Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
FLORENCE
It’s a few days after Quinn’s party when it happens.
I’m trying to sneak a nap in the break room again when Cam bursts in. He takes one look at my fleece cocoon and bursts out laughing.
‘Florence, it’s almost July,’ he says, plopping himself down on the sofa opposite me.
I screw up my face at him. ‘Tell that to the air conditioning.’ I’ve never been good at retaining warmth. I’m cold blooded, like a lizard.
He looks at the thermostat on the wall, then back at me. ‘It’s twenty-one degrees, just like always.’
I harrumph. ‘Fine, maybe I’m just hungry.’
Without missing a beat, Cam fishes two vials of blood out of his pocket and offers them over to me. I swear this man has blood on him every hour of the day.
‘You misleading thyroid patients again?’ I ask, downing one of the vials and almost immediately feeling a little brighter.
Cam just grins. ‘Nah. One of the trainees misread the request form and drew two unnecessary samples. I happened to be in the right place at the right time. And now you are, too.’
The second sample hits the spot. It’s only a tiny amount of blood, but it’ll be enough to perk me up for the rest of my shift, like a vampire espresso. When I look back at Cam, I’m awake enough to note that he’s still sitting opposite me, looking at me expectantly.
‘There’s more?’
He chuckles. ‘Yes, Florence. Believe it or not, I’ve got better things to do with my time than lie about in here all day.’
‘I’m on a scheduled break.’
He ignores me. ‘I’ve just been speaking to someone at the lab in Edinburgh.’
My ears perk up, hope finding its way into the space between my bones. ‘About Quinn?’
He nods. ‘There’s been a development.’
I think I’m holding my breath. I daren’t move a muscle.
‘They’ve managed to track down someone who experienced the same issue,’ he says, his voice low. ‘Records show he died in the early 2000s, but it seems he did not stay dead.’
‘He turned,’ I mutter, more to myself than to Cam.
If that’s the case, this is huge. If Quinn is not fading from me, but merely on a slow road to a full transition, then the looming heartbreak I’ve been trying so hard to forget about may not be an inevitability after all.
If this is real, there’s a chance we could get our forever, together.
Cam nods, looking at me carefully, like he can track every thought rushing through my mind.
‘He did.’ His tone is as cautious as his expression, and something about it tugs on my optimism, holding it in check.
‘We don’t know anything for sure yet. But we think it may be helpful for Quinn to speak with him.
As luck would have it, he lives nearby, and I’m sure he’ll have insight that will come in useful if there are any choices to be made down the line. ’
My stomach drops. There’s more to this than Cam is letting on, I’m sure of it. ‘Choices?’
Cam studies me for a moment or two, but he doesn’t elaborate. ‘Just speak with him,’ he says and he stands, slipping a folded Post-it into my hand. ‘I think it will be helpful for both of you.’ And then he’s gone.
I take the note and slip it into the pocket of my tunic.
It hasn’t escaped my attention how Cam spoke to me just now.
I’ve known him for so long that I’ve become attuned to the smallest of changes: the cadence of his voice, the tiny degrees of tension in the way he holds his hands.
Even his posture was different, his spine stacked infinitesimally straighter than his usual laid-back loll.
The way Cam spoke to me just now wasn’t the way he speaks to me, his oldest friend. He spoke as if I were a patient. And I can only see two reasons why he might have done that. Either it isn’t good news, or there’s a difficult choice to be made.
And if I’m being really honest with myself, I’m not sure I’m prepared for either.
* * *
‘I love a train,’ Quinn exclaims a little too brightly as we rattle along the North Yorkshire Moors railway line.
His face is practically pressed up against the glass, occasionally cooing with delight as we fly past a field of cows, or a quaint little farmhouse.
The route is especially beautiful at this time of year, all lush green fields and brightly coloured blooms. It’s worth the full half hour I took to plaster myself in my super high-factor sunscreen.
Quinn does have a car, but he’s been driving it less and less since his symptoms started, and I think the full loss of consciousness the other day scared him.
I suggested the train instead, as the man we’re going to meet happens to live at the end of this heritage train line, and, as Quinn has now told me four separate times, he does love a train.
Our energies could not be more different as we chug towards Pickering station and he points out a particularly good tree. He seems upbeat, optimistic about how the meeting is going to go. He’s going to get answers, he thinks, and for him that feels like a lifeline.
For me it’s a little different. I haven’t burdened Quinn with my fears. If I’m right to be wary, there’ll be time enough for that. Instead, I’m basking in his sunshine while it lasts and trying like hell to push down my fear of the approaching night.
The train lurches to a stop at Pickering and we grab our things, stepping out into an objectively pleasant day, mercifully cloudy but with that faint haze of midsummer that makes everything seem a little oversaturated.
Quinn grabs my hand and slips his fingers between mine, and together we walk down the platform and out into the streets of Pickering.
Albert Ackroyd lives a short walk from the station, in a little cottage that backs onto the castle.
It looks like a perfectly ordinary house, though I can’t help but notice small details, like the curtains drawn in the middle of the day and the low-maintenance paved-out yard.
There’s a collection of gnomes that mark each side of the path to the front door.
I’m willing to bet that’s deliberate – Albert’s effort to make his neighbours assume he’s just an eccentric old man and never suspect for a moment that there’s a vampire living under their noses. He’s pulling it off perfectly.
I brace myself as Quinn raises a fist to knock on the deep-red door.
I’m not sure I can explain the feeling of dread that’s gripped the back of my neck ever since I heard Albert existed.
I’ve tried to mask it, to not let on to Quinn that I’m anything but hopeful, but it’s been there the whole time, simmering in the background.
Maybe I’ve been kidding myself, larking around on these perfect summer nights with Quinn, thinking this is the way it’ll always be; that we could stay frozen in time, watching the world change around us.
But the reality of the situation is that the only one frozen in time is me.
We hear a muffled ‘Come in’, and then Quinn turns the handle and I follow him into the unknown.
It’s dimmer than I expected inside the house.
There’s only a little light coming from beneath the curtains, and a single lamp turned on in the hallway, its bare bulb gathering a thick layer of dust. The paint is more than a few years past its best, and the flooring creaks and moans as we walk across it.
I hear Quinn’s sharp intake of breath as he spots Albert, even through the cough he tries to mask it with.
The old man is sitting in a tattered armchair, knuckles whitening as he grips what’s left of the arms through the fraying threads.
His eyes dart to us as we enter the room, one hand going to adjust the gold-rimmed glasses on his nose.
‘Albert,’ Quinn says, striding up to the older man and offering his hand. ‘I’m Quinn and this is Florence. It’s lovely to meet you.’
Albert studies Quinn’s outstretched hand for a moment or two before he takes it, his wild white brows pulling into an expression of concentration like he hasn’t shaken hands with anyone for a while.
And his voice, when he speaks, comes out as a croak at first, like he hasn’t had to use that for a while either.
‘Yes.’ He has to try a few times before the word is audible.
‘I was told you would be coming today. The man I spoke to said you had some questions I might be able to answer.’ He laughs, but it’s a strange sound – something more like a rattle.
‘It’s funny, I haven’t been useful to anyone for such a long time. Please, sit.’
He gestures to the small sofa against the adjacent wall of the room and we sit, disturbing what feels like must be a decade’s worth of dust, maybe more.
I hold my breath so the particles don’t irritate me, but Quinn doesn’t have that luxury.
He sneezes three times in quick succession, which makes Albert’s face fall.
‘I’m sorry about the state of this place,’ he says, clearly embarrassed. ‘I’ve been so tired lately that I haven’t really had the energy to clean up.’ He smiles, but even that small movement seems laboured. ‘Can I offer you a drink?’ Albert asks. ‘Though I don’t have fresh supplies, I’m afraid.’
‘I’ll get them,’ I say, popping to my feet.
Albert nods slowly, that faint smile still on his face. ‘You’re a dear. The kitchen is the last door on the left. There should be tea and sugar in the cupboard next to the window. The mugs are to the right of that.’
I nod. ‘Can I get you anything, Albert?’
‘Oh no, thank you.’ His smile broadens, just the tiniest amount. ‘I’ve no need for that, now.’
Unsure how to respond to that, I just nod again and smile at them both before heading out of the room.
Albert’s kitchen is a good fifty years out of date.
The cabinets look to be a faded shade of orange underneath the layers of dust, with worn terracotta tiles on the walls and the floor.
I remember some of the appliances from the cottage I rented in northern Wales in the 1970s. They were past their best, even then.
Ageing hinges squeal at me as I open the cupboard next to the window. Just as Albert said, there’s a box of teabags in there, along with a small jar of sugar and four mugs. I check the expiry date on the teabag box out of interest.
December 1993.
Hmmm. I try the sugar and find it’s fused into a solid block which comes up with the spoon when I lift it.
Perhaps tea isn’t a great idea.
Instead, I run the tap and rinse out one of the mugs, filling it up with fresh water.
I notice the water has left a trail of bright stainless steel that peeps through the dust in the basin, and it makes me stop a moment.
Then I take the dishcloth draped over the tap and scrub the whole sink until it’s clean.
Both men look up at me as I walk back into the living room, and I feel Albert’s eyes flit to the mug in my hand before I pass it to Quinn.
‘You didn’t make yourself anything to drink?’
I shake my head. ‘I’m fine.’
He hums, like I’ve answered a question for him. ‘You’re like me,’ he says, and I’m not sure if he means undead, or just not a tea person. Either way, the answer is the same.
‘Yes.’
I sit back down beside Quinn just in time to hear his tiny grunt of surprise as he gulps from his mug.
‘Just water?’ he asks, in a whisper so quiet I’d probably miss it if I still had human hearing. I bite back a smile.
‘I think you’re too mortal for Albert’s teabags,’ I whisper back. ‘They expired before you were born.’
He’s about a second away from choking on his water, but he manages to swallow it just in time. I catch his eye and he smiles, a small, conspiratorial grin that’s meant just for us. I can’t say why that catches at my throat in quite the way that it does.
‘Anyway,’ he says, dragging his eyes away from mine. ‘Albert was just getting started with his story.’