On the flight back to New York from London, Saffron found herself wedged in the middle seat between Bubble and a young man around her own age who she didn't know.

"What'cha gonna DO when ya get back to Noo YAWK?!" Bubble asked in that odd accent of hers.

"Go home to my flat," Saff told her. She liked Bubble, but often wondered how the girl managed to survive in the real world.

On the opposite side of where Saff sat, the guy her age, who had greasy black hair, soft brown eyes and an absolutely strange, odd leering toothy grin, gaped at Saffron as she desperately tried to read her book.

"'Avin' a flat in New York..." the leering young man said in what sounded like a thick Cockney accent to Saffy, "... sounds like somethin' me twin brother'd do!" He was dressed in a ludicrously loud yellow, checked suit coat, a bright red dress shirt and a yellow tie. He seemed surprised, quite literally, at everything around him.

"Do I know you?" Saffron asked the man. His soft brown eyes went wide as saucers; the leering grin on his face remained unchanged. Clearly, sarcasm was a concept he didn't understand. Like, at all.

"Well, ya dooooo NOWWWW!" Bubble interjected, elbowing Saff knowingly.

The man looked completely smitten with her mother's personal assistant — and she seemed taken with him as well. He half leaned over Saffron to flash that weird, toothy smile of his at Bubble. Saffy could practically see the cartoon hearts floating up from the top of his head.

"Have YOU two met?" Saff asked. Bubble and the young man appeared to have… well… some kind of relationship.

"Squeak? 'Ave we met?" Bubble asked. Saffron gaped from one to the other.

Nodding like a fool, the man replied, "We 'ave! At the party! Naomi was there, 'member? I got the cigar for that one table 'n'..."

"... an' I got the sticky toffee puddin' for the other!" Bubble finished for him.

Clearly, Saff noted silently, they had history. Or something approaching it.

"Your name is 'Squeak'?" Saffron asked him.

"Yes'm!" he replied, his oddball grin brightening. "Me Dad gave it to me. 'E never gave me brother a nickname, though. Strange, eh?"

"Indeed," Saff said, looking back down at her book. Why had she started up this conversation?

"Ah like it, meself, yer naaaaame," Bubble cooed, leaning across Saffron to be closer to Squeak. He returned the gesture and soon, Saffy had a pair of nascent lovebirds nearly touching foreheads mere inches from her bosom.

The flight attendant made her way down the aisle. Angling for the woman's attention over the heads of the Cockney Romeo and Juliet hemming her in, Saffron said, "Excuse me, Miss, but how long 'till we land?"

The woman checked her wristwatch.

"About 40 minutes," she replied, winking at the sight of Bubble and Squeak staring into one another's eyes.

Saffron let her head fall back onto her seat cushion.

"Thank God," she sighed.