After dinner Walker takes the kids up for a bath (they still don’t leave my sight unless he or Cloquet is with them; if it’s neurotic, fine, I’m neurotic) and my dad falls asleep in the recliner in front of the TV. I step outside with a fresh drink for a smoke. I’ve been dying for one all day, but I can’t in front of my dad. Cancer; my mother; sacrilege.

Barefoot, blissful after two drags, I wander down past the pool, across the lawn and out the gate, which opens onto a track that runs a little way uphill between the pines to meet the road above. The sun’s down and the air’s blue-golden, soft, warm. A cloud of gnats a few feet away in what looks like pointless frenzy.

I’ll see you another time.

That was eight months ago, and I haven’t seen him since.

I can’t pretend I’m not a little disappointed.

Vor klez fanim va gargim din gammou-jhi. When he joins the blood of the werewolf. When he joins. As in... joins. What God hath joined, let no man put asunder...

I almost didn’t tell Walker, that night. Five minutes’ surreal conversation with a vampire in the kitchen had felt like an unholy infidelity. But I did tell him. For once grace was given to me to do the right thing. Hot-faced, trembling, I blurted out the whole story. If I hadn’t, the concealment would’ve grown into contempt. That’s what happens when you keep a secret from someone you love: you start to hate them for allowing you to prove your own willingness to deceive them.

So I told him, but the feeling of infidelity didn’t entirely vanish. Hasn’t entirely vanished.

I finish the cigarette and walk back to the pool. The patio smells are benign: chlorine; clean stone; sun-tan lotion; lavender. I can hear basketball commentary from indoors.

I’ll see you another time.

Eight months. Twenty thousand years.

I can’t pretend a part of me isn’t still waiting.

In the house I discover Walker has fallen asleep on my bed in his underwear, with a twin nestled (also asleep) in each armpit. I draw the comforter over them and turn out the light. They won’t roll off. He won’t squash them. Species certainty. Species gravity.

In the lounge, my dad snores, open-mouthed, in the recliner. I cover him with a blanket, mute the TV and set a glass of water on the side table next to him for when he wakes up, parched. I should be sleepy myself, after so much booze and sun and food, but I’m not. I’m alert, restless, vaguely bereaved. It occurs to me that for the first time in a long time I’m not worried about anything.

I hadn’t thought peace would feel like this.

It won’t last, of course.