Robin and Strike had grinned at each other and clinked their beer bottles together.
“Happy New Year, Robin.”
“Happy New Year, Cormoran.”
If there had been a moment, it had been smothered by heat and bodies and noise.
Now, they were standing outside the Earl’s Court flat, waiting for the taxi that would bear Strike back to Denmark Street.
“Good night,” he declared, taking a deep drag on his cigarette.
“It was, wasn’t it? New Year’s is normally a bit rubbish.”
He grunted his agreement.
“Got any resolutions?” he asked, his eyes scanning the long road for any sign of his taxi.
“No. You’re not telling me you do?” Robin said, her eyes wide in incredulity.
“No,” Strike replied and then, after a beat, added, “Might pack in the fags though.”
She stared at him.
“I said ‘might’.”
“I don’t know Cormoran,” Robin grinned. “That sounds suspiciously like you do have a resolution.”
“Less judgement from the woman with a pack of Tarot cards in her desk drawer, thanks,” he retorted.
“How did you-?” she began, but stopped at the sight of his raised, knowing eyebrow.
They watched the road together and, against a backdrop of illegal fireworks and drunken singing from the house across the road, Strike felt something stirring inside him; a dull, burning impulse to divulge, to confide. To throw everything at the wall to see what would stick.
‘And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere, and gie’s a hand o’ thine…’
“Did you know-?” he asked, carefully avoiding looking at her face, watching a distant set of traffic lights instead. “-that mistletoe is parasitic? It has to grow on other trees to survive.”
“Oh?” she said, intrigued by the abrupt turn in conversation. She shivered in the bitter breeze that whistled down the road and shifted a little closer to him.
“Yeah,” he said thoughtfully, eyes still on the middle distance. “It uses the other tree’s water supply and nutrients to grow. Doesn’t kill them, but it does weaken ‘em. Some trees never recover properly, even after you get rid of it.”
He looked at her then, his eyes dark and intense. A few months ago, had she ever even believed that he was capable of looking at her like that, the fact of it would have shaken the ground under her feet. Tonight however, she was sure of her footing, and met his gaze levelly.
“How come you’re such an expert on mistletoe?”
He took half a shuffling side-step towards her. There was still no sign of his taxi. Robin found herself hoping that the driver had been involved in an accident. Not a serious one, just one that meant that they wouldn’t be able to collect their fare.
“Ted’s keen on his garden,” Strike said quietly, finishing his cigarette and tossing the end into the gutter. “I used to help him out a bit when we stayed with him and Joan.”
She regarded him, her blue eyes twinkling.
“I can just see you in a potting shed.”
The joke was delivered with the softest of laughs, affection seeping out along its edges. That it was affection he heard there didn’t unsettle him at all. Not so long ago the notion would have had him running for the hills; now, he simply set his sights towards home. That laugh had always made everything seem simple; it had been calming his anxieties and settling his doubts for years now. When circumstances were bad, it made all things bearable; and when they were good, it added entirely new dimensions to happiness. He was struck by a sudden, fanciful notion; if all there was of life was the work, and making Robin laugh, then he could do it. If that was what it all boiled down to, then he could do it easily.
“Seems a shame, doesn’t it-?” he continued, watching her face carefully. “- for a tradition that should be about lo- …about liking, to be based on a parasite.”
“Yes,” Robin agreed, all caution and suppressed understanding. “It does, a bit.”
Each took another half side-step towards the other, so that they were standing, shoulder brushing upper arm on the pavement. Robin looked up; there was nothing above them but an endless stretch of muddy London sky, with a few stars struggling bravely against the smog and sodium glow.
“Strike.” She smiled at the sky, savouring the moment, knowing what was coming next. “I don’t see any mistletoe.”
He followed her gaze, anticipation thrumming through him like a baseline, as they drew the moment out; neither of them willing to rush it now that it had arrived.
“No. Neither do I.”
They drew together as if magnetised, opposite pole to opposite pole. Robin had gotten cold, standing there waiting for the taxi that she was delighted had not turned up, so her lips were cool. Strike’s were warmer, surer, when they met hers. It was nearly polite; confident, but restrained, hinting at an intensity that she tentatively concluded she wouldn’t mind exploring further. Her hands snuck into his coat and round his back, and he pulled her to him, so that she was practically engulfed; the mingled scents of damp wool, fag smoke and Chanel working on her more powerfully than any shower gel fresh skin or banal aftershave ever had.
“Who needs mistletoe?” he murmured, smiling as they parted, deep lines etched into the corners of his eyes.
“Probably for the best if we don’t answer that question,” she replied, making the first move this time. She was, all of a sudden, incredibly curious about his lower lip.
The taxi arrived as the second kiss began to run away from them. The driver beeped unceremoniously, uncaring of the couple on the footpath. Breathless and beaming, they pulled back.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Strike promised with one last lingering kiss on her cheek.
In the cab, on his way back to Denmark Street, he realised what he’d almost said. It had nearly slipped out; had been on the tip of his tongue. Lo-…
As the taxi crawled up Tottenham Court Road, he found himself thinking about mistletoe; about poison and parasites, about things that wilt too quickly, traditions that he didn’t hold with, and symbolism he didn’t believe in.
Still though…
A kiss and an admission under mistletoe seemed an inauspicious start to… whatever it was they were about to be.
A sudden flash in his mind’s eye; Joan’s favourite cut glass vase, catching the early Spring sunshine and bouncing refracted rainbows onto the walls from where it stood on the kitchen windowsill, filled with blousy heads of tiny purple flowers. Ted had always picked her the first lilacs of the season, and once, when Lucy had asked why, considering that pink roses were their aunt’s avowed favourite flowers, he had replied some people reckon lilacs are for first love, Lucy, and Joanie’s the first girl I ever loved.
Strike grinned to himself.
It was January. Spring was just around the corner.