But they had already tried, again and again and again, and always, when the first crashing wave of mutual longing subsided, the ugly wreck of the pas… - Robert Galbraith

For all his determination to keep her at arm's length, they had literally leaned on each other. He could remember exactly what it felt like to have his arm around her waist as they had meandered towards Hazlitt's Hotel. She was tall enough to hold easily. He had never fancied very small women.

Matthew would not like this, she had said.

He would have liked it even less had he known how much Strike had liked it.

Neither of them could tell who had made the first move, or whether they acted in unison. They were holding each other tightly before they knew what happened, Robin's chin on Strike's shoulder, his face in her hair. He smelled of sweat, beer and surgical spirits, she, of roses and the faint perfume that he had missed when she was no longer in the office. The feel of her was both new and familiar, as though he had held her a long time ago, as though he had missed it without knowing it for year. Through the closed door upstairs the band playing on:

I'll go wherever you will go
If I could make you mine ...

In the depths of his tiredness, surrounded by these blank, sheep-like visages, he found himself pondering the accidents that had brought all of them into being. Every birth was, viewed properly, mere chance. With a hundred million sperm swimming blindly through the darkness, the odds against a person becoming themselves were staggering.