“Of course I’m bloody not, but you’re so frigging starry-eyed about him—he’s a man, it’s just the two of you in the office—”

“He’s my friend, like you’re friends with Sarah Shadlock but you’ve never—”

She had seen it in his face. An expression she had never noticed before passed across it like a shadow. Guilt seemed to slide physically over the high cheekbones, the clean jaw, the hazel eyes she had adored for years.

“—have you?” she said, her tone suddenly wondering. “Have you?”

He hesitated too long.

“No,” he had said forcefully, like a paused film jerking back into action. “Of course n—”

“You have,” she said. “You’ve slept with her.”

She could see it in his face. He did not believe in male-female friendships because he had never had one. He and Sarah had been sleeping together.

“When?” she had asked. “Not… was it then?”

“I didn’t—”

She heard the feeble protestation of a man who knows he has lost, who had even wanted to lose. That had haunted her all night and all day: on some level, he had wanted Robin to know.

Her strange calm, more stunned than accusatory, had led him on to tell her everything. Yes, it had been then. He felt terrible about it, he always had—but he and Robin hadn’t been sleeping together at the time and, one night, Sarah had been comforting him, and, well, things had got out of hand—

“She was comforting you?” Robin had repeated. Rage had come then, at last, unfreezing her from her state of stunned disbelief. “She was comforting you?”

“It was a difficult time for me too, you know!” he had shouted.

Strike watched as Robin shook her head unconsciously, trying to clear it, but the recollections had turned her pink and her eyes were sparkling again.

“What did you say?” she asked Strike, confused.

“I asked what made him tell you.”

“I don’t know. We were in the middle of a row. He thinks…” She took a deep breath. Two-thirds of a bottle of wine on an empty stomach was leading her to emulate Matthew’s honesty. “He doesn’t believe you and I are just friends.”

This was no surprise to Strike. He had read suspicion in every look Matthew had ever given him, heard insecurity in every chippy comment thrown his way.

“So,” Robin went on unsteadily, “I pointed out that we are just friends, and that he’s got a platonic friend himself, dear old Sarah Shadlock. So then it all came out. He and Sarah had an affair at university while I was… while I was at home.”

“That long ago?” Strike said.

“You think I shouldn’t mind if it was seven years ago?” she demanded. “If he’s lied about it ever since and we constantly see her?”

“I was just surprised,” said Strike evenly, refusing to be drawn into a fight, “that he’s owned up to it after all this time.”

“Oh,” said Robin. “Well, he was ashamed. Because of when it happened.”