The Hallmarked Man Advent Adventure Postscript:

Whither Boxing Day?

It’s December 26th, Boxing Day in the UK and Canada and which I am increasingly convinced needs to be adopted in the US. As I learned in my study of Good King Wenceslas, it is also the Feast of Stephen.

Troubled Blood is, to date, the only Boxing Day we’ve seen Strike and Robin celebrate, and it was not very festive for either. Strike was still holed up in his attic flat, recovering from the flu and. unknowingly, from ingesting poisoned chocolates. Robin is stuck in Masham with her family and, feeling miserable, she spends the day tipsy on mimosas and exchanging texts with Saul F. Morris, raising his hopes for a relationship with her and culminating in his drunkenly sending her a dick-pic.

Part Four of The Hallmarked Man picks up with Strike tailing plug on New Year’s Eve, so we don’t see how our heroes spent the second day of Christmas, but we can guess, at least, that Strike had a much more pleasant day than Robin.

Depending on how we interpret Robin’s It’s only four days thoughts on the night of the 22nd, and how we reconcile that with her telling the Flobberworm that they were staying until the 29th. Robin and RFM may be on the drive back to London. So, either long hours with her family in the crowded house, or in the car with the man she thinks, no, she knows she loves. Add that to the real possibility that she is still nursing the hangover from her over-indulgences of Christmas Eve, and we can assume she is not in a good place. She is undoubtedly still over-thinking the significance of Strike’s gift to her and, as we know, she will keep

bumping back against the conclusion she’d reached in the bathroom of the Prince of Wales pub: that Strike, whether consciously or unconsciously, was playing some kind of game intended to weaken her ties to Murphy, lest she contemplate leaving the agency for a more settled existence.

until she convinces herself that is the truth.

Strike is undoubtedly more optimistic, cheered by the quintuple-X reaction from Robin to the bracelet. He presumably woke up in his own flat, having escaped Lucy’s as soon as decency would allow on Christmas Day. I can imagine him opening and re-reading Robin’s thank you text multiple times.

His partner’s Christmas Day response to his foray into truly imaginative gift-giving had given Strike hope. She must have understood what he was implicitly telling her when she examined those silver charms, all of them freighted with memories and private jokes, mustn’t she? Didn’t opening his present in the early hours of Christmas Day indicate an unusual eagerness to know what he’d given her? The five kisses that had followed her thank you, the use of the word “love” – admittedly followed by “it” rather than “you” – could this be the behaviour of a woman trying to keep a man firmly at arm’s length?

Hopefully he got a couple of texts from Jack on maneuvers in Lucy’s backyard, wearing his new camouflage make-up.

As for other series, there is one Boxing Day of great significance in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows : the day of Harry’s dip in the Frozen Pond to retrieve the Sword of Gryffindor and the occasion of Ron’s reconciliation to him and the destruction of the locket horcrux. Three years ago I wrote an essay on the significance of Molly Weasley’s hand-knitted sweaters to Harry. and particularly to this scene.

Happy Boxing Day to all my readers, and thanks again for a wonderful 2025. My final gift is a picture of the first charm Chat GPT showed me when I asked for a “fishing priest (short wooden bat).

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