Sugarcoated by Catherine Forde Page B

then. Because she –’ he cocked his head at me as casually as if I was a sack of spuds, ‘walked in here with me .’ Me was pronounced particularly low and harsh. Anything but casual, I noticed, watching the security guard’s reaction.
    Shaven-headed and with a neck on him as thick as me at maths, he was a good four inches taller than Stefan. When Stefan leaned in and spoke to him, histilted chin was only level with the guard’s impressively broad chest. But despite this physical inferiority, Stefan’s flat mumble was undiluted menace.
    ‘Look I’m so sorry ‘bout this, Mr Josef,’ the security guard burbled through a mouthful of blood. He was softly-spoken, his voice a mismatch to his thuggish outward appearance. And you’re not bad-looking either, in a beefed-up, gentle giant way, I decided.
    ‘I didn’t realise you were both … and when the alarm went off –’ the security guard shrugged, his arm moving from Stefan to me. ‘When your friend set off the alarm, I automatically –’ He sighed, trying to staunch his nose with the side of his hand. With all the fight out of his shoulders he just looked like a bloke desperate to keep his lousy job.
    ‘Honestly, I can’t apologise enough,’ this time the security guard spoke to me. ‘And I hope I didn’t hurt you as much as you hurt me –’ With a half-smile he made a reaching gesture towards me. His eyes – brown, warm – were brimming with sorry. And fear, I sensed. Of Stefan. A guy he could mince in one hand. Isn’t that weird?
    So I tried to clear the air. ‘No bother –’ I shrugged.But a slicing motion from Stefan’s hand silenced me. ‘You’re right there: you can’t apologise enough – what’s your name?’ Stefan moved in so close I couldn’t see the security guard’s face any more. Just heard him murmur, ‘Dave Griffen,’ before Stefan went on, ‘Dave Griffen, yeah? Well, Dave Griffen. You can’t apologise enough. Not now. Not ever. Can he, babes?’
    Though Stefan had raised his voice, he didn’t turn round immediately. That’s why I assumed I was the ‘babes’ he was talking to.
    ‘But he has apologised.’ I was half-laughing. ‘And I got him good on the nose. So it’s OK. Are we having breakfast now?’ I went on.
    Then I realised Stefan wasn’t speaking to me at all. The babes he meant was the spray-tanned shop assistant. I’d been half-aware of her whispering into a phone at the cash desk when Stefan first rushed over to me. Now she was by his side, flicking invisible smuts from the stupid hankie bra that had caused this horrible scene. While I watched her hanging it back on the clothes-rail like it was a priceless work of art, Iwas tempted to snatch it. Dab it against poor Dave Griffen’s nose.
    ‘Stephen, you’re so right,’ babes-who-wasn’t-me gushed. ‘I’ve just told the boss what’s happened and he says Strut won’t employ security that can’t tell criminals from customers. Especially personal customers –’
    ‘Like the ones I bring in, huh?’ Stefan finished the sentence. While he spoke he planted both hands either side of poor Dave Griffen, trapping him against the wall.
    ‘Do you know who I am?’ Stefan said.
    ‘ Do you?’ he repeated in the softest voice I’d heard him use yet.
    I watched the gulp in Dave Griffen’s Adam’s apple when he nodded at Stefan.
    Or Mr Josef , as Dave Griffen was calling him:
    ‘I do, Mr Josef.’
    Well maybe you can fill me in, I’d so loved to have freeze-framed this whole nasty scene and whipped Dave Griffen off into one of the changing rooms to ask, because right now this shirtless Mr Stefan/Stephen/Josef whateverhisname was didn’t seem anything like thesweet-talking guy I’d met in the newsagent’s. My fellow-Minstrels fan. The bloke who was so upset at what I might have seen outside Dad’s shop. Right now Stefan was hard as nails. With a calm, dangerous power to him. Something I’d never seen in anyone who wasn’t a hard-man on the