“All the things you’d expect . . . that he loved me and he wanted to be with me, and then later, when I started dodging him, that he wanted to cook me and eat my bones.”
“Jesus.” Nero swallowed. “And the coppers did nothing?”
Lenny shrugged. “They said they couldn’t, and I didn’t even go to them until just before I came here. I figured if I moved around enough, it would go away on its own. Stupid, eh?”
“Dunno about that. I gotta penchant for sticking my head in the sand.”
Lenny said nothing, his gaze fixed on his fingers so tightly tangled with Nero’s. He curled his ring finger around the stump. “Does this hurt?”
“No.”
“Really? I read a study on amputations that said the site of a missing limb or appendage can give lifelong pain.”
“It wasn’t amputated.”
More silence. Lenny sucked in a shaky breath, but didn’t release Nero’s hand. “I’m sorry.”
“What for?”
“My shitty diplomacy.”
Nero forced himself to pull his hands away from Lenny. “I ain’t that diplomatic myself. So are you gonna finish your tale of woe or what?”
Lenny’s eyes glittered darkly. “Are you making fun of me?”
“Would it help?”
“Maybe. I can’t cry over it anymore, so we may as well laugh, but there isn’t much to add to my ‘tale of woe’ as you called it, nothing tangible, at least.”
“Go on, then,” Nero prompted. “How did you end up here?”
Lenny shrugged. “I sofa surfed until I wound up in Camden, and it stopped for a while. Then a couple of dubious profiles followed me on Twitter and Facebook, so I deleted my accounts. A few weeks later he started showing up outside Misfits, and in the block of flats opposite mine, staring through my bedroom window, leaving bags of chips on my doorstep, all kinds of weird shit. One time it was a dead rat, so I freaked out, decided to go the police on my day off, but the fucker must’ve read my mind because the very next morning the letters he’d sent me disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“Yeah. I used to leave my door open when I took the rubbish down to the bin. He must’ve slipped in and taken them.”
“Did you tell the coppers that?”
“I tried.”
Nero frowned. The old bill were his nemesis, but Lenny was the innocent here, the victim. Surely there was something—
Lenny tapped Nero’s temple. “Don’t frown like that. You’ll give yourself a migraine.”
“Don’t give a shit.”
“Suit yourself. Where was I?”
“At the part where that creep got into your flat.”
Lenny nodded slowly. “That fucked me up, more than him telling everyone at the club he was my boyfriend. I could quit the club and move on, and I did, but knowing he’d been in my place made my skin crawl. I went to the police, even though I had no evidence, but they pretty much gave me some leaflets and—”
“Told you to jog on?”
Lenny’s lips twitched. “I wasn’t going to be so polite, but yeah. It was harsh, and I lost my shit, especially when he turned up at Misfits the same day. I saw him out back and then the barman handed me an envelope with my own fucking toenail clipping inside. I was so done, I swear. If Cass hadn’t turned up . . .”
Nero didn’t need the end of that sentence to understand. “Cass is good like that, eh? Saved me from a meltdown or two.”
