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‘Listen, there was something else I wanted to tell you,’ he said, wondering, even as he heard himself say it, what the hell he was playing at. The impulse came, in a confused way, from a desire to be honest, as she’d been honest, to stop hiding from her. ‘I – er – I’ve made contact with Prudence. You know – Rokeby’s other illegitimate.’
‘Have you?’ said Lucy, and to his amazement – he’d hidden the burgeoning relationship from her out of fear that she’d feel jealous, or that she was being replaced – she was smiling through her tears. ‘Stick, that’s great!’
‘Is it?’ he said, thrown.
‘Well, of course it is!’ she said. ‘How long have you two been in touch?’
‘Dunno. A few months. She visited me in hospital when I – you know—’
He gestured with his thumb towards the lung that had been punctured by a cornered killer.
‘What’s she like?’ said Lucy, who appeared curious and interested, but in no way resentful.
‘Nice,’ said Strike. ‘I mean, she’s not you—’
‘You don’t need to say that,’ said Lucy, with a shaky laugh. ‘I know what we went through together, I know nobody else will ever understand that. You know, Joan always wanted you to make it up with Rokeby.’
‘Prudence isn’t Rokeby,’ said Strike.
‘I know,’ said Lucy, ‘but it’s still good you’re seeing her. Joan would be happy.’
‘I didn’t think you’d take it like this.’
‘Why not? I see my dad’s other kids.’
‘Do you?’
‘Of course I do! I didn’t want to go on about it, because—’
‘You thought I’d be hurt?’
‘Probably because I felt guilty that I’ve got a relationship with my dad and half-siblings, and you haven’t,’ said Lucy.
After a short pause, she said,
‘I saw Charlotte in the paper, with her new boyfriend.’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike, ‘well, she likes a certain lifestyle. That was always a problem, me being broke.’
‘You don’t wish—?’
‘Christ, no,’ said Strike. ‘That’s dead and buried.’
‘I’m glad,’ said Lucy. ‘I’m really glad. You deserve so much better. You’ll stay for lunch, won’t you?’
Given the revelations of the morning, Strike felt he had no choice but to agree.
12
The inferior thing seems so harmless and inviting that a man delights in it; it looks so small and weak that he imagines he may dally with it and come to no harm.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Strike made an uncharacteristic effort to appear cheerful while at lunch, tolerating his brother-in-law and eldest nephew with a grace he’d rarely shown before. He didn’t rush away afterwards, but stayed until the rain had passed off, when the whole family went into the back garden and watched Luke, Jack and Adam play with their Firetek Bows, even feigning good humour when Luke, in what Strike refused to believe was an accident, discharged his dart into the side of his uncle’s face, eliciting roars of laughter from Greg.
Only once he’d left the house did Strike allow his face to slacken, losing the determined grin he’d worn for much of the last couple of hours. Having firmly resisted Lucy’s offers of a lift, he walked back to the station under a grey sky, brooding on everything he’d just heard.
Strike was a mentally resilient man who’d survived plenty of reverses in his life, not least the loss of part of his right leg. One of the tools of self-discipline he’d forged in youth and honed in the army was a habit of compartmentalisation that rarely failed him, but right now, it wasn’t working. Emotions he didn’t want to feel and memories he generally suppressed were closing in on him, and he, who detested anything that smacked of self-indulgence, travelled back towards Denmark Street brooding so deeply that he barely registered the passing Tube stations and realised, almost too late to disembark, that he was already at Tottenham Court Road.
