She scissored the curls away, and - toms, grow easily sentimental over their haircuts, but I remember this sensation very vividly - it was not like she was cutting hair, it was as if I had a pair of wings beneath my shoulder-blades, that the flesh had all grown over, and she was slicing free...

With every step I took away from her, the movement at my heart and between my legs grew more defined: I felt like a ventriloquist, locking his protesting dolls in to a trunk.

You wait 'til you're my age, and wake every morning to gaze on the vast tract of uncreased linen that is the other side of the divan. Try being gallant to that... We shan't even have children, don't forget, to look after us in our old age.

It's a curious, wanting thing.

All unwillingly I opened my eyes - then I opened them wider, and lifted my head. The heat, my weariness, were quite forgotten. Piercing the shadows of the naked stage was a single shaft of rosy limelight, and in the centre of this there was a girl: the most marvellous girl - I knew it at once! - that I had ever seen.

I shivered again, remembering. I put the tip of one finger to my tongue. It tasted sharp—like vinegar, like blood.Like money.

Only when the little charade was nearly complete did Frances understand what it was all about. The spot at which Lilian had been grasping lay just above her heart. She had been drawing an imaginary stake from it.

It was done the day you took me to that house in Bryanston Square, she said. Or even, the time before that, when you bought me tea. We stood in the sun, and you closed your eyes and I looked at your face...I think it was done then, Julia.