Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Robin has always found Christmas in Masham to be an oddly paradoxical experience.

On the one hand, it chafes like sandpaper to be away from the comforts of her own home, crowded in with so many other adults set in their ways and now three excitable kids on top. That commotion would have been enough without having to navigate around the minefields of expectations and etiquettes, too. Altogether, it’s a tangle that she requires at least one to two business days of sitting in solitary peace and quiet to recover from. On the other, it’s always comforting like a warm blanket to be under the same roof as her brothers and her parents again, the same roof where all the memories of years gone by were kept, and she delights in watching her little niece and nephews experience their own childhoods. 

Christmas Eve, with the children tucked up in bed, the adults all vaguely tipsy and half of them dozing on the sofa, is just the time Robin would expect to be most relaxed but she's restless. She has been all day.

Instead of the traditional It's a Wonderful Life on the telly, Robin's eyes linger on her partner.

Cormoran has come with her to visit on a couple of occasions before now but she still isn’t completely used to him being here, casually sitting next to her dad. This is the first Christmas they've ever spent together, since last year she'd decided they should part ways in the name of taking it slow. She'd regretted that decision almost as soon as she left him on the platform at King's Cross, catching the train back to London at the first opportunity and resolving to spend the next year alone, but the course of 2018 had ground her down. Bringing Cormoran to Masham for Christmas had felt like a step worthy of how serious their relationship had become but next year, she promises herself silently, next year they’d stay in London together.

Robin lets herself drift off into a reverie of what their Christmas would be like. They'd wake up later, that's for sure, and perhaps after a kiss and a murmured Happy Christmas, they'd lay savouring the warmth and quiet for a while. Not for too long, because she's been raised with the sanctity of a Christmas breakfast and Bucks Fizz, but perhaps she'd try her hand at something other than the customary eggs and salmon – an apple cake or some festively spiced pancakes. Eventually they'd make their way round to presents, working through their piles on the sofa side-by-side, rather than the stilted turn-taking she finds embarrassing as an adult. If her mother's generous time allocation is anything to go by, soon after, they'd get up and start making dinner together, Christmas songs humming in the background as they wound around each other on their tasks. After they'd eaten, they'd take a walk around the wetlands or maybe they'd drive into London and wander the city without the crowds, swing into one of the handful of pubs that would be open for a drink. They'd come home to an evening of copious amounts of cheese and chocolate and alcohol. If they could restrain themselves from touching a case file, they'd watch films, play cards, just talk, until they’d slip off to bed probably sooner rather than later, ready for visits to friends and family the day after.

She'd be happy with that arrangement for the rest of her life but she starts to wonder about the changes that the passage of time would inevitably inflict.

Next year, they'd be in Blackhorse Road – even she isn’t brave enough to tackle a roast in the attic’s tiny kitchenette – but they'd both expressed a desire for something more than their flat eventually. Perhaps the year after, if the agency has a good run, they'll have scraped together enough money to buy the idyllic house in a leafy suburb somewhere, with a spare room for guests, an office for their long hours, a garden to catch the summer days, a fireplace or a log burner in the living room to warm winter nights, and the big kitchen with an island she'd always inexplicably craved. Hopefully, the ceilings would be high to accommodate a tree impressive enough to warrant getting a real one, and Christmases would smell like pine needles again. As this generation of the Ellacott family matured and separated into their own branches, perhaps they'd stay there more, periodically start hosting her parents in London. But before she knows it, qualities neither Strike nor her parents would lend alone start to bleed into the home in her head – dawn light, thumping feet in the hallway, a quaking mattress, homemade ornaments hanging from the tree, brightly coloured paper avalanched over the floor, a crowded dinner table, glances of exhausted fondness, the inimitable sense of belonging, nostalgia in the present.

Robin shakes her head sharply as if to physically jar the thought loose, her face turning hot. Carefully extricating herself from the sleeping dog with mulled wine in hand, she heads for the kitchen, intent on some fresh air in the garden until she hears the door shutting behind her. Her heart sinks. She knows it’s him, even before she turns to face him.

“What’s the matter, Robin?” 

“Nothing. I was just…” 

She gestures to the sink in expectation of something being in there to provide an excuse but Stephen had already washed up the dinner plates earlier. Indeed, Cormoran had helped him do it. There wasn't so much as a teaspoon needing attention. He raises an eyebrow. 

“Nothing.” she repeats weakly.

Strike just lets out a rasp of laughter as he sets his tumbler down on the counter, his arms folding either in a show of gravitas or to insulate against the cooler air in the kitchen. She supposes she shouldn’t have expected that answer to get her anywhere. She’s a gifted actor but her ability to disguise things from him where real emotions are tied up has been waning ever since she’d fully opened herself to him. It's a good sign, she thinks, especially as it goes in both directions, but not always a helpful one.

“You’ve been nursing that glass for over an hour and no glass of anything should last that long at Christmas. There must be something on your mind.” he says, concern wrinkling his brow. “You were looking at me.”

“Was I?” Robin says airily, averting her eyes as she takes a sip of her wine. 

“Not at me, as such. Beyond me."

She shakes her head in disbelief. Not that she was expecting to get out of it without some measure of truth, not really, but he’s too bloody sharp.

“I was thinking about what our Christmas will be like. Next year, when we’re on our own.” she confesses, and that probably would have been enough to put it to bed, but then her tongue slips dangerously. “And after.”

“Oh yeah?”

Robin had no intention of broaching the subject any time soon. It’s too volatile for anything less than careful thought, curated words, a quiet and private space, and limitless time. Right now ticks precisely none of those boxes. They have three more nights in Masham, sure to be as stressful as they would hopefully be enjoyable without throwing this curveball into the mix. She really wasn’t sure of how he would react. If it was poorly, the house has no space for them to take a breather from each other but plenty of watching eyes and listening ears. It’d be tough to imagine a worse possible scenario. She can still free herself, say it's the same forever. Cormoran’s expression is innocently relaxed, clearly not expecting any answer outside of the agreed parameters. And yet as she watches him from across the kitchen, this face she loved so dearly lit up in the warmth of the Christmas lights in the window, scenes from a life they don't have flashing through her mind like a film reel spinning too fast, yearning cutting deeper and deeper into her as though she'd held it inside for years, it comes bursting out of her anyway.

“I think I want a family with you. One day.”

She has never confessed this to him before, never given even a hint of reversing from the position first shared in the dark of their office that she couldn’t imagine children alongside their work and hence she couldn't imagine them at all. Cormoran had been equally silent on the subject and she’d never entertained the possibility that his one-word answer to parenthood dealt out at the same time would change organically, probably not even with a spur. Inevitably, she'd expected the disparity between them to stir a range of reactions once stated, none of them immediately good ー shock, certainly, and then she’d been prepared for panic, upset, resignation, disgust, outright anger. 

But he doesn’t startle, not by so much as a blink. He simply stands there, blankly contemplative, and as the seconds tick by without an immediate keel into horror, Robin ends up the one caught short. 

“You’re not surprised?”

“No, not really.”

Neutrality had been the best she’d ever dared to hope for before now but irritation flares inside Robin as unexpectedly as his answer. Although she has indeed had second thoughts about it, she’s still wounded at the prospect that Strike ー the one person that has always been ready to embrace her as she is ー hadn’t taken her at her word. Because of course she, a woman, would probably want a baby no matter what she said otherwise. In a way, she’s rankled with herself, too, for falling prey to convention, for inviting all the difficulties it would now cause her to factor motherhood into her life which, for once, has been so simple and content of late.

“You didn't believe me, when I told you I didn't think I could do it with the agency?” Robin challenges, her cheeks starting to heat with temper again. “That I didn’t want it, if that was the case?”

Cormoran must sense the lurking frustration, his voice very precisely calibrated as he replies: “Course I believed you. I just thought it was possible you might change your mind if the circumstances did. All these years, you’ve only ever said you were reluctant to be a mother because of the demands of the agency. Not that wanting to dedicate yourself to a career isn't a perfectly good reason but it sounded at least a bit logistical to me, and our plans for the business always implied a better work-life balance eventually. Now we're at that point where we’re not at the grindstone twenty-four seven, now we're settled and we have a life together, I thought there was a chance you’d reconsider. You've never expressed any stronger feelings against having kids to me. I've always felt you have the right sort of nature for it and… well, there’s only a window of opportunity, isn’t there? For both of us.”

As usual, Robin’s blood erupts with indignation at the mention of the ticking clock but it extinguishes itself almost as quickly as it comes. It was impossible to miss his hesitation, the way he cast about for the most delicate way to put it, and there isn’t any turn of phrase available to him that can change the facts. In her mid-thirties now, there is still time, but not enough for comfort ー not when she factors in the work they’d need to put in first to be materially ready, the lengthy process that conceiving would be for her, the failures she might expect to encounter in getting pregnant, the months she’d need to carry to term then recover physically and mentally, longer again to adjust and hopefully take a moment to enjoy motherhood before getting back to her career, perhaps even years after to settle into managing both, leaving time enough at the end of it all to at least have the option of providing a sibling. Cormoran isn’t subject to as rigid a deadline or as difficult a timeline but she knows including himself wasn’t just a token gesture. A decade older, he wasn’t so very far away from hitting practical and ethical limits, if he were to revisit the subject for her. 

This conversation had been more inevitable than she realised. 

He opens his mouth again, shuts it. Her stomach plunges to the floor, though she has no idea of what he’s about to say.

“What?” she prompts fearfully.

“I saw a leaflet for a hysterectomy in your desk drawer once.” Cormoran admits timidly. “When you were still with Murphy. After Sark. You asked me to grab your portable charger.”

Robin is silent for a moment, trying to resist the lump swelling in her throat. The leaflet she’d forgotten about completely until now, probably still buried in the drawer somewhere beneath her reams of paperwork and personal effects, but the memories and panic that had put it there arise far quicker than she’d like.

Eventually, she makes an attempt at an ironic laugh. “And that made you think I did want babies?” 

“Well, if you have had a hysterectomy, I'd be pretty fucked off with you as I definitely don’t recall you taking enough time off work to recover from a surgery like that.” Strike says resolutely, sending a rush of affection through her. “And you told me you've got a coil in, ergo there must be something there to put it in.”

“I could have lied.”

She can’t help it, unable to resist the temptation to push, just waiting for the edge of doubt to slash at her as it always seemed to when her personal convictions had been tested like this before.

Liar, said Matt in so many words, when she wanted to apply herself to her work because it was her vocation, when she said there was nothing going between her and Strike. 

Liar, said Ryan exactly and many times more about the same things, about plenty of other things in the dying, drunken throes of their relationship. 

Liar, she'd realised about herself ultimately. Never out of malice, only fear. She gave herself that grace, with time, but it doesn’t change that she’d crafted her life on a few vast deceptions ー that she was the perfect daughter, that she didn’t want to live and breath being a detective, that she wasn’t in love with Strike, that she’d healed from all that had been done to her, that she wasn’t the real Robin Ellacott ー and endless smaller untruths necessary to hold it up. She’d torn it all down. She wasn’t so afraid anymore, but as she lives in the life that has been shaped by her past dishonesty, works in her career that often demands her to lie to catch liars, a part of her wonders if there isn’t something at the core of her, unchangeable as the silhouette of her nose or the freckles on her skin.

Cormoran only shrugs. “You could have but why go so far to keep up appearances, to me of all people? Whether you have a womb or not wouldn't change how I feel about you one bit and you know that. Even if it did, I trust you to tell me the truth.”

Robin lets out a trembling breath as she basks in his safe, unwavering gaze.

“I didn't go through with it because it was an overreaction.” she explains, her voice beginning to steady. “Partly to myself. I was putting so much pressure on it and the idea of just having it dealt with permanently ー of not having to think about it anymore, even if I knew I might live to regret it ー was tempting. And it was partly to Ryan. I just wanted him to stop asking when I was going to harvest my eggs, when we were going to try IVF, and I was afraid that I'd end up pregnant again somehow, so that’s where my head went. No chance of anything if I got rid of my womb and ovaries, too. Because I was too cowardly to stand up to him, to confront the hard stuff.”

Strike shakes his head. “Robin, you left him. You stood up, at the most vulnerable point of your life, and left. That's the opposite of cowardly.”

“Eventually.” she grimaces. “Anyway, I did go for a consultation. It’d have been quite straightforward actually ー just a keyhole job, same day discharge ー but I never called back. I realised it was insane.”

“Because you weren't a hundred percent sure you never wanted kids, because if you were, why not do it regardless.” He watches her carefully, looking for the line not to cross, but it’s still a statement. “It's not like contraception is an easy alternative.” 

She folds her arms, nods very slightly.

“If you'd decided since then that you didn't want kids, I think you’d have told me already – you knew I wouldn't mind not having them – but if you were still unsure, or you’d realised you did want them, you'd be waiting for a moment to bring it up. If there were ever a moment, the one time of year we’re in your childhood home, surrounded by your very nuclear family, with little kids and relatives digging it up, seemed most likely to me. So no, for once in your life, Ellacott, you haven't surprised me.”

Robin just stands there in the wake of it, counteracted to the point of incapacity. A part of her is still a bit miffed that he's got her so bang to rights but he has, without a single error. He does know her better than she'd given him credit for but it's also only backwards logic from the conclusion she herself had presented him.

“Blimey. Have you ever considered getting into detective work?”

“That’s a thought. D’you know anywhere good?” 

They laugh together as loudly as her family next door will allow, the seriousness of this situation punctured if only for a second. She reaches out to him and he comes in closer to her, only a pace separating them as he grasps her hand. 

“I wasn't trying to investigate you.” Strike says with some contrition. “It's your business, to discuss with me if and when you see fit. That's why I've never asked. I just know you.”

“I know.” she says, a faint smile on her lips. “But it is your business now.”

“If we'd started this relationship with an agreement on having children, maybe, but as we never promised each other anything on that front, I don't have a right to your feelings.”

Silence falls again, a tenseness at the reminder of the unknown.

“Mum did mention it, actually. Yesterday.” she ventures tentatively, with a sigh. “Asked if I'd reconsidered freezing my eggs, before it was too late.”

She decides not to mention this was after she'd been caught watching him play with her niece with a particular type of fondness. That that had been the exact moment that all the fleeting imaginations and errant feelings that had slipped in and out of her mind over the past couple of months snapped into sharp clarity, into the terrifying realisation that she did want that for herself. That she not only wanted it but could envisage it in the life she'd set her heart on before, the life she shared with a man that had never felt the same.

The apprehension starts to leak back in as she revisits that encounter but at least his slight scoff makes her feel better about her mother's suggestion, just the same as her own reflexive reaction.

“You’re thirty-four.” he says gently. “There’s still time.”

Robin yearns to nod and move on but the optimism isn’t truly there. That privilege had been taken from her, and him by default. If she is asking this of him, she owes him honesty.

“Not much. The chance of any one IVF cycle resulting in a birth is thirty-two percent, only sixty after three, and that’s if I did it today. My egg quality and my odds are about to take a nose dive.” Robin says bitterly, taking a gulp of her wine to dull both her fear and the familiar twist of regretful embarrassment that she'd landed in this position – if only she'd gone back to the doctors, if only she'd known sooner, if only she hadn't wasted so many years on the wrong partners, if only she could have just not wanted children and never had to care about any of it. “And I suppose I haven't got the best track record when it comes to making sensible life choices.”

“When are you going to stop bloody punishing yourself? If our work has taught you anything, surely it's that plenty of people get into relationships with the wrong person. Christ, look at me.” Cormoran laughs sardonically. “Look at what I spent sixteen years of my life on.”

“At least you never married her.”

He hesitates. It’s a question he’s concluded he’ll never truly be able to answer, whether he'd have been foolish enough to go through with it if that fatal lie had never occurred, just like he’ll never know for certain if it was a lie. If it hadn’t been that, there would have been another unforgivable act, of that he is quite certain, but whether the next death blow would have come before or after a wedding, no one could know. 

“I might have.”

“But you didn’t. And not many know it’s wrong when they're walking down the aisle. Anyway-”

Robin cuts across his combative intake of breath. Matthew and Charlotte, even Ryan, feel like ancient history now, barely more tangible in their present than a bad dream, but she has yet to find it easy to talk about any of them. She couldn’t stand to invite them in now, into their happiness, especially not into a moment deciding the nature of it in future.

“I’ve been able to take back a lot of my bad decisions but having or not having a baby is permanent. I can't blame Mum for feeling I'd benefit from more time to think about it.” 

“Would you?”

“No.” She shakes her head slightly, her eyes growing distant as they move away from him. “I’ve been thinking about it on some level for years, even before the ectopic. Ever since I left Matthew. You know, I cried when Annabel was born. I still don't know why exactly – it's more than I know how to put into words – but it definitely wasn't just because of my marriage ending or because I was happy for Stephen and Jenny. It hurt.”

Cormoran blinks in surprise. She’s better at protecting herself nowadays but nothing could change that Robin is selfless at heart. She’s a good aunt, a dedicated sister. It would take a great depth of feeling to override that nature. Whilst he’s always known she has a maternal drive in her from her many caring deeds, from the way she’d considered the welfare of her children when they were nothing but a concept, he hadn’t realised the complicated intensity. 

“It was in my head since I was a little girl myself that I’d be a mother one day but I expected it to go after the divorce. I thought maybe I’d just been going along with Matt or I wanted them to have a normal life and once I’d let that go, I’d become this diehard career woman. And I have been, these past few years. It just hasn’t panned out that way in the long run. Not fully.” She smiles at him almost mournfully, no small part of her lamenting that a simpler path of singular purpose hadn’t been hers. “It was you that changed my mind.”

Strike fears he must look almost comical as his surprise deepens. “Me?”

“Yep.” Robin laughs at his face, at the sheer irony of it. “I used to think that the agency was the most important thing in the world to me but it isn't. You are.” 

He still finds it an odd feeling sometimes. To be someone's priority, their person. To have Robin not only love him but love him in many of the same expressions as he loves her.

“When I've been asked if I wanted children before, I've always said that I couldn’t imagine having them with the agency, and that was true. Not with the hours we worked and the money we made in the beginning but even when that started getting better, I didn't think I'd ever be able to cope with this job and raising a family. I didn’t believe I was strong enough, definitely not with Matthew or Ryan. It’d have been two, three weeks of paternity leave for them and then I’m the primary parent for the next five years. Probably for the rest of my life.” 

She feels claustrophobic just thinking about it – the opaque, cookie-cutter children that had always come to mind with Matt, the embryo she'd lost with Ryan that she'd never wanted to imagine beyond the torturous combination of grief and relief it forced on.

“But it’s also true that it was never just about whether it was feasible. I wanted to be a detective my whole life. I gave up on it, after the attack, but then I met you and it all came flooding back. Once I'd gotten that chance, I wanted to live it to the absolute fullest and the truth is that Matt and Ryan didn't interfere with that impulse at all. Not in my mind. Not in my heart. I didn't love either of them enough to be tempted by a private life with them. It – they – didn't mean as much to me as the agency.”

Cormoran fights back the urge to grin. Others would probably flinch at how blunt she was but he knows how much she’s worked for this, the ability to speak her mind without dulling the edge. And he’s only human – it certainly doesn’t hurt to hear that there was never really competition. 

“The job is still important to me and it always will be, no matter what becomes of our personal life. I want to be working cases till I'm cashing in my pension. Maybe even after that, when I’m on my zimmer.” He does smile then, at the truth of it in the zealous gleam in her eye. “But I know now that the reason I love the agency as much as I do – the reason why no one could ever persuade me to leave even when I could do the same job elsewhere – is because I love doing it with you. I love you, Cormoran, and now that the business is more secure, now that I've been able to be with you outside of the agency and we’ve built this life together, that matters to me more than anything. And I’ve started to feel like it could be more. You make me feel like it could be more.”

Her gut twists with a dread familiar from her days on horseback, turning the corner to the last, highest jump on the course, pounding faster and getting closer, certain to fail if she doesn’t charge on with force but guaranteeing the blow will be harder if she does. She looks up at him. He squeezes her hand. 

Robin digs her heels in, clutches tight. 

“I'm not a fantasist; I understand that things would have to change if we had a baby. A lot of things. I know it’d be hard. But we're a good team. I think we could get it right between us, that we'd work together and the sacrifices wouldn't have to be so much that we couldn't have enough of both lives. Obviously I'd have to take on more of the burden at the start – getting IVF, being pregnant, giving birth, postpartum, all that – but I accept that and I trust that you would be there for me through it. That afterwards, you wouldn't just let me be swallowed up into a housewife. You've always let me be exactly the person that I wanted to be, always believed in me, encouraged me, loved me for it. You’ve helped me to realise that I am strong enough. Strong enough to be both – to be a detective and a mother.”

Now, in the face of a desire so clearly considered and driven forward anyway, she is certain Cormoran will balk. She’ll fall and everything will shatter on the ground. 

"I'm sorry." she blurts, before he has a chance to do it.

In truth, for all his anticipation, Strike hadn’t even really got a grip of the matter yet. He’d rocketed right up to cloud nine at the confirmation that he could make her feel that secure, to want it and say it. The words crack against that feeling like a whip. He’s lost again.

"What on earth are you sorry for?"

"For doing this to you, when I’ve always known you didn't want to be a dad.” Robin says, hearing rising tears in her strained breath. “For being..." 

His eyes widen as she realises the sentiment she's looking to put a word to. Not like you, like everyone else.

"Robin, listen to me.” He takes her by the shoulders, gentle but firm enough that she stops avoiding his stare. "There's nothing wrong or weak or embarrassing about wanting to be a mother. I know you don't think that about Ilsa or Vanessa."

"Of course not. They're amazing, making it all work."

"Then why would it be any different with you?"

"I know. I just–" She bats away a tear with her sleeve. "I suppose I've always wanted to be exceptional, and I know that's silly and egotistical–"

"It's not silly at all. I've never apologised for wanting to be the best at what I do. But you can be exceptional, whether you choose one or both or neither. You are exceptional, Robin, and it’s not what you do, it’s what you are. There's more inside you than anyone I've ever met and all the shit that life has thrown at you couldn't take a thing away from you. Still clever, still kind, still brave and passionate and tenacious. Still tough as fucking nails.” 

Robin laughs tearfully as he lets her go, one hand sliding up her neck to cup her cheek instead.

“Of course I think you would be a brilliant mother and still be a brilliant detective. I know you would.”

She blinks. The feeling in her heart is no less warm for what he’s said, but she can’t help but notice the gaping absence of his own capacity in it. 

Robin probes her partner’s face as he looks down on her, replays every second of what’s already gone by, looking for the slightest hint of upset at this prospect that has never endeared itself to him. Strike is like a book she’s read a thousand times over, pages thumbed and spine creased, the index to so many facets of his being imprinted in her mind. She stares at him, rifling frantically for any sign of his sentiments, but she can’t find a trace and neither does he readily give anything away in response to her waiting. Little does she know, he is doing the very same thing to himself, searching for that dislike and fear that has always so readily led him on this subject.

“I don’t want it more than what we have now.” she concedes after some time, deciding to answer as though the enmity is there, buried deep inside out of sight. 

This, finally, brings about the flinch she'd expected from the beginning. Cormoran drops his hand away, his features harden in the light, but the words that come out fracture from her projections. 

“You shouldn’t let anyone stand in the way of your wishes. Especially me and especially on this.” he says severely. “You’d only come to resent me in the end, once the moment’s passed and it’s just the two of us.”

“That’s not true.”

“Robin–”

“No, you bloody listen to me, Strike. I know my own mind on this. God knows I've dithered about it long enough.” Robin interjects with a steely glare and he falls silent. “I just told you: I don't want kids for the sake of it. I’ve only ever been sure I wanted them in this life I've got now, with you,” She takes his hand again, grasping tight. “–and if I can't have that, then that's alright. It's like you said; we never agreed on having children. In fact, I've always known you didn't want to be a father. If your feelings on that haven't changed since being with me, I'm perfectly happy as I am now. Just the two of us is plenty for me and it always will be. Saying no wouldn't make any difference to that. I assumed you would say no. I just thought it was right to be honest with you and myself, that's all.”

“I'm not saying no.” he corrects with a sudden firmness that startles Robin, her eyebrows jumping into an arch. 

“Then what are you saying?”

Cormoran has startled himself just as much, as if his tongue had acted and his mind was only the audience. More words are less forthcoming.

I don't know.

The words teeter on the edge of expression. It would be an accurate summary of his scrambled brain but he knows he owes her more than that, distress jumping from her face at being left in limbo. He takes a deep breath, forces his thoughts into some kind of articulation. 

“You’re right. I've not wanted kids for as long as I can remember. Partly because I was with Charlotte for so long. She didn’t want them and I knew that we'd have been bloody awful parents together. You couldn't put a child through what we had.” he offers her slowly, reliving the guilt he’d felt for the baby riddled amongst his dread, the awful sorrow for the life sentence he’d dealt out to an innocent. “But it is more than that. I was put off of it before I met her, from when I was a kid myself. I didn't like the idea of passing on the circumstances of my own birth, forcing someone else to deal with the same family situation that’s caused me so much fucking misery. My mother made me realise very early on in life how much it takes to do it right, how much freedom you should lose, and that always felt to me like it'd be a burden. I've never been broadly fond enough of kids to want a family in spite of that. Things have only changed since… well, since you.”

Robin blushes in the dark, returning his smile. In the first ventures into romance, she had wondered if the intense bursts of joy that Strike’s presence and displays of affection brought out in her would lessen once she had a greater supply of them. This has yet to be the case.

“You’re the right person for me, Ellacott. Before I met you, I never really understood why anyone would want to tie themselves down but you… you make me so happy, I can’t imagine wanting anything but to be with you always.” he grins, still as overcome with passion for her as he’d been from the start. “You were right that it's stupid to let the circumstances of my birth control me, and I don't want to let them anymore. Especially now there's a future worth having with you, and I’ve been thinking about what that could entail since–”

“Since?”

Strike is choked off by the distinct feeling of putting his foot right in it. He doesn't want to say but has no choice now. 

“D’you remember when I met your mum before dinner, after we first got together, to clear the air?”

Robin gasps. “She didn't. I told her–”

“She didn't ask when we were getting knocked up. She knew it wasn't in our plans.” He rushes to Linda's defence, keen to preserve his newly-found spot in the good books. “She just thought there was a chance you'd change your mind and if I was going to be in a relationship with you, I should be prepared for that. I agreed with her. I think I was considering it on some level even before that, from when I first knew I wanted to be with you, so I told her I'd think about it just in case.”

“And?”

“And it's the same as you; I love the agency but at the end of the day, it's never stopped me from wanting to come straight home to you, to our life together. That's the most important thing for me, and I think we could manage things well enough to share it with a child, if that's what we want. Mind you, I still think most kids are shits but I like Jack, Benjy, Annabel, and I know that I could love yours. Ours.” 

Her stomach flutters at this prospect said aloud and in earnest for the first time. Their child. Hers and Cormoran’s. 

“What I'm trying to say is that I believe in us. I think I could want a family in these circumstances, with you.”

Robin tenses, waiting for the strides to stop, for her to be thrown forward onto the ground.

"But the truth is that I'm not sure I believe in myself. I'm not sure I could be a good enough father with any partner.” Strike sighs, regret physically weighing him down on hunched shoulders. “Kids need nurturing, and they need someone to model themselves on. Someone that's kind, patient, gentle. Someone that's human, and I'm a little... bent out of shape. In more ways than one.”

She draws in a breath to argue but she forces herself to release it silently. She adores him. She doesn’t accept it but she can’t pretend she doesn't know what he means and trying to would only signal that she isn’t entirely rational about this, and that would likely unravel everything. Rationality is all he can do, and Cormoran is, will always be, a harder character than most. No-nonsense in both what he gives out and what he’ll take. In his worst humours, he could be defiant, judgemental, inconsiderate, uncompromising. Still, it's impossible for her to see any of it as the dealbreaker that he does. At his best, most days, these are the same qualities she admires about him – resilient, perceptive, forthright, confident, principled – and most importantly, beneath it all, there was a solid heart in his chest. Sensitive in his way, compassionate when it mattered, faithful to his causes, and deeply, genuinely loving. 

That he could still be any of those things after all that life had thrown at him is only a further testament to the raw goodness of him. 

"You're probably the most human person I know, though you do a bloody good job of hiding it sometimes." she says quietly.

Strike chuckles. "You've always got the best out of me."

"But I know the worst, too, and I still want this with you. That should count for something."

Decades of festering doubts but he cannot help but be swayed by her. No one understands him better than Robin. No one has ever had more of his trust to judge. How he looks in her eyes is the only image that really bothers him. If he has such faith in her to be a good mother, it follows that he should also have some faith that she'd choose the right father, and the amount of belief she is offering to invest in him with this is immeasurable ー putting her body through the gauntlet of IVF, pregnancy and childbirth, risking her lifestyle shattering, sharing the most precious thing she had with him, trusting that he would live up to all the sacrifices biology and society obliged her to make.

But it’s precisely there, where he circles right back to the lingering cold in his veins.

"I'm afraid, Robin.” he says simply. “I’m afraid I'll fuck it all up, and ruin not just my life but yours and our child's, too. Parents can do so much damage when they get it wrong. I mean, look at our work; every other case we take has to do with crap parenting somewhere along the line, and I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I have no idea what a normal family life should be like. I had no father around to learn from and my mother..."

He struggles, as he always does when she’s in his head. He reaches for his glass and drains the rest of his whiskey in one swallow.

"She was never all bad, my mum.” Strike says hoarsely as the alcohol burns his throat, his eyes lingering on the empty glass as he sets it down again. “You must think she was, the way other people talk about her and I avoid talking about her completely.”

“Shanker might be a little…”

“Mental?”

“Rough around the edges.” Robin amends charitably. “But in a way, he's one of the best judges of character I know, so when he told me Leda Strike was a diamond, I believed him.”

“He’s biased to the point of fantasy.” he scoffs, but then he says: “She had spirit. She was creative, funny, daring. She was almost hypnotic – she craved attention but you wanted to be in her presence, too. She could make you feel special, and she could be very kind. She'd give you the shirt off her back sometimes. That's how we ended up with Shanker in the first place. That's what he sees of her in you.”

His smile fades into a look of raging pain that hurts her own heart.

“But he doesn’t see the rest of her. Doesn’t see that that was just it: sometimes. She cared too much about other things, other people, herself, and not nearly enough about her kids. She wanted her freedom above all else. For all she could be loving when she fancied it, she was also irresponsible, naive, and deeply fucking selfish. She was never cut out to be a parent but she had us anyway and she was too proud to give us up. Because of that, she put Lucy and I through things no child should ever have to experience. Sometimes I'm grateful that she died when she did because she froze in time, in that ideal image I had of her when I was young, and I never had to hold her accountable for what else she was. A part of me can still love her, and I think I always will, but if she were alive today, I know I'd hate her, too. Another part of me does even now.”

Strike’s eyes appeal to her for something. To comfort or berate him, neither can be sure, but Robin is initially too shocked to give anything at all. Of course she knows the facts of his childhood, knows Lucy's view on the matter and how that, along with Ted and Joan’s passing, had impacted Cormoran's. Privately, Robin has felt some of this all along, a quiet distaste towards the spectre that had inflicted so much pain on the man she loved, but she’d never expected Cormoran would ever reconcile with it or speak of it to this degree. He really did love her.

Robin reaches out to hold his hand again and she rubs her thumb over his soothingly, the embrace in her silence washing over him. 

"I meant what I said earlier, you know ー you're ten times either of them, ten times anyone I've ever met.” she says softly, looking up at him. “They didn't care enough to be there for you growing up, but you care so much that you’re terrified about getting it right for a child that doesn’t even exist. That's the difference, Strike.”

His instinct is to argue with her and argue with her vigorously. He can’t help it. His brain has hardwired it into the visceral facts of life ー he is Cormoran Strike and he doesn’t want kids ー but the arsenal of whys is suddenly empty. Is that not what he’d said to her himself on more than one occasion, that parents should pay this level of consideration, viewed as the greatest sign that Robin would be an exemplary mother if she ever decided to put her mind to it? They are going somewhere now that they could not return from. His heart starts to thump in his chest. 

“I don't think anyone knows what to do until you have your own. At least that's how I feel about it and my childhood was completely ordinary. Our family would be bound to be different from what we knew. That's frightening but it's not necessarily a bad thing, and maybe knowing what you don't want to do could be as valuable as knowing what you do.”

Like a physical shove, her last words send him toppling over, into a box with his own thoughts, the usual walls that kept him out of there lying dismantled all around him. 

What would he want to give a child, if he had one? It was more than he could ever comprehend before, when his life was so very far away from it, but now he distils it to only two things.

A safe, secure home. Loving, present, capable parents.

They already have a home, a proper one, carefully crafted together out of so many small details that mean the world to him ー their toothbrushes on the sink, their unique smell of mingling detergent and perfumes and soaps, their favourite old stained mugs, their assigned sides of the bed, the one worn hob ring they both inexplicably favoured, their dents on the sofa cushions, hair from the grizzled cat that he loves to hate, the Indian round the corner that knows their faces and their order. The agency is solvent enough now that he trusted it would be there to sustain it, to move it out of Blackhorse Road and into a house of their own some day.

Loving, he doesn’t really doubt that either anymore. He’s a hard-headed old git and he certainly felt the burden of it in practicals and morals, but it’s also true that he felt the weight in not being able to help but love his kid. Even if all else failed him, he would cherish it because it’d be Robin’s. 

He’s not foolish enough to think that being present would be easy. Being a parent, being a detective, either of them are a vocation able to dominate a life, but there are already spaces. They take mornings, afternoons, and whole days off now, together and apart. Not many but some. They have family and friends to support them and money to pay for gaps to be filled with subcontractors and babysitters. They’re a team and with the will to make it all fit well, he’s sure they could.

Capable was always the sticking point and it still is. He’s had an uncertain life for most of his years before. He doesn’t want one again. The unknown of it all absolutely terrifies him. But, he realises, he does know some things. He knows the way Joan would tuck him into bed at night as secure as an envelope, the way her hand ruffling through his hair felt, the way she’d pack his lunchbox with such care to his tastes, the way she’d sit with him at the dining table and coax him through his homework with endless patience. He knows the way Ted would take him everywhere and let him try his hand at anything even when Joan hovered, the way he’d sneak an extra sweet to him under the table with a wink, the way he’d never shout but always speak to him quiet and steady, like a man. Indeed, he's always tried to model himself as a whole after Ted, as best he could. Why couldn't he do the same as a father? Did anyone have any better to go on than that?

Doubt seeps in faster than he could contain it, even if he had a mind to.

Is he really going to say in ten, fifteen, twenty years that he hadn't had a family with the woman he loved simply because of his old baggage? Would he be able to live with that? His resistance has always seemed so solidly sensible, the righteous move, but there's a cold prickle on the back of his neck now that forces him to wonder if all he's really doing is inflicting more loss upon himself. Would he in fact end up the bitter one, going to his grave not just riddled with guilt about leaving Robin alone but with regret for himself, too?

A memory he didn’t even know he’d kept hold of flashes behind his eyes. Years ago now, in The Trafalgar Tavern, watching the elderly woman that shared his birthday so happily surrounded by her family ー her children and grandchildren ー and wondering what his late years would look like. Even then, he wasn't as stony as he pretended sometimes, did occasionally muse on having the things other people had. His table probably wouldn’t be empty. God willing, Robin would outlive him, as would most of his siblings and their friends, and he has nieces and nephews. But the image doesn’t wrap him up, not in the contentment he saw on that woman’s face as she looked around at her company. It doesn’t plug the hole he felt then, even more so now. He feels cold, peripheral.

"Look, I'm really not trying to wear you down.” Robin's voice pulls him back to earth with her, her eyes searching his face worriedly. “The last thing I want is for you to agree only to make me happy. That wouldn't be fair on anyone and there's no need for you to do that. I am happy and whatever your answer is, it's not going to change that. I'm not going anywhere. All I'm asking is whether there’s a chance, because if there is, I'll get my eggs frozen and we can think about it together for a bit longer, but I'm not going through all that if you know now that you don't ever want a family with me.”

He’s still apprehensive, still practical. It’s all far too much to work through and jump into in a moment but the answer comes far more easily than he expected.

"There’s a chance.” 

Robin says nothing for a while. His answer sends a wave of excitement through her but none of it fits with the life she’s already embraced, the one that resulted from the no she’d always expected and made her peace with.

“I’m sorry,” Strike says remorsefully as the silence stretches. “I know you deserve moreー”

“No, that’s enough. More than enough. I know that’s real.” She stops him with a hand on his chest and a smile spreading across her face. “How about this? The consultant that treated me for the ectopic said he'd refer me for IVF if I ever wanted it in future. I’ll email him in the New Year to ask for an extraction and I'll freeze my eggs.”

“Aren’t the chances better with embryos? Ilsa and Nick had embryos.” he explains to her puzzled look. “Something about eggs having more water and crystallising?”

“Not anymore. Eggs and embryos are equally as likely to survive thawing nowadays. Embryos are just favoured sometimes because it preserves the man's fertility as well and we would know in advance whether we had viability. Embryos can be genetically tested, too.”

Robin is acutely aware of how her words defy common sense even before Strike frowns at her. She means to be with him for life, no matter what. A frozen embryo is no more likely to result in a baby than a frozen egg, unless they take further action by putting it inside her. There's no logical reason not to bind their prospects but a twist in her gut warns her. It’s too big a step to ask him to conceive when only a few minutes ago, she'd assumed he'd never give her a baby. Cormoran, however, seems not remotely bothered.

“Well, why don't we freeze some embryos?” he asks hesitantly. “I meant what I said, Robin, and if you're sure that you only want it with me–”

She nods eagerly. “I am.”

“Then why not do it together? I'm not getting any younger, either, and whilst I have no reason to believe I can't have kids, I've never been put out to stud before. My swimmers could be as knackered as the rest of me, for all I know. If we go for embryos then hopefully, at the end of it, we'll know for sure that we're able. If we're not, then better to find out now and come to terms with it than go on the journey of deciding to do it, just to end up with nothing.”

“Okay,” Robin says slowly, still trying to process just the possibility that they might be parents one day, let alone plan it out. “Okay, I'll need to have my coil taken out to do an egg retrieval, and I'm booked in to have it replaced in January anyway. How about I have it removed, we try for some embryos, then I'll get my coil replaced for another three years and we can decide what to do in that time?”

He shakes his head. “Have the coil out permanently. Once we know we've got some embryos stored away and I'm not needed to… produce the goods anymore, I'll get the snip.”

Robin raises her eyebrows. It hadn’t occurred to her. “Really?”

“Of course. It's the least I could fucking do.” He laughs coarsely before he tilts his head to look at her uncertainly, catching onto a word. “You’re prepared to wait years for this?”

She shrugs her shoulders. “I won't pretend I'm not bothered about my age ー pregnancy will be riskier for me the older I get and ideally I'd be as young a mum as I can be ー but freezing embryos more or less freezes the odds of success at the ages you are when they're made, and I would like to spend some more time just us as a couple. I would rather it be the right moment later than the wrong one earlier.” She glances at the door into the living room. “Sorry, Mum.”

“Why is Linda so keen? It's not like she doesn't already have grandkids.”

“She’s trying to understand me better but Mum'll always be a bit conventional at heart. She still thinks a baby would make me happy. Though I suppose she's not as far wrong as I thought.” Robin sighs at the prospect of proving her mother right, though the thought of giving her happiness is a nice one. “And I think she genuinely does want our grandchild for herself. She told me we'd make lovely babies yesterday.”

“If they take after you, maybe.” Cormoran scoffs. Nobody had ever accused him of being a desirable gene pool before. “Though I'm not sure I want my offspring to be ginger.”

The truth is that, when he’s allowed himself to, he almost always visualises their child to have her hair, boy or girl, but the pique on her face amuses him as intended.

“You cheeky bugger. You’ll get what you're bloody well given.”

“I love it when you talk Yorkshire to me.” 

Robin smiles at him before looking over at the clock glowing on the microwave. 

“Ready for bed?”

He looks as well. It’s barely past ten. “You know you don't have to be asleep for Santa to come anymore, Robin. Your presents are already under the tree.”

“But we will need sleep to get through the day with the little ones who do think that and will be up at five in the morning, if we’re lucky.” she points out. “Well, you will, at least. I hear Annabel’s getting a Barbie Dreamhouse.”

For a reason none of them could quite extrapolate, Annabel had been utterly fascinated with Cormoran ever since she’d met him, when Robin had stepped in for a sick babysitter and had Annabel stay with her for the weekend. She might deign to allow Stephen to build her new toy for her but she'd almost certainly want Cormoran to play with it with her. Especially as they'd bought her a new Barbie to go with it. 

“Good point, as always.”

Strike watches her as she picks up her wine glass, downs the last dregs, and takes it with his empty tumbler to the sink, only a small gesture of tidiness but grounding in the aftermath of an upended future. It’s daunting, as he watches her by the window, wondering where there’d be next year, the year after, every year, but he’s suddenly beset with giddy happiness, too. It’s Christmas. He has Robin. He has a future. He follows after her. Robin makes a squeak of surprise when she turns to find him there beside her but she leans into him as he presses her against the worktop by the hips, arms winding around his neck and initiating a slow, deep kiss that tasted of alcohol and spice and Narciso. 

"Merry Christmas, Ellacott," he murmurs against her mouth as they move together in their familiar electric. 

He feels her smile as she whispers back: "Merry Christmas, Strike."

And it’s a little longer yet, before they slip out of the kitchen, hand-in-hand.

Chapter Text

From the very beginning, neither Robin nor Strike had intended to keep their relationship a secret. For once, finally, they were on the same page and that page read spending the rest of their lives together. Hiding it was a futile gesture and even if they had been of the mind to try, they’d certainly have failed. They were too happily absorbed in each other to put in the due diligence required to sneak around. Without any concerted announcement, almost everyone in their lives had found out within a couple of months. But that page had also included maintaining a commitment to professionalism, using the walls of Denmark Street to separate their working and domestic ties strictly for their own sake, as well as others. They had communicated it to their staff with reasonable subtlety – the sound of her footsteps overhead and on the stairs in the morning, him following her out in the evenings when she’d said she was going home, looks that lasted too long, a brief touch of their hands here and there – and they had kept to that boundary ever since, even after Pat had plucked up the courage to ask and discretely disseminated the yes she’d received. 

Sitting there in the outer office, with the whole team gathering around her in an attentive semi-circle, thinking about nothing except whether Strike is doing an effective job of touching himself feels like an egregious violation of that rule but Robin couldn’t help herself. 

When Robin had contemplated the toll of putting herself through IVF before, it was only ever the procedure itself that she calculated with dread ー the brimming hormones, the needle plunging into her ovaries, the catheter tube digging up inside, the seemingly endless waiting for failure. Their consultation a few weeks ago had revealed a list of preliminary tests to pass before she’d even be started on that course. Since they already know she isn't, the first order of business is to establish if Strike is able and waking up this morning had disabused her of the idea she had until her turn to be free of the nerves. She hasn’t been able to stop fretting about it since he left her on the train at Highbury & Islington. 

Cormoran has never lacked for confidence but she could sense the pressure on him from the minute the doctor had mentioned the sample and he’d refused point-blank to have her accompany him in for assistance. Then there’s after. The thought of him not being able to father children, after coming within a hair’s breadth of it not once but twice, is so ironic that it feels almost absurd, but there has never actually been any proof. Robin has accepted her circumstances, as best she could, but if the analysis reveals he has a problem, too, what little control she feels she’s clawed back over the process would disintegrate.

Her heart sinks a little as Pat starts to make her way over to them from the kitchenette, the last person to join them. She’d expected Strike might be back in time for the team meeting but there’s no sign of him.

Pat frowns at the empty chair as she settles down with her tea. “Where’s he got to?” 

Climax, I hope.

Robin almost laughs hysterically and for a brief moment of madness, she wonders what would happen if she said that out loud, explained to everyone that they meant to go through IVF and Strike had spent the morning in a room somewhere trying to make a starting contribution. They’d probably be mortified and she certainly would be, when reason returned. Outside of therapists, they’d elected not to tell anyone. The intense intimacies of it aside, it’s very early days ー she couldn’t bear the thought of having to announce it if they come away with nothing, or explaining if they do get something but never put them to use.

“We had an urgent call from a client this morning, wanting to meet. He must have got held up somewhere.“ Robin says as smoothly as she can manage, folding her hands on the desk. “Let’s get started. I can fill him in later.”

The non-descript client prompts a few enquiring looks but it’s just about plausible enough to be swallowed without comment and if she gives any sign of her growing anxiety as they work their way through the agenda, that is mercifully ignored as well. When the end of the meeting comes and goes without any appearance from Strike, by the time she retreats to the inner office without making it seem like an escape, she can hardly stand it anymore. She pulls out her phone from her pocket. No texts, no calls, no nothing. She sits at her desk, phone in her lap unlocked to his contact and counting their subcontractors out of the office, but a few moments after Midge departs, before she can press the button, the outer door opens again.

“Alright, Pat.”

The familiar rumble of his voice has a physical impact on her, her muscles twitching with the urge to jump up and run to him, but with Pat there watching, Robin forces herself to sit. He doesn’t keep her waiting any longer.

"Sorry I’m late, I’ve been stuck on the fucking Tube for the last forty-five minutes. Signal failure.” Strike shuts the door behind him hurriedly and takes a few steps into the office to ensure their privacy, coat still on. “How was the meeting?"

"Good." She eyes him, eagerness in her body leaning towards him but nerves in her eyes. "How was yours?"

"Not the best wank I've ever had in my life but for you, dearest, anything." 

Robin bursts into laughter and she knows the relief in her chest is excessive for one small box on a very long list, but it’s something, and knowing what’s coming, perhaps she should take joy wherever she can find it. She sees the same cheer reflected in Cormoran’s grin. Still torn about the future, she’d only ever expected him to do his part like a business transaction and offer her comfort with her altogether more complex role. But he’d surprised her with his attentiveness at the consultation, the depths of his subsequent knowledge, the nature of his worries. He is no less invested in this than she is.

"What was it like?” she asks curiously as he leans in to kiss her cheek, breathing in the scent of his aftershave. “Do they just stick you in a room? Is there any... inspiration?"

"Cubicle with a chair. No porn unless you brought your own. There wasn't any internet in there, either. Feel for the blokes with no imagination.” Strike winces as he hangs his coat and settles at his own side of the desk. “Though perhaps the thought of a needle in the bollocks otherwise is enough to get it up.”

“What did you do?” Robin asks before she can remember the office rule. 

Strike tilts his head in surprise, though he doesn’t look especially inclined to remember the office rule, either, the way his eyes linger on her. “Are you fishing for compliments, Ellacott?”

She stares back brazenly, clicking her nails on the desk. “Maybe.”

"Well, the cubicle had a nice picture of a beach in it. Very calming. Put me in the mood.” He toys with her, stroking his chin as though contemplating the release of state secrets, before caving to her raised eyebrow. “Thought about my birthday. Sorted me right out.”

Robin smirks proudly. She’d spent quite a bit of time agonising over what sort of gestures she could make to Strike to please him on his birthday but as it turned out, being in the kitchen wearing nothing but an oversized flannel and a thong when he arrived home earlier than she’d expected had been plenty.

“Handed it in to the nurse and that was that.” he says. “Didn’t even get a sticker at the end.”

She snorts. “Saying what? ‘You came’?”

“I did think ‘congratulations on the ejaculation’ might be a bit too wordy.”

Robin tries to smile again but this time, it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. They’d skirted around the cause as much as they could. The melancholy is bleeding in for her, as it always does eventually when she has to think about what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, how it might end. She wonders, if all this does eventually lead them to a child or a life they’d freely chosen without one, whether she’ll be able to look back on it all and only be happy, proud of herself for enduring.

She reaches across the partners’ desk and squeezes his hand. "Thank you for doing that."

Strike looks up at her with a slight frown. “That wasn't even a drop in the ocean compared to what you're taking on.”

"You know what I mean.” she sighs, letting go of him. “We only have to do all of this because of me."

"I never wanted kids with anyone but you so if yours have to go via the freezer drawer, then that's the only way I ever wanted to do it."

His manner is thoroughly indifferent, leaning back into his chair with a shrug, but that touches Robin far more deeply than the sentiment itself. Ryan said that, too, in so many words  ー that it didn’t matter that she needed IVF, didn’t matter that she didn’t want to do it right now, didn’t matter whether they had children at all  ー but she remembers the frustration always roiling beneath the surface that she was failing to give him something, silently lashing out with any other inadequacy of hers he found. Strike is not a cold man by comparison. On the contrary, he cares about it all with a great deal more depth than the hitting of life’s milestones, but he’s only truly moved by how her condition affects her. For his own part, he’s utterly content with her, come hell or high water.

Suddenly, before either of them really know it, Robin has made her way into his lap, arms wrapped around his neck and dampening the collar of his shirt with her tears. 

In this situation, Cormoran is starting to learn to not always ask why she's crying. She often doesn't know herself, a comparatively insignificant trigger for a maelstrom of memories, guilt, grief, longing, her unshakeable empathy for others that adds further ways to torture herself. Requiring an answer only puts more pressure on, and this will only get more inextricable when the hormones start to be injected into the mix, but if she's sitting on his lap in the office, a space where they wouldn't usually so much as hold hands, he feels obliged to say something.

"Robin," he says gently, resting his cheek on the crown of her head, his arm coiling around her waist. "This is hard enough on you as it is. For God’s sake, you don't have to pity me, or anybody else, as well.”

"It's not that. Well, not now." Robin pulls away to look down on him, cupping the side of his face and smoothing her thumb along his jaw. "I just love you so much."

"Oh." He blinks. "What? This old chestnut?"

Without a care for where they are, only for his softened dark eyes, she kisses him.

"I love you, too, Ellacott." he says earnestly, handing her a napkin from the desk drawer as she pulls away. "There’s not a lot we can do about this, only whether to take the next step when it presents itself, so let’s just take it day-by-day, yeah? Today is done.”

"Yeah." she sniffs, drying her tears. "I just hate that it has to be so... clinical like this." 

"It's unpleasant for us right now, I know, but there's nothing dispassionate about conceiving with IVF. This is far more effort than a shag. If we can, if we do one day, it’ll be special to know we went to these lengths just to make it happen.”

Robin nods but says nothing more as she slides off his lap and retreats to her side of the desk. There is nothing more to say. She's been dealt a terrible hand and they can't change that, nor can she completely comfort herself with the future, not when he hasn't made her any substantial promises as to what it'll hold. Strike's heart spasms with guilty regret as he watches the lines of residual tension cut into her face but, much as he wants to ease her suffering, he can't crack open that box yet. To attempt to make up his mind now, when they're doing all this on the agreement of putting off a decision, would be cruel unless he's certain, and he's still not. It's the same maddening, suffocating sensation of fear and wonder that he's desperate to be rid of before offering her a yes, and it wouldn't spare her the agony of this procedure. It'd only make that worse, in fact, giving her more to hope for. They're entirely trapped.

He sighs.

“We haven't got to be anywhere till one. Why don't we duck out for lunch and you can talk me through the meeting? My treat. Pat has sent us some options to replace the long-range camera, too, and for a VPN. We can look at those.”

Despite herself, Robin smiles faintly as she rubs her temples. Part of her wants to wallow and rage but to the majority of her, he's offering her the only anchor he can. Routine. The satisfaction of their craft. He understands it. He understands her.

“I’d like that.”

A weekend away, Strike had been sure, would be the best thing for them.

It has only been a year and a half, but he and Robin have already taken a good number of sojourns around the country as a couple. They both love London in its own way, but neither of them would be quick to call the urban sprawl their natural habitat. Masham and St Mawes offer a familiar respite from the crowded, hectic grey but to their curious minds, there’s a certain thrill in roaming new places, and the UK leaves plenty of seaside resorts, rural villages, and ancient towns at their disposal. The distance often helps them get away from work and enjoy being somewhere else, being with each other, so why not this, too? 

He’d chosen Bourton-on-the-Water with particular care. It’s far but not too far. It’s popular, so somewhere they’d prioritise visiting in the off-season. It’s picturesque, peaceful-looking, but he saw plenty to take their mind off things. They could meander along the River Windrush as far as they fancied, counting the bridges, enjoying the scenery, stumbling into a few of the pubs and eclectic little shops along the way. They could come off the beaten track and take one of the easier walks through the countryside, into the nature reserve or round to the nearby villages of the Slaughters. He was sure Robin would love the motoring museum and perhaps they’d stomach another of the more conventional tourist attractions on offer, too, like the model village or the maze. They could take a proper afternoon tea at the scattering of traditional rooms around the village. If that wasn’t enough, they could drive out to Blenheim Palace or Warwick Castle. They could finish their days with a hearty meal at the selection of restaurants on the riverside and a nightcap in the canopy tent bar in the garden of their hotel, if the weather held up.

They’d ended up doing very few of those things so far. They'd mostly stayed as they are now, hidden away in the room, and he doubts tomorrow will be any better.

Of all the stages, they had both expected the past few weeks of meddling with her hormones to be the worst for her. On the contrary, Robin had seemed better once the medication started, relieved to be doing something and laser-focused on the finish line. She’d gone to her last monitoring appointment the day before they’d left for the Cotswolds firmly constituted but receiving the confirmation she’d hoped for, being handed an appointment card for the next Monday and a loaded syringe of Ovidrel, had pulled something loose. 

One moment, she’s fine. A second later, almost wrecked. Strike is only baffled that she isn’t in the latter state at all times, bombarded on almost every possible front – hormonal, angry, upset, frightened – but he suspects what’s about to come next might do it.

Strike could feel the passing of time as her body grew tenser and tenser in her arms but he still jumps out of his skin as the alarm goes off. 

22:00

In exactly a day and a half, Robin would be laid out on the operating table but now, a more immediate task. 

At first, she sets off with the confidence she’d shown over previous weeks. She gets up from the bed and retrieves the injection they’d stowed in the mini fridge that would act as the final trigger, forcing her eggs to mature and present themselves for retrieval. She hands it to Strike as he shuffles to the end of the mattress. He tries to catch her eye as she lifts her pyjama shirt to expose her midriff but she looks intently at the headboard. He hesitantly follows her lead, cleaning the intended site with a wipe, pulling off the cap, and lining up the needle to her abdomen pinched between his thumb and index. 

Before he can move an inch further, she grabs his wrist. “Are you sure?”

Strike nods. On his part, he is. “Are you?”

“Yes. No. I don't know.”

She sits on the bed beside him, burying her face in her hands.

“I'm scared, Strike.” Burning tears well in her eyes as she looks up at him and the simple, ragged words break his heart. “What if I go in on Monday, get all the way onto the table, and there's nothing there anymore when they scan me? What if they do the surgery but there's no eggs in there or they're not mature enough to use? What if they only get a few and none of them take?”

He reaches back and places the needle on the duvet as far away from them as he can, out of sight.

“Then we'll try again.” he answers calmly, taking her hands into his lap, holding tight to try and suppress the tremble he felt inside at the prospect of putting her through this all over again. “Or we won't. Whatever you want to do, I'm with you.”

“I just want it to be over,” she sobs, drawing away from him and hunching over into herself. “–and it won't be, no matter what happens.”

“You don't have to do any of this, Robin. We can stop, right now.”

“But we've come so far, spent so much–”

Only a few months have passed since they'd stood in the dark in her parents' kitchen together but between the appointments and the waiting and worrying, the days have stretched out thin, into its own lifetime. The NHS waiting list was ambiguously lengthy when Robin called the doctor, and even once they started treatment, they could expect the process to be dragged out by tight resources, the volume of patients, the many bureaucracies that held it all together. It was longer than either of them had felt they had the time for so they’d taken the private route. The referral saved them some steps and the most expensive parts are yet to come but still, the consultations, the tests, and the medications have taken thousands already. Strike has footed as much of the bill from his inheritance as Robin would allow. He can’t stand the thought that she should pay for the privilege of all this pain and stress now, let alone what she’d have to go through if they ever try to transfer, if she ever does become pregnant. Besides, nothing would have made Ted and Joan happier than to know their money was spent on helping him start a family. 

“I don't care.” Strike stresses frustratedly. “I don't care about what's already been done or what'll happen next. I only care about you, how you feel, and if you've changed your mind–”

“No.”

The answer is unthinking, instinctive, and perhaps it's authentic for being so, but she's too overwhelmed. The telltale signs of complete panic start to force their way in, her chest constricting, the cold sweat, the burn in her throat, but just as she begins to wobble on the precipice, the familiar lilting Welsh tone of her therapist slips into her head as though she’s there at her ear.

Robin, you're about to go through a hugely challenging experience – physically and mentally – and yes, there's a limit to how much that can be avoided, but therapy isn’t supposed to be a one-off fix. It’s supposed to equip you with skills to handle all life’s difficulties. It can still help you. If you find you're struggling, go back to the basics. 

She’d been wretched when she first walked through Judith’s door. Even that truth had been more than she was willing to admit to herself. She’d fought for a while, several sessions, twice a week. They’d had to start from the very beginning, tools to restore her most basic chains of thought.

Can you do something for me, Robin? When you feel like you're being buried, when you feel like you can't cope, take a seat in this chair.

She hasn’t had to do it so rigidly like this for a while but the words come to her easily, as does the scientific rationale: forcing the moment of pause, giving space to your emotions. 

Robin closes her eyes to the warm dimness of the hotel room and with a heave of strength, like pushing back an opening door, the scene materialises in her mind. She walks along Henrietta Street, the tall old townhouses leaning in on either side of her, stopping at the glossy black door almost halfway up the road, climbing the creaking stairs to the third floor, down the white corridor to Dr Judith Gregory’s office. She opens the door and crosses to the chair in the middle of the room – a green armchair, old and worn, slightly too encompassing for her frame and the cushion sagging from the many that came before her to fight their battles, a feeling that had always brought her particular comfort. The leather frays slightly on the arms, pried by restless hands in difficult moments, and the air smells faintly of the doctor’s Earl Grey and the ephemeral, fresh mist of her menthol vape. The afternoon sun streams through the blinds always half drawn in shafts, lighting up the dust motes and the books on the shelf.

What is it you’re feeling, Robin? And no bullshit, mind, or the water pistol is coming out.

Scared, above all. It comes easily. She’d said it just then. Scared that she would fail now. Scared that she would fail later. Scared that she might not be given the chance at all. Upset for what she’s lost. Angry that it was stolen from her. Angry at it all.

Can you change it?

Yes, whispers alluring logic. Yes, she could stand up right now, throw the jab to the floor and crush it under her heel. She could tell Strike it was all a big mistake, that she never wanted to speak of it ever again and he, of course, would say yes, too, if that was really her wish. She could call the clinic first thing in the morning and cancel the surgery, ask them to remove her from their books for good measure, too. Cormoran would get a vasectomy. Time would pass and eventually, her body would lose its ability, too. She could live without the strain of all this. 

But it would not be without cost. It would cost her motherhood. It would cost whatever their family might become, and that causes her agony, slicing through the panic.

No, she thinks with seething fury, clenching her fists on her knees. The sum of her life already has far too many subtractions. She would not let one more thing be taken from her.

Then how can you accept it?

This was always the hardest part for her before, the question she always took the longest to answer because she dodged, argued, pleaded. She only wanted normal. Or at least, her broken, hare-brained conception of it – no pain, no risk, no complexity, no uncertainty. She refused to see anything else. It had gotten easier eventually, when she finally realised that her best attempt at ordinary had brought her nothing but a misery built of those same things, fed the bone-deep discontent that put her in the chair. That without embracing those things on her own terms, she couldn't hope to manage them, couldn't possibly use them to reach any good in her life, either.

But this is simpler again. She refuses the alternative. There is only this.

Robin takes a deep breath and lets herself sit with the physical sensation for a second – the tightness in her chest, the burning behind her eyes, the twists in her stomach. Not a sign of weakness. A sign of accepting a difficult reality. 

No, not accepting, she insists to herself. Fighting. 

“No.” she says, with the force of scaring something away, sitting up straight again. “I want a chance at a family and I can't have one like everyone else. There's nothing I can do to change that. All I can do is fight for it the way I can, and I need to know I did everything I could.”

She wipes her tears with the heel of her hand and stands up. “Do it.”

Strike rarely feels the need to doubt Robin. She stumbles, she could have her moments of recklessness, but with her usual level head, there are few sharper and when that cold, steady determination takes over, it’s almost as though it’s his own. He picks up the syringe. She barely felt the prick of the needle, his hand honed by weeks of the smaller, less consequential jabs, but she watches his thumb plunge the trigger into her.

It’s done.

For a while after, they just watch each other silently and as her eyes roam the familiar contours of his face, Robin wonders how she would have fared had she gone through this with the men that came before, that had more conventionally fit the picture she’d held of partner and father. Matt, Ryan, they’d have wanted to do this more readily than Strike. They’d have probably asked first and there’d be no pause, a fresh transfer straight in. They’d have comforted her, as best they knew how. But neither would have ever let her stop so easily, at any point but certainly not now. They’d not have wanted to throw away the money, the time, the expectations, even if it meant throwing her away first.

“I don't know where I'd be without you.”

“HR, probably.”

She laughs raggedly and overcome with affection, she wraps her arms around his neck, pulling his head into her, fingers pushing up into his hair. Strike’s large hands find her hips, letting her closer again in the space between his knees. Eventually, he shifts back up the bed and leans until she comes down on top of him, a leg slung across his pelvis, her head on his chest. In the warmth of his arms, with the steady beat of his heart in her ear, Robin eventually drifts off to sleep but thoughts of the needle find her there.

She stands on one of the quaint pedestrian bridges crossing the water but it’s not the shallow gentle stream they’d seen this morning. Beneath her is a deep, dark, pulsing artery. The water surges by, rushing with a relentless fury but to what end, she couldn’t yet know.

Taking Day Seven off work had seemed thoroughly sensible to Robin from the beginning, blocking it out in the calendar as soon as she had a projected course of dates. There’s already too much about this that she is not in control of. She couldn't bear taking a call like this in an unpredictable environment, when she was with a client, undercover, on surveillance, or with only a door separating her from their staff. Work usually trumps all but nor did she think herself capable of focusing on anything before or after the call anyway. 

Insisting that Cormoran should not take the day off with her seemed equally as sensible. Their work could be volatile; they agreed the agency should have one of them around wherever possible. Removing him from the rota, too, would have doubled the amount of rescheduling work, delayed more clients. He could just come home if needed, she said.

But as she sits there, alone at home, Robin could feel herself slowly coming unhinged.

She gets up, takes yet another aimless wander through their flat. The worktops are spotless, the sink and dishwasher empty, tiles mopped. The living room is orderly, shelves dusted, carpet hoovered, plants watered. The bed has been made, the washing basket clear, and the folded clothes returned to the wardrobe and drawers. The to-do list in her diary has been crossed out to nothing. She'd been through her case files once, twice, thrice, and couldn't bring herself to concentrate on them, or the TV, or a book. She couldn't sleep, even though she barely had the night before. Her eyes kept gravitating to her phone on the coffee table, dark and silent. Every previous vibration of her phone had sent a bolt of stress through her, then the work emails, the news alerts, family texts smothering it with a mingling crush of relief and disappointment.

Robin has no idea of what to expect. She’d refused interim updates from the embryologist. They'd got a good yield from her but that guaranteed nothing. She didn’t need to hear that some had taken, only to lose some or all of them because they hadn't grown or the testing found they wouldn’t be compatible with life. Only the end result matters. Only this call.

They said to expect it today or tomorrow. 

She gives into the temptation to check her phone again, as if she could somehow have missed it. Nothing but the time.

16:55

She wouldn’t know, being that any hour is good enough for a private detective to work, but she assumes these last five minutes are for taking mugs to the kitchen, packing up bags, switching off computers, putting on coats. They’re not going to call her now. Robin storms over to the cupboard under the sink and yanks out the shopping bags. She may as well resort to the one task left to her – their empty fridge.

As she leaves the flat and walks down towards the stairwell, trying her very best not to cry at the sheer frustration, the phone rings.

She gasps, scrambling for the device in her coat pocket as if it's a live thing that might try to escape from her. Her heart hammers against her ribs, the sound of the ring tone deafening in the empty hallway, as she looks at the screen.

16:58

It isn’t Strike or Pat, isn’t any of their subcontractors or clients, isn't her mother or Ilsa, or a scam caller. 

Homerton Fertility Centre

For a second, she just stares at the contact, unable to touch the green icon, trapped between dread and excitement. Finally, as she realises her rings are running out, she manages to swipe the screen.

"Hi, Robin, it's Dr Thomas. Sorry it's late in the day but I've just had the report from the lab and I thought you'd like to know as soon as possible. Is now a good time to talk?"

Robin hurries back down the hall and into their flat, sitting down on the storage rack by the front door. 

"Yeah.” she swallows, her even tone giving no hint of the faint sensation in her head, the sick feeling in her stomach. “Now's fine.”

"So, as you know, we retrieved thirteen mature eggs from your collection last week. Cormoran's sample was of high quality for a man of his age, and he was able to fertilise eleven of your eggs.” The doctor says slowly, the clicks of a mouse echoing in the background. “Of the eleven, seven of them developed into blastocysts. In the genetic testing today, we found three of them were aneuploid and four euploid, so you have four viable embryos. That's an excellent result, congratulations. I've just emailed you some photos of them, if you want a look.”

Alerted by the ping of the notification in her ear, Robin is already in the file. Objectively, to her, they look like a variety of lumpy circles under a microscope but she’s baffled by the knowledge that these things belong to her, are a physical part of her. Her and Cormoran. She is looking at four potential lives – one of them, if the timing should ever be right and they're lucky when it does, perhaps fated to become their son or daughter.

"How would we decide between them?" she wonders aloud as she scrolls back and forth through them.

"You wouldn't need to. Keep in mind the genetic result is the most important thing here – all four are strong candidates for implantation based on that alone – but they have what we call a morphological grade, too. The level of growth, which is the number, and the appearance of the cells in the inner mass and the part that would form the placenta, the letters, also help predict success. You'll see the first embryo is labelled 5AA, which is the best possible grade, the second and third are 5AB and 5BB, and the last one is 4BC. We'd transfer them one at a time in that order.”

"One?"

Robin only says it in awe of the unfathomable singularity that each photo, each transfer, would represent but the doctor takes it more literally.

"Yes. One at a time is considered best practice nowadays. There are more risks associated with multiple pregnancies and putting two embryos in doesn't increase the chances of success by a margin significant enough to justify it. We could explore transferring two if you feel strongly about it – say if you particularly wanted twins – but otherwise, there's no need; you're relatively young still and your embryos are of a high standard. Just the 5AA on its own I’d say gives you around a sixty to sixty-five percent chance. Taking all four cumulatively, you stand a very reasonable chance of success – perhaps eighty to ninety.”

Very reasonable chance of success. Eighty to ninety.

She’s never permitted herself even a shred of optimism about all this but that stirs something like hope in her. It’s not a guarantee, not a dream, but reasonable. Strong majority.

"I recall at your consultation that the only goal for now was preservation but we sometimes find that changes over the course of treatment. It's a very involved process for both partners. Do you have any questions about the next steps?”

Robin hesitates. They’d very specifically not had any more thoughts about the future yet, let alone conversations, but the doctor is right – the experience has had a way of dragging more certainty into it than they’d agreed. The idea of all four of those possible lives staying frozen for years, only to be thrown away, seems more far-fetched than it had at the start. On several occasions through the process, she thought she'd detected a greater amount of investment from Cormoran than she'd expect from a man only buying some insurance – listening intently at all the appointments, anxious that he might not be able to perform for her, the smile when she told him they'd gathered so many eggs from her. She’s certain he’ll be happy to hear this. What is that if not commitment? But she'd decided not to force the issue before it was ever discussed. It wouldn't be fair – he'd given her honesty all along and she's accepted of her own volition – and nor would it serve her. The ball must stay in his court.

"Not yet.” she answers eventually. “Cormoran and I still haven't made a decision about children. We’ve done this to keep the option available while we talk it through over the next couple of years.”

"Well, I’m obliged to remind you that your odds will continue to decline slightly as you get older, and the risks of pregnancy increase, but of course you have to weigh up your personal circumstances first. You have some years to play with and it's the quality of the embryos that matters most for fertility. Yours are as good a shot as you could have hoped for." Dr Thomas says with a soothing tone. "We'll keep them on ice until you're ready to use them or they're no longer needed. You'll be sent a letter covering all this, the storage information, and your bill, and you’ve got my details; just drop me a line if you're ready for a transfer.

After exiting pleasantries, the line goes dead and it’s over.

Robin leans back into the rack of their coats and bags and umbrellas, breathing in the scent of her partner from his old trench hung nearest to her. He must be wearing the new one she'd bought him for Christmas.

Before she knows it’s coming, she lets out a laugh of sheer relief. There is a much bigger decision still to come but that is mostly out of her hands for now and at least she won't have to think about her degrading fertility nearly so much any more, doesn't have to worry whether they could even conceive together.

In some ways, she’s glad she was alone for the call, couldn't bear the thought of Strike watching her face if it had been bad news, but now all she wants is him.

She picks up her phone from her lap again.

"I've just had a call from the clinic." 

Across London, Strike glances at Wardle in the driver’s seat of his car, waiting to take over surveillance and doing his best to look disinterested in anything else. For a moment, Strike dithers, but he decides he'd rather face the consequences of Wardle hearing this conversation than put her off. Robin had come to terms with her circumstances some time ago now but the glaring reminder in every step of the embryo freezing process hasn't been easy for her. This will be a vulnerable moment for her whatever the nature of the news, and she knows he's out at work. She'd called because she wanted him now anyway. He trusts Wardle wouldn't gossip.

“Go on.”

"Four viable embryos.” Robin's voice is a little shaky over the line, still edged with the adrenaline and emotion. “I've just forwarded you the photos.”

He lets out a breath he didn't notice he was holding before now. He was more afraid than he realised that nothing would come of it in the end, that the clinic had made a mistake about him or he was somehow impotent specifically when it came to Robin, or her eggs had degraded significantly since she last conceived. Robin had suffered enough and perhaps, he feared that outcome for himself, too.

"She said it's an excellent result, that they're of a high standard and the odds of a birth are very reasonable. Eighty to ninety percent.” He smiles at the sound of hers in her voice. "She also said you gave a quality sample for a man of your age.”

"Glad to be of service." Strike retorts drily but he couldn’t help but be a bit pleased with himself, though he could have done without the caveat. 

"So that's it.” Robin says, exhausted by it all but bright. “Four chances whenever we want them. They'll store them and contact us annually to ask if we want to keep them and charge for the next year. Two-hundred a year." 

"Why can't we just bring them home? Put them in our freezer for free? I’m sure we can make some room.”

"I'm not sure how well our peas and vodka would do in liquid nitrogen conditions." 

Strike chuckles before he lets the weight of seriousness take over again. "Sounds good. It's a small price to pay. I'll call the GP tomorrow, so long as you're sure four is enough?”

Robin sighs as possibilities start to slip in again to the clean joy of the moment. Eighty to ninety percent cumulative. The 5AA could give her cause to hope for that embryo to make it and they’d have a baby, with three left over if they ever wanted to provide a sibling. But she might also reasonably expect to expend them all just for one birth, leaving her with no means to grow their family further, or she might be unlucky and have nothing at all. So many uncertainties but after this, she is sure of one thing.

“I don't know if it'll be enough but I do know I don't want to put myself through endless rounds of IVF so let's set that boundary now. Get the snip.”

"Okay.” Strike says. A part of him is surprised at the finality – she really does want this – but he understands. How could he not? The tears, the bruising on her stomach, the sight of her lying on that bed after the extraction, all the things that would happen to her in a transfer, a pregnancy, he couldn’t yet picture, float in his mind. “How do you feel? Are you pleased?"

"It feels a bit anticlimactic to go through all that then just leave them sitting in a drawer somewhere but I am happy. Relieved, more than anything." He hears the sound of her boots on the floor, the rustle of what sounds like plastic bags in the background. "I've got to go. I was just about to go to Lidl before she called. We've got nothing in for dinner.”

Perhaps another man, in another pair, would have been concerned by the abrupt turn but Strike knows better. It’s a tacit signal she is expecting him home shortly. Wants him home.

“Robin?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t worry about cooking tonight. We’ll order in or go out, whatever you want to do. We deserve to take a breather.”

She pauses, then lets out a breath. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. See you in a bit. Love you.”

He opens the email immediately as she cuts the call. Scrolling through the four photos over and over, he is just as perplexed by the thought that the look of their future hinges on which of these circles would catch in her womb. That these things are his and Robin's potential babies, that he might one day bend down to show one of these pictures to a child of theirs and be able to say ‘That’s you. That’s the first time we ever saw you’. He might have sat there for a while, looking at them all and wondering who each one might be, but acutely aware of Wardle sitting there, he hurries his phone back into his pocket.

"So,” Wardle clears his throat and Strike instantly regrets not getting out of the car, even if he'd have got soaked in the rain and probably spooked the target. “Strong swimmers, hey?"

"Pack it in, Wardle.”

He just laughs.

“Please don't–”

“Course I won't bloody tell anyone.” Wardle says with a scornful look. “What’d you take me for?”

“We haven't actually decided whether to try for kids yet. Well, I haven't.” Strike continues, sudden to himself, his mouth almost working independently of his mind. “I want to say yes. I think it'd be alright with her but my parents fucked things up so royally, it’s hard to imagine.”

Wardle watches silently from the corner of his eye, obviously nonplussed at the sharing.

“I don't know why I'm telling you this.”

“Because you need to tell someone other than Robin,” he offers hesitantly at the admission. “Because she's in love with you and she has the most skin in the game.”

Strike touches his chest in mock anguish. “Are you saying you don't love me?”

“I don't want you to father my young, that's for sure.” Wardle snorts, looking back out through the rain-blurred windscreen. “Look, it's a personal decision and you’re my boss but I just want to say, if you do decide to go for it, I hope it happens for you. It's bloody hard work but my Liam's the best thing that's ever happened to me. And I was there for the FA Cup final in ninety-one.”

“You're not worried about how it might affect the agency?” Strike ventures curiously. “If Robin and I had a kid at home to think of?”

Wardle just shrugs. “If anyone could make it work, I reckon it'd be you two. Besides, if you need to drop a few hours here and there to go and be with Strike Junior, that means more overtime for me.”

“I think it'd be Ellacott Junior, if there were one.” he says absently, chewing over the answer, before he turns back to Wardle. “Cheers. Enjoy Twitcher.”

“Always.” Wardle says, settling deeper in his seat for the night and if there’s a bit of extra verve in Strike’s step as he walks back up the pavement to his BMW, he pretends not to notice.

Chapter Text

“We’ve just had an email from the bank. Apparently Gadget has a delivery scheduled at a FedEx centre on Old Brompton Road tomorrow between two and five. The shop is open nine to six and can hold packages for up to a week so it could take a lot of surveillance if they drag it out, but I don’t want to fiddle with the rota if we don’t have to, so I was thinking I’ll go tomorrow then we can play it by ear. With any luck, they’ll show up to collect the same day.”

It isn’t often that Robin Ellacott is stunned into silence over anything. Sure, Strike had thought it possible she might take issue with his suggestion. Robin has always been more of a planner by nature than he is, frequently drawing the infamous ‘if you fail to plan’ adage on him like a sword. She may very well prefer to take the hit and re-jig the rota now than leave it to chance, where disorganisation might have them arrive one minute late at just the moment their mark arrived. But he didn’t think his plan was so unreasonable that it would awe her. Sure enough, one look at her face tells him he could have announced he was going to take a sledgehammer to a mark's front door today and she wouldn’t have said a word about it. 

Robin looks terribly queasy, all her focus on not passing out or vomiting or both. 

“Are you–”

She darts out of the main office before he can even finish the question, only a stifled gagging sound and the hurried click of her heels announcing her departure for the toilet. 

Strike can feel Pat’s stare weighing on him as he stands there uneasily, wanting to follow but knowing he’d be very much unwelcome – Robin has always hated being touched when she’s sick. 

He supposes he should be grateful that it’s only Pat there in the office, with Midge, Dev and Wardle already out on jobs and Barclay on a day off, but in many ways, Pat is far more of a force than the others. As shrewd and hard-nosed as she is curious, she’s a brilliant administrator but he’d fear the investigator she could have been in her day. Or military interrogator.

His lack of an attempt at an explanation, or even just an acknowledgement, has their office manager trying to meet his eyes. He’s working equally as hard to avoid it, cheating in the battle of wills by showing a flagrant amount of interest in the papers on the desk. Not his papers and not his desk, but the plausibility of the excuse seems not to matter much if he’s going to ignore what’s so obvious. And it is obvious. Robin is trying her best to be quiet but it remains clear enough to anyone with ears that she’s retching. 

Not many of the other incidents over the past couple of weeks have been much better concealed, either. If Strike wasn't set on being so stubbornly delusional, Pat’s suspicions probably hardened the morning before last, when Robin had sobbed over a story on the radio about a lonely swan at St James's Park. Not that Robin is typically unsentimental and she’s known to have a soft spot for animals – the tatty, curmudgeonly tomcat they share their flat with is a testament to that – but tears had flowed in such abundance that morning that he'd been half tempted to march down to the park and put the bloody bird through speed dating, before the hosts said that a successful match had already been made.

It’s a very clear picture, all in all, no matter how much they're pretending there's no picture at all. Certainly for Pat, who knows none of their reasons for refusing to look.

Finally, Pat takes a breath in to speak. “Is she–”

“Pat, would you like to work from home for the rest of the day? Try out the new VPN.” Cormoran cuts straight across with a loud clearing of his throat. “I think Robin and I could use the afternoon to ourselves.”

The answering look on Pat’s face tells him frankly that she’d sooner stay put and soak up every last word of the impending conversation through the office door. It's the height of hypocrisy, given his trade, but he has always been prone to privacy and a part of him wants to be less delicate in gaining it, but he can’t exactly blame her. Most of the job on Pat’s end is the vital but dry tasks – playing Tetris with the diaries, answering the routine calls, making bookings, issuing invoices, paying the bills. On top of that, for nearly five years, he and Robin had subjected Pat to plenty of their theatrics just for the crime of being in their proximity the most, constantly in flux between flirting and fighting, ignoring and obsessing, trying to force their bond into the platonic-professional box that it was just never meant to be contained to. He owes her something for putting up with that for so long, certainly for keeping it to herself when she could have spilled it all to their subcontractors, but he wasn’t squaring that debt today.

"Whatever's going on,” Pat whispers in a manner that communicates perfectly what she thinks is going on, worry apparent in her irritation. “You need to get her seen by a doctor. She needs proper care.” 

“Please.” 

His tone and expression are probably more on the side of pleading than assertive but either way, he gets what he wants. Pat is descending the stairs to street-level, muttering under her breath, just as Robin actually does start to throw up something of substance. He’d cajoled her into eating breakfast this morning, compromising on a bowl of warm Weetabix with sugar after she’d spurned everything else he’d offered. A mistake, with the benefit of hindsight.

Strike sighs as he sits heavily in Pat’s vacated chair. He doesn’t want to make any more mistakes but his strategy thus far of staying quiet – at first waiting for Robin to get better, then waiting for her to mention it so he didn’t have to confront her about something so delicate – isn’t working. She seems to be taking a similar tact with him. They’re verging on two weeks now, nearly two weeks of not acknowledging that she’s going to bed early and sleeping through her alarms most days, or the way she’d yelped when he accidentally glanced her breast with his elbow in bed, or how she’s picking at most of her meals, or how she’s spending an abnormal amount of time in the toilet every day.

A large part of him still rejects it out of hand. The odds are astronomical. The timing would be utterly ridiculous. And yet it’s not impossible.

Something about this moment had resigned him to broaching the subject the second Robin turned tail but Pat is more right than she knows. If she is, then she’s in terrible danger. He’d have to take her to the nearest hospital immediately. Even as that fear solidifies his will, even as he gazes blankly at the door for several minutes trying to puzzle out the best path through this conversation, he’s no more prepared when Robin reappears than he was when she left.

His heart sinks with no small amount of pity at the sight of her in the doorframe – alarmingly pale but for her cheeks, flushed red with exertion, a scattering of sweat on her forehead. She looks thoroughly drained. 

“Where's Pat?” she asks, looking at the empty desk worriedly.

“Sent her home.” Strike answers shortly, keen to get to the point. “Are you alright?” 

Robin musters only a strangled noise when she first opens her mouth. Whether it’s her raw throat, a lack of a good answer for the question at hand, or fear of what Pat's dismissal signals is coming, she’s not sure, but once she starts to speak again, the words rush out of her on a battery of nerves. 

“Yeah, sorry, I really don’t know what’s going on with me lately. I feel rubbish. I’d call the GP but I’ll probably be better by the time I get an appointment. You know what it’s like these days. It’s annoying but I just need–”

“Robin,” he interrupts, gentle but firm. “Do you think you might be…”

He trails off, unable to bring himself to follow through with the accusation, but the unspoken word hangs between them like a wrecking ball.

“No.” she says, quick and terse. “I can't be. I’m on the coil. I had it replaced in March, right after the extraction.”

“I know, I remember.”

In fact, he was there. He'd waited in reception so he could take her out to lunch afterwards at the café in Temple she liked; The Garden Room, with its sun-trapping terrace overlooking lush, manicured lawns and an ensemble of quaint Victorian buildings. He’d made a point of walking her back down Tower Street on the way back to the office, too, so she could stumble into her favourite stationery shop and he could tap his card for the fountain pen, notebooks and watercolours she picked up before she could. That was about as big a gesture as Robin would let him make to try and assuage the guilt he felt over her having to suffer a piece of plastic in her uterus for the sake of their sex life again. It always bothered him. It certainly bothered him more after what she'd just been through making their embryos but, facing at least three months till his vasectomy and at least another three months on top for it to take effect, that had been her choice regardless of his protests.

The memory of that afternoon has an odd quality to it as Strike recalls it now, apprehension turning his stomach and prickling the back of his neck like he’s watching himself from afar, straying perilously close to a cliff edge. 

He swallows, his mouth suddenly dry. “But it isn’t foolproof and if it were to fail, it’d be most likely to happen in the first couple of months after insertion. We’ve had enough interactions in that time.”

There's something in the way he says it, so matter-of-fact. It’s obvious to Robin that – unless he has some existing trove of knowledge about contraception, which she supposes is possible given his run-ins with Charlotte and Bijou but that he’s never so much as hinted at before – he’s looked that up specifically. His suspicion is written plainly into that gesture but even had he not said that, she could see on his face a gut feeling taking root. After many cases cracked together because of that instinct, she knows it well. The look usually excites her, in that they're about to leap forward on a case and his cleverness is an enduring point of attraction, but she certainly doesn’t like it aimed in her direction.

“But I can still feel the threads, and I haven’t had any pain or bleeding.” She’s only repeating the warning signs the nurse had advised but it still somehow feels like she’s grasping at straws. “It’s ninety-nine percent effective.”

Strike shakes his head almost imperceptibly. “Still one in a hundred.”

Robin is still and silent for a moment, standing there in front of him like a deer in headlights.

“Even if it did fail,” she says slowly, fighting back the tears that often rise to her eyes when she has to reckon with this fact. “It’s only a backstop. You know I can't get pregnant naturally and it's not just after conception that it’s a problem; the scarring reduces the chances of it ever happening in the first place, too.”

“They said it was unlikely, but not impossible.” he says, not unkindly but determined now. “You have once before.”

He's not saying anything that hasn't been looming in the back of her mind for the past few days already. Robin prides herself on a level head but when it matters, when there’s stakes, she’s always been led more by her heart and gut. She has a feeling deep down and has done even before she could cite any tangible symptoms, but even with the threat of it, she’s been too afraid to know it for a fact, stuck to denials that were increasingly tenuous but made her feel safe in her own head. If she is, then the grief had been bad enough when she’d lost one she didn't want at all. She couldn’t bear to face it again with one she would. If she isn't, she couldn't stand the humiliation of deluding herself into thinking she could do it like everyone else when she knows otherwise.

Nonetheless, Cormoran’s insistence seems to shatter whatever last mental barrier was keeping her from conceding that something, somehow, is happening. Her heart thumps harder in her chest. Her face feels hot but the rest of her body is contrarily cold. She meets his eyes but she finds it about as difficult to maintain as looking directly at the Sun. The nausea still simmers in her stomach, threatening to erupt again at any second.

“Shall I go and get a test?” he asks after a moment. 

Robin glances away from him as she crosses to sit on the sofa, though it feels less like a conscious action and more like a puppet being dragged along on its strings. 

“Alright.”

She looks the complete opposite of alright. She looks absolutely terrified, her body stiff to stop herself from trembling. Strike sits down beside her, wrapping an arm around her.

“Robin, I know this is going to be difficult no matter what it says but I promise it’ll be alright in the end.” he says, holding her tighter as she nestles in closer to him because it all feels so woefully inadequate but what else can he say? It's fucking awful. “We've got the embryos. We've still got chances. It doesn't change anything about that.”

“But what if it did?” Her eyes lift to his with an almost manic quality. “What if I am and it's viable?”

Strike blinks.

All along, he's only really considered two outcomes – that it's another ectopic or it’s nothing at all. The odds that they've conceived are low. The odds that such an improbable embryo would then go on to survive her occluded tube and the deterrent effects of the coil, even if it isn't doing its job properly, are almost nil.

But it isn't impossible.

“We'd manage.”

He meant it with sincerity. They would manage. That they'd agreed on from the start. There are just too many things a baby would impact to answer properly when he's had all of two seconds to try and get his head around it – the agency, their home, her degree, everything. The responding dismay on her face tells him he perhaps should have tried anyway but he realises what she was really asking just before she says it.

“But you…”

His heart contorts in his chest.

The fact that she’s concerned about him in that miraculous scenario, enough that it would come to the fore now of all things, hits him right where it hurts. 

Robin wants a baby. She told him so, so clearly and carefully only half a year ago. To make one together in a moment of innocent passion, without the misery of needles and speculums, Petri dishes and gradings, slim odds and agonising waits, is a dream she'd been forced to give up long ago. But the tiny possibility that she has somehow gotten it back frightens her and he is the root of most of that panic. Guilt burns like acid in his bloodstream. Despite that he has left the door wide open to going down this path with her, even gone so far as to preserve and bind his fertility to her, he had passed on the opportunity to fully agree to having a child. He'd left her with a maybe. A reasoned, genuine maybe that she'd accepted with equal openness. An optimistic maybe, one that had only grown stronger over the course of freezing their embryos, both of them sending their opportunities for a family into storage with the sense that at least one of them would come out again. But still ultimately, he'd said maybe and in the space of the grey that leaves, there are plenty of ways she could imagine him taking this poorly.

Strike rushes to reassure her but Robin gets there first, looking away sharply. “Don't answer that. I'm not. It wouldn't be.”

“If it were–”

“Let’s not get into all that. It’s pointless. Let’s just find out what's happening. Go and get a test.”

“Robin–”

“I said no!” 

Robin jumps to her feet as if he'd scorched her, wringing her hands as she turns on the spot agitatedly.

“I can't. I can't do that, Strike.” she says with glassy eyes when she faces him again, softer now, barely more than a murmur. “Please just go and get a test.”

He doesn't want to leave, doesn't want to let her wonder what he'd do in that scenario for a second longer, but her eyes are begging him. She can't bear to hear him say any more, can't bear to go through unpacking it all like it isn't a completely ridiculous fantasy. He couldn't bring himself to force her through that, not now, and the worry that she could haemorrhage at any minute still lies like a lump of lead in his stomach.

He stands up, tucks her hair behind her ear as he plants a kiss on her forehead. “I'll be back in a minute.”

Cormoran knows Denmark Street, knows Soho as a whole, like the back of his hand. Even before he moved into this office, even before he properly honed his talent for observation, his mother had dragged him up on these streets – runs to the off licence for cigarettes and wine, late night trips to the pubs and clubs, breakfasts in the greasy spoons when she had the money spare. He could describe it all with his eyes closed to the finest detail, and yet as he steps out into the street, the world seems so distorted around him that he feels as though he's been cast out onto an alien planet.

The walk up to the pharmacy feels like it takes a million steps but it also seems to be over in a flash.

People and vehicles bustle around him, the first trickles of the lunchtime rush, but he’s never felt more singular on the earth. 

He thinks and thinks and thinks, his consciousness starting to fray with overstimulation, and yet his mind is empty when he tries to grasp for something to hold onto.

He pulls up the collar of his coat as high as he can as he ducks into the shop, trying his best to look inconspicuous on his search for the right aisle. The last thing he needs is to be recognised by someone in need of a quick payout then have the whole world find out that Robin might be carrying his child from the tabloids. That would be absolutely torturous for her, potentially dealing with another loss or a reminder that it couldn't ever happen like that, with her phone buzzing off the hook asking about a baby that wasn't coming. Going to the Boots on Tottenham Court Road to buy a test, an area he’s known to haunt almost daily, probably isn’t his wisest choice in that regard, but he isn’t about to leave Robin stewing alone in the office for any longer by going further away, either. He makes as quick a job of it as he can, snatching up the first test he encounters, burying it straight in the bag at the self-scan under some snacks sufficiently bland enough that Robin might stomach them later, and storming out with his head down.

Where once it hadn't even occurred to him, still knows it's a longshot in gale-force headwinds with eyes closed, Strike can't stop reckoning with the thought. They haven't even said the word.

Pregnant.

Robin could be pregnant.

It's a thought that doesn't come at all naturally, not after the mechanical, programmed way they've been forced to expect it to happen, but what if she really is? What if there is a baby in there, safely in her womb just as it should be, after all they've just been through trying to secure that through other means?

The crux of it is simple, Strike supposes, turning it all over as best as his overloaded brain can manage on the walk back to the office. If she isn't pregnant, then they would continue as planned – keep their embryos frozen, take a little longer to consider it, prepare for an attempt to bring one of them to life if they choose. It would likely be the same if she has another ectopic, if the experience of losing a second pregnancy doesn't completely destroy her will to be a mother. If she is somehow viably pregnant, he would support whatever choice she makes about it. That's that, really. It's already out of his hands. Still, he reels at the last prospect.

Christ, a baby.

He returns to a Robin more like the one he’s used to, still up on her feet and with some strength in her bearing, albeit he heard her pacing the office until he was close enough for her to hear his footsteps on the stairs in kind. She takes charge, fishing the test out of the bag as soon as he sets it down and marching into the toilet again without a word. A rustle of packaging, a trickle and a flush, then it’s the two of them again, sitting side-by-side on the sofa with the test in front of them on the coffee table like a judge. Time seems to both hurtle by and slow beyond comprehension. The gravity of the moment bears down harder on them with each second ticking down on her phone, the frightening awareness building that whatever the result, this experience will change the course of their lives in some way.

Cormoran looks at Robin, her eyes unfocused in the direction of the floor. She startles as he takes her hand but doesn't pull away, letting him smooth his thumb over the back comfortingly.

The silence is stifling. It takes a concerted effort for him to ask quietly: “What are you thinking?” 

Her laugh is brittle, rubbing her face with her free hand before turning to him. “What am I thinking, what are you thinking?

They are still talking about the longshot. She knows she's being grossly unfair to him. She stopped him from telling her that earlier and she still doesn't really want him to tell her now. He seems to sense that, despite her words goading him.

“We’ll be alright." he says, trying to walk the impossibly fine line of restraint and comfort. “No matter what.”

“Alright.” Robin echoes, wondering if that word carries enough sentiment to make it through the rest of their lives. Even as her brain screams at her to stop, she pushes further. “Is it? We agreed to do the embryos only for preservation. We never agreed on actually having a baby. We've never made any plans. It's not the right time.”

“You hit the nail on the head before: you don't know what to do until you've got one. We could talk about it every day and there still wouldn't be a right time. We still wouldn't feel ready.”

She shakes her head. It's simply not in her nature to accept that she has no control, can't always plot her way to perfection, but before she can say anything else, the alarm interrupts. The sound seems deafening, both of them flinching like a bomb has gone off in the office again. Her hand immediately drops to his thigh and tightens as the radar sound trills, her manicured nails digging in sharply. 

“Will you look?”

Strike pushes himself up and retrieves the stick before he can hesitate.

The words that immediately jump out catch him unawares. He’d assumed he’d be scrutinising for a faint second line, like they always show it on the telly, but it turns out that’s not the kind of test he’d grabbed off the shelf. It's spelled out in plain English for him.

Pregnant

3+ weeks

Not even an inkling of shock. Highly unlikely though it seemed, the symptoms and intuition had made him more certain than he realised.

No, the first thing he feels is utter devastation for her that this is happening again after the myriad of dreadful shit that life has already subjected her to, just when she’s finally been able to take a break from worrying about all this. His heart starts to race at the realisation Robin likely has a ticking timebomb lodged inside her, threatening to do untold damage to her physically and certain to do so emotionally. 

But he can't keep himself from weighing up the other possibility, too.

The longshot. The fucking longshot.

For a split second, he tenses as the prospect settles in his mind, waiting for the verdict to roll in.

He would never have anticipated feeling the same as he had when Charlotte had dropped this news on him. Besides that the circumstances are entirely different, Robin herself is entirely different. Everything he's experienced being with her has been a progression on his past relationship; he had no reason to believe this would buck the trend. In fact, he’d have prayed for a different reaction because what he’d felt when faced with the idea of a baby with Charlotte was absolute dread, like his insides had plummeted through the ground. Even as he’d been quick to doubt her, the fear at just the chance she was telling him the truth had been oppressive. Robin has already made him feel safe and content enough to acknowledge the possibility of starting a family with her of his own free will.

Still, the surety that washes over him as he stares at the test result and imagines that world is unexpected. There are still the doubts and worries, as there have always been, but they’re muffled beneath something warmer stirring in his chest. 

If it is, he is very sure.

“Well, Robin,” Strike exhales. “You really are the exception”

The test disappears from his hand as Robin whips it away to see for herself. 

She looks up at him, eyes wide as saucers.  “I’m pregnant.”

“You’re pregnant.” he agrees. “Three weeks plus apparently.”

Silence falls as the horrible implication of it weighs heavier and heavier upon them. If an embryo of theirs exists inside her, it's likely languishing in her remaining tube. In a matter of hours, she would be dragged into surgery and it would be taken from her, leaving her with nothing but her grief for the baby that could have been and the howling reminder that she simply couldn't do it like other women could. Tears prickle Robin’s eyes at just the thought of it all. It was bad enough the first time. It would tear her apart this time, with a baby she wants so badly and the knowledge that the embryos she’s pinned her hopes to aren’t that certain to survive either. But the desperate what if keeps her from breaking down just yet and there must be something in the way she looks at him because he's finally spurred to say:

“Robin, I know that it's probably not viable and you don't want to pretend otherwise but I need you to hear this. If it is–”

But he wasn't able to hide it from her anyway. She'd already clocked it on his face seconds ago, a quick flash of joy when he saw the result.

“But it's so soon.” she interrupts in surprise. “We haven’t decided on anything. You weren’t even sure if you wanted–”

“I’d want ours.”

This isn’t news. There's a reason he’s looked at those photos so many times over the last few months, unable to stop thinking about what they might grow to be. He’d openly told her as much months before those embryos ever existed. Perhaps he’d known deep down even longer, when he’d decided he wanted Robin to love him and everything else became secondary details so long as he could be with her, but he's still taken aback by the intensity of his own conviction and so is she.

“It was complicated before, when I could only imagine what it’d be like. Thinking about all the possibilities, all the ways I could fuck it up, it was frightening.” Strike explains slowly to Robin's look of incredulity, still trying to parse it out himself. “But this, this feeling is real and if it could happen now, I’m sure that I'd be happy about it. Fucking terrified,” he admits with a vaguely hysterical laugh. “–but happy. If you feel the same way, if it is okay, then I know we could figure out the rest from there.”

Robin still hesitates, eyes searching his face as she clutches the test tightly. “You mean it? You're not just saying this because you know it's what I would want? Because it would be…”

A miracle.

"I’m fucking done with letting the past get in my way. It’s taken enough of me.” he answers fervently, like an oath. “I want this. I would want to have this kid with you and if we can't this time, then I'd want to have another, whenever you're ready.”

She lets out a breath, soon warping to a whimper as a bubble of what feels like years of emotion bursts inside her. Even as she knows she's climbing up for a terrible fall, she can't keep her focus on the safer promise of the future he’s handed to her. She can't help but get swept up in this moment, in the reckless idea that she'll get to keep this one, this spark of life that came from nothing but love between them. 

The force at which Robin embraces him knocks some of the air from his lungs. Like everything she does, his partner has always had a way of hugging with commitment, like she’s trying to leave behind an imprint of the affection that motivated it. It’s an idiosyncrasy that has always suited Strike down to the ground, as there’s never been a time he’s wanted to let go of her. Even so, this is especially strong for her, her arms wrapping around him like a vice and the press of her cheek to his chest seeping tears into his shirt.

“I love you.”

She’s holding on to him so tightly that he feels the vibration of the sentiment over his heart more than he hears it in the muffled sound. 

Those three words hadn’t always been an easy thing for him to receive. With his mother, with Charlotte, there was happiness but always a disquiet, too, a niggle in the back of his mind wondering about what the endearment was trying to smooth the way for. 

He never tires of hearing Robin say it, uncomplicated and earnest, and it’s never been so easy to say it back.

“I love you, too.”

Pulling away, he brushes the tears from her cheeks as Robin lifts up the test into the space between them.

“I'll call someone.” she sniffs. “Ask where to go.”

And suddenly the real world comes crashing in like the sea drawn out by an earthquake, back again as a tidal wave. His insides flood with cold dread as she turns away and picks up her mobile, the sensation growing endlessly deeper as she stays on the line with 111. The same feeling is reflected on her face as she glances at him through the questions, answers and pauses, pacing around the office restlessly. The operator asks so much of her that the idea of snatching the phone from her hand and demanding someone see her now grows tempting to him, but just when he’s starting to seriously contemplate it, Robin drops the phone away from her ear. 

“They’ve referred me to the Royal Free Hospital.” she tells him, her voice strained. “Told me to go in straight away and report to the emergency department.”

Strike nods stiffly. He was expecting nothing less but it still worries him. “Let's go then.” 

The sense of urgency suffocates any discussion between them as they hurry down the stairs, around the corner to the station, and onto the Northern line. As the train rattles them towards Hampstead, he watches Robin in the reflection on the opposite window. Even in the harsh light of the carriage, he can see she is white with fear, arms wrapped around herself.

“Do you know the odds?” he says, as lowly as he can whilst still being audible to her over the screeching of the rails.

“Not for my tube. I did ask when they re-examined me before the egg retrieval. I was hoping maybe they'd find it wasn't so bad after all and it was worth trying naturally.” She shakes her head derisively. “But it is bad and the risk isn't easily calculable. Just high enough that IVF is the better option. For the coil on its own, the chance of an ectopic is fifty percent.”

It isn't just a possibility. Between the two factors, it's almost a certainty. Robin chastises herself for not respecting the danger sooner, so caught up in the denial and fear. Not that losing her remaining tube would be any great loss, she thinks to herself cynically. No, she is more upset that she'd allowed herself to acknowledge this pregnancy so wholeheartedly even if only for a few short moments, to be happy about it in full cognisance of her condition, that she'd created something so very precious to take away from her.

“Even if it did manage to implant where it should, the coil also makes the womb itself less hospitable. That can't be good for…” 

She elapses in silence, no idea how far along she is, no idea if she wants to describe something she is at such extreme risk of losing as a baby.

He desperately wants to tell her it'll all be fine but he can't. He has to settle for holding her hand. 

“I’m so sorry, Robin.” Strike says hoarsely, hanging his head low between her shoulders in shame. “It's bloody cruel.” 

“It’s not your fault.” she answers, tipping her head back on the wall of the carriage, trying to let the swaying sensation lull her. “We did everything we could to prevent it, and you needed to tell me that. I'm glad you did.”

“But if I’d just gone privateー”

“There still would have been a period where we’d have relied on some other method and this could have happened, like we have for all the time we've been together before now. It’s nobody's fault.”

Still, Robin spends the rest of the journey playing the last three months over in her head, wondering when the mistake was made, until she walks through the hospital doors and the world seems to narrow into her body.

She sits in the chair in the obstetrics waiting room, hyperconscious of her form like her sense of self has migrated into every last nerve. She feels no worse than she has over the last few days but the telling sensations she'd recklessly ignored wash over her in sharp clarity now – the dragging tiredness, the soreness of her breasts, the metal that lingered in her mouth, the constant brink of emotion swelling in her chest. She'd never forget the hot blade cutting through her the last time, the niggling cramps building up to it that she'd dismissed as the amorphous discomfort inherent to living in a woman's body. There's none of that now but she can't stop imagining the sound of a thick tear or a thudding pop, her flesh splitting open, blood silently spilling out into the cavities, draining away the potential of her child and then her life, too.

“Robin Ellacott, please?”

She startles but being trapped in only the somatic frame of things has given her some strength. She levies the doctor's presence, the promise of medical attention, to pull herself together. Her hand clamps onto Cormoran's forearm as she stands up, like they might drag him away from her otherwise. She'd been through a couple of her IVF appointments alone, the monitoring too frequent for him to make every last check and he wasn't allowed to be with her in surgery, but she can't bear the idea of being without him now.

“Can my partner come in with me?” she asks with a note of panic.

“Yes, of course, whatever makes you feel most comfortable.” the doctor says kindly – a younger woman, perhaps a few years shy of Robin, dark eyes demanding attention against her pale blonde hair. “I'm Dr Warren. This way, please.”

They follow her down what feels like a neverending maze of featureless corridors until they arrive into a room, equally indistinct from every medical office she's ever been in but for the ultrasound machine stowed in the corner. Robin tries her best not to look at the anatomical posters in her peripheral vision as she sits in the chair next to the desk.

“I usually start by going through the reasons a patient is here but it's clear from the notes of your 111 call that you understand very well.” 

Robin sighs. “Yes, I do, but my partner wasn't with me when I had my previous ectopic. I think I've explained it all but I'd like you to say it anyway so we're all on the same page.”

Strike grimaces. He still feels pointedly guilty about that, even if it was her wish that he be kept in the dark, even if he wasn't the boyfriend then or the father. She was still his partner, his best friend. He should never have ignored his better judgement and taken Murphy's word for it, should have checked up on her instead of sulking. Perhaps he'd have sensed it when he heard her voice, coaxed her into telling him the truth, rushed to her bedside. He certainly should have noticed in the months after, when she was barely holding it together.

Dr Warren nods her head, turning away from the computer to face them both, knotting her fingers in her lap.

“You’re here because you have both a single, scarred fallopian tube and an intrauterine contraceptive device. The first is a problem because any fertilised eggs are likely to get trapped behind the scar tissue in the tube and therefore can't progress into the uterus. The second, your coil, also creates an environment deterring implantation in the uterus, so it’s unfortunately very probable that this pregnancy is ectopic. Even if it isn't, there'd still be cause for concern because the coil also thins out your uterine lining. Your womb might not be sufficiently prepared to sustain a pregnancy, putting you in danger of miscarriage. Taken together, you are a very high risk patient.”

Indeed, she does understand. It's nothing they haven't acknowledged already but Robin pales further again, hearing it from a professional mouth, and Strike just sits there paralysed at the sheer viciousness of it. It would be evil to go through this unexpected joy, he thinks, only to have it all torn away from them a second later. A cynic might argue that if this is what they want, as they’ve now agreed, they can just try for another with IVF, as has always been the expectation. Perhaps that'd even be better in a way, to do it with the comfort of some kind of plan, but already he feels some level of attachment to this one.

“What will you do?” Robin asks as steadily as she can, keeping her chin up even as her head feels like it's turned to concrete.

“An ultrasound to confirm the pregnancy first. Your referral notes say your test indicated three weeks plus and your periods have been irregular since the coil replacement, but by chance, do you have any idea of when you might have conceived?”

“I’ve been feeling ill for about twelve days so probably at least four to six weeks ago, but other than that, no. It could have been a few occasions.” 

She feels a flush tinging her cheeks at the implication the two of them had been at it enough that even the timing of symptoms couldn't help her narrow it down, but the doctor is unfazed, perhaps for knowing what's coming next.

“In that case, a transvaginal scan would give us a better image if it turns out you're very early on, but we can try an abdominal scan if you're opposed. As you know, if the scan shows you’re pregnant but the embryo has implanted outside of your uterus, which is most likely the case, then I'm afraid you'll have to terminate immediately. Ectopics are always non-viable and when they rupture, it can be catastrophic.” she says, clinical but not cold. “If you’re pregnant and it were to have implanted correctly, the next steps would be for you to decide.”

“Okay.” Robin says hollowly. “Do whatever scan is best.”

“In that case, I'll need an empty bladder for a transvaginal so pop to the loo next door if you need to. If not, pull the curtain, take everything on your lower half off, get up on the bed, and you can cover yourself with this.” 

Having recently urinated for the test, Robin disappears behind the curtain with the surgical sheet in hand. She’s been required to do this so many times now that there’s no embarrassment or fear left anymore, kicking off her heels and leaving her jeans and underwear in a pile on the floor like she’s at home in her bedroom, but the indignant sense of objectification has never waned. When she was a child, during the autumn half term, sometimes her father would let her come out to the farms with him and watch while he carried out the inseminations. She’s always reminded of the ewes hanging there helplessly in the cradle when she’s on her back, her feet in the stirrups.

“If you've had an egg retrieval,” Dr Warren says with a strain as she hauls the ultrasound machine over whilst Cormoran drags a chair to sit at her head, once she signals for the curtain to be drawn back again. “I assume you're old friends with this?”

Cormoran noticeably winces at the sight of the long instrument the doctor picks up from the holster but Robin just nods wearily. 

The doctor smiles sympathetically. “I won't tell you to relax then.”

But she does anyway, in the best way she’s learned how, methodically releasing her muscles one by one by picturing a cutting string until she lies there near boneless, gritting her teeth rather than her insides as the wand is slid into her. 

“Good, can you give me a moment to take a look then we'll discuss? I’ll be as quick as I can.”

Robin nods again, as if she has any real choice in the matter. She slides her palm down the bed, quickly finding his searching hand, too. Their fingers twine in the silence, his grip strong and solid like an anchor. She focuses her eyes on him determinedly, not wanting to see either the shifting microexpressions or the professional blank from the doctor, the beams of light from her broken biology reflected on her face. She’d sooner be here with him, sheltered in the love in his dark eyes, when she’s told she’s going to lose their child.

“Okay, I can confirm you are pregnant and the embryo has implanted in your womb.”

Strike’s hand clenches hard in hers, her bones protesting at the force, but the words make no sense to her at all, as though spoken in an entirely foreign language. 

“What?”

“It's not ectopic.”

Her ears take the words in but they only bounce off her mind. “It must be.”

“Your tube isn't completely blocked, Ms Ellacott. It's only obstructed. It is still possible for you to have a natural, in utero pregnancy.” the doctor explains as she studies the screen, though the small frown pinching her brow says exactly how unlikely it is. “It’s found a way through.”

Robin still can't comprehend it. The hope that sparked earlier was desperate, fleeting. Not like the long, difficult months it had taken her to come to terms with the reality that this could never happen for her. It hadn't been easy to accept. Being robbed of the chance before she could decide whether she wanted it had hurt her deeply, heightened the feeling of helplessness that night had left her with, but her ambivalence had made it easier in some ways. She'd worked through it with her therapist as far as her rudimentary ideas about becoming a mother stretched, using her doubts like a crutch. It was only later, after she'd settled into her relationship with Strike – with a man she loved to the extent of wanting more of him in the world, trusted to parent with her – and the future had started becoming a surer, brighter thing that she’d been forced to plunge deeper into the loss. She’d allowed herself to grieve, moved on as best she could in time, taken the only other path to her own family available. To ask her to believe in it again now is almost beyond her.

“And it’s…” she hesitates, struggling with even the most basic implication. “It’s alive?”

“Yes. Your uterine lining is a bit thinner than I'd like – about seven millimetres, where I'd be after eight to thirteen ideally – but it seems to be providing enough for now. The fetus looks healthy.” 

The fetus.

It’s a word with even more connotations. Not just alive, but developed. Panic flares in the back of her mind when the doctor asks if she wants to see – today is no more a guarantee of tomorrow – but she must nod ever so slightly enough for the screen to be swivelled around.

Strike has never seen an ultrasound like this before, only pictures from later in his sister's and Ilsa's pregnancies, but he doesn't need an explanation of what he's looking at. As promised, Robin's discomfort has bought them a good image. It's mostly a white blur in the dark of her womb but it's a lot more realised than the clump of cells he imagined it would be. He can make out the indistinct lines of a head, the beginnings of arms and legs. A tiny human shape he and Robin had made together.

He'd already made his choice but the notion of merely wanting this baby pales in comparison to the feeling in his chest, what must be called paternal instinct – to hold this little thing close to him for as long as he possibly could.

“Oh my god.” Robin murmurs as she watches the screen.

At first, he assumes she must just be in shock but as he looks down on her, as she turns to look up at him in return, he can see it in her eyes, that same connection that clears everything else away for now. They share a faint smile.

“How far along is it?” Strike asks as they look back at the monitor.

“I'd say ten weeks, based on the size. It’s about as big as an apricot.” Dr Warren demonstrates between her thumb and forefinger before she points to a slight flickering in the chest and the trace along the bottom of the screen with a pen. “That's its heart beating there. Here, let me turn the volume on.”

Sound punctures the room at the click of a button on the console, quick and loud, the speakers crackling with the beats.

“It's fast.” he says, alarmed by the almost frantic pace.

“Perfectly normal.” the doctor soothes. “A fetus’s resting heart rate at this stage is around about one-hundred and seventy beats per minute. It’s fast because they need a lot of the mother’s blood pumping through their system to grow as quickly as they do. A woman's blood volume increases by around half during pregnancy to sustain it. It's fascinating, really, if a little terrifying, how much it changes us.”

“And it's moving.” Robin gasps as the baby seems to wriggle slightly, an almost imperceptible flick of the leg, a flash of a formative foot appearing and disappearing.

“Yes, we see fetal movement from about seven weeks. We think it's just reflexive at this point, the muscles firing off as they're forming. Purposeful movement comes later on, at about eighteen weeks. That's about the time that most women feel it, too, though it can be anywhere between sixteen and twenty-four weeks.” The doctor looks at them curiously as they watch the screen, asking eventually: “I take it you’d like to try to keep the pregnancy?”

“Please.” Robin says instantly, before Strike can look to her for their answer.

She’s never been much for higher power. The things that have happened to her in life, the things she’s seen inflicted on others, have almost entirely worn away the faith of the little girl she’d once been, heartily singing the praises at Sunday School, but there's something imploring in her voice now that reaches beyond the capacities of medicine.

Please. Please let me keep this. 

“Alright, then we'll need to see about getting the coil out ASAP. After that…” 

The doctor reaches down and pulls out a desk drawer. Inside is a veritable library of leaflets. Robin’s eyes flick through the handful in sight – Diet during pregnancy, Pelvic floor exercises, What is Vitamin K?, Phases of labour, Safe sleeping, Breast and bottle – but the drawer is slid shut again without any taken out, Dr Warren looking up with a hesitant expression.

“Under normal circumstances, you’d be talked through pretty much everything there is to know during your first contact with a doctor – how the pregnancy will progress, how and when you'll be cared for, how to take care of yourself in between, your options for delivery, preparing for life afterwards – but I understand this is a big shock for you and you've got a lot to take in as it is. I need to do some tests now, and make sure you're properly supported given your history, but would you prefer I scheduled an appointment with a midwife to do the rest at a later date?”

Robin is nothing if not thorough in her endeavours. She’d known almost everything there is to know about how she could get pregnant before she’d sat down with the IVF consultant but she realises now she is woefully underprepared for actually being pregnant. That is all information she needs to take in but just looking at the leaflets makes her head feel like the overstuffed drawer they’re kept in.

“That would be great, thank you.”

The rest of the exam proceeds with a similar avoidance of fuss. The coil comes out without too much struggle, Robin staring at the plastic T-shape in the dish as she dresses herself, wondering how she could ever have trusted anything that small and flimsy to shield her. The doctor takes her height and weight, listens to her heart and lungs, measures her blood pressure before taking a couple of vials of it for testing.

“I imagine you’re probably feeling dreadful, being in the first trimester, but the good news is you seem to be in fine physical condition so you're free to go for now. I'm writing you a prescription for progesterone pessaries. Not much fun to put in, I'm afraid, but they should help thicken your lining.” the doctor says at the end of her checks, scribbling it out on the green paper in their illegible language. “I'll book you in for a follow-up scan at Whipps Cross in two weeks to see how things are progressing, and then you’ll have an appointment with a midwife shortly after.”

Two weeks seems to stretch out beyond the horizon of comprehensible time in Robin’s mind, words echoing in her head. Your womb might not be sufficiently prepared. In danger of miscarriage. Try to keep. 

Try. 

She swallows. “How concerned should I be?”

“Everyone should be prepared for miscarriage this early on, unfortunately. The average rate is ten to twenty percent, and eighty percent occur in the first three months. From the scan, it's looking promising – baby is in the right place, it's growing as it should, and it has a strong heartbeat. The odds are in your favour and the progesterone will hopefully help stabilise things further but in the circumstances you've conceived, the risk of loss will be a bit higher.”

“Besides the medication and vitamins,” Strike speaks up when Robin stays silent, eyes glazing over. “–is there anything we can do to help it along?" 

He already suspects they can’t, even more so that he specifically can’t – seeing what’s going on inside her body has had the contrary effect of both connecting him and underlining what a solitary challenge she faces – but it has the desired effect of making Robin feel less alone. She glances at him appreciatively for a second, before retreating to her growing stupor.

“Nothing that hasn't already occurred to you both, I’m sure.” The doctor says with a regretfully kind smile. “A fetus can only do so well as its mother so the best thing you can do is keep your body healthy. Make sure you're eating well, staying hydrated, getting enough rest. I appreciate you're going to be worried about the pregnancy now but try to avoid stress as much as you can, for your own sake. Beyond that, it’s out of your hands.”

Robin doesn’t really remember getting up and leaving the exam room or going to the pharmacy to fetch her prescription. It’s only when they step outside, a breeze hitting her face that feels unseasonably cold after the heat of the hospital, that she’s aware of anything outside of her head but she’s no more sure of how to navigate it. Cormoran seizes the initiative, as he must have before this point, too, putting an arm around her and steering her into a taxi back to Blackhorse Road. 

A space to process this together, alone, had been all either of them really wanted before but being in the flat provides no more direction to either of them. If anything, it’s exponentially worse for Robin at least, being in the home that would probably not be their home anymore if she were to bring this child to term. The walls are too small and everything within them seems obscenely unsuitable, too. She stands there and watches with the focus of a hawk as Strike takes his boots off and puts them away, a frenzied loop of thoughts sparked off at the observation that there’s no room left on the rack, latently wondering if she’s going completely mad for noticing such a thing for a life that might not even last two more weeks, let alone to the point of ever needing shoes to wear.

“Robin?” he asks with panic as he notices her terrifyingly vacant look hovering above him.

“Sorry, I–”  She shakes her head sharply, forcing herself to look away from the rack and into the hallway but only running straight into the thought of her bookcase, crowded and unsecured from the wall. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

She all but runs away from him and breezes past him again when he eventually follows her into the living space, sitting herself down on the edge of the sofa. Strike is equally unsure of what to think or feel, let alone what to say, his resolve to act only on cue from Robin nullified by the lack of one – or, at least, one he can grapple with. He’s never felt so out of place in the room and that is a bar to surpass, given his birthday spent between Robin and Murphy in this very space. He resorts to familiar mechanics, as she tried to before the wait for the boiling water became too much, making them both a cup of tea before joining her on the sofa. 

She stares at the liquid he sets down on the table in front of her, just the shade she likes, but it inexplicably churns her stomach this time. Perhaps she shouldn’t drink it anyway, it occurs to her. Caffeine is bad in a certain measurement but how much exactly, she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t even know if she should bother finding out.

“What are we supposed to do with that?” Robin asks him eventually, her eyes still locked on the mug, tone fraying at the edges as the tears rise but no less imbued with resentment for it. “You're pregnant but you're probably going to lose it anyway.”

“Not probably.” Strike says softly, squeezing her knee. “Might.”

“Higher than average.”

He hesitates, wondering whether a rational conversation is really what she needs from him right now. That is what she’d usually prefer to receive and what he’d find easier to give but this is all far too much for one person to handle, even someone as stoic as Robin. No amount of words or pragmatic steps are going to be sufficient to contain what has happened to her, what’s happening now, what might yet happen. Sure enough, she folds into him, laying her head on his lap as sobs start to rack her body. Cormoran has never felt so desperately useless. He doesn't have the words or ideas even if Robin wanted them, doesn't know what they're meant to do with such a double-edged sword, either – clutch onto it, drop it, it'll be an agonising experience no matter what. It's agonising right now. He just strokes her hair as she cries and he assumes she might lay there like that until dark but after half an hour, she sits up sharply, yanking back the arm she'd curled around her belly.

“I don't want to talk about it. Not even between us.” Robin says, mopping her tears roughly on her sleeve as she turns to face him. “Not until we can be more sure it's staying.”

“Robin, I'm not sure–” he tries but she shakes her head adamantly. She knows what he's about to say, what her therapist would say: that avoidance often isn’t the answer, indeed that avoidance has caused her a great deal of suffering in the past, but she doesn’t care.

“I don't want to adjust to the idea that that'll be our life, to make plans and have hopes and feelings for it, for us, and then it just…” Her face crumples in a wave of anticipated grief before she hides behind a pinch to the bridge of her nose. “I just don't want to get too attached. I couldn’t handle it.” 

Cormoran knows it's already far too late for that. The sight of that tiny flickering heart that they'd made together, the unexpected rush of joy he felt at the test result, the photo of the little white ghost in his coat pocket, he'll keep hold of that for the rest of his life no matter the outcome. He saw the look on her face as she watched the ultrasound screen and she saw his. Even so, he nods in defeat. Robin is doomed to experience this on a level he could never truly understand, whatever the outcome. He likes to think he'd always appreciated that – watching his mother and sister endure their pregnancies, hearing about Joan and Ilsa's struggles to conceive – but he certainly does now, after he'd laid in bed on Christmas morning researching it all after she asked, after he'd been at her side through the retrieval, after what had happened just today. She comes first and he could see some sense in not crafting more things to lose, more angles to be in pain if this doesn't go their way, even if he does also worry what keeping this inside will do to her.

Nonetheless, the next fortnight is perhaps the most stressful two weeks of his life.

As promised, they don't talk about the baby, not in passing, not once, not even when the symptoms of its presence continue to plague her daily. To talk about anything else feels hollow, almost puerile, so they incidentally almost stop talking entirely. It’s not a strain between them alone, the quiet a mutual agreement and she found comfort in Strike’s mere company as the circumstances bind them even closer together, but it leaks over to the office, their odd silence combining with her ceasing of street work drawing attention. 

Robin simply withdraws into herself. Strike, on the other hand, spends the fortnight almost vibrating with nervousness. Everything she does panics him to a degree he finds not so far away from being in an active conflict zone – tensing every time she flinches or goes to the toilet or so much as opens her mouth to speak, dreading every vibration of his phone when he's not with her. His worry often translates to irritability with everyone except her, snapping at the slightest thing. His character protects him to an extent, most of it written off under his usual ill humours, but the way he flies off the handle at some minor transgressions is unmissable.

“Watch what you're doing!” A yell had ripped from his throat when Midge elbowed Robin in the abdomen at the kitchenette, just short of halfway into the fortnight. 

Midge’s eyes widened at the intensity of it, for what was little more than an incidental brush. “Alright, calm down, it's not like I bloody meant it, is it?

“You should be more fucking careful.” 

Midge had glanced over at Robin then, clearly expecting her to intervene in some way. A part of her had wanted to. It was an accident, an inconsequential one at that, and it wasn’t Midge's fault that they perceived it as anything more, but she couldn’t speak on it. She couldn’t blame Strike for any of the ways this horrible dread expressed itself, not when she had been the one to insist he keep it suppressed. He was not so equipped for it as she was. He was tough, restrained, but his emotions could be so violently felt when they did break through.

“Don’t look at her like that.” Strike said anyway. She saw a hint of regret flash on his face but he was too stubborn to back down, acid in his tone. “Robin’s not responsible for me.”

Midge’s hackles rose properly then. “Good. Fuck knows why she’d want to be.”

“Stop it.” Robin murmured with a pained expression, unable to face any more scrutiny, any more criticism of him. 

She looked between them in disbelief. “The fuck’s the matter with you two? Lovers’ tiff or something?”

Midge waited for an answer for quite a while. She would certainly have expected one. The addition of a romance with Strike hasn’t changed much about their work life, their colleagues and clients keeping the polite professional courtesy as they do in return, but on the odd occasion it has been necessary, Robin has been quick and sharp with her reprimands. She wouldn’t be reduced to anyone’s girlfriend in her work. Or perhaps Midge expected the truth, but she didn't get either. They couldn't exactly admonish her when they were acting as they were. As for the latter, Robin didn’t know what she would have said even if she was of a mind to share, staring blankly at Midge’s back as she gave up and stormed out of the office. Could she really say she was pregnant, if she knew she might not be soon? If it might already be lost?

The rest of the days drag by. By the time they make it to the morning of her second scan, it feels as though they’ve been crawling on gravel for a thousand miles or more, cut bloody by the journey. 

Robin had kept a strict vigil in her body, looking for the smallest thing to interpret as the end, but nothing has happened to give her particular worry. She had no bleeding, no pain, not even a twinge. She’d woken up this morning feeling better than she has in weeks, but none of it put her at ease. If anything, the nothingness terrified her more, unable to bring herself to consider anything except the worst and an ignorant body.

Cormoran does his best to ignore the other people in the waiting room, most of them obviously expectant parents. It's easy enough for him – his only concern is for Robin – but Robin herself can't help but look around at them all, some of the women here for the twenty-week scan visibly pregnant but all of them sharing the telling whispers and smiles. She can only wonder what it would be like to be here with only excitement to see her baby and hopes for the future, no real expectations of anything being amiss. It's an experience she knows she'll never have regardless of what happens with this pregnancy. Her odds have improved significantly from her first assumptions but she’s too practical to take on IVF optimistically, too acquainted with that kind of loss not to continue to worry even if it worked initially. She wonders about today, if she'll be back here in another couple of months for her own mid-term scan or if she'll instead have to walk out past all these people with ashes in her mouth, knowing her baby is dead.

Her baby.

Robin almost laughs out of sheer bitterness. She's her own worst enemy but she resigns herself to it now, with a twisted kind of relief. In a few moments, she'll either be safe enough to use that word or she'll be crushed no matter what she called it in her head.

They’re both so focused on the doors to the three exam rooms ahead that neither of them notice the appearance of a new sonographer – an older woman with greying black hair peeking out from beneath a neatly pinned silk headscarf, thin glasses balancing near the end of her nose – until she calls:

“Ms Ellacott?”

She freezes in her seat, heart suddenly pounding to the point of pain shooting through her chest, up her throat.

Robin has known more than her fair share of fear but this, this possibility that the slight curve to her belly she’d noticed in the last week no matter how much she refused to look is a deception, scares her in a way incomparable to anything she's experienced before, even her own brushes with death. If she'd been killed, at least it would be over. She'd have known nothing more of it. If she has failed to keep their child alive, to keep hold of this miraculous chance she’s been given, it might well break her in all the ways that matter but leave her still existing, there to feel it all for the rest of her days.

She's not sure if she'd have ever been able to get up and walk into the room, if Cormoran had not been there at her side. She might have run as far and as fast as she could or simply collapsed, without his hand resting on her forearm as she wobbles to her feet. He doesn’t demand it of her, doesn’t trap. 

Together, is all the gentle touch says. Always together.

She locks her arm through his, clinging him to her side like a rock, a shield, as they follow into the room.

Strike assumed the sonographer knew the situation beforehand from the senior title on her badge, how she arrived from elsewhere and not the appointments ongoing, the way her face restrains itself, how she says nothing beyond the formalities and commences almost immediately, but it would have been obvious to her in their demeanor, too. Robin lies on the bed with her eyes squeezed shut and her body stiff as a bowstring, nothing between them but hands entwined with white knuckles and strained silence. Outside of his work, he’s never been an especially patient man and after two weeks, even his resolve to allow enough time for a proper assessment quickly wears thin. A demand that she at least tell them if it's still alive or not is on the tip of his tongue when she clears her throat of her own volition.

“Ms Ellacott, I’m pleased to say you have a healthy baby on the way.”

Robin gasps for air, eyes flying open, as if she'd been drowning in a nightmare.

“Really?” she whispers, her hand clutching him harder again. “It's really okay?”

“Really.” The sonographer smiles at them then, patting Robin's hand comfortingly. “Ten fingers, ten toes, and a nice steady heartbeat, right on track for twelve weeks. I expect your little one will make an appearance around Christmas Eve.”

Robin’s flared eyes flick to the screen turned away urgently, back at the doctor. “And my womb. The lining–”

“You're taking care of it just fine.”

The perfect sense of solace that washes over her collapses her completely, like a sand castle crumbling under a wave. She is taken by the swirl of feeling that it reminds her of being a child herself, intense and consuming. Tears burst from her eyes, every track down her face kept fresh with the stream. Her sobs are deep, convulsive, sucking every breath out of her lungs the second she takes it. 

She could do it. It’s alive. Healthy.

For a good while, Strike is far too distracted with Robin to notice anything beyond her. He murmurs adulations to her, strokes her hair, peppers kisses to her temple, her forehead, her cheek, lets his own joy unfurl with hers as she laughs and cries. When he does eventually look up to see the screen facing them, he’s startled by how much the baby seems to have grown in only two weeks. It’s strange to him, to think that all that time they'd spent in anguish, wondering if it was even still alive, it has been happily thriving in there. The body looks noticeably longer than before and the silhouette more defined, with proper arms and legs – furnished with fingers and toes as promised – and a more proportionate head, even to the point he can just about make out the tiny slope of a nose. He can't tear his eyes away from the shadow of a little face, wondering if that’s Robin’s nose or someone else’s, if it'll have her smile, too, or his eyes or any number of gifts from their loved ones.

“Look at that.” he nudges as she dries her tears with a tissue the sonographer offers.

“Hello.” Robin whispers as she watches the screen with a teary smile, hand resting atop of her belly. 

She looks back at him as he kisses the back of her hand. Father of her child, she calls him in her head for the first time in actuality, and then finally, she realises:

“We’re having a baby.”

It's only some moments later, when they've decamped from the hospital to a café across the road in the park and Robin murmurs it again as she looks over the scan photos, the staff printing off a generous string of them, that Strike notices it's the first time they've really acknowledged that. 

“Yeah. We are.”

The words are entirely nominal as he stares into his coffee cup but only because he couldn't conceive of anything that could come close to conveying the magnitude of his feelings. He's thrilled. Of course, as he came round to the idea through the embryo freezing process, he thought he’d be pleased in a moment like this, particularly with the aspect of overcoming the IVF odds, but he could never have imagined he’d be this elated. There’s only one moment in his life that compares ー the morning after they'd started this side to their relationship, filled with giddy excitement that Robin loved him, wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. He knows Robin can tell how happy he is anyway

At least until he looks up and the look on Robin's face is less like his delighted grin and more aghast.

“We haven't thought about anything.” 

That had all been part of the plan, her plan. It was necessary protection and sensible use of their time not to start preparing their lives for a baby they might not have but now they are, it seems reckless to have not had at least some rudimentary ideas and chats, if not in the last two weeks then anytime before. They haven't made any plans for the business, haven't assessed their financial situation, haven’t considered their living space, haven't told a single soul, barely know a thing about pregnancy or parenting between them, and she is now already in her second trimester.

“We need to move.” she says in sudden alarm, sitting up straight. “What about the rota–”

“Robin.” Strike interrupts with a chuckle, shaking his head incredulously. “I know it’s a lot but we'll figure it all out, I promise. Just enjoy it for a moment, will you? For fuck’s sake, you've earned it.”

It's only when she looks at him again, her returning smile faint but still so brightly buoyant, when he dwells on how little he’s seen that hopefulness in her on this subject, that he appreciates how much struggle she's been through. Not just the last two weeks but years of her life doubting she was capable in herself, watching so many women around her become mothers, feeling the growing pressure to choose, having so much of the experience ripped away from her in exchange for more stress and a clock ticking louder, going through the discomfort and angst of science to achieve what so many others could without a second thought. And he swears to himself he’ll do everything in his power to make this pregnancy, her whole experience of motherhood, as perfect for her as he possibly could.

As if she’d read his mind, Robin pushes back her chair, stands up, and throws her arms around his neck as he mirrors her movements, hugging him tightly. He realises they probably look exceptionally odd, embracing each other like they’re in the climax moment of a shitty original chick-flick, standing outside a greasy spoon in Walthamstow on a thoroughly overcast day, but he doesn't give a fuck.

“What are we actually supposed to do now?” she asks after a moment, her head on his shoulder.

He suspects the question was directed as much to herself and nobody as it was to him but Cormoran thinks about it, to an extent. He doesn’t find an answer. He’s a doggedly practical man and it feels like their life is hinging on this moment but every course of action, even the ones that make perfect sense in theory, seems inadequate to come next. 

“Well, you grow it for us, then I think we have to feed it, let it stay in our home for a bit, teach it some life skills.” he deadpans, though he can't quite stifle his smile for effect. “Try not to traumatise it too much in the process.”

Robin lets out a scoff of laughter as she pulls away, hand over her mouth. “God, we’re going to be somebody’s parents.” 

He looks down at her belly. Both ultrasounds had had the effect of making the baby seem more real to him but he's belatedly struck by the notion that it's right there inside her. Only the size of a plum and plenty of shaping for them to do later, but all the pieces of them that would make up their child already chosen and formed within. It's an equally staggering thought that Robin could take it from there, create a whole new life from just one moment so ordinary that they'll never even know which.

Strike reaches to touch the tiny bump he knows is hidden beneath her floaty white blouse. He'd privately wanted to as soon as he noticed it days ago but he’d also noticed the way Robin was adamantly fighting it herself, caressing without thought then snatching back a second later. He’s half expecting her to swat him away now, too ー no woman he’d ever been with had appreciated their stomach being touched and it's still early ー but Robin lets him settle his hand there, and he sees the same baffled amazement reflected on her face as she stares down at it, too. 

“Lucky little sod, hey?” he says, smoothing his palm up and down gently to feel the modest swell.

Robin looks up at him as she brushes her fingers over the back of his hand affectionately, enjoying the warm, encompassing weight on her. “I think so.”

And he believes it even more now, that they’ll be okay together. Because there’s no doubt in his mind that he loves it, loves her, enough that he has no choice but to give them everything he’s got. Perhaps, even, that they’ll be more than okay.

“I did mean today, though.” she says with a wry smile. “One thing at a time, I suppose.”

“Let's get you something to eat first.”

Robin had been too sick with fear to take breakfast this morning. That had concerned him then, her appetite diminished for weeks, but he's certainly more conscious of keeping her properly nourished after seeing the level of growth her body is fuelling. Already, Strike sees a treacherous path ahead, toeing the line between caring and fussing.

For now, at least, he gets away with it and Robin sits back down at the table without objection, picking up the laminated menu. 

“Can we go and buy something after?” she asks eagerly as she peruses her options, stomach rumbling at the smell of cooking sausages in the air.

He frowns. “Buy something?”

“For the baby.” she clarifies, almost shyly. “I know it's still early but the last couple of weeks, all I've noticed in the shops is the baby stuff – the clothes and blankets and comforters and toys. I really wanted to just stand there and look at it all like any other mother would but I couldn’t do it to myself. Now that we can be more sure, I want to get something.”

As this is a very achievable climb-down from buying a house, after coaxing a bacon roll and orange juice into her, he gladly walks with her into Walthamstow Village, to The W Store that Robin has always been partial to. Strike feels like a sore thumb in the trendy little shop, surrounded by frames, candles, coffee table fodder and racks upon racks of chic women's clothes. This feeling doesn't much improve as his attention is drawn by the modest baby section in the corner. For a fortnight, he'd thought of little else but the chance that they might have a baby, silently hoped for it with everything he had, but even that hasn't quite prepared him for the monumental reality as he looks at all the things now proof of a little human coming into their life. He unhooks a bundle of plain white mittens. His only motivation for doing so was chewing over the prospect he would be responsible for something with hands that small by the end of the year, but the shop assistant nods as she passes by.

“Good shout.” The elder woman says approvingly as she gives Robin the baby-grow she'd asked for in a newborn size. “Most people forget those but their nails are so sharp.” 

Cormoran just nods sagely as if he'd known this all along. In truth, the only reason that had occurred to him as to why their baby might need mittens is the winter due date, not because it’d be liable to just claw its own face off at any time of the year. 

Like puppies. Sharp teeth.

He wonders what Robin would think if she could hear him puzzling through his ignorance, so completely lacking in experience that he could only liken their impending infant to a dog. He’d never owned a bloody dog, either. 

Robin, he knows, is no expert either and she always objects to the notion of women having an inherent predisposition. So does he ー after all, he’s always believed the world could benefit from parenthood being chosen with a bit more rationality and little less sentiment, norm and so-called instinct ー but he does see a natural potential in her. With the external pressure eased by sharing her infertility, smothering the remarks and expectations, she utterly dotes on Benjy and her niece and nephews, and they adore her back. She has many of the most fitting qualities ー affectionate, patient, versatile, responsible, dedicated ー and Robin listens, too. She surely had picked things up from the mothers in her life.

Despite his insistence at Robin not to panic, he feels a flicker of it in the back of his mind. He has an awful lot to learn, with not a lot of time and not a lot of opportunities to do so. His mother is dead and was hardly a font of superlative parenting wisdom in life. Though he might go so far as to say they had a cordial relationship nowadays, he wasn't about to ask Rokeby for advice on being a present, engaged father. Ted and Joan are gone, too. An excellent mother though she is, he isn't going to tempt Lucy to meddle by asking her too much. Not to mention that the father of her kids is, and always has been, completely fucking useless. Pru is perhaps the strongest option, having two decent kids and never breaking his trust with the many sensitive things already shared, but he can't deny the twinge of discomfort at disclosing something so personal to a sister he is still getting to know in many ways. He doesn't like the idea of asking Nick or Ilsa either, knowing the risk it might be relayed back to Robin in some form. They'll be on this curve together, and he means to be honest with her about it, but he'd also prefer not to dump all of his uncertainties and stupid questions on her. She'll have enough on her mind without an over-input from him.

The realisation that he has no familiar leg-ups available to him is daunting but he means to take his own advice – he can afford to be happy without caveats for now and in any case, he's used to pulling himself up by his own bootstraps.

He takes the all-important mittens with him over to Robin. She has several somethings in her arms already – a plush sun comforter blanket, a boxset of Spot the Dog books he remembers Robin talking about from her own childhood, a rattle in the shape of a toadstool, and a soft white babygrow with ‘New Here’ above an embroidery of the Earth – but she lingers over a little pair of shoes. Strike, admittedly, has never seen the fuss about babies in general but he especially didn't understand the cooing about baby shoes. At best, they would only ever be worn for a handful of weeks, but even he can't deny the melting feeling inside as he looks at the tiny red leather T-bars, decorated with stitched white and pink flowers.

He really is going bloody soft.

“If you want them, get them.” he tells her as she stares at them longingly.

“But we don't know if it's a girl.” Robin says, looking over her shoulder at him. “What if we have a strapping great boy like you?”

It’s too new for him to distinguish whether it’s suspicion or a wish but he does believe they’ll have a little girl. Still, he grins at the idea of their toddler son, red-headed and hefty, pottering about in those dainty little shoes. 

“Then I'm sure he'll look a picture.” he says, firmly picking up the box for her and leading to the till.

For a second, once they’ve paid and they’ve stepped back out onto the village square, they’re both at a loss as to what to do next but the buzzing of an incoming call takes it out of their hands. They'd purposely avoided drawing attention to the fact they were both off on a random weekday morning and he'd only specifically instructed Pat not to contact Robin. He pulls his phone out of his pocket to Midge’s caller ID. They hadn’t crossed paths since their clash in the office. He could admit he’s tempted to ignore it for that reason, as well as that he wanted to concentrate on his personal affairs right now, but it would be unprofessional and Midge is on a case he wants shot of ー Flash Gordon, so named for his haircut and latterly his pace, long suspected of abandoning his young son during his custody hours with unauthorised friends and relatives, but many hours of surveillance and a few shots captured hadn’t persuaded his divorcing wife’s lawyer of a robust enough case. Between Gadget, Flash, and Robin out of the rota, they’ve been buried for the past few weeks.

He swipes the button and lifts his phone to his ear reluctantly. “Yeah?”

“Strike, sorry to bother you on a day off but I could really use an extra set of hands on Flash.” Midge says urgently. “He's just left the kid with some stranger at the park and he's heading towards his car at a rate of knots. I feel like there could be something else here but if I follow him, we won't get the proof of abandonment.” 

“I can't–”

Robin interrupts with a tug at his elbow, mouthing: “Go.” 

He covers the microphone but still speaks in a hush out of habit. “Are you sure?”

She nods enthusiastically. “We know he’s conspicuously broke in terms of support payments but is clearly getting legal advice from somewhere on the sly, doesn’t dress too shabbily, and drives an Audi. He could be going to do some cash-in-hand and if we catch him out on two accounts, custody will be a done deal. We could use one less case on the books now, especially this one. It'll give us some breathing space to sort other things out.”

If he were honest, Strike still doesn’t want to go. Perhaps there’s an irrational flare of guilt that he’s already ditching family business for the agency but overall, it’s not a new feeling. Ever since he’s had Robin in his whole life, their work sometimes lacks a bit of its pull when it splits them apart. He’d much rather stay with her, slip into the pub down the street ー or maybe the coffee shop opposite now, since Robin couldn’t drink ー and talk about the future, but she’s right. They need more time for that than today can offer, time that closing this case can give them.

He takes his finger off from the speaker, letting Midge hear him again. “I haven't got a car with me so you go with Flash and I'll get to the park ASAP. Text me the address.”

“On it.”

He sighs as the call cuts off and he stows his phone back in his pocket.

“Don’t worry about any of the serious stuff.” he tells her as she smiles at him ruefully. “We can start talking about all that tomorrow, hopefully with one less case to worry about. Just go home and relax.”

Robin arches an eyebrow amusedly at his imploring eyes. “Are you going to be like this the whole pregnancy?”

“Are you?” 

She just kisses him on the cheek. “See you later.”

“I mean it!” he calls after her as she walks away in the direction of Blackhorse Road.

“Love you.” Robin calls back over her shoulder, swinging her shopping bag happily.

Strike grins as she disappears round the corner before turning away himself. He has a house to earn.