thought of an airplane seat, let alone stripping down to a bikini on a beach in Marbella. She had never lost the habits of embarrassment gained in childhood, and now she had the prospect of middle-age spread looming before her.
Mina hadn't an atom of proof that she had been passed over for promotion because of the way she looked. The fact that her newly imported line manager, Lucy Stanwere, had a figure like Paula Radcliffe as well as being ten years younger might have been coincidence. The fact that Lucy was able to wear four-inch heels, thus allowing her to tower over those condemned by gravity to flat soles, might also be irrelevant to her rapid ascent of the status ladder. The fact that Mina was due to see Lucy for her annual appraisal the morning after she fell off the Stone Age wagon and gorged herself on Welsh rarebit and chocolate milk was, however, definitely not a coincidence. Anxiety had always been a key factor in Mina's comfort eating.
Lucy's office was, of course, incredibly neat. It wasn't just that the cleaners made more effort there than in the open-plan, but that Lucy's own personal neatness radiated out from her size-ten suit to bathe her entire environment with a kind of bloodless perfection. Simply being there made Mina feel even more like a rubbish- heap than usual; from the moment she stepped through the door her one ambition was to escape as soon as possible, no matter how much criticism she had to absorb and acknowledge in order to do it.
She didn't, of course, dare to entertain the ambition that she might accomplish that escape without some slighting reference being made to her appearance-in fact, the first thing Lucy said, after 'Please sit down, Miss Mint,' was 'Are you unwell?' That, in health-fascist-ese, meant: 'How can you even breathe when you're carrying so much excess baggage, you disgusting calorie-addict?'
'I've had a little tummy trouble recently,' Mina admitted, 'but it's sure to clear up now.'
'Coming off the Stone Age?' Lucy asked, in a tone that sounded almost sympathetic.
Mina had never talked to Lucy in a non-work context, so she couldn't claim to know her well, but she certainly hadn't expected sympathy. She decided that it must be an illusion.
'Yes, actually,' Mina admitted.
'I thought so,' Lucy said. 'The trouble with all these theories about what evolution shaped our digestive systems to do is that humans are so exceedingly adaptable. We grow up on grains and dairy products, and our bodies learn to love them. If there's one thing that separates humans from all the other animals, it's the ability to learn to love. Don't you agree?'
The chance would be a fine thing, Mina thought. What she said aloud was: 'Yes, Miss Stanwere.'
'It's Lucy. Look, Mina, I don't want to seem presumptuous, and I'll understand if you want to confine our discussion to the nerves and sinews of auditing practice and Gordon Brown's latest wrinkles, but there's a better way to lose weight, if you really want to. It's about time that you were let in on the secret.'
Mina had long suspected that there must be a vast conspiracy of the fit and thin whose precious secrets were sternly withheld from people like her, but she had never expected to be let into it. She said nothing.
'I know what you're thinking,' Lucy Stanwere said, when the pause had passed from pregnant to eggbound. 'How would I know? Well, I do.' She took up her handbag. Any normal person would have had to root about for at least thirty seconds to find what she wanted, but Lucy only required a mere moment to pluck the desired item from its innermost depths. She handed Mina a photograph.
Mina stared at the snapshot in frank disbelief. It wasn't so much the sixteen stone version of Lucy Stanwere that startled and appalled her so much as the expression the teenager was wearing: an expression of profound shame and terror of exposure that Mina had only ever seen at WeightWatchers-or in a mirror.
When she looked up again, Mina saw her superior with entirely new eyes. She could find but one word: 'How?'
Lucy's perfectly manicured fingers dipped into the mysterious bag for a second time, and produced another slim item. At first, Mina judged from its size that it was a business-card, but it was glossy and black, and bore an image of two magnificently athletic individuals dancing what appeared to be the tango, above the red-lettered inscription: THE AFTER DARK CLUB. The postcode attached to the address was suggestive of Mayfair.
'Meet me there at ten-thirty,' Lucy said. 'I'll tell the desk to expect you, and I'll take you in.'
'A night club?' Mina said, aghast. 'I can't go to a night club.'
'Ten-thirty,' Lucy Stanwere repeated, insistently. 'Be on time.'
Mina had nothing suitable to wear, but the situation was so surreal that it didn't seem to matter. She was usually curled up in bed with a Mills and Boon not long after ten-thirty, once she'd watched the news on the BBC, so she went to catch the Central Line tube at Ealing Broadway with the kind of disturbed feeling that changes in a familiar routine always bring on.
She had never realized that the urban wilderness between Piccadilly and Oxford Street had so many hidden trails and discreet coverts but her pocket A-to-Z eventually guided her to an unmarked door with a discreet intercom and bell-push. Mina almost turned round and went home right then, but eventually plucked up courage to press the button. When a fuzzy voice said 'Yes?' she blurted out 'Is-that-the-After-Dark-Club-Lucy-Stanwere-asked-me-to-meet-her-here?' without the slightest pause for breath.
There was an eerie buzzing sound-more like a swarm of angry wasps than placid bees, but no less welcome for that-punctuated by a click. Mina pushed the door open, and entered a gloomy corridor which led to a flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs was a desk, manned by a teenage male in an absurdly old-fashioned suit. 'Miss Mint?' he said, before she could gather her breath. 'We've been expecting you. It's a pleasure to meet you.'
Mina had not had time to frame a reply when the burgundy-colored door to the left of the desk opened and Lucy Stanwere came out, accompanied by two other men, each as callow as the receptionist, both complexioned like Turks or Italians. They too were wearing black suits cut to standards of formality that had surely gone out with the last King George, or maybe Queen Victoria.
Lucy, by contrast, was dressed in a very now manner that was far more relaxed-louche, even-than her everyday office-wear. 'Mina, darling!' she said, with a brazen bonhomie that contrasted just as sharply with the flinty face of public finance. 'I want you to meet Marcian and Szandor. You'll have to forgive Szandor-I'm afraid his English is a trifle rusty-but Marcian will translate for him. Come through, won't you?'
Mina was unable to respond to this invitation immediately, because Marcian and Szandor were busy kissing her hands, so enthusiastically that they hadn't waited to take turns, seizing one apiece. Nor did they let go when they had finished, arranging themselves to either side of her with an affectionate politeness that she had never encountered before.
She had, of course, avoided making eye-contact, her embarrassment being so intense that she had all but closed her eyes, but as she stole sidelong glances to her left and right she observed that both of them were looking at her with expressions that betrayed not the slightest hint of disgust, contempt, scorn or disapproval.
If she had only dared, she might have felt a surge of joy, but she had lived in the world too long to be free of the suspicion that she was about to suffer some humiliating reversal of fortune.
Marcian and Szandor escorted her through the doorway, although it didn't seem humanly possible that there was room enough for either to pass through it beside her, let alone both. She was swept along another purple-carpeted corridor to another darkly varnished door, while Lucy followed.
The image on the card had left Mina with the impression that there might be a ballroom swirling with exotic couples, all engaged in a furiously erotic tango, but the whole building seemed silent, insulated from the unceasing noise of the capital; the room in which Mina now found herself was actually a bedroom.
My God! Mina thought, as she contemplated the king-sized four-poster with the red velvet curtains. It's not a night club at all. It's a knocking-shop for chubby- chasers!
So far as she was concerned, chubby-chasers were creatures of legend, one of whom she had always longed to meet. Like unicorns, which refused to have anything to do with anyone but virgins, men who were sexually attracted to fat women were exceedingly thin on the ground in Ealing. Then Mina remembered Lucy, who was only half the woman now that she had been as a teenager, and realized that there must be more to the situation than had yet met her eye. She turned, opening her fearful eyes sufficiently to demand an explanation.
'It's all right, Mina,' Lucy said. 'There's nothing to be afraid of. No one's gong to do anything to you that you don't want them to do. But the time has come for you to ask yourself the question:
Do I sincerely want to be thin?'
Mina swallowed a hysterical laugh. The consequent frog in her throat made it impossible to do anything but croak: 'Yes.'
It seemed a pitifully feeble expression of her desire, but Lucy seemed satisfied. 'Good,' she said. 'I'll cut to the chase, then-no point in beating about the bush. Marcian and Szandor are vampires. Given a few months of weekly sessions, they can literally drink your superfluous flesh away. You'll need to take iron tablets to facilitate the manufacture of new blood, but their enzymes will do the rest-reorientate your metabolism to convert your adipose deposits, that kind of thing. It won't make you feel bad-quite the reverse. You'll feel better than you've ever felt before: full of energy, in more ways than one. Natural selection is a wonderful thing, and we talked only this morning about the marvelous ability of human beings to adapt themselves.
'Marcian and Szandor are human too, of course-you'll have to forget all that superstitious nonsense about the undead rising from their graves and canine teeth becoming fangs. Vampires are just another natural species, near relatives of ours in the genus
Homo, who accompanied us to the brink of extinction more than once, but are now on the increase again. They're not quite ready to come out of hiding yet-like us, they're not entirely free of their old instincts-but they're making discreet diplomatic moves at every level, taking one step at a time in the tedious business of winning hearts and minds.'
Mina hadn't noticed Lucy Stanwere's cliche-addiction before, but she tried to concentrate her attention on the more important aspects of the speech. Apparently, she wasn't going to be required to dance the tango in any literal sense. Instead, she was going to lie down on the bed while Marcian and Szandor drank her blood, presumably relieving her of forty fluid ounces or so, while pumping some kind of enzymes into her that would retune her metabolism to mobilize her fat reserves and set her on the road to paradise, or at least size twelve.
All in all, it was difficult to see a downside.
Eyes wide open now, Mina found herself staring at Lucy's neck, looking for tell-tale holes.
Lucy smiled. 'That stuff about fangs is just Hammer horror,' Lucy said. 'It's more sucking than biting, actually. It doesn't even leave a love-bite, because there are no leftovers. You'll feel a slight numbness for a day or two, and your complexion might be a trifle pale, but you'll feel a lot better in yourself.'
Mina belatedly thought of a potential downside. 'Will I turn into a vampire too?' she asked, surprised at the lack of faintness in her own voice.
'No, silly,' Lucy replied. 'I told you, they're just another human species. You can't turn into one of them any more than they can turn into wolves or bats. It's symbiosis. They obtain sustenance from us; we get fitness and an amazing sense of well-being in return. Mutual profit-the ultimate expression of free-market economics at its finest. There's no rush; you can have all the time you need to think about it. All we ask is a little discretion.'
