You are not writing properly unless someone is bleeding, probably you. - Robert Galbraith

Robin felt her luck, these days, at having two loving parents. Her work had taught her how many people weren’t that fortunate, how many people had families that were broken beyond repair, how many adults walked around carrying invisible scars from their earliest childhood, their perceptions and associations forever altered by lack of love, by violence, by cruelty.

It was four in the morning, the hopeless hour when shivering insomniacs inhabit a world of hollow shadow, and existence seems frail and strange.

". . . you know who Polworth is?"

"Your best mate," said Robin.

"He's my oldest mate," Strike corrected her. "My best mate . . . "

For a split second he wondered whether he was going to say it, but the whisky had lifted the guard he usually kept upon himself: why not say it, why not let go?

" . . . is you."

Robin was so amazed, she couldn't speak. Never, in four years, had Strike come close to telling her what she was to him. Fondness had had to be deduced from offhand comments, small kindnesses, awkward silences or gestures forced from him under stress. She'd only once before felt as she did now, and the unexpected gift that had engendered the feeling had been a sapphire and diamond ring, which she'd left behind when she walked out on the man who'd given it to her.

She wanted to make some kind of return, but for a moment or two, her throat felt too constricted.

"I . . . well, the feeling's mutual," she said, trying not to sound too happy.