Page 2 of Lessons in Life

‘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 youwant 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 doIknow about starting up an eating establishment when there are restaurants going to the wall on a daily basis?’

‘What doyouknow about food? Fabian, food is your life…’

‘Don’t be daft.You’remy 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, sheisgood. 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 knowwhatI 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 inGreat 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 pattingas 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.

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