... it is hard to throw off long-established love: Hard, but this you must manage somehow... - Robert Galbraith

Strike was used to playing archaeologist among the ruins of people’s traumatised memories;

For this to happen today, of all days! It felt like a wink from God.

"She wuz depressed. Yeah, she wuz on stuff for it. Like me. Sometimes it jus' takes you over. It's an illness," she said, although she made the words sound like "it's uh nillness."

Nillness, thought Strike, for a second distracted. He had slept badly. Nillness, that was where Lula Landry had gone, and where all of them, he and Rochelle included, were headed. Sometimes illness turned slowly to nillness, as was happening to Bristow's mother... sometimes nillness rose to meet you out of nowhere, like a concrete road slamming your skull apart.