Chapter 8
8
I knew I’d fallen irrevocably in love with this beautiful, intelligent and seemingly sensitive man. I’d had two previous long-term relationships back in Manchester – one particularly we both thought would end in commitment, but were simultaneously relieved when we realised we were going nowhere, neither of us wanting the same things in life.
But this thing with Fabian was like nothing I’d ever experienced before: I felt I was drowning in those eyes of his, wanting to touch him constantly when I was in his presence, desperate to see him again the minute I wasn’t.
That first evening, after we’d eaten the clams and the Caesar salad, we stayed at the table, drinking coffee and just talking, getting to know everything about each other: he was Taurus to my Capricorn; favourite colour navy blue to my mauve; couldn’t be without French cheese, whereas I had withdrawal symptoms if there was no Marmite and peanut butter on my one shelf of the shared kitchen cupboard.
And all the time, our fingers would accidentally touch as he poured coffee, passed the milk jug, opened the exceptionally expensive box of chocolates from Harrods his grandmother had sent over for his birthday. I was waiting for a repeat of the ice-cream kisses but none was forthcoming and I was both relieved and disappointed. I didn’t want the evening to end in sex on his cream carpet – that would have been too obvious. If this was going to be worth anything, have any future, then sex on the second date was not happening.
At midnight, Fabian called an Uber, took my hand and walked me down to the street where, while we waited for the cab, he threaded his hands through my hair, pulling his face down to mine and kissing me so thoroughly I was a quivering mess and debating whether it wouldn’t be a good idea to walk him all the way back up again and ravish him on that cream carpet after all.
Just a few days later – it was a Wednesday evening; I remember it so well – Fabian asked if I’d like to meet him after he’d finished work for the day. We could walk along Regent’s Canal from Little Venice as it was such a beautiful evening, and stop for a drink at one of the cafes and pubs along its length. I’d spent all day at The Mercury theatre, signing contracts, and insurance documents, being fitted for outfits and completing a hundred and one other tasks. I met the cast as they trooped in and along to the dressing rooms, some with only half an hour or so to spare before curtain-up for the mid-week matinee, and I marvelled, wondering would I ever appear as sanguine as these performers. I knew on my first night’s performance the following week I’d be impatiently ready to go, poised with my make-up on, as soon as the stage door was unlocked.
I watched the whole performance, singing along and acting out the steps in my head as well as with my restless tapping feet, from the safety of the side stage. My excitement and delight were only slightly marred when the girl whose part I was about to take shoved past me, deliberately knocking into my shoulder as she came off stage.
One of the leading men had seen her actions and, still smiling at me, said, ‘She assumed she’d have maternity leave rather than being thrown off the production. You can’t really blame her for taking it out on you.’
I wanted to retort tartly, ‘I think I can,’ but I was the new girl, I didn’t need to be ruffling any feathers, and instead nodded with, ‘I get that,’ and a smile.
After that little altercation, the thought of a walk in the evening sunshine and a drink with Fabian was music to my ears. After all, how many other evenings would I have free once I was committed to seven performances – possibly eight, including two matinees – every week?
‘You look tired,’ I said, noting the dark shadows around his eyes.
‘Been working on a very difficult case.’ He nodded, taking my hand. ‘Not left chambers before 10p.m. since I last saw you.’
‘Even at the weekend?’
‘Saturday, I had a family commitment I was expected to be at but, yes, Sunday was spent going through indictments.’ Fabian sighed, pulling a hand through his hair in a gesture I’d come to recognise very much as his own. ‘You can’t imagine how much I’d rather have spent the time with you, Robyn.’ He stroked the area between my thumb and finger as he led the way to his parked car at Marylebone, and just that simple touch sent a spark through my whole body.
Fabian drove quickly to Little Venice, the affluent residential district in West London that sits on the junction of the Paddington arm of the Grand Union Canal, the Regent’s Canal, and the entrance to Paddington Basin, before parking up. We walked and we talked, stopping for a drink at two waterside pubs – Coke for Fabian, white wine spritzer for me – and when he bent his head to kiss me, and the kiss went on and on and two kids on bikes doing wheelies shouted, ‘Oy, mate, get a room,’ Fabian pulled away and groaned.
‘Christ, Robyn, if I don’t make love to you soon, I won’t be held responsible for anything else…’
‘I don’t want you feeling responsible for anything ,’ I managed to get out once we both came up again for air.
‘Shall we go?’ he asked almost brusquely, before grabbing the attention of the waiter to pay for drinks we’d hardly touched. We set off back to the car and had only been gone thirty seconds when his phone rang.
‘Sorry,’ he eventually said after a short conversation to whoever was on the other end of the phone. ‘I’ll have to make a detour and call in for a file I need.’
‘Call in?’
‘At chambers.’
‘I’ve always wanted to see where barristers hang out backstage.’
‘Backstage?’ He smiled and we carried on to the car, which, in the time we’d been away, had accrued a parking ticket. ‘Shit, that’s London for you,’ he said, peeling it off the windscreen and throwing it into the car before driving us off – in a manner guaranteed to end up with another motoring offence – towards the Royal Courts of Justice.
‘Handy,’ I said, once he’d parked the car in its allotted spot. ‘You know, your apartment, chambers and the courts all within walking distance of each other.’ But Fabian didn’t reply, intent on retrieving the file as quickly as possible. He pushed myriad security buttons to enter a large domed building. Several flights of marbled stairs, as well as an imposing amount of framed-photograph-covered cream painted walls, stretched ahead of us.
‘Through here,’ was all Fabian said as we walked the length of classically decorated corridors.
‘Wow,’ I finally said. ‘Is this all yours?’
‘The Carringtons’, anyway.’ He smiled over his shoulder. ‘Been here for over a century. We have forty barristers.’
‘Forty?’ I gasped. ‘Forty offices?’
‘Twenty,’ he corrected, somewhat vaguely. ‘The more junior barristers share.’
‘I bet you don’t.’
Fabian smiled and gestured as we walked. ‘Julius’s office… my mother’s… Reception… You still here, Milly? You need to get off.’
‘I wanted to finish this for you, Mr Carrington,’ she said, looking me up and down, obviously intent on trying to work out who I was.
‘Oh, Mr Carrington,’ an acne-faced young man called nervously from around an open door to my right. ‘Could I have a word?’
‘Go home, Hugh,’ Fabian called. ‘It can wait until the morning.’
‘But…’
‘Really, go home.’
I followed Fabian up the flight of stairs where he unlocked a door on the left and we went in. The room was immaculately – obsessively – tidy and I took in the rows and rows of leather-bound legal tomes and the huge desk under the tiniest of windows. I glanced around, recalling the notoriety of Dr Crippen and the Kray twins as well as Ruth Ellis, the last woman in the UK to be hanged for murder and, of course, the Yorkshire Ripper. All had faced judgement at the Old Bailey. Maybe, I thought, their defence could have been planned in this very building?
I shivered at the thought, finding a modicum of normality in a pair of battered sofas at one end of the room, and the drinks cabinet strategically placed between them.
‘Help yourself to a drink,’ Fabian said, his eyes still on the papers in front of him. ‘And now we’re back, I’ll have one myself. There should be some mixers in the fridge – I could really do with a whiskey and ginger ale. And the lavatory is through that door if you need it,’ he added.
I poured us both drinks and, after handing one to Fabian, wandered the room, taking in the many photographs of past Carringtons, slowing down at one of a younger and presumably newly called to the bar Fabian.
‘I’ll try not to be too long.’ He smiled in my direction, before loosening his tie and unbuttoning his shirt collar with obvious relief.
Fabian was on home territory here, and for thirty minutes he appeared as though in a different world, moving from desk to computer to the large tomes and then to files on a shelf, intent on something or other before shifting back to his laptop.
Eventually he turned to me, draining his whiskey as he did so. ‘I thought you’d done bar work?’ He smiled. ‘There must have been at least a triple shot in that.’
‘Sorry.’ I pulled a face. ‘More used to pulling pints in pubs in Manchester than sorting spirits in a barrister’s bar.’ I sipped at my own drink, unable to tear my glance away from Fabian as he moved towards me, taking my glass and placing it on his desk. He was so close I could see the smattering of freckles on the bridge of his nose, was able to take in the sweep of his long eyelashes as he briefly closed his beautiful brown eyes, and then I closed my own as he kissed me again and the air between us appeared to still.
‘Ah, Robyn,’ was all he said as he began unbuttoning my shirt to reveal what was beneath, and my own hands went automatically to his white shirt, finishing the job of unbuttoning its front that Fabian had started when he’d loosened his tie.
‘Just a moment…’ He broke off as I stood back to admire his quite spectacular tanned and toned torso, before leaning in once more to pull the shirt from its mooring in the black leather belt. He moved to the door, turned the key and then, with a smile, pressed me gently back against the desk. I can never take in the tantalising scent of leather and furniture polish without remembering that first time Fabian made love to me, and it was like nothing I’d ever experienced before.
Afterwards, his arms wrapped tightly round me, he whispered, ‘Stay with me tonight, Robyn.’
‘I thought you liked your own company.’
‘I do, but tonight I need you to come back and stay with me. We can’t make love like that and then go our separate ways.’
‘I’ve no toothbrush.’
‘I’ve a stack.’
‘Well, then, what can I say?’