Lethal White (A Cormoran Strike Novel)

Now, she thought, Strike, too, would think her a flake, a damaged fool who should never have taken on this line of work, the one who ran when things got tough. It was that which made her wheel around to face him as he hobbled along the hard shoulder after her, and she wiped her face roughly on her sleeve and said, before he could tell her off, “I know I shouldn’t have lost it, I know I’ve fucked up, I’m sorry.” But his answer was lost in the pounding in her ears and, as though it had been waiting for her to stop running, the panic now engulfed her. Dizzy, unable to order her thoughts, she collapsed on the verge, dry bristles of grass prickling through her jeans as, eyes shut and head in hands, she tried to breathe herself back to normality as the traffic zoomed past.

She wasn’t quite sure whether one minute or ten had elapsed, but finally her pulse slowed, her thoughts became ordered and the panic ebbed away, to be replaced by mortification. After all her careful pretense that she was coping, she had blown it.

A whiff of cigarette smoke reached her. Opening her eyes, she saw Strike’s legs sticking out on the ground to her right. He, too, had sat down on the verge.

“How long have you been having panic attacks?” he asked conversationally.

There seemed no point dissembling any more.

“About a year,” she muttered.

“Been getting help with them?”

“Yes. I was in therapy for a bit. Now I do CBT exercises.”

“Do you, though?” Strike asked mildly. “Because I bought vegetarian bacon a week ago, but it’s not making me any healthier, just sitting there in the fridge.”

Robin began to laugh and found that she couldn’t stop. More tears leaked from her eyes. Strike watched her, not unkindly, smoking his cigarette.

“I could have been doing them a bit more regularly,” Robin admitted at last, mopping her face again.

“Anything else you fancy telling me, now we’re getting into things?” asked Strike.

He felt he ought to know the worst now, before he gave her any advice on her mental condition, but Robin seemed confused.

“Any other health matters that might affect your ability to work?” he prompted her.

“Like what?”

Strike wondered whether a direct inquiry constituted some kind of infringement of her employment rights.

“I wondered,” he said, “whether you might be, ah, pregnant.”

Robin began to laugh again.

“Oh God, that’s funny.”

“Is it?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, “I’m not pregnant.”

Strike now noticed that her wedding and engagement rings were missing. He had become so used to seeing her without them as she impersonated Venetia Hall and Bobbi Cunliffe that it had not occurred to him that their absence today might be significant, yet he didn’t want to pose a direct question, for reasons that had nothing at all to do with employment rights.

“Matthew and I have split up,” Robin said, frowning at the passing traffic in an effort not to cry again. “A week ago.”

“Oh,” said Strike. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

But his concerned expression was at total odds with his actual feelings. His dark mood had lightened so abruptly that it was akin to having moved from sober to three pints down. The smell of rubber and dust and burned grass recalled the car park where he had accidentally kissed her, and he drew on his cigarette again and tried hard not to let his feelings show in his face.

“I know I shouldn’t have spoken to Geraint Winn like that,” said Robin, tears now falling again. “I shouldn’t have mentioned Rhiannon, I lost control and—it’s just, men, bloody men, judging everyone by their bloody selves!”

“What happened with Matt—?”

“He’s been sleeping with Sarah Shadlock,” said Robin savagely. “His best friend’s fiancée. She left an earring in our bed and I—oh bugger.”

It was no use: she buried her face in her hands and, with a sense of having nothing to lose now, cried in earnest, because she had thoroughly disgraced herself in Strike’s eyes, and the one remaining piece of her life that she had been seeking to preserve had been tainted. How delighted Matthew would be to see her falling apart on a motorway verge, proving his point, that she was unfit to do the job she loved, forever limited by her past, by having, twice, been in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong men.

A heavy weight landed across her shoulders. Strike had put his arm around her. This was simultaneously comforting and ominous, because he had never done that before, and she was sure that this was the precursor to him telling her that she was unfit to work, that they would cancel the next interview and return to London.

“Where have you been staying?”

“Vanessa’s sofa,” said Robin, trying frantically to mop her streaming eyes and nose: snot and tears had made the knees of her jeans soggy. “But I’ve got a new place now.”

“Where?”

“Kilburn, a room in a shared house.”

“Bloody hell, Robin,” said Strike. “Why didn’t you tell me? Nick and Ilsa have got a proper spare room, they’d be delighted—”

“I can’t sponge off your friends,” said Robin thickly.