I almost told Pete this story, but something stopped me. From early on I had understood that ours would not be a relationship of gradually communicating our strangenesses, our weaknesses, our undignified moments, to one another. He had, for instance, never once passed gas in my presence. I don’t know how I became aware of this, but it resulted in my feeling that I shouldn’t pass gas in his presence, either. This was a discipline I now rigorously observed. There had been nights when I woke myself up either by passing gas or having a vivid nightmare in which I did, and then lay there with my heart racing, hoping he hadn’t heard.

He would not, I decided, appreciate the story of the poo phantom. And I didn’t want the shame of what Cilla had done – what she might have done – to stick to me.

What had attracted me to Pete in the beginning? Looking at him, his eyes trained with ferocious concentration on Cilla’s hapless, apologetic hatchback, I felt both drawn to him and repulsed by him. I liked his certainty, his untroubled conscience, his sense of purpose. He was someone who woke up before the alarm and then took pleasure in switching it off. He often asked to speak to the manager. He would not allow strong-smelling foods into our apartment – no anchovies, no curry powder, no blue cheese. I knew that these were irritating traits. And yet I admired them, saw something heroic in them, the way you might think it heroic for someone to fight a wildfire with a water pistol.

I met Pete when he was the nurse at my local doctor’s clinic. I was there because I needed a series of antibody injections. Specifically, rabies antibody injections.

When the clinic said I had to make an appointment with the nurse, I pictured a woman with middle-aged spread in shoes with solid arch support. Not this tall, healthy man with a face that managed to be boyish and pious at once.

‘You haven’t noticed any symptoms?’ he said.

‘No…?’

‘No thirst, sweating?’

I shook my head.

‘You’re not foaming at the mouth?’ He smiled, pleased at his joke.

‘Not yet,’ I said.

He retrieved a refrigerated bag and withdrew the vaccine, then began assembling the things he’d need, each wrapped in its own sterilised package.

‘Dog bite?’ he asked, confident, peeling the packaging away. I could see that his abdomen was a flat, disciplined plane, and I had an athlete’s appreciation for the denial that had gone into its making.

I smiled. ‘Bat.’

That got his attention.

‘A bat? Seriously?’

‘Seriously.’

‘Show me.’

I was charmed by his enthusiasm for my wound. I showed him my hand – the small but deep impressions left by the bat’s fangs.

‘So you’re a vampire now?’ he asked. ‘Feeding on the blood of the living?’