Amanda stepped onto the black and white tiles of the hallway and closed the front door behind her. When she turned back around, Amanda found that Caroline had already disappeared back into the front room, quite content to leave her newly arrived and unknown guest unattended.
“Just throw your things down in there, my dear, and come and join me in here. Oh, sorry, I forgot to ask your name.”
“Amanda.”
“Well, Amanda, would you like anything to drink?”
“No, fine thanks,” replied Amanda, softly, as she draped the leather jacket she was wearing over a mahogany hat and coat stand.
As she did so, she could not help but notice some of the photographs on the wall, most of which seemed to include Caroline herself, and many of which included pictures of parties in the very house in which she was standing; parties at which the only member of the living dead clearly seemed to be Caroline. One black and white image, in particular, caught Amanda’s eye; it was of a dance hall, heaving with people, that she guessed must have been taken in the 1940s or 50s. It was not so much this that interested her, but one particular figure. Dancing with a well-attired and handsome young man was a smiling Caroline looking right down the camera’s lens; what was striking was that in the image, Caroline appeared to look exactly as she had when she had greeted Amanda at the door.
“Ha, you’ve found me,” said Caroline.
“Hasn’t anyone ever noticed this? What do you say if people see this? I mean, you clearly seem to invite people round.”
“When you get to my age, dear – and the less said about that the better – you don’t really care what people see or say.”
“You mean that people here know what you are?”
“No, don’t be silly. They’re far too busy with their own lives to worry about something as inconsequential as me. Tell people you’re a vampire and they’ll think you’re either having a laugh or that you’re mad.”
“Are you saying that you tell the living that you’re a vampire?”
“On the odd occasion, just when the moment seems right.” Caroline smiled as concern and a small amount of confusion spread across Amanda’s face. “Don’t worry, as I said they never believe me.”
“Well,” continued Caroline after watching Amanda consider her picture for what she believed to be long enough, “as much as I enjoy standing around in my hall reminiscing about old times, would you like to come through?”
“Er, of course. Sorry.”
Feeling more than a little unsettled by her initial impression of Caroline, Amanda sat herself down in the brown leather armchair opposite Caroline’s own. It was not just that she had never seen a vampire so willing to openly live among the living, it was also that this woman - who had apparently been able to survive for decades out in the world – was going against all of what Amanda had been taught at the school. One of the key pillars of the school’s teaching about surviving in the living world was that while it was acceptable to be seen now and then, it was necessary to keep your head down as much as you could.
“You said you were expecting me,” said Amanda, finally putting aside her distracting thoughts about the life of the woman opposite and what it could mean for herself. “So you know that I’m here to talk about the attack that happened recently.”
“Yes, I remember reading about the poor boy in the local paper. Terrible, just terrible. Then, later, a friend of mine at your school informed me that the little chap had ended up there. Alarming that such things still happen, the attack I mean, even when we have the ability to gain what we need to live on by other means. As soon as I heard this, I knew that Chester would send someone down. I still remember the last time that this sort of thing happened, when that poor Johann Milch was attacked on the outskirts of the town. The school had the same approach to such things all those years ago; just got someone to come and have a word with the four of us, as we were then.”
“Four? But Milch wasn’t about then, was he?”
“Oh yes of course. But we had another vampire around here back in those days, Jane South. Not that she’s been here for a while now though, mind.”
“Why? What happened to her?”
“Oh, you don’t want to hear an old vampire like me prattling on about something that happened so long ago. It’s all done now, and I think she was happy enough to go down into the Tunnels.”
“Did she attack someone?”
“Oh no, dear, nothing like that. It was something much more mundane. All to do with the trouble you can have with the local authorities if you’re not careful. You see, poor Jane had moved back into her old home after she’d died. And she lived there for some time, mind you. The problem arose when some developer determined that Jane’s house, which happened to have the sort of garden one would kill for if you had your heart set on a good plot of land, would be a great spot to construct a new housing estate. He approached Jane at the house, but she just told him to go away. Silly Jane had never taken the time to re-establish her ownership of the house, meaning that when the developer took his time to see who owned the place - as trying to get any information of Jane had been a dead end - he discovered that the last listed occupant was one Mrs South, a widower born in 1863.
“Though I don’t know all the ins and outs of what
