Page 104 of A Class Act

‘I betyouhaven’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 meannothing? Nothing, Robyn?’

‘You blocked me,’ I countered. ‘AndI hurt my knee badly.Verybadly,’ I added mulishly.

‘I know that, Robyn. I went round to the theatre to see you once I’d calmed down after you’d blockedme. 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.Younever 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 onJudge 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 bedisrespected. 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 doneanythingnot 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?’

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