It was not that he had not thought about it; the night before, he had lain awake on the camp bed, running calculations through his mind, trying to come up with an offer that might not seem insulting beside the salary offered by the media consultancy. It was not possible. He could no longer defer payment on the largest of his loans; he was facing an increase in rent and he needed to find somewhere to live other than his office. While his short-term prospects were immeasurably improved, the outlook remained uncertain.

‘I wouldn’t expect you to match what they’d give me,’ Robin said thickly.

‘I couldn’t come close,’ said Strike.

(But she knew the state of Strike’s finances almost as well as he did and had already guessed at the most she could expect. The previous evening, when Matthew had found her in tears at the prospect of leaving, she had told him her estimate of Strike’s best offer.

‘But he hasn’t offered you anything at all,’ Matthew had said. ‘Has he?’

‘No, but if he did…’

‘Well, it would be up to you,’ Matthew had said stiffly. ‘It’d be your choice. You’d have to decide.’

She knew that Matthew did not want her to stay. He had sat for hours in Casualty while they stitched Strike up, waiting to take Robin home. He had told her, rather formally, that she had done very well, showing such initiative, but he had been distant and faintly disapproving ever since, especially when their friends clamoured for the inside details on everything that had appeared in the press.

But surely Matthew would like Strike, if only he met him? And Matthew himself had said that it was up to her what she did…)

Robin drew herself up a little, blew her nose again and told Strike, with calmness slightly undermined by a small hiccough, the figure for which she would be happy to stay.

It took Strike a few seconds to respond. He could just afford to pay what she had suggested; it was within five hundred pounds of what he himself had calculated that he could manage. She was, whichever way you looked at it, an asset that it would be impossible to replace at the price. There was only one tiny fly in the ointment…

‘I could manage that,’ he said. ‘Yeah. I could pay you that.’

The telephone rang. Beaming at him, she answered it, and the delight in her voice was such that it sounded as though she had been eagerly anticipating the call for days.