Chapter 1
1
JANUARY 2024, BEDDINGFIELD, WEST YORKSHIRE
Robyn
‘Robyn, no, no, stay. Stay in my lurve nest .’ Fabian’s arm snaked seductively round my middle, his hands warm, searching, inviting as I started to move from the bed.
‘Oh God, if only.’ I eased my body back towards him, wanting nothing more than to remain. I was torn between tittering at the daft expression he’d just come out with, responding to this heavenly man’s hands or jumping out of said lurve nest , aka Fabian’s bed, in his sister Jemima’s apartment in Harrogate. Glancing at my phone on the bedside table, I took the third option, horrible though it was, and headed for the shower.
‘Well, at least let me in there with you,’ Fabian called. ‘I don’t recall christening that shower yet.’
‘Fabian,’ I yelled over the Niagara Falls explosion of icy water that had me screeching like a banshee, ‘it’s almost 6a.m. and it’s… hell, it’s… freezing… I’ve to be in school by eight thirty… Oh, I can’t stand this… any longer… were you timing me…? Did I manage the full minute…?’ I stabbed at the temperature control, letting out a moan of pure ecstasy as warmth replaced the cold and my numb fingers started to return to life.
‘You’re such a drama queen.’ Fabian was at the basin now, cleaning his teeth.
‘Drama teacher .’ I grinned, pulling at the white towel around Fabian’s hips, eager as always to get a final glimpse of his toned buttocks to see me through the days ahead without his actual presence.
‘But it’s the first day of the new term. No kids in, you said. What’s the hurry?’
‘You know what that road out of Leeds is like on a Monday morning. And,’ I added primly, ‘I’m a professional. The kids might not actually be in school, but I can’t turn up to the morning’s staff meeting in last night’s little black dress and ridiculous heels.’ I rubbed at my right leg. It had just about recovered from the ACL accident that had brought me back to Yorkshire from my time in musical theatre in London, but did still give me some gyp, especially after subjecting it to several hours in my one and only pair of heels.
‘Give that headteacher of yours a hard-on if you did.’ Fabian would persist in bringing up the fact that Mason Donoghue – the rather gorgeous and charismatic head of St Mede’s – and I had had a bit of a fling last term. Not overly professional of either of us but, as far as I knew , we’d been discreet, it had lasted only a few weeks and both of us had been aware that we’d sought each other out when the person we both really wanted to be with was unavailable.
‘Right, I’m off,’ I said, once I’d towelled myself dry and pulled on jeans and a jumper. ‘Got to go home and get changed before school. All my files are there too. What are you up to?’
‘Oh, the usual.’
‘The usual?’
‘Cooking, cleaning, shopping. Walking Boris on The Stray. A man’s work is never done…’
‘Do you miss it?’
‘What?’
‘You know what.’ I went to put my arms around this man I’d adored since first setting eyes on him defending in the Central Criminal Court in London eight months earlier. I’d taken myself along to Courtroom 4 hoping to find a woman barrister I could emulate for the part in a TV drama I’d been up for later that week. I hadn’t got the part, but had ended up losing my heart to Fabian Mansfield Carrington KC, son of Roland Carrington, Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales.
‘Hmm, sometimes. You know…’ Fabian broke off, nuzzling at my neck. I batted him away, simultaneously looking at my watch, but knowing I needed to understand what Fabian was thinking.
‘Oh, Fabian, it was your life. All you’d worked for.’ I held my breath. Was Fabian trying to tell me he wanted to go back to London? Back to the beautiful family-owned apartment overlooking Green Park? Back to his roots in Marlow in Buckinghamshire? Back to his burgeoning career in the Old Bailey? ‘Am I the one stopping you returning south? I’ll come back with you, if that’s what you want?’ I took his hand. ‘Really.’
‘What and tear you away from St Mede’s, that most prestigious of educational establishments in the whole of West Yorkshire?’
‘Don’t scoff,’ I snapped crossly.
‘Robyn,’ Fabian said calmly as if talking to an argumentative child, ‘it’s a sink school, struggling to survive with a headteacher who’ll be off the minute something else comes up. The kids are bloody hard work and the staff are fed up. I bet half the teachers will have rung in sick with Covid or flu or some other made-up complaint when the doors are actually opened to the kids again in the morning.’
‘So, do you want to go back?’ I felt my heart sink a little.
‘I didn’t say that, Robyn. The work was making me ill, you know that. Dealing with the flak from defending the Soho Slasher while trying to live up to the Carrington name…’ Fabian broke off and I knew he was still fighting his demons. All the Carrington family, including his misogynistic and racist half-brother, Julius, with whom I’d had several run-ins, were well known in London’s legal world and were blaming me for Fabian’s defection from his chosen profession. ‘It’s just that I’m at a bit of a loss with what to do with myself. It’s fine when Jemima’s here – which isn’t very often – and you’re here, which, now that the new term’s begun, will be even less. There’s only so much helping out at food banks or giving free legal advice to those on the streets who can’t afford it. So, yes, I do miss striding around a court, bantering with the CPS, irritating the judge – as I so often did – in charge of the proceedings.’
‘OK, what about your dream?’
‘Which one? Since last night, all my dreams now feature you in that black basque and suspenders you had hidden under your dress.’
‘Hidden?’ I laughed, remembering Fabian propelling me from our table at the black-tie do we’d been invited to by Fabian’s lovely younger sister who’d been up for some business award and outside into the freezing January evening. ‘Well, you certainly found them.’ I laughed, slightly embarrassed, recalling Fabian’s hands slowly inching up my black-stockinged legs, my back arched against the cold Yorkshire stone of the grand building on the outskirts of Leeds. The cry of release, muffled by Fabian’s hand, as he brought me – as he always did – to an explosive climax. ‘Your restaurant dream?’ I insisted, even though I knew, by staying to talk some more, I was going to end up stuck in traffic on the M62.
‘Oh, just a dream.’ Fabian smiled sadly. ‘What do I know about starting up an eating establishment when there are restaurants going to the wall on a daily basis?’
‘What do you know about food? Fabian, food is your life…’
‘Don’t be daft. You’re my life.’
‘…and don’t forget you came third in the Christmas Yorkshire TopChef competition. Still not sure how you wormed your way into that one, having only been resident in Yorkshire for a couple of months at the time.’
‘But beaten by your sister.’ Fabian laughed. ‘Now, she is good. Jess is a natural.’
‘So are you,’ I soothed. ‘You know more about what to do with a Jerusalem artichoke than I do with a bag of cheese and onion crisps. Right, I really am off.’
‘People can’t afford to eat out any more.’ Fabian sighed, pulling me towards him again, unwilling, I knew, to let me go.
‘Unless you’re in London? Where all the dosh is? Are you saying, Fabian, that London’s the place you’d want to have a restaurant?’
‘God no…’ Fabian paused. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I want. Apart from you, Robyn.’ He smiled, reaching for my coat buttons and fastening me up as he might a child before taking Boris’s collar to prevent him following me out into the still-dark January morning. ‘Go on, off you go, ignore me, it’s just a miserable Monday in January and I’m not used to having no structure to my day. And, I’m missing you already.’
* * *
As I drove the thirty miles back to my mum’s place in Beddingfield, the pretty village in West Yorkshire where I’d grown up and where Mum still lived in the small cottage next to my big sister, Jess, I knew Fabian and I had some serious decision-making to do. Shortly after I’d met him, he’d taken on the defence of Rupert Henderson-Smith, possibly London’s most prolific rapist and murderer to date. Henderson-Smith, an ex-Etonian whose family moved in the same social circles as Fabian’s parents, had been dubbed the Soho Slasher for his predilection for slaughtering young women in the Soho area where I’d been living at the time. The relief I’d felt when Henderson-Smith was finally arrested and charged, and women like myself were able to walk the streets safely once more, turned to anger when, without telling me, Fabian colluded with his family to take on the notorious case. The subsequent hate and trolling, as well as verbal and physical attacks directed at Fabian outside his London apartment and chambers by women’s groups, had him leaving the case, his profession and his family. He’d fled north to recover from the onslaught, moving in with Jemima, house-sitting and dog-sitting when Jemima flew off around Europe in her role as financial advisor to a large American company.
I swore when the traffic in front started to slow down as I neared the junction for the M62, rear lights blinking and turning red as the cars came to a standstill. I really was going to be late and Mason wouldn’t be happy. He could be as sharp-tongued and demanding of his staff as he was of the five hundred kids in his care. I saw a gap in the traffic and went for it.
* * *
‘You’re going to be late, Robyn.’ Mum was already switching on the kettle.
‘I know, I know, I know.’ I headed for my room – the tiny box room with its single bed I’d moved into on my return from London back in September.
‘Is your knee giving you trouble again?’ Mum called after me. ‘You were limping slightly just then.’
‘Wearing high heels when I shouldn’t,’ I called back down the stairs. Jeans, sweater, trainers, that was all I needed for a teachers-only day.
Ten minutes later I grabbed at the toast and marmalade Mum had prepared for me. ‘What’re you up to?’
‘Well, actually, I’m going up to Hudson House with Jess.’
‘Oh?’ I turned to Mum, draining my cup of coffee and swallowing before ramming in the remains of the toast. ‘You reckon you’re ready for an old folks home, then?’
‘I didn’t hear a word of that,’ Mum tutted. ‘Don’t speak with your mouth full.’ Mum might have brought up the three of us – Jess, me and fifteen-year-old Sorrel – for the majority of our childhoods as a single mum, but she’d constantly insisted on good manners throughout.
‘I know, I know.’ I grinned in her direction. ‘“I didn’t bring you up by hand” to have you speaking with your mouth full,’ I added, misquoting Mrs Gargery to the recalcitrant Pip in Great Expectations , as the three of us always did when Mum got uppity. ‘So, why are you off to Hudson House if not to bag a bed up there?’
‘I’m feeling so much better these days now that Matt has got me onto this new medication. There’s little to be done out in the garden this time of year – which is where I’d rather be – so I’m going to do a bit of volunteering, you know, chatting and patting as Jess calls it up at the home.’
Matt Spencer was Mum’s new consultant at the local hospital where she’d ended up back in the autumn after a particularly frightening attack of acute porphyria, the chronic, possibly inherited, ailment she’d had to deal with most of her adult life. He’d not only got her up and running again and on some new drugs that appeared to be keeping her in remission, but seemed also to be giving her a new lease of life. And, I acknowledged, wishing I’d time for another coffee, this lovely, rather shy consultant had fallen in love with Jess into the bargain, and, for that, we all loved him back.
‘Oh, I thought you must be turning yourself in up there.’ I laughed, reaching for my car keys and school bag.
‘Robyn, I’m fifty-four years old.’ Mum sniffed. ‘I’m ready for a bit of life after spending all these years bringing you three up while waiting for your dad to show his face.’
‘Not sure you’re going to find any life in God’s Waiting Room,’ I chortled. ‘And,’ I added, ‘you’re getting very bolshie these days, you know.’ It was rare for Mum to criticise Jayden, our Jamaican-heritage reggae-singing dad with whom she’d run off, leaving her adoptive parents somewhere in Sheffield, intent on no return. S omewhere in Sheffield was about all we knew of these grandparents of ours because that was all we’d ever been told about the couple who’d adopted Mum as a tiny baby. It had been only very recently that Jayden, with his morbid fear of educational establishments brought about after being excluded from the many he’d been sent to, had let on that Mum had actually attended St Mark’s just outside Sheffield, one of the top public schools in the country. Jess and I had grilled Mum after this revelation, but all she’d say was that it was all in the past and that was where it was going to stay.
‘So, good, you’re doing a bit of volunteering. Get you out and about. A chance to meet new people rather than always waiting in, hoping Jayden’s going to drop by.’
Mum snorted derisively. ‘You’ll have me doing armchair aerobics next and getting excited when I throw a one in a game of Beetle.’
‘Bit ageist that, Mum. Listen, if you’ve so much time on your hands, you can always come and help the wardrobe department with this production of Grease we’re putting on at Easter.’
Mum’s eyes lit up. ‘Ooh, yes, I’ll do that. I’m not bad with a needle.’
‘Except we don’t actually have a wardrobe yet. And certainly, no props or outfits to go in it.’
* * *
‘You’re late, Ms Allen.’ Mason Donoghue was obviously in one of his moods. Probably his wife, to whom he’d recently returned after a fairly lengthy separation, giving him earache again. ‘Right,’ he went on as I slid into the vacant seat next to Petra Waters, the deputy head sitting to Mason’s left. ‘Can we crack on? We’ve a lot to discuss and, I’m afraid, it’s not all pleasant.’
Petra shifted her feet, appearing unsure where to put them next.
‘Unpleasant?’ I whispered, pulling a face. ‘What’s that all about?’ Then, as Petra massaged her six-months-pregnant abdomen, I asked, ‘You OK?’
Mason broke off from speaking, glaring over his spectacles in our direction.
‘Wind,’ she reassured me, moving slightly once more. ‘One big burp and I’d be fine, but don’t think that would go down too well, do you?’
‘Why’s Mason glaring at us? Doesn’t he understand pregnant women have special needs?’
‘You shouldn’t be sitting there. That chair’s for Melanie Potter. You’ll have to shift once she arrives.’
‘Who?’
‘Shh…’
‘Any relation to Harry? Is she a wizard?’
Petra tittered. ‘No, chair of governors. Once Mason’s given us the third degree, she’s coming into the meeting to talk to us.’
‘What about?’
Petra raised her eyebrows in my direction but said nothing more, settling back while Mason went through the usual litany of directives: timetabling, staff lateness, staff dress – he didn’t want to see anyone without a tie…
‘I don’t own a tie,’ I whispered and Petra laughed, turning it into a cough as Mason glanced our way once more.
‘So,’ Mason went on, ‘I’m planning a series of team breakfasts in my office: I want each subject department, the administration team, the caretakers and kitchen staff to join me in turn…’
‘He’s not asking us to share our Rice Krispies with Caretaker Ken?’ I pulled a face in Petra’s direction.
‘Now,’ Mason said, obviously back in his stride, ‘since September I’ve observed at least one of all of your lessons and I’ll be starting the cycle once again from next week. I’m not there to judge…’
I found myself switching off from Mason’s pep talk, conjuring up, instead, lovely pictures of Fabian in his tux and black tie at Jemima’s do the previous evening. The mere thought of ever losing him again, as I had when we’d fallen out over his unpleasant family and Fabian’s decision to defend the Soho Slasher, was enough to have my pulse race in anguish.
‘Excuse me…’
‘Robyn…’ Petra was nudging me none too gently and I looked up from my lovely reverie to find the entire staff staring at me and a tall, raw-boned woman, perhaps in her fifties, hovering meaningfully at my side.
‘Oh, sorry, sorry.’ I jumped up, removing myself, overflowing bag and files to the vacant chair at the back of the staffroom in order that Melanie Potter could claim her rightful place at the front with the senior leadership team.
‘I know Mason wanted me here this morning,’ Ms Potter was saying, ‘to support him as regards a couple of things that have arisen over the Christmas break. As Chair of Governors, I need you to know that one of St Mede’s pupils was very badly hurt in a knife attack last night. It will be on the local news this evening and both myself and Mason have been asked to comment.’
‘One of our kids?’ Jo Cooper, Head of History, spoke the question that was on all our lips.
‘Joel Sinclair.’ Mason nodded, visibly upset.
‘Joel?’ I briefly closed my eyes. Joel Sinclair, one of the most talented dancers I’d come across in years, with the potential to go far were he allowed to do just that by the OCG of drug dealers his family was a part of. Joel Sinclair, the lovely, exceptionally bright kid who’d rescued me from the notorious Year 9 class on my very first morning here at St Mede’s. Joel Sinclair, my little sister Sorrel’s best friend.
I realised Melanie and Mason had moved on. Already moved on from something so awful ? Was there worse to come?
There apparently was.
‘…And this terrible incident, which unfortunately happened late last night on the edge of the school playing fields – I’m assuming you all came in through the main gate and didn’t see the police cordons – will do absolutely nothing to help what we’re about to tell you now.’
Ms Potter paused, and there was a collective holding of breath as the entire staff focused on what the chair of governors was about to say.
‘In a nutshell, the local authority is determined to go ahead with what they’ve been wanting to do for years.’
‘What? Close us down?’ Dave Mallinson, Head of English, asked.
‘Knock us down,’ Mason put in dryly. ‘Apparently Frozen has had its eye on the site for years. Melanie and I were in a meeting yesterday and the local council can’t wait to wash its hands of us. The Sattar brothers are determined to go ahead with their plans.’
‘The Sattar brothers?’ Molly Burkinshaw, the young maths teacher who was even newer to St Mede’s than me, turned in my direction.
‘Local businessmen,’ I whispered. ‘They’re intent on world domination when it comes to their frozen fishfingers and sweetcorn.’
‘Blimey.’ Molly blew out a long sigh.
‘Blimey indeed,’ I replied.