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Strike stirred an extra spoonful of coffee into his mug where once he might have added a second sugar, and surveyed his morning gloomily. Pat would be here soon, and shortly after her, Robin. He didn’t mind either of these things, as such, just…
No. Seeing his business partner always lifted his spirits a little, still. It was just a little harder to bear on a Monday morning, especially these days. He thought back to that first Monday he had come back to work, feeling fitter than he had in years despite his new scar and the fierce instructions from the physiotherapist to be gentle with his leg. His new diet, the enforced lack of alcohol due to various medications, the self-enforced lack of cigarettes - all of it had added up to a leaner, healthier version of Cormoran Strike that he had been determined to maintain.
It was a resolution he had almost abandoned on that first morning when, after an hour or so in Robin’s presence, his subconscious had finally put a name to the vague feeling that something about his business partner was different. He’d seen her far less than usual in recent weeks - a few visits in hospital, and then she’d taken to popping up to his flat to keep him apprised of the workload until Strike had started coming down to the office, a move which had meant that whoever was about (often not Robin as she took the lead on a lot of cases now) updated him on the agency’s caseload. With Nutley gone and Strike out of action they were yet again short-staffed. So Strike’s official first morning back at work was the first time the two detective partners had spent any concentrated time together in some weeks.
It was not until Robin’s phone pinged and she glanced at it and gave a soft smile that Strike put two and two together and made five; suddenly he understood the subtly different body language, the somehow softer swish of her hair, the more relaxed style of blouses she wore, the swing of her hips.
They’re sleeping together.
What made him so certain, he couldn’t be sure, but he would have bet money on it, and was unprepared for the stab of anguish it caused him, that wasn’t all that far removed from the stab of a knife blade a couple of months prior in the damage it seemed to do; it certainly seemed to drive the breath from his body.
Strike was self-aware enough to appreciate the utter double standards at play here, given his own tendency to bury his previously unacknowledged feelings for his business partner in casual and ultimately doomed relationships with unsuitable women - how often had he half admitted to himself that it suited him to be in a sexual relationship with someone to whom he owed no ties, to keep a certain part of his psyche from straying in directions it shouldn’t? And that was an option no longer available to him, since one of the many resolutions he had made during his protracted hospital stay was that, if he were truly going to face up to his feelings for Robin, he could no longer subsume those feelings in work, booze and casual sex.
And so he had pinned a friendly smile to his face and asked about Murphy; Robin, initially reluctant to discuss her new… boyfriend? had eventually begun to open up and allow little snippets to be imparted. Strike knew that they often went to the theatre, that Murphy liked drama but not Shakespeare. He knew that they had been to see a few bands. He knew that the police detective had met one of Robin’s brothers who had come to London to visit, and that Linda Ellacott was by now very keen for the new couple to make a trip north, but that Robin was resisting, “because it’s quite a step, isn’t it? Meeting the parents?” Robin had mused, and then she had blushed and changed the subject.
Strike also knew, as he stirred his too-strong coffee, that this last weekend had been earmarked for said visit, a pre-Christmas trip, that a formal invitation had been issued by Linda that had made Robin roll her eyes and worry that her mother was going to go over the top as though preparing for a Royal visit. He had deliberately not texted Robin all weekend and, determined not to fall back on overwork as a distraction but also equally determined to avoid a barrage of questions about his feelings on the matter over a suspiciously conveniently-timed early Christmas dinner at Ilsa and Nick’s, he had turned down their invitation and instead made himself go the gym he had joined, to work on his knee and hamstring strength and to swim, exercise suggested to him by the physio as an essential part of his rehabilitation.
Only so many hours could be filled thus, and so he had allowed himself a pint (a man had to have the odd treat) at the Tottenham on Saturday afternoon with the final Arsenal match before the Christmas break, still not thinking about Robin taking her new partner home to meet her parents.
The downstairs door slammed, and Strike picked up his mug and carried it through to the inner office. He patted his shirt pocket, and wondered how long it would take for his hands to stop reaching automatically for his cigarette packet. Instead he pulled his vaping device from his trouser pocket and pondered for the umpteenth time whether he was ready to go down a step in nicotine strength. Probably.
He could hear from the steadily approaching footsteps that it was Robin and not Pat, and his heart sank a little, but he forced himself to smile as she entered the office, his eyes dropping as they so often did they days to her left hand, some cruel part of his subconscious telling him that it was only a matter of time before a new engagement ring glinted there, mocking him with his appalling timing, telling him he had yet again missed the boat he hadn’t known he so desperately wanted to catch until it was too late.
“Morning,” she breezed, her smile broad and dazzling as always, and immediately Strike’s forced grin was a real one. They would always have this, their friendship, their partnership. Maybe that was worth more. Was enough.
Yeah, right.
“Morning,” he replied. “Good weekend?”
“Fine,” she said, not quite looking at him as she set her handbag and the little padded sandwich bag she used to carry her lunch onto her desk. “Tea?”
“Just made myself a coffee, thanks.” Strike waved at his mug. “But the kettle’s hot.”
“Great.”
He’d been going to ask a specific question about her weekend, to show an interest, but she was gone again too quickly for him to form the words.
Strike sat himself at his desk and opened his laptop, more to try and look busy than because he had anything he wanted to do. He had a coffee booked with a new client to take initial notes at ten; nothing more pressing needed doing before then.
Presently Robin returned. She’d made her tea in her travel mug, which she tucked into her her sandwich bag before turning to the filing cabinets end opening the middle drawer of the nearest.
“Not staying, then?” Strike hid his disappointment carefully.
“Nah, it’s my turn to trail Cheater today,” she replied over her shoulder. “Just popped in to grab the file and leave my invoices with Pat. And to invite her - and you - to my housewarming.”
Strike blinked. “Housewarming?”
Robin laughed. Did it sound forced or was he imagining things? “Yes, I know I’ve been in my flat months and months. But I never got around to it before, and I’ve just been to Masham so I’m not going again so soon. I’m having a Christmas off peeling sprouts and admiring Annabel, lovely though she is. So I decided to have a party. Christmas Eve.”
Strike nodded slowly. “Sounds good. I’ll be there,” he said - and then he remembered Murphy. Fuck. Did he really want to spend his Christmas Eve watching the happy couple kiss under the mistletoe? Not that he imagined Robin was into public displays of affection, but still. Murphy would be the one staying after everyone else had left…
“Great,” Robin said, slamming the drawer closed and turning to grab her handbag and lunch. “See you later.”
Strike watched her leave and sighed. He had almost a week to think up an excuse not to go. There was still time.
…
Flicking her hair over her shoulders again, Robin silently admonished herself for her nerves. There was absolutely no reason to feel anxious; her party was going well. The flat was all ready for Christmas, with a few hastily purchased decorations about the place and a little fake tree complete with lights and baubles standing on a small table in a corner. She didn’t have the room for a full-sized tree.
Max (without Richard, who was at a works do) was here, talking to Izzy Chiswell, and the Herberts had turned up early with their new baby daughter. Ilsa had already commandeered Robin’s bedroom as a private place to feed the baby, and Robin had set her up with extra pillows on the bed and a pint of water on the bedside table. Vanessa and Oliver had just arrived and been given the (short, given the size of Robin’s new-ish abode) tour. Pat and Barclay were stood awkwardly chatting about work. Barclay’s wife had elected to stay at home rather than try to find a babysitter on Christmas Eve, which was understandable. Midge was missing, which Robin was sad about, but she hadn’t wanted to travel to Manchester on Christmas Day - also understandable. Numbers, which Robin had feared would be low given the time of year, the short notice and the difficulty of making friends when your work was your life, had been made up by neighbours - she had slipped invitations under the doors of the nearest few, and a young woman from upstairs had popped in along with an elderly couple from the floor below. It had been nice to get to know them.
No sign of Strike yet. But he wasn’t, for him, technically late - she knew he’d been on surveillance until an hour ago and had wanted to go home and shower first.
What if he didn’t show up? She was trying not to check her phone for messages too often, having caught a knowing glance last time from Ilsa, who was annoyingly sober as she was still breastfeeding her daughter.
Despite listening for it, the door buzzer made her jump. Robin hastened to it, and her heart soared at the sound of her business partner’s voice over the intercom. He hadn’t forgotten - or, worse, bailed. He was here.
Knowing Strike had arrived lifted her somewhat gloomily sentimental mood. She still wasn’t entirely sure why she had abruptly ended her relationship with Ryan Murphy a couple of weeks ago, and she sensed that she’d hurt him. They’d been getting along well. Robin had found that she just… It was hard to explain, even to herself. But taking him to Masham to meet her parents, spending Christmas with him - they had been steps too far, steps that she could not in all fairness take when she was beginning to strongly suspect that he was starting to feel more for her than she did for him. Neither of them had said I love you, but Robin had begun to fear that Ryan was about to, and one shouldn’t fear that, surely? So she had ended things, as gently as she could.
Facing Christmas alone, however, with her mother’s dismay at her newly-rediscovered singledom hardly helping, had left Robin feeling despondent and a little lonely. It had been nice to be in a couple, to have someone’s hand to hold, someone to cuddle up in bed with at night. To have sex again, sex that she wanted, with someone who was gentle and respectful. There had been nothing wrong with Murphy, really. He just wasn’t—
“Hi.” Strike was at her door, huge in his greatcoat, a genial smile on his face and a wrapped gift in one hand and a bottle of wine with a bow on it in the other. He was here, and on time, and sober, and he had brought a gift and a contribution to the party. And despite the “plus one” that Robin had agonised over putting on his invitation, he was alone, for which Robin felt far more relieved than she had a right to.
“Hi yourself. Come in.” Kisses on cheeks were exchanged, and gifts handed over; Robin put the gift bag under her little tree, and opened the wine. Strike had made a beeline for Nick, who had been abandoned while Ilsa fed the baby yet again - Robin vaguely wondered how on earth she got anything else done - and they were deep in conversation about Arsenal being top of the league at Christmas, and just how good a predictor this was for end-of-season triumph.
Robin took Strike a glass of the red he’d brought and joined the conversation for a few moments, but she had limited interest in football despite the fact that having three brothers meant she could hold her own in most sport-based conversations. Nick remained adamant that outsiders Leicester City could win the title, which Strike held to be a position taken out of mere jealousy at Arsenal’s performance thus far. Low-level bickering was threatening to break out, and Mr and Mrs Wojcik from downstairs looked to be needing more drinks. Robin moved on to offer her neighbours a top-up, but they made their excuses and so she found herself fetching coats (trying not to disturb Ilsa who nearly had the baby to sleep; Robin tiptoed in and out again) and bidding her new acquaintances good night.
Thus went the rest of her evening. Somehow she didn’t manage a proper conversation with Strike. Between catching up with her other guests, filling glasses, warming up nibbles and passing snacks, the party seemed to whizz by.
Ilsa and Nick left early, with the baby asleep in her car seat and the hope that they’d be able to lift her into her cot at home without waking her. Barclay didn’t stay long either, as he’d promised to be home in time for stocking-filling and last-minute wrapping. The young woman who lived above Robin, who she had high hopes might become a new friend, had another party to go to, as did Izzy.
Max lingered a little, enjoying Robin’s company. He’d missed her easy presence, but he could sense there was a conversation waiting to be had between the detective partners, and he suspected it was not about work, from the way Strike loitered without saying too much. Vanessa, ever unsubtle, gave Robin a broad wink as she left. Pat had gone some time ago, not wanting to travel across London too late.
Suddenly there was only Strike left, and Robin found herself busying about, tidying up, feeling a little awkward all of a sudden, but unsure why. Strike helped, and for ten minutes they worked in companionable quiet, collecting up glasses and plates, stacking the small dishwasher and setting it going.
“Coffee?” Robin asked brightly.
Strike grinned. “I’d prefer a tea.”
“Tea it is,” Robin replied, putting the kettle on to boil. Strike moved to sit on her sofa and watched as she went through the familiar routine that she had done so many times over the years. How many mugs of tea had they made for one another, he wondered. Hundreds, surely.
Aware of Strike’s eyes on her, Robin remembered his gift. She took the two mugs of tea to the coffee table, and went back to the tree to fetch her present to him and his to her.
“Open yours first,” she urged, sitting next to him on the sofa, and Strike complied. Robin hadn’t been sure what to get him this year, and had gone with a new scarf, a semi-joking present as Strike had been grumbling lately about the temperature in the Land Rover on overnight surveillance in December, and she’d told him he was a soft southerner. He laughed when he opened it, and thanked her warmly, and Robin opened the little bag her gift was expertly (by a shop assistant, she suspected) wrapped within.
“Narciso? I needed a new bottle!” Robin exclaimed. “But how could you have known that? Did I tell Ilsa?”
Strike hesitated. How could he tell her that she had stopped, in recent weeks, smelling of… well. She had reverted to the perfume that, although he had liked it, somehow reminded him of the Robin who had been married to Matthew, rather than the Robin who had been, until Murphy, the main woman in Strike’s life, as he hoped he had been the main man in hers…
Strike shrugged. “It’s true what they say about your sense of smell improving when you stop smoking,” he hazarded. “You didn’t smell the same.”
“I had some of my old perfume left,” Robin said, her heart beating a little faster.
Strike nodded, his eyes meeting hers. “I prefer this one.”
Robin gazed back at him, her fingers still on the little bag. “Me too.”
There was a heated pause, tension in the air.
“I’m not seeing Ryan any more.” Robin said suddenly.
“I know,” Strike replied, and Robin sat back a little, surprised.
“How?”
Strike gave a rueful grin. “Ilsa was very keen to let me know at the earliest opportunity that Murphy was no longer on the scene.” He hoped that his secret pleasure at this fact wasn’t obvious, but it had indeed pleased him to know, as Ilsa had also eagerly told him, that it had been Robin who had finished the relationship.
Would he have come to the party tonight if Murphy had been here? He could tell himself now that he would have done, that he would have risen above petty jealousy and been happy for Robin. He could almost believe it, too.
“Well,” Robin said slowly, as though feeling her way. “It was for the best. I wasn’t feeling…what I think I ought to have been feeling, and taking him to Masham seemed a bit much, somehow.”
Strike nodded, hoping his delight at this admission was hidden. In all his fears of love declarations and engagement rings, or in darker moments of Murphy turning out to be a twat who didn’t treat Robin as she deserved to be treated, he hadn’t stopped to consider that Robin might end the relationship herself. He’d not exactly given his partner the credit that she was very well due.
Robin looked down at the perfume in her hands, and set it aside on the coffee table next to her untouched tea.
“Strike—”
She stopped. Strike raised his eyebrows.
“The Ritz,” Robin said in a rush. “When you nearly— I thought you were going to—”
Strike shook his head. “I’m sorry, Robin,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“You didn’t do anything.”
It was time for honesty. Something, Strike sensed, was shifting, had shifted, between them. Time to stop shying away from the elephant in the room.
“I wanted to.”
Robin’s eyes searched his. “And you didn’t because I backed off.” It wasn’t a question.
“I thought I’d got it wrong. You didn’t seem to…” He trailed off. Had he got it wrong then, outside the Ritz, or now, sat on this sofa?
“I was afraid,” Robin said quietly. “Not of you,” she added hurriedly as Strike opened his mouth to speak. “I was afraid of me. Of it being too soon. Of how I was feeling. Of… I don’t know, of you thinking we could have a drunk one-night stand and ignore it after.”
Strike sighed. What in your behaviour might have given her that idea, he admonished himself.
“That wasn’t what it was about,” he said slowly. “Well, not only that,” he amended, in a spirit of honesty. “Yes, it was about the evening, and the cocktails, and how stunning you looked. But I never wanted a one-night stand with you. I wanted—” How much did he dare say? He didn’t want to scare her off.
Robin’s lips - soft and so kissable - curved into a smile. “I wanted more than that too,” she said. “But I wasn’t ready. I—” She hesitated and then took the plunge. “I think I might be now.”
Strike sat back a little, ignoring his leaping heart telling him to kiss her right this second. He sensed she wanted to explain. “Because of Murphy.”
Robin pulled a face. “Yes and no. Not because of him specifically, but because— I think I needed to date someone else, someone nice, who wasn’t a twat, to understand that I hadn’t just…” She hesitated, blushing. “That I hadn’t somehow attached my errant feelings to you, mistaken friendship and admiration and connection for…” she was almost whispering now “..for love.”
“Robin.” Strike took her trembling hands in his. “You were right to reject me then. It wasn’t the right time, and I wasn’t ready either. It had been a long, hard year, full of upheaval in all aspects of my life—” for a moment the warm presence of Joan and the icy spectre of Charlotte hovered at the edge of his mind “—and I wouldn’t have been ready. I didn’t really understand, until you started dating someone else, how I felt about you and what I might have lost.”
Robin chuckled. “So do you think we might, after all these years, finally have our timing right?”
Strike grinned. “I think we might,” he replied, and kissed her.