Filed to story: The Ink Black Heart Read Online Free (PDF/ePuB) >>
Sleep on content, as sleeps the patient rose.
Walk boldly on the white untrodden snows,
The winter is the winter’s own release.
Helen Jackson
January
On the whole, Robin had enjoyed her time in Zermatt. She’d forgotten what it felt like to have eight hours’ sleep a night; she’d enjoyed the food, the skiing and the company of her friends; and suffered barely a tremor when Katie told her, with a look of concern that turned to relief when Robin responded calmly, that Matthew had indeed brought Sarah back to Masham over Christmas, along with his new-born son.
‘They’ve called him William,’ said Katie. ‘We ran into them one night in the Bay Horse. Matthew’s aunt was babysitting. I really don’t like that Sarah. Sooooo smug.’
‘Can’t say I’m that keen on her either,’ said Robin. She was glad to know she’d avoided the almost inevitable meeting in their home town, and with luck, next Christmas it would be Sarah’s family’s turn to host their grandson, so there’d be no danger of a chance encounter.
The view from Robin’s bedroom was of the snow-coated Matterhorn, which pierced the bright blue sky like a gigantic fang. The light on the pyramidal mountain changed from gold to peach, from ink blue to heather depending on the angle of the sun, and alone in her room, staring at the mountain, Robin came closest to achieving the peace and perspective she’d sought in coming on the trip.
The only part of the holiday with which Robin would gladly have dispensed was Hugh Jacks. He was a couple of years older and worked in pharmaceutical chemistry. She supposed he was quite nice-looking, with a neat sandy beard, broad shoulders and large blue eyes, and he wasn’t precisely unlikeable, but Robin couldn’t help finding him slightly pathetic. No matter the subject under discussion, he somehow managed to bring it back to his divorce, which appeared to have blindsided him. After six years of marriage, his wife had announced that she wasn’t happy, that she hadn’t been happy for a long time, packed her bags and departed. Hugh told Robin the whole story twice in the first few days of the holiday, and after the second, almost identical recital, she did her best to avoid sitting next to him at dinner. Unfortunately, he didn’t take the hint, but kept targeting her, encouraging her to share details of her own failed marriage in a lugubrious tone that would have been appropriate had they both been suffering from the same terminal disease. Robin adopted a bracing attitude, telling him there were plenty more fish in the sea and that she was personally glad to be free again. Hugh told her how much he admired her feistiness with a slightly more cheerful look in his watery blue eyes, and she was afraid he might have taken her declaration of happy independence as a tacit invitation.
‘He’s lovely, isn’t he?’ Katie asked her hopefully, one evening in a bar, when Robin had just succeeded in shaking Hugh off after another hour of anecdotes about his ex-wife.
‘He’s all right,’ said Robin, who didn’t want to offend her cousin, ‘but he’s really not my type, Katie.’
‘He’s usually quite funny,’ said Katie, disappointed. ‘You aren’t seeing him at his best. Wait until he’s had a drink or two.’
But on New Year’s Eve, with a large amount of beer and schnapps inside him, Hugh became first boisterous, though not particularly amusing, then maudlin. At midnight, the two couples kissed their partners, and the bleary-eyed Hugh opened his arms to Robin, who let him kiss her on the cheek and then tried to free herself, while he breathed drunkenly in her ear:
‘You’re so lovely.’
‘Thanks,’ said Robin, and then, ‘could you let go, please?’
He did so, and Robin went to bed shortly afterwards, locking her door. Somebody knocked on it soon after she’d turned out the light: she lay in the darkness, pretending to be asleep, and heard footsteps walking slowly away.
The other less-than-perfect aspect of her break had been her own tendency to brood about Strike and the incident outside the Ritz. It was easy enough not to think about her partner while trying to keep herself vertical on skis, but otherwise her disengaged mind kept returning to the question of what would have happened if she’d cast off her inhibitions and fears, and let him kiss her. This led inexorably to another question, the same one she’d asked herself while pacing the warm white sand in the Maldives three years previously. Was she to spend every holiday, for the rest of her life, wondering whether she was in love with Cormoran Strike?
You’re not, she told herself. He gave you the chance of a lifetime, and maybe you do love him a bit, because he’s your best friend, but you’re not in love with him. And then, more honestly, and if you are, you need to get over it. Yes, maybe he was hurt when you didn’t let him kiss you, but better that than he thinks you’re pining away for love of him. A lovesick partner is literally the last thing he’d want.
If only she could have been the kind of woman who could have enjoyed a kiss one drunken evening and then laughed it off. On the evidence of what she knew about Strike’s past love life, that was what he liked: women who played the game with an insouciance Robin had never learned.
She returned to the office in the second week of January, bringing with her a large box of Swiss chocolates. To everyone who asked, Strike included, she said she’d had a wonderful time.