'I can see why you want to leave!'
He put on his sunglasses, and grinned at her. 'No one ever knows. I'm careful.'
'Good, because I'm not done. I haven't finished. Not yet.'
The dark lenses gave back a double image of her face, so richly shadowed, it's a shame she needs another partner. But two predators can't feed on each other. This is their eroticism, these tastes and smells, this contact at a remove: and it still thrills her. Sheridan always comes first, true. But Camilla likes it that way.
'Go, sister,' says Sheridan, the big teenager. 'You look like you need a fix.'
The car had been repaired. It arrived back at the B&B that evening. They announced their departure the next morning, and settled the bill. Noreen was very sorry to see them go, but she made no fond farewells in front of Camilla's ersatz husband. Camilla conveyed, by a sad glance or two, that the sudden decision was not her own; and that she wished they could say goodbye more warmly. She got up about an hour after midnight, Sheridan peacefully unconscious. The sheets, although freshly changed, still had that bad-laundry smell. How does she do it? wondered Camilla, wrapping herself in an elegant blue and white kimono. Poor Noreen is a genius of poor housekeeping, of meagre portions She went into the ensuite and checked her face. Good God, even the electricity in the mean fluorescent tube seems to come straight from the North Pole. Tiny crow's feet around her eyes, lines between her brows, is that a broken vein ? Can't be! Never mind. Soon, soon this washed-out hag will disappear. The mirrors of civilization will restore Camilla's beauty, infused with fresh magic. For a last thrill, she walked the immeasurably ugly, pine-varnished passageways of the big lumpen house, possessing it like a ghost. American couples snore peacefully behind their brass number-plates, dreaming of Blarney Castle and the Rock of Cashel. Noreen shares a room and a bed with Jonas, with baby Roisin in her cot. The baby, for a wonder, is not grizzling. But the house is unquiet.
Camilla followed a trail of sound — buzzes and clicks and muted thunderclaps. Silently, she opened a door and saw the BMX boy there in the shadows, with his back to her, lost in contemplation of the graphics on his TV screen. His little hands were moving incessantly, clicketty clicketty clicketty . Camilla knew the names of all the children. This one was Declan, the ten-year-old, fortunately immune to the virus that's going round. He's actually a little young for that virus: the bud not quite bursting, the sap not yet on the rise, but he'd be immune anyway. There are rules. She slipped into the room and stood behind him, wondering about passions that she did not share. She was standing so close, it was amazing that the child didn't turn around. Over his shoulder she could see her own face reflected on the screen, clearly visible within the racetrack image.
Declan turned and saw nothing (an adult woman, a mother, a featureless conduit). Without changing expression, he turned back and resumed his game.
Shuddering with horror, Camilla retreated: and that's Noreen's diet. That's all the feeding her poor starved soul ever gets.
She went down to the TV Lounge, feeling morally justified. I'm not a bad person. Not entirely greedy. I give as well as take! A quarter of an hour, and Noreen appeared, red-faced with sleep, her crop-head tousled, bundled up in a dreadful dressing-gown. 'I thought I heard Ough, Camilla what is it ?'
Camilla was weeping, stifling her sobs with fists clenched against her teeth.
She was beside herself. It was some time before she could be persuaded to talk. In choked, half sentences, covering her face, she told the story.
Her suspicions. Her certainty. The terrible burden.
'I can't prove it,' she explained. 'But I know, more surely every time it happens. He steals something from them How can I say it? They surrender to him.'
'Jesus God. Ye're saying he interferes with them?'
'No!' wailed Camilla. 'That's nothing . I'm saying he takes the life out of them.'
'But, Camilla, nobody's died!'
'No! He doesn't kill them, he's too clever for that. They die later, of something else, an accident, the flu; I've kept track. I know it happens. But he never gets the blame. What's worse is when they live, but it would be better if they didn't, because they're like him . I've known that happen, too.'
The harshly furnished room listened in shock. The big TV screen gazed sombrely.
Camilla showed Noreen the photographs. The young housewife trembled. She babbled of 'the polis'. Camilla said, then he'd kill me . Oh, God, I don't want to die!
'I had to tell you,' she wept. 'I just had to tell. Oh, Noreen, the things I know '
And then the broken whispers, the breath coming fast. The last protests, the surrender. Noreen agrees abjectly that she will not raise the alarm. Shivering, sickened, she is deflowered, degraded, made complicit in something monstrous and she loves it.
For Camilla too, the experience was deeply satisfying.
She left the room, and crept back to number four.
A flash caught her as she opened the door, her lips still wet, features softened and eyes blind with afterglow. 'Gotcha!' cried Sheridan, brandishing the camera, grinning; and she laughed. It was almost as if he'd kissed her. He turned away, and checked the preview screen. 'Hmm.' He sounded disappointed; or maybe puzzled.
'What is it?'
'Oh, nothing.'
They left the big, stark yellow house early in the morning. Camilla found the moment of departure oddly disappointing. She would have liked to see Noreen again. She would have liked to see some consciousness, a touch of pallor; some shamed disquiet in the young housewife's eyes. But it's time to make a clean getaway. Noreen will wake up unsure that anything really happened in the night (she'll probably never miss what Camilla took from her): and that's the way it's supposed to be. In and out without a trace, love them and leave them.
She went into the kitchen for a moment, and stood looking around. The smells of kippers, blood-pudding, and laundry that's been dried indoors mingled sickeningly. Camilla felt suddenly, deeply disoriented. The taste of Noreen's life was in her throat; she had a horrible, momentary vision of somehow staying here, being trapped here , with the slab of a husband, the indifferent children, the sonorous Americans chewing overcooked bacon in that
