But now wasn’t the time to tell Fabian that everything was for the best. She’d have to tread carefully, and appear at least a little destroyed at the loss of her love. Her priority right now was protecting him from the vileness in the press.

He gathered himself and looked up at her, but to her shock, he was smiling.

She thought it might have been a trauma response, like when people laugh at tragedy and pain, and so she gave him a moment.

‘Fabian?’ she asked, not really knowing why.

His face changed, as if he realised how it was set, and he straightened his grimace and wiped his face.

‘Are you all right, Mummy?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think it’s hit me yet, darling,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry for cutting your trip short,’ she added, for want of anything else to say. She felt awkward and hadn’t expected it.

He sat back, and sighed. ‘Well, I’m here now. What are you doing in bed in the middle of the day? You can’t let yourself get down. I’m going out. I’ve arranged to see a few people.’

She looked at him warily. ‘Whatever for?’ She panicked suddenly and thought he might turn to drink, or drugs. Maybe he already had. There’d been that time at school when he’d been caught dealing marijuana. She fully expected the press to rake it up now. Every scrap of indignity was in the public domain and there for the taking, and she was sure that while Lord Reilly lay reliant upon the dear NHS for survival, so Bart would be, and already was, vilified as the corrupt and depraved party who’d led the peer astray. She couldn’t shield Fabian from any of that, but she had an army of lawyers who could fire some warning shots. If the press went too far then she’d sue their arses, just because she could. She’d already been on the phone about the articles she’d read insinuating Bart’s business history was less than legally clean, and worse, that he was some kind of morally rotten influence on legitimate partners. She wouldn’t have it. Bart was a shithead, and all manner of other things, but she wouldn’t have her name, and that of her son, hauled through trial by newspaper, just because it sold copy. She would use her extensive contacts to encourage articles that might serve to distract the press from Bart’s more lewd pastimes. That much was imperative. At all costs.

She hoped Lord Reilly pulled through, not because he was a decent chap, or even for Elaine’s sake, but simply because then the circus surrounding the crash would die down.