Chapter 7
Winter is my favourite time of year—the days are short, the nights are long, and everyone else is pale and has the morbs too. But the second half of December, when the Christmas rush hits . . . not so much.
As I emerge from Bond Street tube station into a thick holiday crowd, I clench my jaw, turn away from Selfridges and rush towards Oxford Circus instead.
The sky glows indigo, and all around me shop windows are lit up with Christmas displays, spilling green and red light out onto the pavement.
It would almost be scenic—tourists in winter coats and woollen hats and gloves tottering along slowly, exhaling clouds of fog and staring into shop windows—if I wasn’t already running late for work.
Stay calm. All you have to do is get some blood then go to work and Daphne will help you fix this, I think as I rush towards the blood bank where Es works. Luckily, it’s not far away. Though, to be candid, that’s less by luck and more by design.
Four years ago, when I got my job at Selfridges, I cased the place out and managed to befriend Es at a local cafe. But what started as necessity is now a real friendship—insofar as I can have a real friendship.
I turn left up Regent Street, then right down Margaret Street, until finally I’m outside the blood donor centre.
There’s a goth-looking teenage girl standing outside, smoking a vape and wearing eye shadow as dark as my soul. She’ll do. I figure I should probably practise before I get in there, given how frazzled I am. I can’t afford to mess this up. I stride over to her as she eyes me suspiciously.
I look deep into her eyes, feel my pupils flare and a warmth in my solar plexus. I can sense that she’s about to look away, so in desperation I reach for her arm, muster all my focus, and in a strong voice I say, ‘You will give me your vape.’
At this point her eyes are meant to go glassy, like she’s in some kind of trance.
And then I’m supposed to be able to tell her what to do.
But that’s not what happens. No, instead, my other dud-power fires up because .
. . this is my life. My stomach clenches.
I brace myself. And in come a stream of images.
It’s like watching a silent black and white movie, that’s slightly sped up: wooden pails of soapy water . . . laundry hanging up . . . clothes I recognise from the 1880s . . .
Ahh, a memory from her last life, I think.
Thankfully, she pulls her arm away and the images cut to black. Her nose crinkles. Then her forehead. ‘Fuck off,’ she says.
As I watch her strut away, I know what she’s thinking: I’m some weird young woman who tried to steal her vape. Not a vampire trying desperately to get bagged blood because she’s committed to being a good person. And this is why I feel so misunderstood.
Still, at least now I know my hit-or-miss hypnotism powers are a total ‘miss’ today. Which may make what I’m about to do a little more challenging, but it’s better to know up front.
I pull open the door, move inside, take a deep breath of what smells like antiseptic, and walk through the reception area. I smile at the receptionist—she knows me now, I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing—and head down the hall to where Es will be.
Even when I’m not frazzled and heartbroken, this next bit is a bit tricky.
Let’s just say getting blood from a blood bank is a lot more complicated than they make it look in vampire movies.
To start with, I need whole blood, and donated blood doesn’t stay whole for very long.
Soon, it’s separated into red cells, platelets and plasma, so I need to get to it before any of that happens.
And you can’t just walk up to a quarantine fridge and help yourself to a nice bag of AB negative.
There are swipe cards and CCTV. Honestly, you’d think they knew vampires existed, the way they’ve got it locked down.
Each year, with the advancement of tech, it just gets more and more complicated.
And I have to be careful not to implicate Es.
My mission, therefore, is to get to the blood between when it is drawn and when it is put in the fridge. Not an easy feat.
I get to the room where they take blood and peer through the window.
I can see Es, she’s standing by one of the reclined donation beds, smiling and chatting to someone she’s just hooked up to a needle and bag.
Her light brown hair shines under the overhead strip lighting and a silver cross hangs around her neck, reminding me a little of Buffy.
That, coupled with her true-crime fascination, her biological knowledge and her disturbing ability to join dots, means if anyone actually believed in vampires, being friends with her would be very risky.
Luckily, Es is entirely scientifically minded and evidence based.
My gums tingle as I look at the bags of blood currently being filled; they almost glow neon red, while everything around them dulls to greyscale. I swallow hard, then reach for my phone and text her: Here xxxx
I watch her glance at her phone, then up at me. She grins and I smile back, then my gaze shifts to the cooler box beside her, the words Blood Products written on the side.
Reach for the handle, please reach for the handle . . .
She’s talking now, and I strain to hear her voice through the door. I can just make out her thick Liverpool accent saying, ‘I’m just going to go to the fridge.’
Yes.
The other technician nods and then, seemingly in slow motion, Es reaches for the blood cooler and starts to wheel it my way.
Yes, yes, YES.
Step one accomplished.
As she comes out the door, she grins at me again and looks around—it’s just us. We head quickly down another hallway, towards the room the big fridges are kept in, then slip into a storage room and shut the door. Click.
I know this room well; we do this handover a lot.
Now comes step number two.
‘Do you have them?’ she asks, her deep blue eyes wide and sparkly. She’s twenty-eight and has the beginnings of the fine lines I’ll never have. Oh, how I want life to leave its traces on my face, for people to look at me and know I’ve lived. Instead, they look at me and assume I know nothing.
From my pocket, I pull a small bag of five weed gummies.
The ones I buy from Brendon, who tends the bar at Bunch of Grapes.
Paying Brendon for them and then giving them to Es for free makes me feel marginally better about using her for blood.
It’s a finely tuned moral ecosystem I have going on.
Now comes the pièce de résistance, step number three . . .
As I go to hand them to her, I stumble a little, then lean against the cool plaster wall. ‘Oh wow,’ I say. ‘I’m so dizzy.’
She frowns. ‘Are you okay?’
Most of the time I’d hypnotise her now, or at least give it a shot. Make an excuse if it failed (‘Just joking!’). But given how badly it went with Goth Girl, and given how close I am to tears, this seems like a safer bet.
‘I haven’t eaten today,’ I say. ‘I think it’s low blood sugar.’
‘Aubs, eating is important,’ Es says. ‘Wait here, I’ll get you some biscuits.’
I nod.
As soon as the door clicks shut behind her, I pull open the cooler.
There are six blood bags inside. As cool air rises, I rifle through them, ignoring the first bag, which is labelled O negative.
I never take that—it’s the universal blood donor type, the type that saves lives.
But the second and third are B negative and A positive .
. . I grab them, shove them into my bag, then quickly close the cooler again.
I’ve barely zipped my bag shut when I hear Es coming back, her footsteps quick on the linoleum.
‘Here,’ she says, handing me the biscuits and shutting the door behind her. I make a big show of unwrapping them and taking a contented bite, even though—and I don’t want to sound ungrateful here—they taste like sugary, crumbly cardboard.
‘Thanks so much for the gummies, they’ll make work this evening a lot more fun, but you really didn’t have to, tomorrow would have been fine . . .’
And shit. We’re supposed to be going to see the Christmas lights tomorrow night, we’ve done it every year since we became friends, but with all the trauma I forgot.
I was supposed to ask Jonathan because she’d already asked Greg—her lovely boyfriend who she met at Glastonbury, ‘made love to’ under the stars and has been with ever since—and we were going to double date.
Meet each other’s partners, finally. But clearly, that won’t be happening now, so I’m about to cancel, make an excuse, but then she says: ‘So looking forward to it.’
My lower lip twitches. I look down at the floor.
There’s a heart-shaped mark on the linoleum and I stare at it, thinking, Do not cry.
I should tell her that we broke up, but I’m ashamed.
That I’m the unlovable one. Besides, if we get back together and she meets him, I want her to like him. And we will get back together.
Daphne will help me get him back.
So instead, I smile really hard, push down the tears and say, ‘He said next time, he’s still really busy with work. They’re trying to get funding.’
‘Ahh, that’s a shame, still working at this time of year? Greg was so excited to meet you. But no mind, we’ll have fun without them,’ she says. There’s something about the kindness in her voice that makes me want to cry even more.
I nod and force a smile and say, ‘I’d better go. I’ll be late for work.’
‘Go, go,’ she whispers as she opens the door.
As I get outside I glance down at my phone: 5.03 pm. And shit, now I really am late.