Lethal White

The atmosphere we breathe is heavy with storms.
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
The sunset cast a ruddy glow across the duvet behind Robin as she sat at the
dressing table in her and Matthew’s spacious new bedroom. Next-door’s
barbecue was now smoking the air that had earlier been fragrant with
honeysuckle. She had just left Matthew downstairs, lying on the sofa watching
the warm-up to the England–Italy game, a cold bottle of Peroni in his hand.
Opening the dressing table drawer, she took out a pair of colored contact
lenses she had concealed there. After trial and error the previous day, she had
decided the hazel ones appeared most natural with her strawberry-blonde hair.
Gingerly, she extracted first one, then the other, placing them over her watering
blue-gray irises. It was essential that she get used to wearing them. Ideally she
would have had them in all weekend, but Matthew’s reaction when he had seen
her in them had dissuaded her.
“Your eyes!” he had said, after staring at her, perplexed, for a few seconds.
“Bloody hell, that looks horrible, take them out!”
As Saturday had already been ruined by one of their tense disagreements
about her job, she had chosen not to wear the lenses all weekend, because they
would serve as a constant reminder to Matthew about what she was up to the
following week. He seemed to think that working undercover in the House of
Commons was tantamount to treason, and her refusal to tell him who either her
client or her targets were had further aggravated him.
Robin kept telling herself that Matthew was worried about her safety and that
he could hardly be blamed for it. It had become a mental exercise she performed
like a penance: you can’t blame him for being concerned, you nearly got killed
last year, he wants you to be safe. However, the fact that she had gone for a drink
with Strike on Friday seemed to be worrying Matthew far more than any
potential killer.
“Don’t you think you’re being bloody hypocritical?” he said.
Whenever he was angry, the skin around his nose and upper lip became taut.
Robin had noticed it years ago, but lately it gave her a sensation close to
revulsion. She had never mentioned this to her therapist. It had felt too nasty, too
visceral.

---

“How am I hypocritical?”
“Going for cozy little drinks with him—”
“Matt, I work with—”
“—then complaining when I have lunch with Sarah.”
“Have lunch with her!” said Robin, her pulse quickening in anger. “Do it! As
a matter of fact, I met her in the Red Lion, out with some men from work. Do
you want to call Tom and tell him his fiancée’s drinking with colleagues? Or am
I the only one who’s not allowed to do it?”
The skin around his nose and mouth looked like a muzzle as it tightened,
Robin thought: a pale muzzle on a snarling dog.
“Would you have told me you’d gone for a drink with him if Sarah hadn’t
seen you?”
“Yes,” said Robin, her temper snapping, “and I’d’ve known you’d be a dick
about it, too.”
The tense aftermath of this argument, by no means their most serious of the
last month, had lingered all through Sunday. Only in the last couple of hours,
with the prospect of the England game to cheer him, had Matthew become
amiable again. Robin had even volunteered to fetch him a Peroni from the
kitchen and kissed him on the forehead before leaving him, with a sense of
liberation, for her colored contact lenses and her preparations for the following
day.
Her eyes felt gradually less uncomfortable with repeated blinking. Robin
moved across to the bed, where her laptop lay. Pulling it towards her, she saw
that an email from Strike had just arrived.
Robin,
Bit of research on the Winns attached. I’ll call you shortly for quick brief
before tomorrow.
CS
Robin was annoyed. Strike was supposed to be “plugging gaps” and working
nights. Did he think she had done no research of her own over the weekend?
Nevertheless, she clicked on the first of several attachments, a document
summarizing the fruits of Strike’s online labor.