So I’d been sleeping with a jazz vampire. It made a kind of weird sense. Goddess of a small river in South London, Soho jazz vampire, what was next? A Chelsea werewolf, a succubus from Sydenham? I decided to invent some rules just so I could add a new rule to the rules: Never diss somebody’s mum, never play chess with the Kurdish mafia, and never lie down with a woman who’s more magical than you are.

IT WAS a cold miserable day in October when I headed out of London. As I crawled out of town in the rush-hour traffic I had time to watch people heading into work, coats on, shoulders hunched, heads down—summer was over and the promising center forward was on a plane to Rio with a beautician from Malaga.

But London didn’t care, she never does when you leave her because she knows for every one that leaves another two arrive. Besides, she was too busy painting on her neon lipstick and dolling herself up in red and gold. Don’t you know, darling, soccer stars are so last season. The theater’s where the action is now. She was looking for a Hollywood star out to prove his acting chops in the West End.

I bypassed Colchester again and this time I phoned ahead so that Leslie would know I was coming. As I approached the iron-gray horizon, Brightlingsea accumulated around my car like granite pack ice under an overcast sky. When I drew up outside her dad’s house Leslie was waiting for me under the carriage lamp. In deference to the weather she was in a blue waterproof hoodie and had ditched the rock-star scarf and sunglasses for an NHS-issue face mask of pink hypoallergenic plastic. When she spoke it was still with somebody else’s voice.

“I’ve got something to show you,” she said.

On the way through the slick streets we met a couple of locals who had a cheery wave for Leslie and a suspicious look for me.

“Advantage of living in a small town,” she said. “Everyone knows, nobody’s shocked.”

“I don’t think they like me,” I said.

“They can tell you’re from the wicked city of sin,” she said.

We went down through the car park full of dinghies, tarpaulined up for the winter, the cold wind singing in their rigging, and out onto the esplanade with the long line of beach huts and the concrete swimming pool. Leslie led me back into the brick shelter with its mural of improbably blue skies and white beaches.

“I’m going to take my mask off now,” said Leslie. “Think you can handle it?”

“No,” I said. “But I’ll give it a go.”

Leslie fumbled with the fastenings on the side. “These are really fiddly,” she said. “I’ve got one that’s Velcro and it’s even worse—there.”