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Robin had been trying to sleep for - she checked the time on her phone - two hours and seventeen minutes. It had been a rollercoaster week. Her birthday had been magical. The evening she had spent with Strike was as golden-hued and sparkling as the champagne they’d drunk at the Ritz. She’d spritzed herself with his gift every day, and each time, it had been like another dose of some magical potion that was waking her out of an enchanted stupor.
It wasn’t like she was seeing him with new eyes. It was like what she had seen and known for a long time was suddenly illuminated, like the clouds parting on a gloomy day and the sunlight bouncing off the blue sea.
Perhaps she wouldn’t have noticed if they had shared the Ritz and then some more days of mundane routine had followed. Showers, hastily snatched meals, the necessary business of life. But there was the birthday meal the following night, and a sense of a shared confidence between them as they kept their visit to the Ritz to themselves. That hadn’t been prearranged.
Ilsa had asked about what Robin got up to on her actual birthday, and she had smiled a small smile, caught Strike’s eye and said that it had been ‘quiet’. To her relief, he hadn’t seemed to read this as a put down, but had read the mischief in her eyes, and played along beautifully, which had required lots of looking at her to gauge her reaction to his misdirecting comments about his own activities the day before. It was almost an extension of the bantering pleasure of her birthday treat, like a door had been propped open so that the light from the room beyond came through.
When they’d hugged at the end of the evening, he’d pulled back with a grin and looked in her eyes as he’d said “You smell nice. Something new?”
Robin had felt her heartbeat quicken as she’d smiled at the secret that passed from his eyes to hers and back again.
“Yeah,” she’d said. “I love it.”
“Me too,” he’d replied, and then something had distracted them and the moment was deferred.
But each day she had walked through a mist of Narciso first thing in the morning, and each time, the moment deferred felt a little closer. She’d thought about it before, in another fragrantly beautiful setting, one she didn’t enjoy recalling. She’d paced up and down a beach, having just taken a chance on phoning him, knowing in her heart of hearts that when she heard his voice she would know the truth of her repeated question “Am I in love with him?” and she hadn’t heard his voice, not straight away, but she had known the truth nonetheless, even while she pushed it away. The pain of it had sent her scurrying blindly, and she had tried to find a sure course and failed for so long.
But it wasn’t painful right now. This week, her feelings had been warm delight and an almost luxuriant pleasure at fitting so perfectly on his arm as they had walked to the Ritz, at their surreptitious in-joke, and the almost imperceptible shift in body language that changed the atmosphere whenever they met.
Here she was, at nearly one in the morning, trying to sleep before an early start, but unable to hold back the culmination of seven days worth of awakening. It wasn’t possible. She picked up her phone, put in the passcode and opened her texts and typed a message to Strike.
Are you awake?
She looked at the blue light in the dark of her room, and had just managed to quell her eagerness by reminding herself that Strike had the same early start she did so would be unlikely to respond, when a text box flashed up under hers.
Yes. You ok?
Even the thought of him awake and responsive made her smile.
Can’t sleep.
She sat up and put the bedside light on.
Me neither. My best mate keeps texting me in the middle of the night.
Robin giggled.
You should have a word. You need your beauty sleep.
Without realizing, she had now sat on the edge of the bed, her feet on the floor.
I’ll get by on my wit and charm. You can do the beauty thing for both of us.
She looked at this last text for a moment, the cursor winking beneath it expectantly. This was a compliment, wasn’t it? An open compliment. The awakened excitement in her belly became a storm of butterflies. Sleep was a distant, forlorn hope now.
I think I can do the wit and charm thing too.
She typed back, standing and pulling open her underwear drawer, fishing out some pants.
You can, but you’re nice enough to let me have a turn now and then.
Strike’s reply came as she pulled on her jeans.
I’m generous like that.
Robin pressed send and looked in the mirror, spritzing Narciso, pulling her hair into a ponytail and grabbing her keys. She laid the phone on the seat beside her as she started the engine of the Land Rover, and heard it ping a few times as she drove through the streets of London, much quieter than during the bustle of the day, but still buzzing with the coiled up energy that never seemed to fully fade away.
When she reached Denmark Street and parked, she picked the phone up to read the texts Strike had sent.
I’m grateful for the consideration.
I’m grateful for a lot of things.
You still there?
Sleep well. See you bright eyed and bushy tailed at 7.
Robin got out and stood looking up at the office. She took a long slow, deep breath in, and typed a text response.
Why wait until 7?
She pressed send and entered the building, climbing the stairs carefully, looking at her phone the whole way, waiting for his reply.
What?
The text appeared just as she got past the office door and began the final climb to Strike’s flat.
Why wait until 7 when I’m right here?
She looked at the words she had typed as she stood outside his door, stunned at her own audacity. This was boldness she didn’t believe she could ever have managed in years gone by, in fact, she knew she had shrunk from it many times. Yet here she was, and like other times in this building, she stood on the threshold of something she knew would change her life. She closed her eyes, pressed send and waited.
She heard movement inside, and realized she was shaking. She felt suddenly paralyzed, unsure whether to wait for another text, or to knock. She knew she didn’t want to turn and leave, and at any rate, her feet wouldn’t move. Her moment of panicked indecision ended a few minutes later when she saw a light come on under the door, and then the door opened and Strike was there, poised to leave and his mouth slack at the sight of her.
“I-if we’re both up, seems reasonable to be together,” Robin stammered.
He swallowed, and stepped back. They stared at one another for a moment longer, and then Robin took a step inside. Strike was still looking at her as she closed the door behind her.
“I mean, I can’t sleep, and my mum always said there comes a point where you’re better off just getting up and having a cup of tea, instead of just laying there staring at the ceiling,” she said, shoving her phone in her pocket.
“I-I can put the kettle on, then,” Strike managed. Robin nodded, but as he turned, she reached out her hand and put it on his forearm, just below the hem of his t-shirt sleeve.
“Cormoran,” she said quickly, and he turned back, and she saw the rise and fall of his chest, and his dark eyes on hers.
“Yeah?” He said.
“I need to say something,” she told him.
“I’m listening,” he replied.
Robin licked her lips, her mouth dry, and she focused on the mat of dark hair she could see at his neck as she tried to steady her nerves. She looked back into his eyes again, and opened her mouth to speak, but it was a few seconds more before the words came, and when they did, she could hear the raspy note in her own voice.
“I don’t know how to say this perfectly, which is a bit bloody stupid given how long I’ve been running these things through my head, I should have had this tied up in a bow by now, but I haven’t so,” she began, and sniffed before continuing, “so you’re just going to have to take it as it comes.”
Strike nodded, his eyes full of something that both spurred her on and frightened her.
“I think.. I think I’m in l-love with you, and I don’t quite know what to do with that, because it feels so big and I could probably have carried on keeping it to myself for a long time, but then my birthday happened and then the rest of this week and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. Not even at one o-clock in the bloody morning, obviously,” she gabbled, and as she said it, a sense of panic started rising in her as he didn’t move to respond. To try and control it, she just kept talking.
“And I don’t even know if you feel even slightly the same, and really why would you, because I’m just me, and you’re you, but the way things have been have felt so different, but not really different. Like the same but deeper, really, like best mates but also something thicker and stronger, and I don’t even know what I’m saying now, and-”
Robin could have carried on digging herself into incoherence for quite some time, and the only reason she stopped was because Strike had closed the gap between them, put his hands on her face and pressed his lips to hers. After a few seconds of almost mystical silence, he pulled back just far enough for her to look into his eyes.
“I think I love you too,” he said.