The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)(103)

Robin shivered as the family edged towards the doors of St Mary the Virgin, past the remnant of a ninth-century round-shafted cross that had a curiously pagan appearance, and then, at last, she saw Matthew, standing in the porch with his father and sister, pale and heart-stoppingly handsome in his black suit. As Robin watched, trying to catch his eye over the queue, a young woman reached up and embraced him. Robin recognised Sarah Shadlock, Matthew’s old friend from university. Her greeting was a little more lascivious, perhaps, than was appropriate in the circumstances, but Robin’s guilt about having come within ten seconds of missing the overnight train, about not having seen Matthew in nearly a week, made her feel she had no right to resent it.

‘Robin,’ he said urgently when he saw her and he forgot to shake three people’s hands as he held out his arms to her. As they hugged she felt tears prickle beneath her eyelids. This was real life, after all, Matthew and home…

‘Go and sit at the front,’ he told her and she obeyed, leaving her family at the back of the church to sit in the front pew with Matthew’s brother-in-law, who was dandling his baby daughter on his knee and greeted Robin with a morose nod.

It was a beautiful old church and Robin knew it well from the Christmas, Easter and harvest services she had attended all her life with her primary school and family. Her eyes travelled slowly from familiar object to familiar object. High above her over the chancel arch was a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds (or, at the very least, the school of Joshua Reynolds) and she fixed upon it, trying to compose her mind. A misty, mystical image, the boy-angel contemplating the distant vision of a cross emitting golden rays… Who had really done it, she wondered, Reynolds or some studio acolyte? And then she felt guilty that she was indulging her perennial curiosity instead of feeling sad about Mrs Cunliffe…

She had thought that she would be marrying here in a few weeks’ time. Her wedding dress was hanging ready in the spare room’s wardrobe, but instead, here was Mrs Cunliffe’s coffin coming up the aisle, shining black with silver handles, Owen Quine still in the morgue… no shiny coffin for his disembowelled body yet, rotted and burned…

Don’t think about that, she told herself sternly as Matthew sat down beside her, the length of his leg warm against hers.

The last twenty-four hours had been so packed with incident that it was hard for Robin to believe she was here, at home. She and Strike might have been in hospital, they had come close to slamming head first into that overturned lorry… the driver covered in blood… Mrs Cunliffe was probably unscathed in her silk-lined box… Don’t think about that…

It was as though her eyes were being stripped of a comfortable soft focus. Maybe seeing things like bound and disembowelled bodies did something to you, changed the way you saw the world.

She knelt a little late for prayer, the cross-stitched hassock rough beneath her freezing knees. Poor Mrs Cunliffe… except that Matthew’s mother had never much liked her. Be kind, Robin implored herself, even though it was true. Mrs Cunliffe had not liked the idea of Matthew being tied to the same girlfriend for so long. She had mentioned, within Robin’s hearing, how good it was for young men to play the field, sow their wild oats… The way in which Robin had left university had tainted her, she knew, in Mrs Cunliffe’s eyes.

The statue of Sir Marmaduke Wyvill was facing Robin from mere feet away. As she stood for the hymn he seemed to be staring at her in his Jacobean dress, life-sized and horizontal on his marble shelf, propped up on his elbow to face the congregation. His wife lay beneath him in an identical pose. They were oddly real in their irreverent poses, cushions beneath their elbows to keep their marble bones comfortable, and above them, in the spandrels, allegorical figures of death and mortality. Till death do us part… and her thoughts drifted again: she and Matthew, tied together for ever until they died… no, not tied… don’t think tied… What’s wrong with you? She was exhausted. The train had been overheated and jerky. She had woken on the hour, afraid that it would get stuck in the snow.

Matthew reached for her hand and squeezed her fingers.

The burial took place as quickly as decency allowed, the snow falling thick around them. There was no lingering at the graveside; Robin was not the only one perceptibly shivering.

Everyone went back to the Cunliffes’ big brick house and milled around in the welcome warmth. Mr Cunliffe, who was always a little louder than the occasion warranted, kept filling glasses and greeting people as though it were a party.

‘I’ve missed you,’ Matthew said. ‘It’s been horrible without you.’

‘Me too,’ said Robin. ‘I wish I could have been here.’

Lying again.

‘Auntie Sue’s staying tonight,’ said Matthew. ‘I thought I could maybe come over to your place, be good to get away for a bit. It’s been full on this week…’

‘Great, yes,’ said Robin, squeezing his hand, grateful that she would not have to stay at the Cunliffes’. She found Matthew’s sister hard work and Mr Cunliffe overbearing.

But you could have put up with it for a night, she told herself sternly. It felt like an undeserved escape.

And so they returned to the Ellacotts’ house, a short walk from the square. Matthew liked her family; he was glad to change out of his suit into jeans, to help her mother lay the kitchen table for dinner. Mrs Ellacott, an ample woman with Robin’s red-gold hair tucked up in an untidy bun, treated him with gentle kindness; she was a woman of many interests and enthusiasms, currently doing an Open University degree in English Literature.