Chapter 11
I look up and around to make sure nobody is watching, then quickly log in.
Welcome, Margot, it reads at the top.
While I could have chosen any screenname I wanted, it seemed a bit pointless given that anybody who tapped on my profile could see my ‘real name’ anyway. Well, the name that matches the ID I used to sign up to this site (more on that later).
I tap through to the VHC noticeboard and scan the most recent posts: PENNSYLVANIA COUPLE CLAIM TO DRINK BLOOD, brONX SUBWAY STABBING ATTACK APPEARS RANDOM, brEAK-IN TURNS DEADLY . . .
The way this forum works is simple: members copy and paste the main information from news articles detailing crimes they suspect might have been committed by a vampire, or that reference vampires directly.
Usually these involve stabbings—apparently that’s how we ‘vamps’ cover our bite marks, at least according to the ever-growing number of members on this site.
Sometimes, when there is a particularly compelling article that everyone agrees most probably describes a vampire attack, there are IRL (in real life) events in the relevant location to ‘strategise’. Members can even ‘Zoom in’ electronically from other locations if they want to.
I’ve only been to one of these—a meet-up organised by a psycho called @Riley—and never again.
I tap on PENNSYLVANIA COUPLE CLAIM TO DRINK BLOOD and scan down to the comments.
There’s only one: If they want to act like vamps let them die like vamps! Wrap them in chains, bury them with rocks in their jaws like the olden days!
It was posted by @NancyJayne, whose avatar is a little circle with the text Jesus Loves You in the centre.
I tap out of it. My stomach clenches.
Comments like that are par for the course, but I won’t lie, sometimes they hurt.
But every time I’ve almost deleted my profile, I couldn’t.
This is the only place I’ve found where people actually believe vampires exist. And in a world where all I can do is stay hidden, and lie to everyone I know . . . that’s everything.
Besides, now I can’t leave, because I’ve made a friend here.
Sally. Otherwise known as @Connecticuthousewife011.
And even though yes, she lives in Connecticut, so we’ll never get to hang out in real life, that’s kind of a good thing.
There’s something comforting about having a screen and an ocean between us.
About knowing I could delete my profile at any time.
It means I can almost be myself with her. Almost. While yes, she thinks my name is Margot, and no, I’d never tell her my biggest secret, I’ve told her more than anyone else. Things I’d never dare tell anyone who knew me in real life.
Like, this year on my vampire birthday, I was having a particularly bad night. I was sitting there with my stupid little cupcake, sobbing uncontrollably, certain that the ache inside me would never ease, and I just had to get it out.
I didn’t know Sally that well, we’d only been messaging for a couple of months about various articles, but she’d once written that she wished a vampire would come and scare her husband out of inertia.
She’d added ‘LOL’ like it was a joke, but I could tell there was some truth to it.
A latent pain that meant she might understand.
Besides, she was so far away that if I was going to be honest with anyone, she was perfect.
So I logged in and typed the thing I’d never said out loud: I want to die sometimes.
Then, of course, came the terror of judgement. As the typing bubbles flared, I was preparing myself for the worst, getting ready to delete my profile altogether, thinking: Have you lost your mind? But then she wrote back: It’s okay. Me too.
It was the most normal I’d ever felt. And we’ve been friends ever since.
I’d say our friendship is thirty per cent sexy-vampire memes, thirty per cent complaining about life, twenty per cent chatting about what it might be like to actually be a vampire (she thinks it’d be amazing, I usually gently suggest it might be more like a holiday in hell—though obviously under the guise of surmising), ten per cent discussing articles on the site and ten per cent real talk.
For me, that real talk used to mean telling her exactly how lonely I was, how nobody ever saw beyond my surface, but maybe if they ever did, they wouldn’t love me anyway. How I thought Edward from Twilight was the perfect man, that sort of thing.
But recently, all I’ve talked about is Jonathan and how I’m so in love with him. I have, however, been careful to dilute that with a lot of complaining about Kenny and work because I know Sally is unhappy in her marriage and I don’t want to be insensitive.
Sally talks a lot about killing her husband, Frank, and making it look like a vampire did it, though she does routinely take breaks from that train of thought to ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ over things Jonathan has said or done, or to pray for Kenny’s demise and encourage me to do the same.
I’m pretty sure she’s joking about all of it, but who knows?
I’m certainly not going to judge. And thanks to the time difference, I can talk to her late into the night while the rest of London sleeps.
But the best part is, I get to keep her.
Because I love Es and Daphne, but they have a shelf-life.
In three to five years, I will have to fade out of their lives the way I always have to disappear from the lives of my friends, before they figure out I’m not ageing—there’s only so much I can put down to Botox, good hydration and a nine-step skincare routine, although those things have bought me a little extra time in recent years.
It meant I had a little longer before needing a new ID where the picture matched the birthdate.
But online friends don’t know if you’re seventeen, seventy or 150, so I can keep those friends for as long as they are alive.
I tap through to my inbox and stare down at Sally’s last message: In-laws arrived today. MIL is already reorganising my cutlery drawers. FML. How’s the man? How’s work? Douchebag boss die of a heart attack yet? Still praying!
She sent it yesterday, but what with the break-up and everything, I didn’t get to it. And now there is no man and every part of me hurts.
Then I hear: ‘Aubrey, no phones on the floor.’
That’s Kenny’s voice. The douchebag in question.
My stomach clenches and I look up. He’s staring at me with those beady little eyes of his, shifting from foot to foot like he’s brought the London marathon training he never shuts up about into work.
That marathon is why Sally thinks he might have a heart attack one day soon if we both ‘pray on it’. I don’t have the heart to tell her that if there is a god, he hasn’t answered my prayers in a very long time. Honestly, he’d probably keep Kenny around just to spite me.
I put my phone back under the desk. ‘Sorry.’
Kenny’s eyes graze my chest and linger around where my nipples would be if he could see them.
He licks his lips just a little and my insides recoil.
I imagine myself lurching forward, my fangs exposed, going for his pasty neck.
Not because I’m hungry or tempted by his blood, but because I want him to feel violated too.
Stop it Aubrey. Push it down.
‘I’ll put a meeting in so we can talk about your sales targets.
Again,’ he says, eyes to mine now. As he wanders off I think, How have I sheltered from bombs in the London Tube, fought as a suffragette, gone to war, pushed through the Great Depression, evaded electric shock therapy in the 50s, dealt with Y2K, 9/11 and the 2008 crash (along with everything else), only to have to deal with the likes of . . . Kenny?
Daphne rushes over.
‘Oh my god, what is his deal?’ she asks. ‘Are you okay?’
I nod.
‘Such a lech,’ she says, sneering in Kenny’s direction. Then she turns to me, her eyes on mine. ‘It’s okay, Aubs, stop looking so sad. Jonathan is just a guy. But if you want him back, we’ll get him back, okay?’
And as she says it, that elusive hope is back.