Strike knew he oughtn’t to rise to the bait. Nevertheless, he said,
“Other than our actual mother, you mean.”
“Leda wasn’t my mother,” said Lucy coldly. Strike had never heard her say it in so many words, though it had often been implied. “I haven’t considered her my mother since I was fourteen years old. Younger, actually. Joan’s my mother.”
And when Strike made no response, she said,
“You chose Leda. I know you love Joan, but we have entirely different relationships with her.”
“Didn’t realize it was a competition,” Strike said, reaching for another cigarette.
“I’m only telling you how I feel!”
And telling me how I feel.
Several barbed comments about the infrequency of Strike’s visits had already dropped from his sister’s lips during their week of enforced proximity. He’d bitten back all irritable retorts. His primary aim was to leave the house without rowing with anyone.
“I always hated it when Leda came to take us away,” said Lucy now, “but you were glad to go.”
He noted the Joan-esque statement of fact, the lack of inquiry.
“I wasn’t always glad to go,” Strike contradicted her, thinking of the ferry, Dave Polworth and the smugglers’ caves, but Lucy seemed to feel that he was trying to rob her of something.
“I’m just saying, you lost your mother years ago. Now I’m—I might be—losing mine.”
She mopped her eyes again with the damp toilet roll.
Lower back throbbing, eyes stinging with tiredness, Strike stood smoking in silence. He knew that Lucy would have liked to excise Leda forever from her memory, and sometimes, remembering a few of the things Leda had put them through, he sympathized. This morning, though, the wraith of Leda seemed to drift on his cigarette smoke around him. He could hear her saying to Lucy, “Go on and have a good cry, darling, it always helps,” and “Give your old mum a fag, Cormy.” He couldn’t hate her.
“I can’t believe you went out with Dave Polworth last night,” said Lucy suddenly. “Your last night here!”
“Joan virtually shoved me out of the house,” said Strike, nettled. “She loves Dave. Anyway, I’ll be back in a couple of weeks.”
“Will you?” said Lucy, her eyelashes now beaded with tears. “Or will you be in the middle of some case and just forget?”
Strike blew smoke out into the constantly lightening air, which had that flat blue tinge that precedes sunrise. Far to the right, hazily visible over the rooftops of the houses on the slope that was Hillhead, the division between sky and water was becoming clearer on the horizon.
“No,” he said, “I won’t forget.”
“Because you’re good in a crisis,” said Lucy, “I don’t deny that, but it’s keeping a commitment going that you seem to have a problem with. Joan’ll need support for months and months, not just when—”
“I know that, Luce,” said Strike, his temper rising in spite of himself. “I understand illness and recuperation, believe it or—”
“Yeah, well,” said Lucy, “you were great when Jack was in hospital, but when everything’s fine you simply don’t bother.”
“I took Jack out two weeks ago, what’re you—?”
“You couldn’t even make the effort to come to Luke’s birthday party! He’d told all his friends you were going to be there—”
“Well, he shouldn’t have done, because I told you explicitly over the phone—”
“You said you’d try—”
“No, you said I’d try,” Strike contradicted her, temper rising now, in spite of his best intentions. “You said ‘You’ll make it if you can, though.’ Well, I couldn’t make it, I told you so in advance and it’s not my fault you told Luke differently—”
“I appreciate you taking Jack out every now and then,” said Lucy, talking over him, “but has it never occurred to you that it would be nice if the other two could come, too? Adam cried when Jack came home from the War Rooms! And then you come down here,” said Lucy, who seemed determined to get everything off her chest now she’d started, “and you only bring a present for Jack. What about Luke and Adam?”
“Ted called with the news about Joan and I set straight off. I’d been saving those badges for Jack, so I brought them with me.”
“Well, how do you think that makes Luke and Adam feel? Obviously they think you don’t like them as much as Jack!”
“I don’t,” said Strike, finally losing his temper. “Adam’s a whiny little prick and Luke’s a complete arsehole.”
He crushed out his cigarette on the wall, flicked the stub into the hedge and headed back inside, leaving Lucy gasping for air like a beached fish.
Back in the dark sitting room, Strike blundered straight into the table nest: the vase of dried flowers toppled heavily onto the patterned carpet and before he knew what he was doing he’d crushed the fragile stems and papery heads to dust beneath his false foot. He was still tidying up the fragments as best he could when Lucy strode silently past him toward the door to the stairs, emanating maternal outrage. Strike set the now empty vase back on the table and, waiting until he heard Lucy’s bedroom door close, headed upstairs for the bathroom, fuming.
Afraid to use the shower in case he woke Ted and Joan, he peed, pulled the flush and only then remembered how noisy the old toilet was. Washing as best he could in tepid water while the cistern refilled with a noise like a cement mixer, Strike thought that if anyone slept through that, they’d have to be drugged.
Sure enough, on opening the bathroom door, he came face to face with Joan. The top of his aunt’s head barely came up to Strike’s chest. He looked down on her thinning gray hair, into once forget-me-not blue eyes now bleached with age. Her frogged and quilted red dressing gown had the ceremonial dignity of a kabuki robe.
“Morning,” Strike said, trying to sound cheerful and achieving only a fake bonhomie. “Didn’t wake you, did I?”
“No, no, I’ve been awake for a while. How was Dave?” she asked.
“Great,” said Strike heartily. “Loving his new job.”
“And Penny and the girls?”
“Yeah, they’re really happy to be back in Cornwall.”
“Oh good,” said Joan. “Dave’s mum thought Penny might not want to leave Bristol.”
“No, it’s all worked out great.”
The bedroom door behind Joan opened. Luke was standing there in his pajamas, rubbing his eyes ostentatiously.
“You woke me up,” he told Strike and Joan.
“Oh, sorry, love,” said Joan.
“Can I have Coco Pops?”
“Of course you can,” said Joan fondly.
Luke bounded downstairs, stamping on the stairs to make as much noise as possible. He was gone barely a minute before he came bounding back toward them, glee etched over his freckled face.
“Granny, Uncle Cormoran’s broken your flowers.”
You little shit.
“Yeah, sorry. The dried ones,” Strike told Joan. “I knocked them over. The vase is fine—”