Chapter 14

Silver

I’m surprised but not overly concerned when I see Logan’s text about not being able to meet. We have been spending crazy amounts of time together lately. Maybe he has to do his laundry or something.

When Ollie comes over that evening, I tell him all about Logan—though obviously not the sex part. That’s just tacky. I’ll save all that for Vera.

“Are you mental?” he asks, looking at me as though I’ve just announced I’m seeing a serial killer. “You’re dating a vampire?”

“What’s with the face?” I say, mimicking his scrunched-up expression. “Vampires are people too, you know. When did you become such a vampist?”

“A vampist? Is that a thing?”

“It’s going to be if we let narrow-minded types like you loose in the universe.” I push my plate of ramen noodles away from me. Usually I enjoy nothing more than Chinese chicken flavor, but since having regular exposure to home-cooked meals, I realize they actually taste a lot like plastic worms.

Ollie twists his fork around the plate like he’s eating spaghetti. “What about the future? You’ll age and he’ll still be young. Have you thought about that?”

My shoulders slump. He’s Ciara all over again. “It’s called living for the moment, Ollie. Just because you and Krista have baby names all picked out doesn’t mean the rest of us have to follow suit.”

He breaks my gaze, muttering something unintelligible under his breath and jabbing his fork into his noodles.

“What was that?”

“We broke up. You were right about us. She was trying to change me into something I’m not.” He sighs, shoveling food into his mouth.

I reach across to lay a hand on his. “Ollie, I’m sorry,” I say with genuine sympathy—though obviously I’m relieved I’ll never have to make conversation with the stuck-up bitch again.

A smile plays at the corner of his mouth. “Nah, you’re not. I know you hated her.”

“Hate is a strong word. But yeah, pretty much detested her from the word go.”

We both chuckle.

“You know what really ended it for me?” he says, staring off wistfully into space.

“The way she still referred to her parents as Mummy and Daddy?” I ask, brows raised.

His grin widens. “No. Though, yeah, that was annoying, now you mention it. But no, it was the other weekend when I took her to Brighton. I wanted to go to the amusement park on the pier, and she kept saying there was no point because we don’t have kids. And then when I eventually got her there, she wouldn’t ride the ghost train. Not because she was scared—that would have been cute—but because she thought it was childish.”

“Evil bitch,” I cut in.

“I can’t spend my life with someone who won’t ride the ghost train.”

“A life without ghost trains is no life at all,” I agree.

“But seriously. There’s no point if you can’t have fun with the person you’re with, is there?”

“No.” I think of Logan and our zany conversations, that time he stuck his head out the cab window and yelled at a bunch of tourists. I unsuccessfully try to smother a goofy grin.

When my eyes flicker back to Ollie, he’s deep in thought and looking at me, head tilted to one side. “You’re happy, aren’t you, Silv?” he asks, brow furrowed.

My heart clenches. “Aren’t I always?”

His frown deepens as he shakes his head slowly. “I mean, you’re never miserable or anything—a little spiky at times maybe. I don’t know, you seem softer.”

“That’ll be the sex,” I say, instantly regretting it as he squirms uncomfortably on his seat. I’m not sure how it works with other boy/girl best friends, but Ollie and I don’t really do below-the-waist talk.

“If he makes you happy,” Ollie continues, ignoring my comment, “then I’m happy.”

I look across the table at his freckled face, red bangs falling in his blue eyes, the tiny chip on his front tooth he got from riding his BMX down a slide at the park. For some odd reason, tears prick the corners of my eyes. “He does make me happy, Ollie. I mean, sometimes I want to kill him, but—” I break off, shrugging. “I really like him,” I say simply.

He puts his fork down. “You were never going to fall for someone normal, were you?” he says, not unkindly.

I shake my head and smile. “Where’s the fun in that?”

* * *

Later on, after Ollie leaves, I text Logan to say good night—he doesn’t reply.

All night, sleep comes in fits and starts. At one point, I dream someone is knocking on the front door and I wake up, in a tangle of sheets, straining my ears in hope that it’s Logan, and checking my phone for the thousandth time since sending the text. Nothing.

By the time I get to work the next morning, I feel as if I haven’t slept for a month. I spent the whole bus journey with my phone in my fist, staring at the screen. I’ve become the girl I never wanted to be.

“No good-bye kiss at the door this morning?” Ciara asks as I tear off my coat in the cluttered staff room.

“Nope,” I say bluntly, avoiding her eye.

She frowns. “Did you guys fight or something?”

“Nope,” I say again. The last thing I need is another lecture from her boring men are the best repertoire of relationship advice.

“Maybe it fizzled out,” she says.

I have to mentally count to ten to keep from hitting her in the face with my handbag.

At around ten, I decide if I don’t hear by this evening, I’ll call him. It’s enough to see me through the rest of the day without strangling Ciara and her pitying looks with a vintage pearl choker.

I turn onto my street later on, heart pounding in my chest, half believing I’m going to find Logan outside my flat. Even when I reach the steps and find them empty, hope infuses me with an image of him standing in the kitchen, cooking. It’s so powerful I can practically see him smiling, hear him make a lewd comment about my work uniform as I take off my coat.

But the flat is as dark and empty as I left it this morning.

I flick the light on and slam the door shut behind me, rifling through my bag for my phone as if my life depends on it. Tissues, bus tickets, and hair ties fall to the carpet like ticker tape. My heart pounds in my chest so loudly it almost drowns out the dial tone. After about five rings, it connects to the network voice mail. I hang up without leaving a message.

What the hell is his problem? He didn’t seem any different yesterday morning. It began like all the others—waking up wrapped in his arms, a thick hard-on pressed into my back. We’d made love, showered, made out for so long the toast burned, and then left in a cozy bubble of hazy, postcoital happiness.

I’m no stranger to breakups. I’ve been breaking up with men since I was fifteen years old. A girl gets good at reading the signs—distant behavior, little or no eye contact, and the general sixth sense they’re about to run for the hills. There was none of that with Logan. If anything, he was too keen. He’d promised pizza, for heaven’s sake. The only reason I can think of is that the idea of officially meeting Ollie scared him off.

Not fancying an evening of phone watching, I grab my keys and stomp upstairs to Vera’s. Even an I told you so is preferable to a cold, lonely flat.

When she opens the door, I have to bite my lip to keep from bursting into tears on her doorstep. What is happening to me? Next thing I’ll be eating ice cream straight from the carton and watching Beaches.

“Silver?” Vera says in a voice so laden with sympathy that a rogue tear squeezes out of my eye and escapes down my cheek. “Has someone died?”

I let out a throaty laugh that sounds disturbingly sob-like. “Not yet. But never say never.”

She steps onto the doorstep in her slinky black robe and drapes a thin, birdlike arm around my shoulders, drawing me into the house. “If it’s not death, it’s man trouble,” she says, ushering me past the front room and into her cozy, retro furnished den further up the hallway. “Let me guess—the hottie vampire?”

Nodding, I drop into a squishy, red armchair. “Why are men assholes, Vera?”

Vera crosses to the fifties minibar shaped like a ship’s stern and picks up a half-full bottle of gin. “Some say it’s inherent. Personally, I think it’s because they know they can get away with it.”

I look up, watching as she scoops ice into a tumbler with tongs shaped like pineapples. “But it doesn’t make any sense. Yesterday he was all over me, and today he’s ignoring my calls.”

“Men are like stray dogs. If there’s a better cut of meat on offer elsewhere, they’re off faster than a greyhound from a trap.” She skillfully pours gin into the glass without taking her dark, hooded eyes from my face. “I don’t want to have to say it, darling, but I warned you about going to bed with him too soon.”

I take the drink from her liver-spotted hand and sigh. “I know you did. But this didn’t feel like just sex. I’ve never had someone look at me the way he did. He made me feel adored.” I take a swig of the drink, enjoying the tingly warmth as it slides down my throat and remembering the way he murmured my name during the heat of climax, the kisses that felt like love.

“I’m sure he adored you at the time. But in the cold light of reality, it’s a different story.”

“Bastard,” I mutter, swigging more of my gin. Deep down though, I don’t believe it. There was never the slightest doubt we were anything other than two people growing more and more crazy about each other. Surely he wasn’t that good an actor.

When Stan arrives half an hour later, I plod miserably back downstairs. My phone is still where I left it on the sofa. I pick it up, hope filling me like helium in a balloon, praying I’ll find a message. There’s nothing. Flopping down against the cushions, I ignore my growling stomach and comb through my memory of yesterday morning for any look or strange comment I might have missed.

In what has become my knee-jerk reaction to any form of rejection, I wind up thinking about Mum. A psychologist would say it’s because I never properly dealt with the trauma of her disappearance when I was a kid. Who knows? Maybe I didn’t. But it wasn’t like we didn’t try. Dad didn’t go into a depression or drink himself unconscious—he was there for me. We dealt with it together. The only part I still can’t deal with is the not knowing. It’s like trying to heal a wound you can’t quite reach or solve a puzzle with half the pieces missing.

For a couple of years, I tried convincing myself she wasn’t dead. I pretended she’d run away with a rich millionaire and was living out on the ocean in a yacht somewhere. I’d pick away at the scab with sordid pleasure, hating her, blaming her, telling myself she was a selfish bitch who never loved us in the first place. It seemed far easier to hate someone than to grieve them.

Putting the phone to my ear, I decide to give Dad a call.

Sheila answers, sounding crotchety as usual. “Hello?”

“Hi, it’s Silver.”

There is a short intake of breath. “Silver, how nice to hear from you. I’ll just pass you over to your dad, if that’s okay. Grey’s Anatomy is on and Meredith just went into labor in the middle of a blackout.”

“Oh. Sounds serious,” I say in a droll tone.

“The phone lines are down,” she explains.

“What about her mobile?” I ask quickly.

“It fell into a water-filled ditch.”

“Ah. Then she really is screwed.” Nice to know I wasn’t the only one down on my luck.

“Anyway, here’s your dad. Bye.”

There is a mutter of low voices and clunking as the phone switches hands. Then Dad’s voice booms down the line, “Silver! How are you?”

I flinch, holding the phone away. Dad always speaks twice as loudly on the phone. As if he feels the need to compensate for us being miles apart. “Hi, Dad, I’m fine,” I say, lying through my teeth. Unless Logan walks in that door right now, it’s going to be a long time before I feel remotely fine again.

Neither of us speaks for a few seconds. I get the feeling he still has one eye on the TV.

“Dad, I wanted to ask something about Mum.”

That gets his attention. “Oh,” he says, his voice dropping several decibels. “What is it you want to ask?”

I screw my eyes shut. I hadn’t planned on ever talking to him about this, but since I’m depressed as hell anyway, I figure why not go whole hog and throw some mother issues into the mix?

“Was there any mention of vampires involved in her disappearance?”

For a moment I wonder if he’s still there. Finally, he says, “No. The police never mentioned anything like that.”

I frown into the phone. Dad is the most honest person I know. When I was seven years old, he blurted out that Santa Claus wasn’t real because he couldn’t bear the deception. But for some reason, maybe it’s the frailty in his voice, I get the impression there’s something he’s not telling me.

“I see,” I say, staring across the room to her photo on the mantel.

“Why do you ask?” he says next.

“Just curious,” I lie. “It just occurred to me that, back then, they didn’t realize vampires existed. I thought maybe it might make a difference.”

There is another long pause. I hear his shallow breathing down the line. “Did she ever say anything to you about this? Maybe something when you were little that you’re only just remembering?”

This was getting weirder by the second. “No. Why would she?”

He sighs. “It doesn’t mean anything, I’m sure.”

“What doesn’t?” I ask in confusion.

“Hang on.” I hear shuffling and a door creaking shut, a soft thud of footsteps. “I couldn’t talk with your stepmother in the room,” he says when he comes back on the line. “I’m upstairs now.”

Patience isn’t my forte. “Oh, for God’s sake, Dad. What is it?”

He tuts loudly. “There’s no need to snap.”

I roll my eyes like I used to at age fourteen. “Sorry.”

“Silver, I met your mother when she was twenty and I was twenty-seven.”

“I know,” I mutter irritably. I still have no idea where he’s going with all this.

“Before me, she was involved with another man. He treated her badly—physically and mentally. She’d met him when she was quite young, around fifteen. It was a few years into our relationship before she trusted me enough to tell me.”

My heart stills in my chest. “Who was he?”

“A fella named Stephen Clegg. When she told me about him, I thought she was having me on.”

“Dad?” I say. I’m suddenly finding it hard to breathe. “He wasn’t—”

“A vampire, yes. It took a lot for her to open up about it. I was the only one she ever told.”

White dots swim around my vision, and my palms sweat so badly the phone almost slips from my grasp. “But why didn’t you mention it to the police?”

“I did, but they thought I was having an episode of some kind, that her disappearance had made me unstable. There were questions about my ability to raise a child, talk of social services. I couldn’t have that, Silver, so I shut up. I figured they knew what they were doing.”

“But they didn’t. Not really.” Without realizing it, hot tears begin to slide down my cheeks.

“I guess not,” he says, sighing. “But anyway, that’s why I was so surprised when you brought it up, why I thought you might have somehow overheard us talking when you were little.”

“No,” I mumble. “Like I said, it just suddenly occurred to me, that’s all.”

“I’m sure if it was relevant, they would have connected the dots.”

I think of Burke and Davies. While they definitely know of the link, they didn’t say whether it was because of what Dad once said or not.

“Nothing will bring her back,” Dad says in a voice that sounds as brittle as cracked glass. “She’s gone.”

I suck in a lungful of air. My head feels light and my stomach growls again. “Dad, I better go. I need to make myself some dinner.”

“Are you okay? I can drive up if you need me.”

“No, I’m fine. Just hungry. Thanks for talking to me about it.”

“Anytime. You know where I am. Why don’t you come home next week? We’d love to see you.”

“I’ll try,” I say noncommittally.

“Please do. Bye, sweetheart.”

“Bye, Dad.”

We hang up, and even though I’ve just learned some earth-shattering news about Mum, the first thing I do is check to see if any messages have come in while I was talking. Such is the nature of my desperation. When I see there’s none, I sink back into the sofa, thinking about what Dad said, the irony that my own mother once dated a vampire herself.

If Logan were still around, I’d ask about Stephen Clegg. After all, he did say he knows all the vampires in London. I could kick myself for not being brave enough to ask Dad about it sooner. I could have been focusing on him instead of random questions about holy water and coffins.

Toying with my phone, I hit Logan’s number again, my breathing ragged as I wait for the dial tone. Only this time there isn’t one. It switches straight to voice mail, meaning he’s either somewhere with no phone signal or it’s switched off. I let out a scream of frustration. How could I let my guard down like this? All the years I’ve spent carefully not holding hands with guys, refusing second dates, only to wind up driven half-crazy anyway.

To stop me replaying the last morning again in my head, I pick my laptop off the coffee table and flip it open, quickly typing in the V-Date website address. If Logan has disappeared, maybe I should go on another date and, this time, ask about Stephen Clegg. A voice in my head tells me to stop, to put down the computer, that no good will come of it. But the way I feel inside, like an animal caught in a snare—hopeless and bleeding—propels me on. I need the complete distraction of foolishness. And besides, since when have I ever listened to my sensible voice?