I had first consulted the wisdom of the internet. Wait, was the advice. Bats have excellent echolocation; wait for it to find its own way out. Or failing that, wait for it to exhaust itself and fold up like a leathery cocoon somewhere. When it has, you can place a bucket over the bat and carry it outside.

So I sat down on my living-room floor, still careful with my bad knee after all those years. I waited for that bat to figure out how to leave my apartment. I waited and waited, watching it jerk around the light fitting, bumping against the ceiling, flailing, getting nowhere.

It was after it finally landed, after I’d slipped a bucket over it and slid the lid underneath, that it bit me. I held the bucket next to the open window and removed the lid, but there was no movement, no sound, and I was worried it was injured, maybe dead. I stuck my hand, stupid, stupid, into the dark recess of that bucket. It bit me because I sought it out, because I went to touch it gently with my fingertips.

That day I met Pete, when he asked me if I was a vampire, I started to wonder if it were possible that the bat had imparted something to me. Some new power or talent, some reserve of darkness or mystery on which to draw, something that would mark me as different, as changed.

In bed, while Pete operated himself above me like a piston, focused on a point on the wall, his toes braced against the foot of my bed, I would imagine drawing that new, essential thing up through myself, like casting a spell. But nothing ever happened. Maybe there was nothing dark in me, nothing strange, nothing special. Just the usual things: glutamate, amino acids, a normal frenulum, and one healed ligament that would always be at risk of rupturing again.

I thought about Cilla all that week. I found myself idly searching for her online, thinking it would be easy to find information about someone with such an unusual name. But all that came up was the profile at her father’s real estate business: a black and white portrait of her looking washed out and stunned, a culprit, the way a possum looks when you shine a light in its eyes.

I waited until Pete was at his yoga class before I slipped out to the florist. Once there I stared and stared at the wall of flowers. Lilies, irises, orchids; it seemed like every flower had a free and mobile tongue and was intent on directing it towards me.

Finally I drew some white roses from their black plastic bucket. I chose green paper, a gold ribbon; in every choice I made I felt an aversion to pink, to purple, to red, to any pulpy, fleshy colours, anything you might see on the inside of a mouth.