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Troubled Blood
Part Four - 40
“Actually, why don’t we put all the bags in my bedroom for now?” Robin suggested, as Jonathan swung his holdall onto the sofa, too. “And keep this area clear for after dinner?”
Neither Courtney nor Kyle showed any inclination to move, so Robin and Jonathan took the bags downstairs together. Once they were in Robin’s room, Jonathan took a box of chocolates out of his holdall and gave them to his sister.
“Thanks, Jon, that’s lovely. D’you feel OK? You look a bit pale.”
Troubled Blood
Part Four - 40
Why had Strike turned up drunk? Why did they have to talk about rape and porn? Her attacker had been a voracious consumer of violent pornography, with a particular emphasis on choking, but his internet search history had been deemed inadmissible evidence by the judge. Robin didn’t want to know whether Strike used porn; she didn’t want to think about trafficked children being filmed, just as she didn’t want to remember Morris’s dick pic on her phone, or the snuff movie Bill Talbot had stolen. Tired and low, she asked herself why Strike couldn’t leave the students alone, if not out of consideration for his host, then for her, his partner.
She headed back upstairs. Halfway to the living area she heard Kyle’s heated voice and knew the argument had escalated. Arriving on the top floor, Robin saw the other five sitting around the coffee table, on which stood a cafetière, a bottle and the chocolates Jonathan had brought. Strike and Max were both holding glasses of brandy while Courtney, who was now very obviously drunk, though nowhere near as much as Strike, was nodding along with Kyle’s argument, a cup of coffee balanced precariously in her hands. Robin sat back down at the abandoned dining table, away from the rest of the group, took a piece of beef out of the casserole and fed it to a pathetically grateful Wolfgang.
“The point is to destigmatize and reclaim derogatory language about women,” Kyle was saying to Strike. “That’s the point.”