and then the man moved his flashlight away from her eyes, and in the dim light she realised it wasn’t Grant. This new sight, however, made her feel like she was going straight out of the frying pan and into the fire.
What she saw was a kind of giant – a man of about twenty-five, tall and sturdy as a redwood. Well, her imagination was probably getting carried away looking for comparisons, but she had no doubt he was over six foot four, and he couldn’t have weighed any less than two hundred and fifty pounds, not because he was fat but because his muscles were enormous, bulging even through his clothes. He could have snapped her in half with a single forearm, the same one helping her get back to her feet, and on which she noticed a dense weave of tribal tattoos in shades of grey and black. His wrist was as solid as a trunk of petrified wood and streaked with raised veins, visible even in the semi-darkness.
Having previously imagined it was the beautiful, cruel and crazy Grant on her tail, it almost seemed to her as if this man, dressed all in black, with his appearance of a heavyweight champion and his military-style crewcut and ice-cold eyes – blue, or maybe grey? – might be some kind of heavenly spirit sent down to rescue her.
‘You scared me,’ Penny whispered, still wondering if she was right to feel relieved or if this was some new threat that would be harder to fight off than Grant himself. How could she even begin to keep this one at bay?
The man froze and glared at her, his eyes like shards of glass. His glacial stare was unnerving, but Penny continued to look at him bravely, and for a handful of strange moments they remained like this in the shadows, gazing at each other. Silence surrounded them, broken only by Penny’s anxiously rapid breathing.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked finally. It was undoubtedly a stupid question to ask of this Herculean stranger, who perhaps harboured a similar intention to hurt her as Grant did, but she couldn’t think of anything better to say.
The man pointed upwards as if to indicate the heavens.
‘Are you an angel?’ she continued, knowing it sounded a little ridiculous.
An angel? Looking like that? He looks more like a demon guarding the gates of hell.
‘I live upstairs,’ the man replied. He had a powerful voice to complete the package. A hoarse, deep voice that was as imposing as his body.
Penny squinted, incredulous. She knew no one lived up there. It was a sort of dilapidated attic, more like a pigeonhole than an apartment, inhabited by mice and old moth-eaten furniture.
The man, correctly interpreting her obvious astonishment, added in a monotone: ‘I’m the new tenant.’
‘Tenant’ was not a word that much suited him. A ‘tenant’ sounded like someone who moved in with rubber plants and striped silk sofas, painted the walls a creamy yellow and bought sets of pots to steam their vegetables in. This guy, on the other hand, made her think of old cellars where people drank and fought, of wrestling rings spattered with blood, spit and sweat, and damp sheets after wild sex.
Flushed to her ears, Penny didn’t think there was any need to remain in the company of someone who was either a new tenant or a dangerous lunatic.
Then she asked him with a little bitterness, ‘If you live upstairs, why don’t you go, then? Why are you still here?’
‘I’m waiting to see you safely inside,’ he replied.
‘Why?’ she asked with suspicion.
‘Because of the look on your face.’
‘What look?’
He was silent for a moment, and then felt around in his pockets as if looking for something. Penny wondered if he was going to pull out a knife and slit her throat right there, but instead he took out a pack of Chesterfields and a lighter. He brought a cigarette to his lips and lit it. His face was illuminated with a reddish glow that momentarily revealed large eyes, a straight nose and full lips, his mouth slightly furrowed on one side from a small scar. He drew on the cigarette and said, ‘Whenever I see a woman with that face on her, I usually stop to make sure she’s not in danger, even if I don’t know her.’
‘You’re much more likely to be the danger here!’
He raised an eyebrow, and his sarcastic laugh was accompanied by a slight hint of annoyance in his generally