And then Albert himself, sitting almost motionless in that chair, like he’s been forgotten, too. The whole thing is so profoundly sad that I can barely stand it.
‘How did you find out?’ he asks, after considering me for a few moments.
‘I had some blood tests done,’ I say. ‘I was feeling strange. But I never expected it could be something like this.’
He hums thoughtfully, his nod so slight that it’s almost not a movement at all. ‘It was the same for me. I wasn’t a young man then, so I expected to be told it was diabetes, or cancer maybe. Something like that. But then a different doctor came to see me, one I’d never seen before, and he explained it all. Said I was a human who’d been contaminated, and that was as much as they knew. I didn’t believe it.’ He huffs out a dry laugh. ‘Maybe I didn’twantto believe it.’
There’s a drag of something heavy in his voice. It’s bitterness, maybe, or regret. The sound of it tightens around my chest a little, like a belt pulled tight. The expectations I had begin to creak and crack, grains of sand falling into the sea.
I hoped for a solution, or at least reassurance, but I think that hope may have been misplaced. This is starting to feel more like a warning.
‘I tried everything,’ Albert continues. ‘Praying, bargaining, even ignoring it. I thought I could do things that would reverse it. But the truth was that it was a ticking time bomb. My fate was sealed the day that blood got inside of me. I was already turning, just in slow motion.’
‘So, you were immortal?’ Florence asks, her hand flexing in mine. It’s obvious she’s tried to temper her hope here, but I hear the traces of it in her voice. She hasn’t said as much, but I know that’s what she’s hoping for me. She’s always been worried about my mortality, and the fainting incident didn’t help any.
But when Albert looks at her, his wiry brows are pulled tightly together. ‘That’s the funny thing,’ he says, holding her gaze. ‘That was the last part of the puzzle to click into place.’ He looks away, towards the window, which is only just visible behind threadbare curtains. ‘And all the while my body was duelling– the vampire cells constantly fighting my own. I was close to the end a fair few times. It wasn’t long before I was totally housebound. I could barely move, my body was so exhausted.’
My stomach rolls, and I can feel the prickle of a cold sweat between my shoulder blades.
‘How long did it take?’ I ask, bracing myself for the answer. What would make this easier to take? A year? Five? Twenty?
Albert’s eyes flick back to mine. ‘Thirty-four years.’
My heart plummets.
‘I was ninety-six when I finally turned. I was on my death bed.’ His hands grip each other in his lap, paper-thin skin stretched tight over bone. ‘By the time I took my last breath, I was ready to die.’ A tear creeps down his face, a glistening trail left in its wake. ‘And then, of course, I didn’t.’
I hear Florence suck in a tiny breath beside me. ‘Who takes care of you now?’ she asks softy.
He doesn’t look at her, nor does he make any move to wipe his tears away. ‘The doctor who told me about my condition. Armitage, I think his name is. Dr Armitage. He sorted the legal things, made sure I could keep my house, and that my bills were covered. But he’s all the way in Aberdeen. I haven’t seen him since I turned.’
‘There’s no one else,’ Florence says. It’s not a question. More like a realisation.
Albert shakes his head. ‘It’s strange, or perhaps it isn’t, but once you die, people stop checking up on you.’
I swallow past the lump in my throat. I recognise that– having no one. I’ve been there myself, once, saved from it only by Bram and Sammi’s kindness. I always thought one day I’d pay their kindness forward. Perhaps now is when it happens.
As if she knows what I’m thinking, Florence looks over at me for a moment, before she turns her attention back to Albert. ‘When did you last feed?’
He thinks for a moment, dry lips pinching together. ‘I don’t remember,’ he says eventually. ‘It’s not so easy at my age. I had a cat when I first turned, and she’d bring me animals she caught. Birds, sometimes rats. But after she died, nothing. And, you know, the longer you don’t feed…’
‘The weaker you get,’ Florence finishes for him, and he nods solemnly.
‘It’s been so long now that I can barely move.’
Something heavy drops in my guts. I hadn’t even thought about that, but now it seems obvious. He’s probably been sitting in that chair for a decade.
Could that be me, one day? I have Florence now, but will she still want me when I’m housebound and broken? Will Bram and Lucy and Elias remember about me? Will they know to check on me?
Something cold and dark grips at my ribcage, and it isn’t helped any when Albert meets my eyes, his expression more haunted than it’s been so far.
‘You know,’ he says, in a way that reaches deep into my bones. ‘If I’d known what it would be like, I might have tried a little harder to die while I had the chance.’
ChapterTwenty-Five
FLORENCE
We don’t talk on the journey back from Pickering. It’s not an uncomfortable silence so much as there’s a longing there, an inconvenient dose of possibility that’s far darker than either of us assumed.