by Jill Mansell
‘No wonder you’re a bit grumpy,’ Lola said sympathetically.
‘I’m not a bit grumpy. I went to Australia, I came back again and I didn’t even have time to get a suntan.’ Exasperated, Gabe glugged down ice-cold lager before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Dammit, I’m pissed off.’
‘OK, you choose. Now, do you want to carry on talking about Australia or shall we change the subject?’
He surveyed Lola, who was evidently dying to unleash some gossip. Nodding in realization he said, ‘Right, of course, you’ve seen that guy again. Doug, isn’t it? Has he forgiven you yet?’
Lola’s face fell at the mention of her first love. ‘Not even slightly.’ Then she brightened. ‘But something else has happened. I’ve met another man.’
‘And to think they call you fickle.’ Gabe regarded her with affection, because it wasn’t her fault his own life was crap. ‘Go on then. Who is he?’
‘Actually,’ Lola grimaced, ‘this is the weird bit. He’s my father.’
***
At seven o’clock they heard the front door open and close, then the sound of someone climbing the stairs.
‘Here’s Sally.’ Lola stayed sitting, clearly not looking forward to the next bit.
‘Right, I’ll speak to her. The sooner this is sorted out, the better.’ Gabe rose to his feet, ready to do battle with the bag lady who’d wrecked his flat.
‘The thing is, she—’
‘Don’t worry, I know she’s Doug’s deranged sister, I won’t yell at her.’ Ha, much.
‘But—’
‘I shall be charm personified,’ said Gabe, opening the door.
Except the girl he came face to face with on the landing was no bag lady. This girl was tall and curvaceous in a red wraparound dress and an elegant cream coat. Her hair was baby-blond and swingy, her eyes were the color of chestnuts, accentuated by expertly applied eyeliner. Her mouth was curvy and painted red to match her dress. She was even wearing Jo Malone’s Lime, Basil, and Mandarin, which was Gabe’s all-time favorite perfume.
This couldn’t be the girl he’d spoken to on the phone last week, surely.
‘Hello!’ She smiled cheerily at Gabe and, key poised, headed for the door of his flat.
It just couldn’t.
Gabe cleared his throat. ‘Are you Sally?’
She stopped, turned. ‘Yes! And you must be a friend of Lola’s.’ Her eyes sparkling, she indicated the mountain of luggage and said jokily, ‘Are you moving in?’
‘I’m Gabe Adams.’ God, it was her.
‘Gabe?’ Sally looked puzzled. ‘But that’s the name of the one who moved to Australia.’
‘I didn’t move to Australia, I went to Australia. But things didn’t work out,’ Gabe said evenly, ‘so now I’m back. Look, I realize this is inconvenient for you, but I’ll help you pack up your stuff. And if you could be out by the end of the week, that’d be great.’
She stared at him. ‘Excuse me?’
How could any girl who lived in such abject squalor look like this? How was it physically possible? ‘Well, you’ll be moving back in with your mother.’ Ha, lucky old her. ‘I’ll even hire a van if you like.’ Gabe felt he was being more than generous; with all the stuff she’d strewn around his flat he’d need a forklift. ‘And we can do it any time this week, whenever suits you best.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Sally. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
‘But you have to. Because it’s my flat and I need it back.’
Her eyebrows furrowed. ‘And I’m saying you can’t have it back because the agreement was that I could live here for a year at least.’
‘OK, OK.’ Gabe heaved a sigh; it had always been on the cards that she might dig her heels in, decide to be difficult. ‘I’m giving you official notice as of today. That’s in the contract. You have one month to find somewhere else. God knows where I’m going to stay until then, but—’
‘Hang on,’ Sally interrupted. ‘What contract?’
‘The one you signed with the lettings agency.’
‘I haven’t signed any contract,’ said Sally.
Behind him, Gabe heard Lola’s door click open. He turned and said evenly, ‘What’s going on here? Why didn’t she sign the contract?’
Lola could feel her heart clattering away in overdrive. She’d been hiding behind the door listening to their heated exchange. Now it was time to face the music. Uncurling her clenched toes, she took a deep breath and said reluctantly, ‘I cancelled the agency.’
‘Why?’
Oh God, Gabe had been dumped by his girlfriend, he’d just arrived back from Australia, and he was suffering from jet lag on top of jet lag. All in all, he wasn’t in the sunniest of moods.
‘OK, the thing is, I was trying to help.’ When she went on the defensive, Lola knew she used her hands a lot; now they were going like a pair of wind turbines in overdrive. ‘And you told me yourself that the lettings agency charges a fortune, so when Sally came along I thought I could save you a heap of money, which I thought you’d be happy about. Because I knew we could trust Sally, she obviously wasn’t going to be giving you any trouble with the rent, so it made sense to just, you know, deal with her direct and cut out the middleman. She gave me the deposit and the first month’s rent in cash and I paid them into your account.’
‘No problem, I’ll give it straight back,’ Gabe retorted.
‘This isn’t fair.’ Sally’s tone was heated. ‘You’re being completely unreasonable.’
‘Me?’ Gabe jabbed at his own chest and yelled, ‘I’m being completely unreasonable? What about the state of my flat? Would you say the carnage you’ve reduced it to is reasonable?’
Sally stared at him. ‘How do you know what I’ve done to it?’
‘Because I went in and had a look!’
She gasped. ‘You can’t just let yourself in whenever you like.’
‘You can’t stop me.’ Gabe was really losing it now. ‘It’s my flat!’
‘Which you rented to me. And I like living here.’ Sally’s eyes abruptly brimmed with tears. ‘What’s more, I’m not going to move out.’
‘Oh please.’ Lola was by this stage feeling absolutely terrible. ‘I’m sure we can arrange something. Who are you phoning? Not the police?’
Having pulled out her mobile, Sally was blindly jabbing at buttons. ‘I’m getting Doug over here. He’ll sort this out.’
Doug? Yeek, the very name was enough to set Lola’s heart racing. Would Gabe and Sally think her shallow if she quickly washed her hair and re-did her face before he turned up?
Chapter 20
The answer to that was a resounding yes, but she’d gone ahead and done it anyway. When Doug arrived at her flat forty minutes later he surveyed the three of them and said levelly, ‘What a mess.’
Lola really hoped he didn’t mean her. If she said so herself, she was looking pretty good.
‘You’re telling me.’ Gabe’s tone was curt. ‘Have you seen what your sister’s done to my flat?’
‘I don’t need to. I can guess. She’s not what you’d call tidy,’ said Doug with heroic understatement.
‘And she’s a liar.’ Gabe turned to Sally and said accusingly, ‘When we spoke on the phone, you told me you were completely trustworthy.’
‘I am!’
‘You promised you were super-housetrained.’
‘Oh God, you’re so picky.’ Sally rolled her eyes. ‘That’s just what people say when they want to rent somewhere. Like when you go for a job interview, you have to act all enthusiastic and tell everyone you’re a really hard worker. If you said you were a lazy toad who’d be late for your own funeral, they wouldn’t take you on, would they?’
Gabe threw his hands up in the air. ‘So you lied.’
&
nbsp; ‘It wasn’t a lie. Just a little fib. It’s not against the law to be untidy.’
Gabe addressed Doug. ‘I just want her out.’
‘I can see that,’ said Doug. ‘Right, tell me exactly what’s going on.’
When they’d finished explaining the situation, Doug looked at Lola and said, ‘So basically this is all your fault.’
‘Oh, of course it is. I do my best to help people out and this is what happens, this is the thanks I get.’
‘Legally,’ Doug turned to the others, ‘either of you can cause untold hassle to the other. If you ask me, that’s a waste of everyone’s time and money. Shall we go and take a look at the flat now?’
‘Everyone put on their anti-contamination suits,’ said Gabe.
Over in Gabe’s formerly pristine living room, now awash with magazines and clothes and abandoned food and make-up, Doug nodded sagely. ‘Oh yes, this is familiar.’
Defiantly Sally said, ‘But it’s still not an arrestable offence.’
‘What I don’t understand,’ Lola was puzzled, ‘is when I came to the house in Barnes, your bedroom was fine. Completely normal.’
‘That’s because I have a mother who nags for England.’ Sally heaved a sigh. ‘And because she has two cleaners who barge in and tidy my room every day. Which is why I was so keen to get out of there.’ Glaring defiantly at Gabe she added, ‘And why I’m definitely not going back.’
‘How many bedrooms here?’ Doug was exploring the flat. ‘Two?’
There was a pause.
‘I hope you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking,’ said Gabe.
Doug shrugged. ‘Do you have any better ideas?’
‘I have a very much better idea,’ Gabe retorted. ‘She’s your sister. You can take her home with you.’
‘Not a chance. Lola, could you have her?’
Sally complained. ‘You’re making me sound like a delinquent dog.’
‘Trust me,’ Gabe gestured around the room in disgust, ‘a delinquent dog wouldn’t make this much mess.’
‘I would take her.’ Keen though she was to scramble into Doug’s good books, Lola couldn’t quite bring herself to make the ultimate sacrifice and thankfully had a get-out clause. ‘But I’ve only got the one bedroom.’
‘Fine. So you two,’ Doug turned back to Gabe and Sally, ‘have a choice. You either hire yourselves a couple of solicitors to slug it out or you give flat-sharing a go for a couple of weeks.’
‘I can’t believe this is happening to me.’ The stubble on Gabe’s chin rasped as he rubbed his hands over his face.
‘You never know,’ Lola said hopefully. ‘It might work out better than you think.’
‘Ha! I’ll end up strangling her, then I’ll be arrested and slung in prison, then neither of us’ll end up living here.’ As he said the word prison, Gabe winced and looked apologetically at Lola. ‘Sorry.’
‘Right, decision time.’ Doug pointed to Sally. ‘Would you be willing to give it a try?’
Huffily she said, ‘Oh great, be chopped up into tiny pieces and hidden tidily away in a black bin bag. Just what I always wanted.’
‘So you’d prefer a solicitor. Expensive,’ mused Doug. ‘That’s a lot of shoes.’
You had to admire his style. Sally was now looking like a sulky fourth-grader being told her homework wasn’t up to scratch. Lola kept a straight face as Sally shrugged and said, ‘I don’t see why I should, but I suppose I could give sharing a go for a couple of weeks.’
Doug swung back to Gabe. ‘But you still want to stick with the legal route, or…?’
What a pro. He was like an auctioneer juggling bids. Entranced by his masterful air, Lola watched and held her breath.
Gabe hesitated, then exhaled and threw up his hands. ‘Oh, for God’s sake. We’ll try it, then. Seeing as I don’t have any choice.’
‘Good call,’ said Doug.
‘But only for a couple of weeks. Then she has to move out. And I’m not living like this.’ Gabe gestured at the floor in disgust.
‘We’ll help you clear the stuff away, won’t we?’ Lola beamed hopefully at Doug; now she could impress him by showing him how great she was at tidying up.
But Doug just looked at her as if she’d gone mad. ‘Me? Not a chance, I’m out of here. And you,’ he instructed Sally, ‘behave yourself and don’t give him a reason to chop you into pieces. Just try and get along together, OK? And put your clothes away once in a while.’
‘Not once in a while!’ Gabe exploded. ‘All the time!’
‘Oh, don’t start already,’ Sally jeered. ‘You sound like such an old woman.’
Doug forestalled their bickering. ‘My work here is done.’ His gaze fixed on Lola. ‘You can show me out.’
Lola’s breathing quickened; she so desperately wanted him to stop regarding her as the wickedest woman in Britain.
In the hallway downstairs Doug came straight to the point. ‘What was that about prison, earlier?’
He didn’t miss a trick.
‘What?’ Lola thought rapidly.
‘Your friend Gabe mentioned prison. Then he looked embarrassed and apologized. Who’s been to prison?’
‘My father.’
‘Really? God. Alex?’ Doug frowned. ‘What happened?’
Lola felt her throat tighten. ‘Not Alex. My real father. His name’s Nick James.’ Her voice began to wobble. ‘It’s all been a bit strange really. I only met him for the first time yesterday. Well, that’s not true, he’s been coming into Kingsley’s and chatting to me but it wasn’t until last night that he actually told me he was my real d-dad. And there was me, dressed like a r-rabbit… God, sorry, I wasn’t expecting this to h-h-happen. Must be having some kind of delayed reaction.’ Hastily she pulled a tissue out of her bra and wiped her eyes. ‘To be honest I think it’s all c-come as a bit of a sh-shock.’
‘OK, don’t cry.’ There was a note of desperation in Doug’s voice; this was rather more than he’d been expecting and way more than he could handle. Lola realized he’d never seen her crying before. It was something she hardly ever did in public, darkened cinemas excepted, largely because some girls—the Snow White brigade—might be able to cry prettily but she always turned into a pink blotchy mess. In fact, the only way to hide her face from Doug now was to bury it in his chest.
If only he wouldn’t keep trying to back away…
Finally she managed to corner him against the front door and conceal her blotchiness in his shirt. Oh yes, this was where she belonged, back in Doug’s arms at last. She’d missed him so much. If she hadn’t needed to take the money, would they still have been together now? It was heartbreakingly possible.
Gingerly he patted her heaving shoulders. ‘Hey, sshh, everything’ll be all right.’
The fact that he was now being nice to her made the tears fall faster. Nuzzling against the warmth of his chest, making the most of every second, Lola said in a muffled, hiccupy voice, ‘All these years my mum lied to me about my f-father.’
‘And he’s only just come out of prison?’
‘No, that was years ago. Cigarette smuggling, nothing too terrible. He went to prison just before I was born. Pretty ironic really. My mother decided he wasn’t good enough to be my dad, so she refused to let him see me. And then seventeen years later, your mother decided I wasn’t good enough to be your girlfriend.’
‘That is a coincidence.’ Doug paused. ‘Did she offer him twelve thousand pounds to stay away too?’
OK, still bitter.
‘I haven’t even told Mum yet. Heaven knows what she’s going to say when she finds out he’s been in touch. It’s just so much to take in.’ Lola raised her face and wondered if he ever watched romantic movies, the kind she loved, because this would be the perfect moment for him to sweep her into
his arms for a passionate Hollywood kiss.
‘You’ve got mascara on your nose.’ Doug evidently hadn’t read the romantic-hero rules.
So close your eyes.
But that didn’t happen. Even less romantically, his phone burst into life in his jacket pocket, less than three inches from her ear.
The spell was broken. Doug disengaged himself and answered the phone. He listened for a few seconds then said, ‘No, sorry, I was held up. I’m on my way now.’ He ended the call and opened the front door. ‘I have to go.’
‘Mustn’t be late. Or you’ll get home and find your dinner in the dog.’ She was longing—longing—to know who he was rushing off to meet, but all Doug did was give an infuriating little smile. Almost as if he knew she was fishing for clues.
‘Why were you dressed as a rabbit when you met your father?’
Ha, he wasn’t the only one who could smile infuriatingly. ‘It’s a long story.’ Lola was apologetic. ‘And you have to rush off.’
He had the grace to nod in amusement. ‘Touché. So what’s he like?’
‘Nice, I think. Normal, as far as I can tell. We have the same eyebrows.’ If he made some smart remark about the two of them having the same morals she might have to stamp on his foot.
‘The same eyebrows? You mean you take it in turns to wear them when you go out?’ Doug shook his head. ‘You want to splash out, get yourselves a pair each.’
Chapter 21
‘Look, I’m sorry about yesterday,’ said Gabe.
Sally, just home from yet another pre-Christmas shopping trip, dumped her bags and took off her coat. ‘Really? Yesterday you were like a grizzly bear with a sore head.’ Actually that didn’t begin to describe him; yesterday he’d been like a bear with a sore everything.
Gabe shrugged and smiled. ‘Yesterday wasn’t the best day of my life. Now I’ve slept for thirteen hours I’m feeling a lot better.’
Well, that was a relief.
‘So I hope we can get along,’ he continued, clearly keen to make amends.
‘Me too. Can I ask you something?’