neat little front garden. A brick-arched porch led up to the front door and on the other side of that was an achingly homey hallway with soft grey walls and stripped floorboards. This was a place that people had tried to make a life in.
“So …” I drew out the syllable to give myself thinking time. “I think you were going to read me a poem?”
She nodded. “I know this sounds like a line. But I do actually keep it in the bedroom.”
I let her lead me upstairs. This was turning into a very strange day.
5
Sex & Eliot
I was beginning to get a little bit creeped out. Housing-wise I’d spent the past few years bouncing between my very, very batcheloretty flat in Muswell Hill, Julian’s absurd range of high-end pleasure palaces, and most recently the crumbling Gothic splendour of Safernoc Hall. The last time I’d gone into an honest to goodness family home, it had been because the family in question had been torn apart by a pack of feral vampires.
Also, my PI senses were tingling. “I don’t want to kill the mood,” I said as Penelope settled herself—a little self-consciously, I thought—onto the edge of the bed and kicked off her heels. “But it feels like this place is a bit too big for just you and your husband.”
To my surprise, she looked almost scared. She took a deep breath. “This isn’t what you were expecting, I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s not that, it’s …”
She swiped through her phone and showed it to me. On the screen was a picture of a boy and a girl, smiling in that slightly resentful way teenagers got when you insisted on photographing them. “David and Leah. Fourteen and Sixteen. They’re with their father for the evening, which makes tonight one of the few nights I get to myself.”
“And you wanted to spend it with me?” I didn’t mean to sound quite that shocked.
She shifted uncomfortably. “I know you said your job wasn’t as exciting and mysterious as it sounded. But I’m sure you’ve got far better things to do with your time than hang out with a forty-six-year-old divorced woman with two kids.”
“You know what? I really don’t.” That earned me a slightly confused look. “Sorry, that came out much more faint-praisey than I intended.”
She took her phone back and put it down on the bed beside her. “It’s fine.”
“I mean”—I sat down next to her and, somewhat belatedly, took my hat off—“and if you find this insulting then please slap me or something, but I think you might be a literal MILF.”
That made her laugh. It was still kind of an uncertain laugh, but it felt like progress. “I suppose that depends.”
“Depends on what?”
She looked up into my eyes, hers wide and blue behind her glasses. “On whether you’d like to fuck me.”
Before I could answer she was kissing me, hesitant at first but bolder when—I don’t know, when whatever terrible thing I guess she was worried might happen didn’t happen. There was something strange and frail about it, her lips soft and human. I’d got so used to being with women who were immortal, or the embodiment of cosmic truths, or half unstoppable predator that there was something almost intoxicating about the sheer person-ness of her. I tried not to let her remind me of Eve, and it was strangely easy—that had been so long ago now it felt almost like it had happened to a different person.
With a passion that surprised even me, I manoeuvred her onto her back and ripped her blouse open with what might have been a very slightly supernaturally enhanced level of strength. She gasped and for a second I backed off. “Was that too—shit, I’m sorry, I’ll pay for it.”
She laughed again. More confident this time. “Just surprised, that’s all. I don’t normally lose clothing that way.” Wriggling underneath me, she got into a half sitting position and with somewhat less disregard for property damage than I was used to in a lover, took off her jacket and what was left of her top. “Right, carry on.”
For a moment I couldn’t. All I could do was stare at her body. Her skin was like an essay about a life lived. There was the ghost of a burn mark above her wrist, which probably came from getting something out the oven too quickly. Her shoulders were flecked with freckles from the sun, and her eyes traced with lines from laughing. A triangle of moles sat just above