Page 113 of In Control

“Liam already took me to a kebab shop and to the fairground.”

Esra nods in approval.

“And tonight we’re taking you to The Star of Asia. Best curry house in Studworth – if you don’t mind cheesy music, warm beer and peeling paint work.”

“Sounds great!”

“Here.” Gabe offers her a glass of champagne.

“Oh God, I can’t drink that in the back of a car. I’ll spill it all over myself.” She snuggles up against Esra, carefully pulling his shirt from his trousers.

“Hey!” I warn her. “No funny business, remember. Not before dinner anyway.”

“I want to see,” she says.

Esra’s bandages came off yesterday, the wound needing air to heal. An angry ragged line crawls across the left of his gut, level with his belly button.

Sophia touches it gently. “Does it hurt?”

“No,” he says, his voice dropping low. I can’t blame him. Her fingers on his skin – I know what that feels like.

She bends down and kisses the wound. “Good.” Then she turns to us. “So who’s singing first?”

“Roman!” Gabe announces. “He has a voice like an angel. He used to serenade me when we were first dating,” he adds wistfully.

“I thought you hated when I sang,” Roman says, taking the microphone from Gabe’s outstretched hand.

“No, darling. I loved it.”

It’s hard to tell in the dim light of the car, but I think Roman actually blushes.

Gabe selects ‘Somewhere Only We Know’, a Brit pop song from the nineties I’m sure Sophia’s never heard before. It’s a song we played a lot when we first got together with Gabe. Roman sings the words and I sink into the seat, a sense of contentment and peace filling through my chest. I peer over at Sophia. She’s tucked up against Esra’s side, his arm around her shoulder and her hands linked with Gabe’s in her lap. She looks content too.

“He used to be a choir boy in school,” Gabe whispers to her. “You wouldn’t think it now, would you? Such an innocent little angel grew up into one dirty old man.”

Sophia elbows him in his side. “Shhhh, he’s so good.”

We make Roman sing to us all the way across town to the curry house, singing all the songs we danced to when we were students, reliving tales of our youth, of finding Gabe and convincing him to join our pack.

She laughs at our stupid mishaps and misadventures, and we even convince her to sing a song of her own, ‘Wannabe’ by the Spice Girls which she claims to actually know.

“Which Spice Girl was your favourite?” she asks, when the song finishes and she hangs up the microphone.

“Posh,” I say with a smirk.

“Scary,” Roman tells us.

“I was too young.” Gabe throws up his hand.

“I was more of a Britney fan,” Esra says.

“Is that where your obsession with short skirts started?” Sophia asks him with a cheeky smile that has me wanting to tell the driver to pull up and take a long walk.

Esra gazes down at her bare thighs with longing. “I think that started with you. These silly skirts will be the death of me.”

“They nearly were,” Gabe points out and we all stare at him. “What? Too soon.”

Esra chuckles and soon we’re all joining in.

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