She looks beautiful. Tight blue top and a long floaty grey skirt with bright pink shoes that she proceeds to balance on her good leg to remove.

I move to give her a hand but she waves me off, hiking herself up to sit on kitchen counter and make the job easier. Her ankle looks more mobile, though – good sign. Seems to be healing well.

She raises her eyebrows at me.

Tiffy: Checking out my ankles?

Me: Purely medical interest.

Tiffy grins at me, sliding down from the counter and limping over to examine the pot on the hob.

Tiffy: Smells amazing.

Me: Something told me you’d like mushroom stroganoff.

She smiles over her shoulder, and I want to move behind her, put my arms around her waist and kiss her neck. Resist the urge, on account of it being very presumptuous and inappropriate.

Tiffy: That was in your cubby hole downstairs, by the way.

She points to small white envelope on the kitchen counter, addressed to me. I open it. It’s an invite, handwritten in careful, slightly wobbly joined-up letters.

Dear Leon,

I am having a birthday party on Sunday because I am going to be eight. Please come!!! Bring your friend Tiffy who likes nitting. Sorry that this is late Mum says your proper invitasion got lost at St Marks by one of the nurses who is rubbish and then they said we couldn’t have you’re address but they said they will send this for us so I hope they got it rite anyway please come!!

Holly xoxoxoxoxox

Smile and show it to Tiffy.

Me: Maybe not what you had planned for tomorrow?

Tiffy, looking delighted: She remembers me!

Me: She was obsessed with you. We don’t have to go, though.

Tiffy: Are you joking? We’re totally going. Please. You only turn eight once, Leon.

47

   Tiffy

I really didn’t think chocolate-tiffin eating could be so sexually charged. We’re sitting on the sofa in front of our television (which is basically just a novelty ornament shelf) with wine glasses in our hands and our legs touching. I’m not far off sitting in his lap, really. That’s definitely where I want to be sitting.

‘Go on,’ I say, nudging him with my knee. ‘Tell me the truth.’

He looks shifty. I narrow my eyes at him, sliding nearer, my gaze flicking to his lips. He’s doing the same – that eyes-lips-eyes thing that seems to tug you closer, and we hover in the moment as if we’re at the top of a rope swing, waiting for gravity to kick in, feeling the tug but not quite going. No doubts this time: I know he’s thinking about kissing me.

‘Tell me,’ I say.

He tilts his head, but at the last moment I pull back just a little, and he lets out a quiet huff, half amused, half frustrated at the teasing.

‘Much shorter,’ he says reluctantly, pulling back too and reaching for another square of tiffin. I watch him lick chocolate from his fingers. Amazing, really – I’ve always found it weird how in films people think licking things like that is sexy, but here Leon is, proving me wrong.

‘Shorter? That’s it? You told me that already.’

‘And . . . dumpier.’

‘Dumpier!’ I crow. This was the stuff I was after. ‘You thought I’d be dumpy?’

‘I just – assumed!’ Leon says, shifting in and pulling me closer again so I’m almost bundled up against his chest.

I lean into him, relishing the feeling. ‘Short and dumpy. And what else?’

‘I thought you would dress weirdly.’

‘Well, I do,’ I point out, gesturing to the laundry drying in the corner, which includes my bright red pantaloons and the rainbow knitted jumper Mo got me for my birthday last year (though even I would draw the line at wearing those two items simultaneously).

‘You make it look good, though,’ he says. ‘Like you do it on purpose. It makes you look like you.’

I laugh. ‘Well, thanks.’

‘And you?’ he asks, shifting his hold on me to take another sip of his wine.

‘And me what?’

‘What did you think I’d look like?’

‘I cheated and looked you up on Facebook,’ I admit.

Leon looks shocked, wine halfway to his mouth. ‘I didn’t even think of that!’

‘Of course you didn’t. I mean, I would want to know what someone looked like if they were moving in and sleeping in my bed, but you don’t care about appearances much, do you?’

He pauses to think about it. ‘I cared about yours once I’d seen it. But otherwise, why would it make a difference? The first rule of the flatshare was that we wouldn’t meet.’

I laugh despite myself. ‘We broke that one, then.’

‘That one?’

‘Don’t worry.’ I wave him off. I don’t fancy explaining Gerty’s ‘first rule’, or quite how much time I’ve spent thinking about breaking it.

‘Ahhh,’ Leon says suddenly, catching sight of the time on my Peter Pan clock on top of the fridge. Half midnight. ‘It’s late.’ He looks at me worriedly. ‘Lost track of time.’

I shrug. ‘That’s OK?’

‘Can’t get back to Mam’s now – last train was at ten past twelve.’ He looks pained. ‘I’ll just . . . sleep on the sofa? If that’s all right?’

‘On the sofa? Why?’

‘So you can have the bed?’

‘This sofa is tiny. You’d have to curl up in the foetal position.’ My heart’s thumping. ‘You have your side, I have mine. We’ve stuck to the left and right rule all year so far. Why should we change it now?’

He watches me, his eyes flicking back and forth across my face as if he’s trying to read me.

‘It’s just a bed,’ I say, moving closer again. ‘We’ve shared a bed before.’

‘Not sure . . . this will be quite as straightforward,’ Leon says, in a slightly strangled voice.

On impulse, I lean forwards and press my lips lightly to his cheek, then again, and again, until I’ve kissed a path from his cheekbone to the very edge of his lips.

I sit back and meet his eyes. My skin is already buzzing, but the look he gives me sends a jolt through me, and now it’s as if eighty per cent of my body has suddenly become heartbeat. I swallow. We’re as close as two humans can possibly be without kissing. There’s no flicker of panic this time, just blissful, fiery wanting.