Career of Evil

“Robin?” said Linda.

“It’s nothing, nothing,” said Robin savagely, wiping under her eyes with the heels of her hands.

She had been desperate to get back to work after five days in the house with her mother and Matthew, after the awkward three-cornered silences in the tiny space, the whispered conversations she knew that Linda had had with Matthew while she was in the bathroom, and about which she had chosen not to ask. She did not want to be trapped at home all over again. Irrational though it might have been, she felt safer in the middle of London, keeping an eye out for that large figure in the beanie hat, than she did in her flat in Hastings Road.

They pulled up at last outside King’s Cross. Robin was trying hard to keep her emotions under control, conscious of Linda’s sideways looks as they crossed the crowded station towards her platform. She and Matthew would be alone again tonight, with the looming prospect of that final, definitive talk. She had not wanted Linda to come and stay, yet her imminent departure forced Robin to admit that there had been a comfort in her mother’s presence that she had barely acknowledged.

“Right,” said Linda once her case had been safely stowed in the luggage rack and she had returned to the platform to spend the last couple of minutes with her daughter. “This is for you.”

She was holding out five hundred pounds.

“Mum, I can’t take—”

“Yes, you can,” said Linda. “Put it towards a deposit on a new place to live — or a pair of Jimmy Choos for the wedding.”

They had gone window-shopping in Bond Street on Tuesday, staring through the shop windows at flawless jewels, at handbags that cost more than secondhand cars, at designer clothing to which neither woman could even aspire. It felt a long way from the shops of Harrogate. Robin had gazed most covetously through the shoe-shop windows. Matthew did not like her to wear very high heels; defiantly, she had voiced a hankering for some five-inch spikes.

“I can’t,” repeated Robin as the station echoed and bustled around them. Her parents were sharing the expense of her brother Stephen’s wedding later in the year. They had already paid a sizable deposit on her reception, which had been postponed once; they had bought the dress and paid for its alterations, lost one deposit on the wedding cars...

“I want you to,” said Linda sternly. “Either invest it in your single life or buy wedding shoes.”

Fighting more tears, Robin said nothing.

“You’ve got Dad’s and my full support whatever you decide,” said Linda, “but I want you to ask yourself why you haven’t let anyone else know why the wedding’s off. You can’t keep living in limbo like this. It’s not good for either of you. Take the money. Decide.”

She wrapped Robin in a tight embrace, kissed her just beneath the ear and got back on the train. Robin managed to smile all the time she was waving good-bye, but when the train had finally pulled away, taking her mother back to Masham, to her father, to Rowntree the Labrador and everything that was friendly and familiar, Robin dropped down on a cold metal bench, buried her face in her hands and wept silently into the banknotes Linda had given her.

“Cheer up, darling. Plenty more fish in the sea.”

She looked up. An unkempt man stood in front of her. His belly spilled widely over his belt and his smile was lascivious.

Robin got slowly to her feet. She was as tall as he was. Their eyes were on a level.

“Sod off,” she said.

He blinked. His smile turned to a scowl. As she strode away, stuffing Linda’s money into her pocket, she heard him shout something after her, but she neither knew nor cared what it had been. A vast unfocused rage rose in her, against men who considered displays of emotion a delicious open door; men who ogled your breasts under the pretense of scanning the wine shelves; men for whom your mere physical presence constituted a lubricious invitation.

Her fury billowed to encompass Strike, who had sent her home to Matthew because he now considered her a liability; who would rather endanger the business that she had helped build up, soldiering on single-handedly, than let her do what she was good at, what she sometimes outshone him at, because of the permanent handicap she had in his eyes acquired by being in the wrong stairwell at the wrong time, seven years previously.

So yes, she would ring his bloody lap-dancing clubs and his strip joints in search of the bastard who had called her “little girl,” but there was something else she would do too. She had been looking forward to telling Strike about it, but there had been no time with Linda’s train due, and she had felt no inclination after he told her to stay at home.

Robin tightened her belt and marched on, frowning, feeling fully justified in continuing to follow one lead, unbeknownst to Strike, alone.

37

This ain’t the garden of Eden.

                        Blue Öyster Cult, “This Ain’t the Summer of Love”