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I want a good person for a change, Charlotte. I’m sick of filth and mess and scenes. I want something different.
Would Robin kill herself over you?
Of course she wouldn’t. She’s got more bloody sense.
Everything we had, everything we shared, and you want someone sensible? The Cormoran I knew would have laughed at the idea of wanting someone sensible. Don’t you remember? ‘Suns rise and set, but for us there’s one brief day then one perpetual night. So kiss me a thousand times…’
I was a messed-up fucking kid when I quoted that at you. That’s not who I am any more. But I’d still rather you’d lived, and been happy.
I was never happy, said the Charlotte who was sometimes brutally honest, when nothing else had worked, and another vicious scene had left both of them exhausted. Amused, sometimes. Never happy.
Yeah, I know.
And he echoed the kindly man in the bicycle clips.
Still.
He opened his damp eyes again to stare at the cross on the altar. He might not believe, but the cross meant something to him, nonetheless. It stood for Ted and Joan, for order and stability, but also for the unknowable and unresolvable, for the human craving for meaning in chaos, and for the hope of something beyond the world of pain and endless striving. Some mysteries were eternal and unresolvable by man, and there was relief in accepting that, in admitting it. Death, love, the endless complexity of human beings: only a fool would claim to fully understand any of them.
And as he sat in this humble old church, with the round tower that lost its sinister aspect when seen up close, he looked back on the teenager who’d left Leda and her dangerous naivety only to fall for Charlotte, and her equally dangerous sophistication, and knew definitively, for the first time, that he was no longer the person who’d craved either of them. He forgave the teenager who’d pursued a destructive force because he thought he could tame it, and thereby right the universe, and make all comprehensible and safe. He wasn’t so different from Lucy, after all. They’d both set out to refashion their worlds, they’d just done it in very different ways. If he was lucky, he had half his life to live again, and it was time to give up things far more harmful than smoking and chips, time to admit to himself he should seek something new, as opposed to what was damaging but familiar.
The kindly sheep-faced man had reappeared. As he made his way back down the aisle, he paused uncertainly beside Strike.
‘I hope you’ve found what you needed.’
‘I have,’ said Strike. ‘Thank you.’
PART FIVE
K’uei/Opposition
Above, fire; below, the lake:
The image of OPPOSITION.
Thus amid all fellowship
The superior man retains his individuality.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
65
The line is yielding and stands between two strong lines; it can be compared to a woman who has lost her veil and is consequently exposed to attack.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
As Strike saw no reason to inform Robin either of Charlotte’s suicide or his detour to St John the Baptist in his next letter, she only knew that he’d been to Cromer to interview the Heatons. Learning that her partner passed within a mile of Chapman Farm on his way to the coast made Robin feel even lonelier. She, too, thought back to the two seaside towns they’d visited together in the course of previous investigations, especially the dinner in Whitstable: the white coral on the mantelpieces set against slate-coloured walls, and the sight of Strike laughing opposite her, framed against a window through which she watched the sea turning indigo in the fading light. Luckily, Robin’s tiredness curtailed a tendency to dwell on or analyse the feelings these memories evoked.
She read his account of his interview with the Heatons three times by torchlight, wanting to be absolutely sure she remembered all of it before tearing it up. Now even more determined to find out as much as she could about Daiyu’s death, Robin resolved to renew her efforts to befriend Emily Pirbright, a task far easier planned than accomplished. Over the next few days, she tried and failed to place herself within Emily’s vicinity until, a week after receiving Strike’s last letter, an unexpected opportunity arose.
Robin was approached at breakfast by the young man with short dreadlocks, who informed her she’d be joining a group going into Norwich that morning to collect money for the church.
‘Tidy yourself up,’ he told her. ‘There’ll be a clean tracksuit on your bed. The minibus leaves in half an hour.’
Robin had become used to casual mention of lengths of time that were impossible to measure for ordinary church members, and had learned it was safest to assume the instruction meant ‘do it as quickly as possible’. In consequence, she gulped down the rest of her porridge rather than trying, as she usually did, to make it last.
When she entered the dormitory she saw fresh tracksuits laid out on their beds, which were no longer scarlet but white. From this, Robin deduced that the church had now moved into the season of the Drowned Prophet. Then she spotted Emily, who was pulling off her red top.
