Work Text:
“Did Barclay find you earlier?” Strike asked, setting a second glass of wine down in front of Robin and settling back into the seat opposite her. The Flying Horse was busy, early evening drinkers crowded around the bar. They’d been lucky to get this small table in a back corner.
“Mm?” She looked up at him, seeming to pull her focus back from afar. She was dressed down this evening after a day of tailing an unfaithful mistress, wearing casual trousers and soft-soled shoes, a slightly fitted cotton top that clung to her curves just enough to make Strike careful to keep his eyes on her face.
“Sam was looking for you,” he clarified. “Something about swapping jobs next week, something about a school play for his eldest?”
“Oh, yeah,” Robin said. “He did. I must tell Pat that we’ve switched, actually.” But she didn’t get out her phone, merely reaching across the battered wooden table to take her fresh wine. “Thanks,” she added.
Strike took a pull of his pint and contemplated her levelly. He set his glass back down.
“Okay,” he said. “Spill.”
“What?” Robin looked up again.
“What’s on your mind?” he pressed. “Can hardly get two syllables out of you tonight.”
“Sorry,” she said, flushing. “It’s nothing.”
Strike raised an eyebrow and waited.
“Okay, it’s not nothing. But it’s silly,” she said, and to his surprise and alarm, her eyes filled with tears. “Shit,” she muttered, delving into her handbag on the banquette next to her for a tissue.
“Hey, Ellacott—” Strike murmured, concerned, sliding his hand across the table, but she waved him away, dabbing at her eyes.
“Don’t be nice,” she told him, half laughing and half crying. “I’ll just blub.”
“Maybe you need to.”
“I absolutely do not,” she said firmly, although her voice wavered a little. “I’m being ridiculous.”
Strike waited while she mopped herself up and took a few deep breaths and another swig of wine. A group of youngsters at the next table were gawping unashamedly; he glared at them and they hurriedly looked away, resuming their conversation.
“Want to talk about it?”
“No. Dunno. Maybe.”
There was a pause, then Robin said in a rush, “Mum rang me. Sarah had the baby. A boy.” Then, seeing Strike’s look of incomprehension: “Matthew’s baby.”
“Ah.” His heart sank. Was she - surely not - wishing that…?
“It’s ridiculous,” Robin repeated, dabbing her eyes again with the soggy tissue. “Why am I even upset? I didn’t want his babies. I don’t think I want any kids, and even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t want his. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Well—” Strike began, feeling his way through the words. “I suppose, in another life, that could have been you.”
“A life I didn’t want,” Robin said fiercely. “A life I chose to walk away from.”
“Yeah, but still,” he said. “If you hadn’t met me, found detecting…”
He drifted to a halt, wondering if he had said too much or if his words might be interpreted the wrong way, but presently Robin said:
“Yeah, maybe that’s it. I’d given up on being a detective. I was going to take a boring job and be safe, have two-point-four kids and a Labrador of our own. Probably move back up north to be near good schools.” She pulled a face of such disgust, Strike laughed.
“And, you know…” she went on slowly. “I’m in my thirties now—”
Strike snorted. “Only just.”
Robin smiled. “Yeah, only just. But even if I do want kids, I might not get the chance.”
He watched her closely. “Do you? Want kids?” He had thought this question settled, and now found himself wondering if the birth of Matthew and Sarah’s son had changed her mind.
“No,” she said at once. “I want to do this job, build the best agency in London. So that’s why it’s ridiculous that I’m upset.”
Strike thought about this for a minute. “Maybe you’re not upset because you wanted that,” he mused. “Maybe you’re just saying goodbye to a version of you that could have existed.”
Robin gazed at him across their drinks. He could see he had hit on something that hadn’t occurred to her. “Yeah, maybe,” she said slowly.
Strike shrugged. “Look at me,” he said. “I could have stayed in the Army, if I hadn’t lost my leg. I often wonder what my life might have been like if that hadn’t forced me to take stock, decide what I wanted for my future. I might have drifted into marriage with Charlotte, and wouldn’t that have been a fucking disaster?”
“But you didn’t,” Robin said stoutly. “You chose to start the agency, and look how that’s turned out.”
“Only because of you,” Strike replied. “What would have happened if you hadn’t come along?”
Robin stared at him. “You’d have solved the Lula Landry case, hired another detective—”
“Ah.” Strike raised a big hand to stop her. “None of that would have happened. I’d have gone after Charlotte that day and been out when John Bristow arrived, agreeing to get back together with her. In six months I’d have gone bankrupt, and I’d have been forced to take the job with her dad she was always on at me to accept…” He trailed off, shuddering. “I’m not joking when I say that nobody was ever more grateful than me for a temping agency’s mistake.”
Robin smiled, flushing. “Well, me too, obviously,” she said. “It gave me a chance at a career I thought I’d lost after I left uni.”
“And you’re bloody awesome at,” Strike said, enjoying her renewed smile and deepening colour. She no longer looked upset. “I think we can say Temporary Solutions saved us both with their little fuck-up.”
Robin laughed. “I guess we can.” She thought for a moment.
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” she went on. “All the tiny, apparently inconsequential decisions that lead us to where we end up? If I’d walked home a different way that night at uni…” She trailed off.
“If my mum hadn’t died when she did,” Strike said, joining her train of thought.
“Or even, you know, if I hadn’t joined a temping agency. Or had joined a different one.”
“If I’d been assigned somewhere other than Afghanistan.”
They paused, looking at one another, and then Strike grinned and raised his pint.
“Here’s to other forks in the road. The ones we didn’t take.”
“The path less travelled,” Robin replied, raising her glass too.
“And also, here’s to the unplanned route and the uncertain future,” Strike added. “If I hadn’t started the agency on a shoestring, and if you hadn’t thrown away a much better job to stick with me—”
Robin grinned. “To taking risks.”
They clinked glasses, and drank.
Robin set hers back down. “Thank you, Strike,” she said, and slid her hand across the table to squeeze his. He returned the pressure of her fingers, smiling across at her, so beautiful his heart lurched.
“Any time, Ellacott,” he murmured, releasing her hand as she drew it away.
And that, he told himself, would have to be enough. For now.