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‘No,’ said Milena, almost inaudibly.

‘Damn right,’ said the father. He was finished with the paper. He crumpled it up and threw it onto his plate.

Rolfa still ate, slowly, carefully, eyes fixed on her food. Well, Rolfa, thought Milena. Do you have anything to say? I can’t stop them, Rolfa. If you let them do it to you, I can’t stop them.

‘Going to Antarctica is like going to school for us,’ said Angela. ‘It’s something everybody does. Maybe meet a nice man.’ She was trying to sound bright and encouraging. Her father began to key in figures. There was a whizz of paper.

Rolfa, you are a great lump. Milena felt betrayed. The meat in her mouth went round and round. Why am I eating this? I don’t need to eat. She spat the seal cutlet out onto her plate. That’s what I think of you all.

‘I can get you an omelette,’ offered Zoe.

I don’t need to talk either. Milena shook her head. She drank. The wine was sour and sharp, which seemed appropriate. May you all freeze in hell. Why am I sitting here?

Milena finished her wine, throwing it back down her gullet, and stood up. Rolfa finally moved, turning suddenly toward her.

‘It’s all right! You don’t need to move,’ said Milena. She looked at the family. ‘Enjoy your meal,’ she told them, and left. As she went down the stairs, she began to run. She ran to the door and threw off the coat. The carpet had crystals of ice along its fibres. Who needs winter? Milena pulled open the front door and left it hanging open, and plunged into human temperatures, the warm blanket of summer air. She still had on the indigent gloves.

She walked, mind raging, so angry she couldn’t think. The tragedy loomed around her, so vast that it seemed part of the iron railings, and the classical Kensington porticos, and chimneys against the sky, part of the other people who passed her, hunched and hesitant, as if the pavements were too narrow. She walked round and round in circles through the unfamiliar streets.

She found herself back in front of the Polar house, all creamy, ice-blue in the summer night. Something broke.

‘Rolfa!’ she shouted. ‘Rolfa! Rolfa!’ Her voice went shrill and she picked up an edge of pavement and hurled it towards the house.

‘I’m here,’ said a voice. ‘Ssssh.’

A shape, a shadow of a head through an open window on an upper floor. Rolfa had been sitting all alone in the dark.

Milena waited in the silence, in the moonlight, hugging herself. She stamped her feet with impatience and to get the blood flowing in her icy toes. Then there was a quiet clunk, and Rolfa stepped out the front door, carrying something, a blanket. She was back in her shorts and cloth shoes.

She came sideways, wary, as if on broken plates, cringing. Frightened of me, frightened of everybody. When Rolfa was close, Milena hit her.

‘You let them! You let everybody. You’re going to let them do it and you don’t have the right. You going to spend your time breaking rocks? What a bloody stupid waste!’

Rolfa looked back at her forlornly, and Milena heard the sound of wind in the trees.

‘Don’t just stand there.’

More silence, and applause from the leaves.

‘Do something!’ Milena’s hands were raised around her head, fingers spread like claws.

Rolfa hugged her. Milena was suddenly enfolded in long, soft, warm arms, and she was pressed against Rolfa’s stomach. ‘Sssh, Little One, ssssh,’ she said.

The edges of Milena’s vision were going black and grainy. I’m going to faint, thought Milena. She meant it as a joke, to make it ridiculous, so it wouldn’t happen. Then her knees gave way. I really am going to faint, she thought. Real people don’t faint.

‘Ooowwgot ta sssip owwn,’ she said. She was trying to say she had to sit down. Suddenly she felt herself lifted up. Her stomach felt weighted down and she thought she was going to vomit. She saw the moon dip and dive about the sky like a swallow, and she felt herself being laid out on the grass. She settled into it and went utterly still.

‘Little Ones shouldn’t drink too much,’ said Rolfa.

Milena wished that her clothing were undone. She wanted to put the very tips of her fingers onto the palm of Rolfa’s hand. She couldn’t find it. All she felt was grass. Then there was darkness.

Had Rolfa kissed the top of her head? Had she run her fingers through Milena’s hair?

CHAPTER FIVE

Low Comedy

(Just Us Vampires)

When Milena awoke, she was cured. She had had enough.

She woke up in her own bed, in the little room in the Shell. How did I get home? she wondered. She didn’t remember. She sat up in bed. Her back was stiff and there was a comprehensive pain in the bones of her head, all around her eyes and temples.

Milena no longer wanted Rolfa. The very thought of Rolfa, of her smell, of her teeth, now made Milena feel a bit ill. The thought of them had become associated with pain. Sick with love, Milena had now become sick of it.

Nothing like a course of aversion therapy, she thought and was ambushed by a wet, explosive sneeze. She wondered dimly what the time was and her viruses told her. Oh Marx and Lenin! she thought. I’ve got a performance of Love’s Labour’s this morning. I’ve missed it. She felt relieved. Missing a performance was the right thing to do. She groaned, and lay back down on her bed.

Then the door opened and a stranger came in.

She’s made a mistake, Milena thought, all the rooms look alike. She managed a crumpled smile of tolerance and waited for the woman to realise she was in the wrong room. The woman began to use Milena’s towel. She was a doe-eyed female with black hair and black eyes and beautiful nut brown skin, not Rhodopsin. She was enormous.

Then Milena saw that mere was stubble all over the woman’s bare arms and shoulders, and criss cross cuts from a razor.

‘I shaved,’ said the woman, with a forlorn familiar voice.

‘Rolfa?’ Milena sat up in bed.

‘I decided to do a bunk,’ said Rolfa. She shuffled forward and sat on the bottom of the bed. ‘I had to carry you back.’ Shorn of her pelt, Rolfa had an odd face. It was fleshy and somehow chinless, with a very small, thin mouth that seemed too deeply indented between nose and chin. But the black and liquid eyes were the same.

‘They don’t know I’m here,’ said Rolfa. ‘Can I stay?’

Milena was not sure what she felt. ‘Yes, yes of course. What have you brought with you?’ She meant clothes, shoes, toothbrush…

‘Piglet,’ said Rolfa, and picked up a shapeless lump of felt from the floor. It was some kind of stuffed toy. ‘Piglet goes everywhere with me.’ Rolfa sat Piglet on her lap facing her and looked at it fondly. Even from where Milena stood, Piglet smelled of biscuit crumbs.

‘You didn’t bring anything else with you?’ Milena asked softly.

‘Wasn’t anything else to bring.’ Rolfa smiled at her. ‘I took some money. They’ll say I stole it.’ She looked back down at Piglet. ‘I did.’

‘Will they come looking for you?’

Rolfa nodded. ‘They’re scared. Papa will be scared. The Family says his genes are impure because he’s so short. He’ll try to keep me quiet, not let them know. He’ll try to find me himself. We’ll be safe for a while. We’ll be OK for a while.’ She looked at Milena and seemed to be making a promise. ‘After that, they’ll call out the bloodhounds.’

‘I’d better go and tell people not to let anyone know where I live.’

‘There’s a problem,’ said Rolfa and turned. Underneath the cheap new blouse there was a dark swelling of fur. Rolfa held up a razor. ‘I couldn’t reach,’ she said.