Lise

I haven’t seen Leon. It’s been a week and a half.

Normally I wouldn’t be worried. He frequently vanishes for weeks at a time. And loses phones with such frequency that Leon himself theorises that he unknowingly projects some manner of magnetic field capable of repelling phones.

But it’s when Lise corners me as I’m coming out of work, desperate to know if I’ve seen him, desperate to know what’s happened to him, that I start to worry.

Lise is an intimidating young woman, tall, lean, and muscular. Tattoos swirl around her upper arms, blaze across her chest, and wash over her back. Metal glitters her lips, nose and eyebrows. She physically slams me back against the wall to interrogate me.

I swear I can almost see tears in her eyes. And that’s what worries me most.

Lise hasn’t seen him either. And, even when Leon drops off radar, Lise always knows where he is. If only because he can’t go longer than the working week without turning up at her flat, drunk, horny and interested in a bout of shameless booty-call sex. Which, of course, she happily indulges.

They dated for a tempestuous couple of months, from just before xmas 2007 ‘til just after Valentine's 2008, but since they broke up they’ve been oddly exclusive, even though they lead almost entirely separate lives – they don’t live together… they don’t go out together… as far as I am aware what little time they do spend together, they spend naked.

I don’t judge their ‘relationship’. If anything I’m jealous. Whatever you want to call it, it works for them.

And he's missing. He’s not answering his phone. He’s not answering any voicemail or text and his landline simply rings and rings.

And she’s concerned.

And she blames me.

“Cos you saw him last, Reynard,” she hisses in my face.