Lethal White

Bollocks. She wouldn’t have told you who was in the office. You already
knew.
“This happens a lot lately,” she persisted. “They call them Braxton Hicks
contractions. I hate being pregnant.”
He knew he had not disguised his immediate thought when she leaned
towards him and said quietly:
“I know what you’re thinking. I didn’t get rid of ours. I didn’t.”
“Don’t start, Charlotte,” he said, with the sensation that the firm ground
beneath his feet was starting to crack and shift.
“I lost—”
“I’m not doing this again,” he said, a warning note in his voice. “We’re not
going back over dates from two years ago. I don’t care.”
“I took a test at my mother’s—”
“I said I don’t care.”
He wanted to leave, but she was if anything paler now, her lips trembling as
she gazed at him with those horribly familiar, russet-flecked green eyes, now
brimming with tears. The swollen belly still didn’t seem part of her. He would
not have been entirely surprised had she lifted her T-shirt to show a cushion.
“I wish they were yours.”
“Fuck’s sake, Charlotte—”

---

“If they were yours, I’d be happy about it.”
“Don’t give me that. You didn’t want kids any more than I did.”
Tears now tipped over onto her cheeks. She wiped them away, her fingers
shaking more violently than ever. A man at the next table was trying to pretend
that he wasn’t watching. Always hyperaware of the effect that she was having on
those around her, Charlotte threw the eavesdropper a look that made him return
hurriedly to his tortellini, then tore off a piece of bread and put it in her mouth,
chewing while crying. Finally she gulped water to help her swallow, then
pointed at her belly and whispered:
“I feel sorry for them. That’s all I’ve got: pity. I feel sorry for them, because
I’m their mother and Jago’s their father. What a start in life. In the beginning I
tried to think up ways of dying without killing them.”
“Don’t be so fucking self-indulgent,” Strike said roughly. “They’re going to
need you, aren’t they?”
“I don’t want to be needed, I never did. I want to be free.”
“To kill yourself?”
“Yes. Or to try and make you love me again.”
He leaned in towards her.
“You’re married. You’re having his children. We’re finished, it’s over.”
She leaned in, too, her tear-stained face the most beautiful he had ever seen.
He could smell Shalimar on her skin.
“I’ll always love you better than anyone in this world,” she said, stark white
and stunning. “You know that’s the truth. I loved you better than anyone in my
family, I’ll love you better than my children, I’ll love you on my deathbed. I
think about you when Jago and I—”
“Keep this up and I’m leaving.”
She leaned back in her seat again and stared at him as though he were an
approaching train and she was tied to the tracks.
“You know it’s true,” she said hoarsely. “You know it is.”
“Charlotte—”
“I know what you’re going to say,” she said, “that I’m a liar. I am. I am a liar,
but not on the big things, never on the big ones, Bluey.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“You didn’t love me enough—”
“Don’t you dare fucking blame me,” he said, in spite of himself. Nobody else
did this to him: nobody even came close. “The end—that was all you.”
“You wouldn’t compromise—”
“Oh, I compromised. I came to live with you, like you wanted—”
“You wouldn’t take the job Daddy—”

---

“I had a job. I had the agency.”
“I was wrong about the agency, I know that now. You’ve done such
incredible things… I read everything about you, all the time. Jago found it all on
my search history—”
“Should have covered your tracks, shouldn’t you? You were a damn sight
more careful with me, when you were screwing him on the side.”
“I wasn’t sleeping with Jago while I was with you—”
“You got engaged to him two weeks after we finished.”
“It happened fast because I made it happen fast,” she said fiercely. “You said
I was lying about the baby and I was hurt, furious—you and I would be married
now if you hadn’t—”
“Menus,” said a waiter suddenly materializing beside their table, handing
one to each of them. Strike waved his away.
“I’m not staying.”
“Take it for Amelia,” Charlotte instructed him, and he pulled the menu out of
the waiter’s hand and slapped it down on the table in front of him.
“We have a couple of specials today,” said the waiter.
“Do we look like we want to hear specials?” Strike growled. The waiter
stood for a second, frozen in astonishment, then wound his way back through the
crowded tables, his back view affronted.
“All this romantic bullshit,” Strike said, leaning in to Charlotte. “You wanted
things I couldn’t give you. Every single fucking time, you hated the poverty.”
“I acted like a spoiled bitch,” she said, “I know I did, then I married Jago and
I got all those things I thought I deserved and I want to fucking die.”
“It goes beyond holidays and jewelry, Charlotte. You wanted to break me.”
Her expression became rigid, as it so often had before the worst outbursts,
the truly horrifying scenes.
“You wanted to stop me wanting anything that wasn’t you. That’d be the
proof I loved you, if I gave up the army, the agency, Dave Polworth, every-
bloody-thing that made me who I am.”
“I never, ever wanted to break you, that’s a terrible thing to—”
“You wanted to smash me up because that’s what you do. You have to break
it, because if you don’t, it might fade away. You’ve got to be in control. If you
kill it, you don’t have to watch it die.”
“Look me in the eye and tell me you’ve loved anyone, since, like you loved
me.”
“No, I haven’t,” he said, “and thank fuck for that.”
“We had incredible times together—”
“You’ll have to remind me what they were.”

---

“That night on Benjy’s boat in Little France—”
“—your thirtieth? Christmas in Cornwall? They were a whole lot of fucking
fun.”
Her hand fell to her belly. Strike thought he saw movement through the thin
black T-shirt, and it seemed to him again that there was something alien and
inhuman beneath her skin.
“Sixteen years, on and off, I gave you the best I had to give, and it was never
enough,” he said. “There comes a point where you stop trying to save the person
who’s determined to drag you down with them.”
“Oh, please,” she said, and suddenly, the vulnerable and desperate Charlotte
vanished, to be replaced by somebody altogether tougher, cool-eyed and clever.
“You didn’t want to save me, Bluey. You wanted to solve me. Big difference.”
He welcomed the reappearance of this second Charlotte, who was in every
way as familiar as the fragile version, but whom he had far less compunction
about hurting.
“I’m looking good to you now because I got famous and you married an
arsehole.”
She absorbed the hit without blinking, though her face became a little pinker.
Charlotte had always enjoyed a fight.
“You’re so predictable. I knew you’d say I came back because you’re
famous.”
“Well, you do tend to resurface whenever there’s drama, Charlotte,” Strike
said. “I seem to remember that the last time, I’d just got my leg blown off.”
“You bastard,” she said, with a cool smile. “That’s how you explain me
taking care of you, all those months afterwards?”
His mobile rang: Robin.
“Hi,” he said, turning away from Charlotte to look out of the window.
“How’s it going?”
“Hi, just telling tha I can’t meet tha tonight,” said Robin, in a much thicker
Yorkshire accent than usual. “I’m going out with a friend. Party.”
“I take it Flick’s listening?” said Strike.
“Yeah, well, why don’t you try calling your wife if you’re lonely?” said
Robin.
“I’ll do that,” said Strike, amused in spite of Charlotte’s cool stare from
across the table. “D’you want me to yell at you? Give this some credibility?”
“No, you fook off,” said Robin loudly, and she hung up.
“Who was that?” asked Charlotte, eyes narrowed.
“I’ve got to go,” said Strike, pocketing the mobile and reaching for his
walking stick, which had slipped and fallen under the table while he and

---

Charlotte argued. Realizing what he was after, she leaned sideways and
succeeded in picking it up before he could reach it.
“Where’s the cane I gave you?” she said. “The Malacca one?”
“You kept it,” he reminded her.
“Who bought you this one? Robin?”
Amidst all of Charlotte’s paranoid and frequently wild accusations, she had
occasionally made uncannily accurate guesses.
“She did, as a matter of fact,” said Strike, but instantly regretted saying it. He
was playing Charlotte’s game and at once, she turned into a third and rare
Charlotte, neither cold nor fragile, but honest to the point of recklessness.
“All that’s kept me going through this pregnancy is the thought that once
I’ve had them, I can leave.”
“You’re going to walk out on your kids, the moment they exit the womb?”
“For another three months, I’m trapped. They all want the boy so much, they
hardly let me out of their sight. Once I’ve given birth, it’ll be different. I can go.
We both know I’ll be a lousy mother. They’re better off with the Rosses. Jago’s
mother’s already lining herself up as a surrogate.”
Strike held out his hand for the walking stick. She hesitated, then passed it
over. He got up.
“Give my regards to Amelia.”
“She’s not coming. I lied. I knew you’d be at Henry’s. I was at a private
viewing with him yesterday. He told me you were going to interview him.”
“Goodbye, Charlotte.”
“Wouldn’t you rather have had advance warning that I want you back?”
“But I don’t want you,” he said, looking down at her.
“Don’t kid a kidder, Bluey.”
Strike limped out of the restaurant past the staring waiters, all of whom
seemed to know how rude he had been to one of their colleagues. As he
slammed his way out into the street, he felt as though he was pursued, as though
Charlotte had projected after him a succubus that would tail him until they met
again.

---

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