1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“Not that much, by your standards,” said Robin, with an arch look at her
handmaidens. “Sandra would love this, though,” she said firmly to Strike, who,
caught off guard, grinned. “And it is her fortieth.”
“She could wear it with anything,” the cotton candy girl assured Strike
eagerly. “So versatile.”
“OK, I’ll try that Cavalli dress,” said Robin blithely, turning back to the
changing room.
“Sandra told me to come with him,” she told the three assistants, as they
helped her out of the coat, and unzipped the dress to which she had pointed. “To
make sure he doesn’t make another stupid mistake. He bought her the world’s
ugliest earrings for her thirtieth; they cost an arm and a leg and she’s never had
them out of the safe.”
Robin did not know where the invention was coming from; she felt inspired.
Stepping out of her jumper and skirt, she began to wriggle into a clinging poisongreen
dress. Sandra was becoming real to her as she talked: a little spoiled,
somewhat bored, confiding in her sister-in-law over wine that her brother (a
banker, Robin thought, though Strike did not really look like her idea of a
banker) had no taste at all.
“So she said to me, take him to Vashti and get him to crack open his wallet.
Oh yes, this is nice.”
It was more than nice. Robin stared at her own reflection; she had never worn
anything so beautiful in her life. The green dress was magically constructed to
shrink her waist to nothingness, to carve her figure into flowing curves, to
elongate her pale neck. She was a serpentine goddess in glittering viridian, and
the assistants were all murmuring and gasping their appreciation.
“How much?” Robin asked the redhead.
“Two thousand eight hundred and ninety-nine,” said the girl.
“Nothing to him,” said Robin airily, striding out through the curtains to show
Strike, whom they found examining a pile of gloves on a circular table.
His only comment on the green dress was “Yeah.” He had barely looked at
her.
“Well, maybe it’s not Sandra’s color,” said Robin, with a sudden feeling of
embarrassment; Strike was not, after all, her brother or her boyfriend; she had
perhaps taken invention too far, parading in front of him in a skintight dress. She
retreated into the changing room.
Stripped again to bra and pants she said: