How could everything change so drastically in a matter of minutes?

‘I suppose I don’t have to move up to Yorkshire. Seeing as the main reason I was planning on doing it was to get away from the miserable old git I was sharing a flat with.’

Gabe stepped out of the shadows, came to stand at the foot of the staircase. He touched his chest.

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you.’ Feeling braver, Sally said, ‘Come here.’

He climbed the stairs separating them. This time she knew he was going to kiss her. What she hadn’t expected was for her trembling knees to give way, mid-kiss. Smiling broadly, Gabe gently lowered her onto the stairs and carried on kissing her. God, he was so good at it and his neck smelled so gorgeous, he was ... whoops .. .

The walking stick she’d left propped against the banister toppled over and went clattering down the staircase. Sally squeaked, ‘Oh no!’ and attempted to muffle her laughter against Gabe’s shoulder.

Gabe whispered, ‘Don’t worry, he’s asleep.’

He wasn’t. The door to the ground floor flat was wrenched open and Mr Kowalski, his white hair standing up like acockatiel, bent down and picked up the walking stick. He turned, in his green and white striped flannel pyjamas, and eyed Sally and Gabe balefully.

‘You two! Vot arr you doing, huh? Making sex on ze stairs in ze mittle of ze night?’

‘Sorry, Mr Kowalski. Didn’t mean to wake you.’ Gabe grinned apologetically. ‘We weren’t ...

um, making sex on the stairs.’

‘Ha. Pretty close, if you ask me.’ Shaking his head, the old man skilfully threw the stick up to them, Gene Kelly style. Equally skilfully Gabe caught it. ‘Thanks.’

‘Off, off you go! You make sex in your own beds and leave me to sleep in mine.’ Having gestured extravagantly at the ceiling he shuffled back into his flat muttering, ‘Too much noise, too much sex, tuh.’

Sally buried her face in Gabe’s chest.

‘Sounds good to me,’ Gabe murmured, standing and helping her to her feet.

By the time they reached the flat, Sally was light-headed with lust, dizzy with joy and minus her shoes. As Gabe lifted her into his arms to carry her through to the bedroom, his mobile burst into life.

He shook his head. ‘Don’t worry, just leave it.’

Fretfully, Sally said, ‘I hate not answering a phone.’

‘It’s not your phone.’

As well as ringing, the mobile was switched to vibrate. When Sally had taken it from his jacket pocket she’d left it, along with his keys, on the glass coffee table. Now it was buzzing and jiggling ever closer to the edge.

‘It’s going to fall, it’s going to fall off, I hate it when that happens.’ Sally flapped her free hand agitatedly and Gabe, still carrying her, veered back across the living room.

She scooped up the phone and answered it. ‘Yes?’

‘Oh hi, it’s Maurice, is Gabe there?’

‘Hi, Maurice.’ Sally knew this was one of Gabe’s fellow paps. ‘I’m afraid Gabe has his hands full at the moment. Can I give him a message?’

‘Right, sure.The thing is, I’m down in Brighton at the moment but I’ve just heard from a reliable source that George Clooney was spotted twenty minutes ago sneaking into a house in Notting Hill with a classy-looking redhead. Nobody else knows about it and I owe Gabe a favour so I thought he might like a chance at an exclusive. The address is 15 Carmel Villas.’

‘OK, got that.’ Sally’s heart sank; what rotten timing. ‘Thanks, Maurice, I’ll tell him. Bye.’

‘George Clooney?’ said Gabe, who had been listening in. ‘Mystery redhead? Notting Hill?’

‘Fifteen Carmel Villas.’ It was the perfect tip-off; Carmel Villas was less than a minute away on foot. When she’d been leaning out of the living room window just now yelling Gabe’s name, George might actually have heard her. He might even have been the one who’d yelled at her to shut the fuck up. No, surely not, George would never be that rude.

Put me down,’ said Sally. ‘You have to go.’

But Gabe was shaking his head, grinning that devil-may-care, easy-going grin she hadn’t seen for so long. ‘No I don’t.’

‘Gabe. You can’t miss a chance like this.’

‘Switch the phone off. Stop thinking about George Clooney.’ Kicking open the door to his immaculate bedroom, Gabe said, ‘Just this once, why don’t we let the man have his fun without being interrupted?’

He was about to lower her onto the crisp, spotless, geometrically aligned white duvet. Sally, her arms entwined around hisneck, whispered, ‘I’m warning you, I’m going to make your bed awfully untidy’

Gabe’s eyes softened as they sank down together.’I’m counting on it.’

Chapter 52.

Sometimes you went away for a couple of days and it felt like a couple of days. Other times you went away for a couple of days and when you got back everything was different.

Lola felt as if she’d been away for a year.

‘What’s going on?’ She walked into Gabe’s flat and saw the look on Sally’s face. Total, total giveaway.

‘What?’ Sally half laughed in that way people do when they’re trying so hard to appear innocent.

‘Hey, you’re back!’ Gabe, emerging from the kitchen with a tea towel slung over one shoulder and a cold beer in his hand, said with delight, ‘Come here,’ and gave her a smacking kiss on the cheek.

Ha, confirmation if any was needed. He’d been like a bear with a sore brain for weeks. And now he was kissing her. What’s more, the atmosphere in the room was positively zingy.

‘We’ve missed you,’ Gabe went on cheerfully — and he definitely hadn’t been cheerful for weeks. ‘How did the book thing go?’

‘Great’ Lola indicated the bag she was carrying, emblazoned with the name of the publishing company that had hosted theevent. ‘They gave me lots of books. I was just asking Sal what’s going on.’

‘Hmm? In what way?’ Now it was Gabe’s turn to look innocent, like a six-year-old being asked what had happened to the last Jaffa cake.

‘You and Sally,’ said Lola. She narrowed her eyes at the pair of them. ‘Shagging’

‘Oh my God!’ Sally let out a shriek of disbelief. ‘How did you know? How can you tell?’

‘OK, three reasons. One,’ Lola counted on her fingers, ‘Gabe’s stopped being a miserable old git. Two, you look so sparkly there’s only one thing that can have caused that.’

‘Sparkly? Do I really?’ Sally rushed over to the mirror.

‘And three, I just bumped into Mr Kowalski on his way out to the paper shop. He happened to mention you’d been making sex on ze stairs.’

‘Oh bum!’ wailed Sally. ‘We wanted to tell you ourselves.’

‘If you hadn’t woken up poor Mr Kowalski, you could have.’

‘OK, but we weren’t actually doing it, not out there on the stairs. I just accidentally dropped my stick.’

Ha, not to mention her knickers! Lola was still struggling to take in the news, but in all honesty not as stunned as she could have been. It was one of those scenarios that was so bizarre it made sense, so wrong it was almost right. Hadn’t she wondered from the word go whether Sally and Gabe would be drawn to each other, if they found each other physically attractive but were so at loggerheads that they simply couldn’t bring themselves to admit it?

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Gabe. ‘But I’m crazy about her.’

‘She’ll drive you mad,’ said Lola.

‘Probably. OK, definitely.’ He slid an arm around Sally’s waist. ‘But she’s been doing that since the day she moved in. I’m used to it now.’

‘She’s never going to be tidy,’ Lola warned.

‘We’re going to hire a cleaner.’ Sally was glowing with happiness.

Gabe grinned. ‘Isn’t it great?’

What choice did she have? If it worked out, of course it was great. Lola knew she should be thrilled for them and on one level she was. But at the same time, and she was deeply ashamed to have to admit it even to herself, there was that niggling worry that the balance of the relationship between the three of them was about to tip. Before, the triangle had been more or less equal.

Now it was changing shape, lengthening, drawing two of the points closer together and distancing the third. She was going to feel left out and unwanted and — oh God — lonely .. .

‘Are you worried that we won’t have time for you any more?’ Effortlessly reading her mind, Gabe let go of Sally and gave Lola a reassuring hug. ‘There’s no need, we won’t abandon you.’

‘Don’t be daft, of course I wasn’t worried. We’re all grownups.’ Lola submitted happily to the hug; how could she have thought everything wouldn’t be fine? ‘Ooh, that reminds me, I just saw a sign outside the King’s Head — that comedian you love is doing a show there on Saturday night. Johnny thingummy? I thought we could all go.’

She felt Gabe hesitate. Sally exclaimed, ‘Oh, what a shame, we’d have loved to, but ...’ She pulled a face and looked over at Gabe to help her out, as if Lola were a child asking how babies got made.

‘The thing is, we kind of decided to fly over to Dublin,’ saidGabe. ‘And we can’t really cancel now that the plane tickets have been booked.’

‘And the hotel.’ Sally shrugged apologetically.

Gabe said, ‘But how about if we book another ticket? Then you can come along too.’

Z000uuuup, that was the sound of the triangle lengthening, like Pinocchio’s nose. OK, it hadn’t really made a noise but they all knew it was there.

‘Thanks,’ Lola shook her head, ‘but I’ll be fine.’

Of course she would. It didn’t matter. She was happy for them, she really was. At the moment Gabe and Sally were besotted with each other but after a while the icky-yicky loveydoveyness would wear off and they’d slide back to normality.

‘You can at least stay for dinner.’ Gabe was presuasive, eager to make amends. I’m doing a cannelloni.’