“Take him?”
“Get him in there to work.”
Nero tossed more meat in his pan. “I don’t run Pippa’s. Why don’t you ask Steph? Sure she’s got room for him on the bar.”
“Actually, I was thinking he could go in the kitchen with you, if you agree to hold the place for a few weeks. Jimbo’s got his holiday coming up, so I could use you there anyway.”
Nero had been half expecting to spend the coming months at Pippa’s, since Jimbo, the incumbent head chef, spent every summer surfing in Hawaii. “I can do that. What kind of background has this kid got? Has he done posh gastropub shit before?”
“He’s never been in a kitchen.”
Nero set his cleaver down. “Okay, you have my attention.”
“I don’t need your undivided attention, mate. Just asking you to do me a solid.”
“By having some front-of-house knobber in the kitchen with me? Why would you ask me to do that?”
Cass said nothing, which said everything. Nero reclaimed his cleaver and finished hacking up the pork shoulder. “He’s not going to be much good to anyone at Pippa’s. Why can’t Rascal’s take him?”
“Is that where you’d go if you wanted to keep your head down?”
So this kid was in trouble? Great. But Cass had a point. Rascal’s was Urban Soul’s rowdy street-food canteen in South Bank—the last place anyone would go for a quiet life. “I suppose he could wash up.”
“Or you could train him to commis for you. You said you needed a PA?”
“I was taking the piss,” Nero said sourly. “Not asking for numpty to look after.”
“So you’ll do it?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“You’ve always got choices, Nero. You know that.”
And there it was, the reason Nero could never refuse Cass: because without the opportunity that Urban Soul—that Cass—had given him, his choices would’ve been limited to the arsehole of nothing. “I’m not back at Pippa’s till Friday. He could start after the weekend?”
Silence. Again. Nero eyed Cass, taking in the face and form of the friend he knew so well, but would never truly understand. “Fuck’s sake, mate. What is it, eh? You want him in sooner? Fine. Say so. You know I’ll do whatever you need.”
“That’s not why I’m asking you. I’m asking you to take him in because I think Pippa’s is the safest place for him right now. Living and working there, he can stay indoors the whole time if he wants to.”
Take him in . . . living and working . . . “You want him to live at the flat with me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“It’s complicated, and I’m still trying to figure it out myself.” Cass mussed his already messy hair, worrying it, tugging, in a way that left Nero torn between wanting to stop him and joining in. “All I know at the moment is that he’s in trouble and I want to help.”
Why? But Nero didn’t ask this time. Didn’t need to when the memory of Cass scooping him from the kerb outside Feltham YOI had yet to fade, even after all these years. “Another stray, eh?”
“One more can’t hurt.”
Nero let the idea percolate as he tumbled garlic onto the counter. “Shepherd’s Bush isn’t a world away from Camden. If he’s in trouble there, it’ll follow him.”
“Would you leave London?”
“You did.”
“I moved a twenty-minute train ride north to be with someone who loved me. It’s not like that for Lenny. He’s got no one, as far as I can tell.”
