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was a long silence.

      Finally James said: “Who’s Ann-Marie? I thought your name was Camille?”

      “Oh—yeah. That was before I changed my name. Camille is my stage name. But I changed it legally, so it’s real.”

      “So you’re an aspiring actress?”

      “Yeah.”

      James held my breasts from behind and murmured: “What really turns you on?”

      I paused. “Offal.”

      “Offal?”

      “Yeah. Tripe in cream and onions and . . . hearts. Big, bouncy hearts that crunch like an apple when you bite into them and stuff kind of spews out. And kidneys, smelling of piss.”

      “Piss?”

      “Yeah,” I said with passion. “Piss.” I jumped off the bed. “Play, boy!”

      James looked startled.

      “Play!” My voice was imperious. “Why don’t you play?” I went back to my normal voice. “That’s what Miss Havisham says to Pip in Great Expectations.”

      “Have you done a lot of community theater?”

      “Yes. And professional stuff. RSC stuff. I played Miss Havisham—at Cambridge.”

      “I can just imagine you in rotting white lace,” he said, lurching forward and grabbing me with both hands. His face looked full of hate for a moment. Then he pushed me backward on the bed and I couldn’t see his face anymore, but I could feel his mouth latch onto my Venus flytrap and eat it out like a little boy who’s terrified his plate will be snatched away at any moment. He ate and ate and ate. My heart was banging. I tried to push his head away, but his scalp was too well-oiled and my hands kept slipping off. He was good at it. I began to moan. I tried to sit up, but he pushed me back down. I had a terrible feeling of losing, as though he were taking the most precious thing I owned.

      And then I came.

      I lay there, limp and blank.

      It seemed to blot out something there in the darkness. It seemed to blot out the darkness itself.

      James’s face appeared, wet and triumphant.

      I said thank you like a good little girl leaving a friend’s birthday party, dressed, and ran down leather hallways until I was alone again in the blue light of dawn. I staggered to the nearest trash can and was violently sick.

SIX

      THE FORCE OF love was acting on me as I made my way back, groping blindly and ecstatically to a place that I could call home.

      It would have to do.

      I walked all the way from the ASH Hotel to Russell Square. Then I got a bus to Chalk Farm. The pub where Vic and I had fallen in love stood empty and dark in the dawn. The last hedonists of that Saturday night were slouched around Camden Lock, staring at their own shattered reflections in the water. Men and women wearing rainbow-colored wool were splashing Red Stripe onto the tongues of their panting dogs. The Wetherspoon’s was closed; it was too early to get a breakfast meal deal. The bongs and Che Guevara berets and sets of rubber underwear looked terrifyingly sticky, as though nothing had ever been wiped down anywhere in the world.

      Finally, I found Vic’s terraced house. It was dark inside.

      I picked up a stone from a nearby water feature and threw it at a first floor window. It rebounded.

      There was silence.

      I called Vic’s phone; he didn’t pick up. I called seven more times.

      Then I texted:

      I’m outside.

      A light came on.

      Vic opened the door, thumbing his eyes farther into his face. He was wearing a pair of crisp khaki pajamas. “What are you doing here, Ann-Marie?”

      “You remembered my name,” I swooned.

      “Yes.”

      “Can I come in?”

      “No.”

      I barged in anyway and shut the door behind me. “Why didn’t you reply to any of my emails, Vic?”

      “You’re a bunny boiler, that’s why.”

      “Those were fucking messages in a bottle, Vic,” I said. “Do you know what a message in a bottle is? It’s sent in faith, Vic, faith. Do you know what faith is?”

      “Quiet,” he said. “You’ll wake the operators.”

      Light fell through the front door and illuminated his ghastly feet. I got down on my knees and tried to kiss them.

      “Get off.” He kicked my cheek by accident.

      I gripped my cheek and stood up. I made my eyes look stricken. Then I slid down the wall until I was squatting on the floor.

      “Hey.” Vic knelt down in front of me. “Sorry.” He tried to move my hand away, but I wouldn’t let him.

      “So you’re a woman beater as well as a war criminal?” I said. “Goes with the territory does it, using women as a weapon of war?”

      He stood up again.

      I pulled down his khaki pajama bottoms. He tried to pull them back up, but I was already sucking his flaccid penis. He pushed my head back but I made my mouth into a black hole of suction.

      “Stop it,” Vic was saying. “Stop it.” His penis rose, in spite of himself.

      I sucked more vigorously.

      Vic pulled my hair hard until I couldn’t take the pain anymore; I let his penis go. He came, volcanically, all over my face. His semen felt like warm rain.

      When I opened my eyes, he was staring down at me in disgust.

      “Because I love you,” I said.

      He released my hair and disappeared down the hall into the kitchen.

      I followed him.

      Three tampons were laid out on the draining board.

      “Whose are those?” I demanded.

      Vic threw me a wad of kitchen towel, but I didn’t wipe my face. “The operator’s,” he said. “I’m going back to bed now. It’s the middle of the night.”

      “No, Vic, no.” I pointed to the sky beyond their sorry substitute for a conservatory. It was split with hot yellow light. “It’s early. It’s now, Vic! Now!”

      I tried to corner him beside the fridge, but he slipped around me. I picked up one of the tampons and demanded: “What kind of woman leaves their private business right here for all the world to see?”

      “It’s for the guinea fowl.” Vic was washing his hands with the same government-certified antiseptic gel that we use in the restaurant.

      “Is that your pet name for her?”

      Now I dropped the tampon and drew a knife out of the rack; it was serrated.

      “Hey,” said Vic, moving around to the other side of the breakfast bar. “That’s dangerous.”

      “Where is this guinea fowl?” I said in a baby voice. “Sorry it’s the time of the month so you won’t be able to fuck her like you want to. Or maybe you’re not squeamish at all?”

      Vic had his hands flat on the counter. “Please, Ann-Marie. Put that down.”

      I swiped it through the air.

      He said very slowly: “The guinea fowl is not a woman. It is for the food blog. Jan read somewhere that food photographers used to put tampons in a bowl of water and then

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