Lethal White (A Cormoran Strike Novel)

I fought out that fight alone and in the completest secrecy.

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

As she walked along the unfamiliar Deptford street, Robin was raised to temporary light-heartedness, then wondered when she had last felt this way and knew that it had been over a year. Energized and uplifted by the afternoon sunshine, the colorful shopfronts and general bustle and noise, she was currently celebrating the fact that she never need see the inside of the Villiers Trust Clinic again.

Her therapist had been unhappy that she was terminating treatment.

“We recommend a full course,” she had said.

“I know,” Robin replied, “but, well, I’m sorry, I think this has done me as much good as it’s going to.”

The therapist’s smile had been chilly.

“The CBT’s been great,” Robin had said. “It’s really helped with the anxiety, I’m going to keep that up…”

She had taken a deep breath, eyes fixed on the woman’s low-heeled Mary Janes, then forced herself to look her in the eye.

“… but I’m not finding this part helpful.”

Another silence had ensued. After five sessions, Robin was used to them. In normal conversation, it would be considered rude or passive aggressive to leave these long pauses and simply watch the other person, waiting for them to speak, but in psychodynamic therapy, she had learned, it was standard.

Robin’s doctor had given her a referral for free treatment on the NHS, but the waiting list had been so long that she had decided, with Matthew’s tight-lipped support, to pay for treatment. Matthew, she knew, was barely refraining from saying that the ideal solution would be to give up the job that had landed her with PTSD and which in his view paid far too poorly considering the dangers to which she had been exposed.

“You see,” Robin had continued with the speech she had prepared, “my life is pretty much wall to wall with people who think they know what’s best for me.”

“Well, yes,” said the therapist, in a manner that Robin felt would have been considered condescending beyond the clinic walls, “we’ve discussed—”

“—and…”

Robin was by nature conciliatory and polite. On the other hand, she had been urged repeatedly by the therapist to speak the unvarnished truth in this dingy little room with the spider plant in its dull green pot and the man-sized tissues on the low pine table.

“… and to be honest,” she said, “you feel like just another one of them.”

Another pause.

“Well,” said the therapist, with a little laugh, “I’m here to help you reach your own conclusions about—”

“Yes, but you do it by—by pushing me all the time,” said Robin. “It’s combative. You challenge everything I say.”

Robin closed her eyes, as a great wave of weariness swept her. Her muscles ached. She had spent all week putting together flat-pack furniture, heaving around boxes of books and hanging pictures.

“I come out of here,” said Robin, opening her eyes again, “feeling wrung out. I go home to my husband, and he does it, too. He leaves big sulky silences and challenges me on the smallest things. Then I phone my mother, and it’s more of the same. The only person who isn’t at me all the time to sort myself out is—”

She pulled up short, then said:

“—is my work partner.”

“Mr. Strike,” said the therapist sweetly.

It had been a matter of contention between Robin and the therapist that she had refused to discuss her relationship with Strike, other than to confirm that he was unaware of how much the Shacklewell Ripper case had affected her. Their personal relationship, she had stated firmly, was irrelevant to her present issues. The therapist had raised him in every session since, but Robin had consistently refused to engage on the subject.

“Yes,” said Robin. “Him.”

“By your own admission you haven’t told him the full extent of your anxiety.”

“So,” said Robin, ignoring the last comment, “I really only came today to tell you I’m leaving. As I say, I’ve found the CBT really useful and I’m going to keep using the exercises.”

The therapist had seemed outraged that Robin wasn’t even prepared to stay for the full hour, but Robin had paid for the entire session and therefore felt free to walk out, giving her what felt like a bonus hour in the day. She felt justified in not hurrying home to do more unpacking, but to buy herself a Cornetto and enjoy it as she wandered through the sun-drenched streets of her new area.

Chasing her own cheerfulness like a butterfly, because she was afraid it might escape, she turned up a quieter street, forcing herself to concentrate, to take in the unfamiliar scene. She was, after all, delighted to have left behind the old flat in West Ealing, with its many bad memories. It had become clear during his trial that the Shacklewell Ripper had been tailing and watching Robin for far longer than she had ever suspected. The police had even told her that they thought he had hung around Hastings Road, lurking behind parked cars, yards from her front door.