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As if apologizing to Anyanka for spoiling her dinner party wasn’t bad enough, Harris is doing his best impression of Hercule Poirot, tryin’ to suss out the how and when and what it all means for me and Buffy.

Wells is on hand, too. The local Oxfam shop ended up with a truckload of donated records from some defunct radio station in the sticks, and we’re handling the sale and sharing the profits.

“So Spike has a girlfriend?” he’s asking, looking between me and Harris like someone just told him aliens landed in Covent Garden last night.

“Oi, Wells! Come on. Children are starving.”

“Right, Andrew. That B-52s disc could feed half of the Sudan.”

I glance back and wouldn’t you know it? It’s one of those gems – a mint-condition, 12” streaky blue vinyl disc printed in South America. Those puppies go for $100 a pop.

“Rock De La Langosta and Baila Alrededor,” Andrew sounds out in halting Spanglish.

“Langosta? Is that Spanish for Love Shack?”

I roll my eyes and bite back a comment about the American educational system.

“Speaking of love shacks,” Harris continues.

“Don’t seem to recall that I was.”

“Where did you meet her?”

I decide that I’ll reveal enough history to thrill the boys, then go back to waiting for sunset.

“We met in California. 15 years ago.”

“California. Did you surf?”

“Had this sun allergy long before the Beach Boys harmonized their first, son.”

Xander nods, and I can see the wheels turning.

Darkness can’t come soon enough.

***

“The sun sets and she appears,” I murmur, as I lock the gate on Minus Zero and turn to watch Buffy walking towards me.

No fear. She never has any fear.

A trio of young women stroll past, breaking my view of her for a minute. The girls all have that dark, silky hair and dusky skin. They’re chattering about something, and I catch the name of one girl – Parminder.

My mouth waters.

They move on, and Buffy is crossing the street to stand in front of me.

“In the mood for Indian?”

***

“It’s pretty much replaced fish’n’chips as the national dish of England,” I tell her as we wait for our chicken tikka masala. “This is the best place to get it ‘round these parts.”

She nods and fidgets.

Then her cell phone rings, and she just about leaps out of her seat, spilling the contents of her purse all over the floor.

I let her scramble, but a red leather notebook has landed at the toe of my boot. I scoop it up and realize – not a notebook.

It’s a picture frame.

She doesn’t realize what I’m holding.

Now there’s some rule of etiquette about snoopin’ in others’ belongings. But I don’t think it applies when the belonging sails into your foot at a nice little dinner place, and I certainly don’t believe any of Emily Post applies to a vampire.

“Hmm,” I sound.

She looks up, debris stowed and cell phone silenced. When she sees what I’m passing between my hands, her skin turns the color of the leather.

“I think it’s going to be me.”

She purses her lips.

“Or maybe just some safe photo of a friend’s sprog?”

I flip it open, and she doesn’t try to stop me.

On the right, a tiny newborn is pictured, all scrunched face and balled fists. To the left, two little Asian girls in denim jumpers smile back at me.

There. She’s done it again. Caught me out, taken the ordinary bravado and made me feel vulnerable.

Human.

I’m about to tell her that I’m a prize ass, when I realize that the Asian girls’ snapshot is atop another one. With quick fingers, I slip it out.

This one wasn’t in the packet of pictures she left for me.

I’m laughing. Shirtless, obviously, but since she’s cropped it from the shoulders, it’s impossible to know I was full starkers at the time. Regardless, this is not a picture of a brother, a husband, a friend. It does not take a mighty brain to see that this is the kind of snapshot a girl keeps of her lover.

I wonder if she’s hidden it all this time, or if she’s in the habit of keeping it on hand, daring her husband to discover it.

With a smile, I hand back the pictures and she hastily shoves them into her bag.

Our food is served, but we’re both distracted. Not twenty minutes later, she looks at me and says she’s not really hungry.

“We probably shouldn’t just end up home in bed again, right?”

I recognize it as an invitation to go back to her place and fuck away the pain.

So I settle the tab, and we head out into the night.

***

He’s tracing the design on my back. He chose it, but it is as much a part of me as my eyes now.

“Why this one?” I ask, as his fingertips skim a spiked point. “You never said.”

“The Vergina Sun,” he says. “Life and death, it means, at least when you draw it like this, on the horizon line.”

He’s talking about the horizon of my hips. The design starts just above, with a half circle. Nine rays shoot up my back. In black with shades of grey and white, it is a startling, tribal image. I’m glad it can be easily covered.

“Seems like that’s what you were after. All these times you find me.”

“Which one?”

“That’s just it,” he says. “You know you’re supposed to be afraid of me.”

I can’t read his meaning, so I stay silent, enjoying the ghost of his touch. Besides, laying on my belly saves me the worry of my sagging abs. They’ll never be taut again, not after nine months of stretching.

Hugo, I think, with a pang.

“Wonderin’ when you’ll come to your senses and head home to your husband, pet.”

“Owen?” I snort.

“That his name?”

“He has a book coming out now. An anthology about it. About my body, our son. It’s called My Thursday Child.”

“You followin’ his career?”

“No! No. I just – there’s this chat room. For people like me. And someone mentioned it. Said it captured her feelings exactly.”

Anger floods me. How dare he pour all that emotion into the book when he barely showed up for our son’s life? When he left me, recovering from my first miscarriage, for a conference? All that feeling would’ve come in handy when I was sleeping on the green vinyl chair in Hugo’s hospital room. Could’ve really used it when I sat crying by myself, trying to pump breast milk and praying to a God I don’t believe in for a miracle I didn’t really expect.

He senses the change and his busy fingers slow.

“I shouldn’t have tried to marry a pale substitute,” I explain.

His fingers press, briefly, into my back with bruising force.

And then he turns me over, and brings me to oblivion all over again.

***

There’s a bookshop a few doors down from Minus Zero.

In my day – I’m talking about my sunlight-wandering days, mind you – books were like diamonds. The wealthy might adorn their manors with strands, but most of us merely affluent clung to a few leather-bound volumes, reading them until the spines unstitched.

Seeing paperbacks abandoned on the Underground today? Tugs at my sensibilities, such as they are.

The bells jangle on the door, and the shopkeeper gives me a familiar nod.

There’s just one shelf of poetry, but I prefer it to the stacks of Laurell K. and her lot. And there it is, prominently featured, three copies available – considerable backstock for this dusty little place.

My hands reach for the discrete dove grey cover and I flip it open to the inscription.

To B. My heart is heavy with regret.

Ought to send her back to her husband.