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Strike turned off all the lights and eased himself into bed, trying not to wake her, but when he’d finally settled his full weight onto the mattress, Robin stirred, and groped in the darkness for his hand. Finding it, she squeezed. ‘I knew you were there,’ she murmured drowsily, half-asleep. ‘I knew you were there.’ Strike said nothing, but continued to hold her hand until, five minutes later, she gave a long sigh, released him, and rolled over onto her side.
‘Get some rest, eat some food and calm the fuck down.
Reminds me of 'Cheer the fuck up and give me that sandwich' from Career of Evil when Robin finally has a conversation with Strike about training to be a detective
‘What the fuck happened?’ said Strike, descending the stairs. ‘What d’you mean?’ said Robin, taken aback. ‘I’ve been worried fucking sick, I thought someone had grabbed you off the fucking street!’
I think I know why I like the 'I'm fucking thin?' quote and the two above and this one - Strike tends to drop the f-bomb more when he's worried about Robin, and covers it up/deals with it by swearing and shouting - very English of him
‘I’d like to take credit,’ said Strike, also picking up a chair and taking it to the table, ‘but that’s mostly down to my detective partner.’ ‘Did she get your client’s relative out, before she torched the place?’ asked Abigail, as both sat down. ‘She did, yeah,’ said Strike. ‘Blimey. You don’ wanna let ’er go in an ’urry.’ ‘I don’t intend to,’ said Strike.
Nope, he certainly doesn't
“Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times.”
‘Cormoran, I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘Feel sorry for Amelia and her kids, not me,’ he said. ‘I was done. There’s nothing deader than dead love.’ For six years now, Robin had longed to know what Strike really felt for Charlotte Campbell, the woman he’d left for good on the very day Robin had arrived at the agency as a temp.
Robin had felt guilty about hoarding every crumb of information about Strike and Charlotte’s relationship Ilsa had ever let fall, feeling she was betraying Strike in listening, in remembering. He’d always been so cagey about the relationship, even after some of the barriers between them had come down, even after Strike had openly called Robin his best friend.
Strike, meanwhile, was aware he was breaking a vow he’d made himself six years previously, when, fresh from the rupture with a woman he still loved, he’d noticed how sexy his temp was, almost at the same moment he’d noticed the engagement ring on her finger.
Even after his love for Charlotte had shrivelled into non-existence, leaving behind it a ghostly husk of pity and exasperation, Strike had maintained this reserve, because, against his will, his feelings for Robin were growing deeper and more complex, and her third finger was bare now, and he’d feared ruining the most important friendship of his life, and trashing the business for which both had sacrificed so much.
‘It’s all right. Amelia burned it. Doesn’t matter – I could’ve written it myself – I told Amelia exactly what Charlotte wrote.’ Robin worried it might be indecent to ask, but Strike didn’t wait for the question. ‘She said that even though I was a bastard to her, she still loved me. That I’d know one day what I’d given up, that I’d never be happy, deep down, without her. That—’
Strike and Robin had once before sat in this office, after dark and full of whisky, and he’d come dangerously close to crossing the line between friend and lover. He’d felt then the fatalistic daring of the trapeze artist, preparing to swing out into the spotlight with only black air beneath him, and he felt the same now. ‘—she knew I was in love with you.’
A stab of cold shock, an electric charge to the brain: Robin couldn’t quite believe what she’d just heard. The passing seconds seemed to slow. She waited for Strike to say ‘which was her spite, obviously,’ or, ‘because she never understood that a man and a woman could just be friends’, or to make a joke. Yet...
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He still didn't quite come out and say it though, did he? Will Robin find a way to continue her denial or will Strike actually come out and say that he loves her, properly?? We know he does but from Robin's point of view, she could probably still talk herself into believing she'd misunderstood him
Happiness is a choice that requires an effort at times, and it was well past time for him to make the effort.
