I carefully swab away the excess blood and bandage her hand. Carry her to the bedroom and change her into the shorts and vest she uses as pajamas. Finally, I squeeze a little toothpaste on to my finger and use it to massage her gums. She will wake up with a sore hand, a headache and the taste of toothpaste, as if she had taken herself to bed. None the wiser about my little vampiric extraction.

The night is dark, the sky loaded with cloud that blocks out the moon and the stars. I am driving fast, but not so fast as to attract attention. The car is technically not mine, but no one will report it stolen. It belongs to one of my neighbors, who hasn’t left the house at all since the virus started circulating, not even to go to the shop or the pharmacy. A fact I only discovered because I am a good citizen and belong to the street’s Facebook chat group about who might need help with groceries or going to pick up prescriptions. Community-spirited. That’s what they say about Chris Hardcastle. Always one of the first on the street at eight on a Thursday evening to clap for the doctors and the nurses risking it all on the frontline. Always happy to pop round with milk or bread if a neighbor has been left in the lurch by one of the supermarkets. I have even helped a handful of parents to make sure their kids are set up to do their schoolwork online. “Such a lovely man,” all the mums say about me. “Good lad,” say the dads, “always up for a quick beer too.”

How many of them could I fuck if I wanted to? Probably four out of the six I see most often. Wives that is. Probably at least one of the husbands too, although personally I’m not really into all that. Definitely Candice. She groped me at her Christmas-Eve-Eve-Soiree—her term—last year, pushing me into the darkness of the utility room while her husband handed out drinks to everyone, her palm rubbing me through my trousers. Sharon who looks twenty-five but is actually pushing forty. Kate is probably a good bet, with her bouncy ponytail and yoga-honed physique. Maybe Dina, although she’s not really my type; unless she lost a couple of stone. Mabel is thirty years my senior, and although she has tried to grab my bum in the past, I assume it was entirely in jest. Then there’s Yasmin, who turned sixty last year. Her husband is eighty-six. They have been married for thirty-six years.

Yasmin’s husband has COPD, diabetes and heart disease and is at least five stone heavier than he should be. Yasmin is four foot ten and weighs just under seven stone. She is her husband’s sole carer. Megan thinks she has it bad being married to a man who is trying to protect her from going to prison for murder. Megan doesn’t know how lucky she actually is. Yasmin has talked more than once about “When it’s all over,” and I don’t think she means COVID.