Chapter 33
33
Racing out of the classroom, heart pounding and without dismissing the class first, I took the steps two at a time down to Reception and Mason’s office, scattering kids and staff as I went.
‘Oy, wotchitmiss, that’s me best Gucci,’ floated crossly in my wake as my shoulder separated an oversized bag full of books and papers from its owner.
‘He’s in there , Robyn.’ Sally nodded in some excitement towards Mason’s open office door. ‘Is he really the bloke who’s defending the Soho Slasher?’ she added excitedly. ‘I saw him on TV. He’s?—’
‘Thanks, Sally.’ I cut her off and walked into the office, closing the door firmly behind me.
‘What the hell are you doing ?’ I asked, leaning against the door, my arms folded against my racing heart in a futile attempt to calm it down.
‘He wouldn’t let me see you.’ Fabian spoke calmly but his face was pale.
‘Who wouldn’t?’
‘This head teacher of yours.’
‘What do you mean?’ I stared at Fabian and then across at Mason, who was looking slightly sheepish, but came out fighting.
‘He was here last Thursday,’ Mason said indignantly. ‘Hanging around like some pathetic stalker, trying to see you.’ Mason sat back in his chair, somewhat portentously, looking down his nose at Fabian in the same way he addressed recalcitrant pupils. ‘Said he’d seen you on Focus North . I assumed he was just a random viewer at first, then I realised who he was, once he gave his name. I don’t know how he could have seen you on Focus North when it’s our local TV programme and he’s living in London. Defending that bastard Henderson-Smith. Unbelievable.’ Mason was at his most righteous, lecturing the pair of us in the same tone he used at meetings when castigating the staff for the week’s misdemeanours that had come to his notice.
‘What? And you never told me?’
‘I think, Ms Allen, if you recall, you assured me there was no way you’d ever want to see this man again. I had only your interests… your mental health and well-being… at heart.’
‘My mental health? Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ I gave Mason my best withering glare. He was jealous! Despite all the conflicting emotions whizzing through my head, I could see clearly that he didn’t want me going off with anyone else.
I turned to Fabian. ‘So, what are you doing here? How can I help you?’
‘Robyn’ –he took my arm – ‘can we get out of here?’
‘She’s back teaching in’ – Mason glanced at his watch – ‘forty minutes.’
‘Robyn?’
Oh, but he was sublime. He’d lost weight, I saw, his dark hair even longer than before and his face pale, but he was still consummately glorious and just looking at him was enough to have my pulse racing like the winner of the 3.30 at Aintree.
‘I lost all my frees last week, Mr Donoghue,’ I said, turning to Mason. ‘I’m sure you won’t object to my taking the afternoon off to take care of my… my mental health ? I’m sure you won’t mind covering the two Year 9 classes on my timetable?’
Fabian’s silver 911 was parked in the far corner of the staff car park, sticking out like a sore thumb amongst the teachers’ Corsas, Minis and VWs and gathering a crowd of Year 7 petrolheads who were gazing upon it reverentially. We walked in silence towards it, the eleven-year-olds parting like the Red Sea at our approach.
‘Nice car, miss,’ Cameron Halliday called.
‘Nothing to do with me,’ I said, pulling a face but getting in nevertheless.
‘Where to?’ Fabian asked, leaning across as I fumbled with the seat belt, my fingers seemingly unable to undertake the simple task my brain was instructing them to do.
‘You appear to be taking me somewhere,’ I snapped.
‘I don’t know the area, Robyn,’ Fabian said without a smile. ‘Just point me in the direction of a park or a pub or… or somewhere we can sit and talk.’
‘There’s the one pub in Beddingfield,’ I said. ‘Mind you, you’ll have to be on your guard: the barmaid there ran off with Jess’s husband last time he was in there.’
‘Jess?’
‘My sister.’
‘Of course.’
Of course?
Fabian drove too quickly down the narrow winding lanes that led from Little Micklethwaite across to the rather more upmarket village of Beddingfield, following my instructions but saying nothing else. We pulled up outside The Green Dragon, which was already decked out in its seasonal festive best.
‘Pretty pub,’ Fabian said as he got out and looked round.
‘Pretty village too,’ I said. ‘Yorkshire isn’t all mill chimneys and eeh bah gum , you know.’
‘I don’t think I ever thought it was.’
‘Not a patch on Marlow, of course.’
‘You’ll have to show me round some time and let me make that judgement.’ He sighed but didn’t smile. ‘I need a beer. What’ll you have?’
‘Wine gives me a headache at lunchtime, but I’ll have one anyway,’ I said, moving to the back of the pub where most of the tables were free. I sat and watched as Fabian smiled and chatted to the girl behind the bar – not Jill who’d been at school with Jess and who had run off with Dean – loving the way his dark hair curled onto the collar of his denim shirt beneath the navy sweater. I’d never stopped loving this man. I might have tried, tried hard to move on by having a fling with Mason, but sitting here, unable to take my gaze off Fabian’s back, feasting my eyes on his backside in the faded jeans, I knew it had been to no avail. And if he was just here to bring back the cardigan I’d left in his flat, before zooming off back down the M1, at least I could refill my senses with enough of him to sustain me through his absence over the coming months.
‘Are you here to return my cardigan?’ I asked as he sat opposite, taking a long drink from his glass of Budweiser.
‘Your cardigan? What cardigan?’ Fabian pulled a face.
Right, not my cardigan, then.
‘Fabian, why are you here?’
‘I wanted to see you. To explain.’
I sipped at my wine, wanting to cry as I remembered that final message he’d texted telling me not to get in touch ever again.
‘You just couldn’t hack the fact that I was just doing my job, could you?’ Fabian said crossly after a long silence. ‘The job I’d spent years being trained to do.’ He shook his head. ‘Running back home when you found out about the Henderson-Smith case. When I needed you most.’
‘There wasn’t much running involved with my damaged knee.’ I glared at Fabian. ‘And, you never actually told me you were defending him.’
‘I knew what your reaction would be.’
‘You never told me!’ I insisted. ‘I had to find out from that brother of yours.’
‘My half-brother.’
‘Does it make a difference?’
‘And you never told me about your grandfather.’ Fabian was equally angry.
‘Do you blame me?’
‘Yes, I do blame you.’
‘Your Marlow set would have loved knowing that little nugget of information.’
‘We’ve all got something in our families we’re not proud of.’
‘I bet you haven’t.’
‘How about my great-great-great-grandfather building his fortune on the back of the slave trade?’
‘You’ve just made that up!’ I said indignantly.
‘No, I haven’t. The last thing I was going to do was come out and confess that to you! And then you blocked my number…’ Fabian shook his head, furious now. ‘Did what we have mean nothing ? Nothing, Robyn?’
‘You blocked me,’ I countered. ‘ And I hurt my knee badly. Very badly,’ I added mulishly.
‘I know that, Robyn. I went round to the theatre to see you once I’d calmed down after you’d blocked me . The guy in charge there – Carl, is it? – said you were injured and wouldn’t be dancing again for a long time. That you’d returned to Yorkshire.’
‘And you didn’t think to come up to Yorkshire, knowing not only that I’d damaged my ACL, but that my mum had been taken into hospital again?’
‘Your mum? And again?’ Fabian glared at me. ‘What do you mean, again? That theatre guy didn’t say anything about your mum. You never once talked about any illness your mum had, Robyn. I didn’t know. Why didn’t you tell me?’
Because Mum had always been embarrassed about her seizures. And, to my shame, always afraid that her condition was hereditary and that, one day, I too might be affected, I’d always kept poor Mum’s ailment at a distance.
‘You blocked my number, Robyn,’ Fabian went on. ‘What was I supposed to think? I didn’t have your address up here in Yorkshire; you’d never once suggested a weekend up here to meet your mum and your sisters. I was never even allowed to meet your father, although he was often in London.’
‘You wouldn’t have liked him. You’re both very… very different. From different worlds.’
‘I’d have loved anything, anyone connected with you, but no, you were ashamed of your family.’
‘I was not,’ I snapped indignantly, but acknowledging a slight sense of guilt that was gnawing at me like a bad toothache. ‘Don’t you come all self-righteous with me about not getting in touch…’ I put down my glass of wine on the table, scrabbling about in my bag for my phone. ‘There,’ I said in triumph, once I’d scrolled through and found that awful final message from Fabian. ‘Don’t you make me out to be the baddie when I messaged you almost immediately I was back here in Yorkshire, and you reply with a message like this.’
I think everything that needed to be said has been said, Robyn. I also think it best for both our sakes that we formally terminate our relationship and have no further contact with each other.
Fabian
Fabian stared down at the screen, shaking his head in apparent bewilderment. ‘Look, it’s probably all water under the bridge now, Robyn, but you need to know, I never sent this. I promise.’
All water under the bridge? What did he mean by that? I felt my heart plummet.
‘So, who did, then?’ I asked, trying to ignore the despair I was feeling at what he’d just come out with. ‘The phone fairy? And don’t tell me you left your phone somewhere and someone else wrote that. You were more attached to your damned phone than to me. You never let it out of your sight: I’d wake and find you scrolling in the middle of the night.’
‘Exactly that.’ Fabian sighed, closing his eyes and obviously thinking. ‘I was called out in court one morning by an extremely irritable – and irritated – judge, fed up of me constantly picking up my phone, hoping for a message from you. He said if I brought it into his court just once more, he’d ban me?—’
‘Oh, come on, that only happens on Judge Judy .’
‘When I remonstrated and said, “With all due respect, Your Honour,” he actually shouted back: “When someone begins a sentence with ‘with all due respect’, Mr Carrington, you can expect to be disrespected . Now, take that infernal device out of my court and leave it there, or I’ll have you for contempt…”’
If I hadn’t been feeling so confused, I’d probably have laughed at that. Instead, I said, ‘You’re having me on. He didn’t!’
‘He did. I had to leave it in my chambers.’
‘Whereupon someone else picked it up? And this someone else replied to my message? Is that what you’re saying?’ I raised an eyebrow at Fabian while scrutinising his face for the truth.
‘Robyn, when you rushed off, I was desperate to see you, not desperate to tell you I didn’t want to see you ever again – so, yes, that’s the only explanation I can come up with.’
‘Fish Face?’ I asked.
‘Who? Oh, Araminta?’ Fabian frowned, shaking his head. ‘While she’s absolutely delighted that I’m “no longer seeing your waitress, darling”, she’s never been to my chambers.’
‘So, someone else, then? I wonder who that could be.’
‘He wouldn’t!’
‘Of course he would,’ I snapped. ‘Julius would have done anything not to have me with you…’ I trailed off as Fabian looked at his watch, terrified he was going to get up and leave. ‘Fabian,’ I eventually managed to ask once more, ‘why are you here?’
‘I’ve been living in Yorkshire for the last two months.’
‘What?’ I stared. ‘Up here in Yorkshire?’ I shook my head, unable to take in what he was saying. ‘But why? How can you live up here, but work in London?’
‘I no longer work in London, Robyn.’
‘Yes, you do. I saw you on TV. Some Japanese… or… or some programme I was watching.’
‘Japanese? Why in God’s name were you watching Japanese TV? And you saw me on it?’ Fabian pulled a face.
‘But what about your work? What about the Soho Slasher?’
‘I couldn’t take it any more…’ Fabian’s voice cracked and eventually he stopped speaking, struggling to carry on. He looked away, trying to control his voice and his emotions. ‘I just couldn’t take Julius and my mother constantly trying to do my job for me; a job I finally admitted to myself I no longer wanted to do. Hadn’t wanted to do for a long time, if I’m being honest. It’s taken a lot of counselling to make me understand where I was in myself. Anyway, it all came to a head when I just couldn’t take knowing the terrible – really terrible – things Henderson-Smith had allegedly done to these poor women. I was tainted by it; didn’t want to be a part of it. And then the stuff on social media started: there were people – sometimes crowds – outside the apartment. I had eggs and dog shit thrown at me. And the daft thing was, I agreed with their sentiments, agreed with why they had it in for me for defending the bastard.’
‘Oh, Fabian.’ I took his hand, then just as quickly released it, holding my breath. ‘You’re with a blonde now?’
‘A blonde?’ Fabian frowned. ‘What blonde? What d’you mean I’m with a blonde?’ He looked round as though any number of blondes were about to descend and claim him for their own.
‘You do know who you’re going through to the next round of Yorkshire Christmas TopChef with?’
Fabian’s eyes widened and he stared for a good few seconds. Eventually, he gave a little smile. ‘You know about that ?’
‘I do now.’
‘Jess? She is your sister, then?’
‘You realised?’
‘She looks very much like you. She’s a cook. She’s in Yorkshire. She kept looking at me as if she might know me, once she’d seen my name on my apron.’
‘I told her it couldn’t possibly be you. That you were not eligible to enter. Got quite cross with her, actually, when she kept going on about you. And then, when Matt said you were set upon by some ravishing blonde?—’
‘Matt?’
‘Jess’s new man. Dr Matt Spencer,’ I added proudly. ‘My mum’s brilliant consultant. When Matt said you were with a blonde…’
‘What? What did you think?’ Fabian kept his eyes on mine but I couldn’t quite work out what he was thinking either.
‘All right, I just didn’t want to know any more. I sort of shut off. If there was even a tiny percentage chance that it was actually you who’d suddenly descended on Yorkshire… and with some blonde in tow…’ I trailed off ‘…I didn’t want to know…’
‘Well, yes, OK, I am living with a blonde, as you call her. I’ve known her a long time, she’s always been there for me and she loves me. When she moved to Harrogate, I decided to move up here with her. The thing is, she’s been trying to get me to come and find you. Knowing how I used to feel about you, she wanted me to come over to Beddingfield and see you. To explain what was going on… you know, with her and me…’
How he used to feel about me?
‘So you wouldn’t get the wrong idea…’ Fabian raised an eyebrow and drained his glass.
‘Right.’ I upended my own glass, not knowing quite what else to do, feeling sick with longing for him. ‘I need to go,’ I said, standing, but then turned back to Fabian. ‘But why? Why all that fuss down on the playing field?’
‘Seemed to be the only way to get in touch with you after that pillock of a head teacher wouldn’t let me see you. I just needed you to know.’
‘Know what?’
‘That I’m happy. Really happy. That you were right all along.’
‘About what?’
‘About my taking on the Henderson-Smith case. I shouldn’t have.’
‘And what are you doing with yourself? How are you earning a living?’
‘I’m not really.’ Fabian smiled. ‘I’m cooking a lot, helping out with foodbanks in Harrogate.’
‘Foodbanks?’ I stared.
‘And volunteering legal advice for those who need it, but can’t afford it.’
‘While living with The Blonde?’
‘ Living off The Blonde at the moment, to be honest… God, you’re pig-headed, Robyn. And bloody dense as well.’ Fabian folded his arms and leaned back on the chair until the front legs left the floor and the chair rested against the wall. If he’d been one of the kids in my class, I’d have had him for doing that.
‘Excuse me?’ I snapped instead.
‘I’m staying with Jemima. In Harrogate.’
‘Your sister?’ I shot Fabian a look of disbelief. ‘But Jemima is as dark-haired as you.’
‘Not any more she’s not.’ Fabian actually laughed, bringing his chair back onto all four legs and reaching for my hand. ‘She made the big decision to not only go blonde but move north, taking a job in Leeds to be nearer to the man she’s fallen in love with – he’s a consultant oncologist at St James’s Hospital. She continues to fly off at a moment’s notice all over Europe – while I house-sit – but just flies from Leeds Bradford airport, which, she says, is actually much easier than driving out to Heathrow or Gatwick when she was in central London.’
‘Right.’
‘Right, so that’s sorted, then.’ Fabian took my hand.
‘And no other blondes I should know about?’
‘Apart from Boris.’
‘Boris?’
‘Jemima and I appear to have inherited him, the rest of the family being too busy to really care for him properly. Mum’s come out of retirement again, taking on another high-profile case.’
‘Not the Soho Slasher?’ I felt my eyes widen at the very idea.
‘No! Henderson-Smith has a whole new defence team working for him. It’s been kept out of the news up until now – I guess the barrister who’s taken him on has been advised to keep a low profile after the media onslaught and protest that came my way.’
‘But what are you going to do? Up here, I mean. In the sticks. Away from your family.’
‘Walk Boris, read a lot, cook a lot, get to know Yorkshire, hope that some gorgeous brunette I know will come and visit. Maybe even stay with me at the weekends? And…’ he paused, slightly embarrassed ‘…and I’m already looking into this… looking for premises.’
‘Premises?’
‘My own restaurant… Early days yet, of course… Hell of a long way to go.’ Fabian bent his head, kissing my mouth, tentatively at first, as though asking permission, and then, with my knees actually trembling – and I could do nothing but acquiesce – he drew back, starting to laugh. ‘Do they do ice cream here?’ he asked.
‘I don’t need ice cream,’ I murmured, reaching for him once more, not caring that we were apparently putting the two old dears at the next table off their chicken in a basket.
‘Robyn.’ Fabian finally sighed. ‘I’ve never changed my mind about you. I knew from the moment I glanced up at you in that courtroom that I had to get to know you. And when I did, despite your constantly jumping out of my car and running away, despite your pride, your bloody awful prejudices and stereotyping, I never wanted to let you go.’
I felt tears well and had to brush them away. ‘You know, Fabian,’ I finally managed to get out, ‘while the last thing I wanted was to lose my career and I never ever wanted to lose you, this has all been a bit of a journey for me. And,’ I went on, standing and holding out my hand, suddenly excited at the prospect, ‘I want you to meet my family. Right now. I want you to meet Jess, meet her properly this time… mind you, you are competitors… but that doesn’t matter, does it…? And Mum and Sorrel. Sorrel is so lovely. And she’s absolutely going places. I’m so proud of her.’
‘And Roger?’ Fabian started to laugh. ‘I’ve been wanting to meet Roger Rabbit since, well, forever.’
He stood then, taking me in his arms and kissing me until I thought he’d never stop.
‘They’ll all love you,’ I murmured, once we came up for air. ‘Just like I do!’