I have seen him again

Rupert, that is. He came to the door, this time bringing leaflets for one of our local Independent candidates, who supports the abolition of income tax and the imposition of VAT at 50%. He flashed a smile at me - oh, those white, pointed teeth - and blew a kiss that was full of allure but also of menace. I'm up to no good, it said. But when was Rupert ever up to any good? The leaflet came in through the letter-box with a little rattle. I looked up and Rupert was gone.
The VAT - well, that wasn't hard to comprehend. In Sanguinaria we had Vampire Appreciation Tax, levied on the entire non-vampire population, and collected only in gold pieces, which we then exchanged for valuable items, like our clothes, the decor of the castle, etc.

It is not generally known, but the doors between the worlds open if gold is paid to Hundinus, the nine-headed bull terrier who guards them. He crunches the gold up in his diamond-hard teeth - you have to pay nine gold pieces, of course, one for each set of teeth. This is, of course, how Rupert got here. It's also how our predecessors managed to get Lutyens across to design the castle for them, replacing the previous, eighteenth-century and thus far less authentically medieval version.
I think that in some way the huge lettering on Mrs Jezebel Gratuita's leaflet may have cast some shadow across the gulf between our worlds, and maybe a spectral version of it landed on Rupert's evening table, when he was drinking breakfast blood from a skull.

But there's more than that going on. Today I met Rudolf, he was skulking behind the quince in my back garden, looking on with horror as I piled soil over the potato plants. 'What are you doing, my vampire?' he demanded. 'Behaving like a peasant?'
I trembled. Would I lose his love? I had no idea what to say - but he seized me in his arms and pulled me close to him. I trembled again. Would his embrace, in this world, make me into a vampire? I was not at all sure if I wanted this to happen. But Rudolf's teeth did not emerge to bite into my throat. He had human teeth, as I discovered when we kissed.
We stared at each other. He was as staggered as I was to find me bereft of the dagger-sharp canines in which we rejoiced on the other side of that Veil that hangs between the worlds. Then we confessed All to each other. It appears that he too was whisked into Sanguinaria from a normal life here, where he works in the Environment Agency.

'We are in great danger,' he said, taking my hand in his and pressing hot kisses on the palm; sending quivers of desire all through me, but -
'Rudolf!' I cried. 'In this world, my darling, I am a married woman.'
'Oh!' he exclaimed. I saw despair on his face. 'My love, fly with me - back to Sanguinaria.' We gazed at each other again, racked by exquisite temptation. It was one of those supreme moments impossible to do full justice to in prose. Imagine a rocking sea of scarlet, over which birds swoop to brush one's skin with the edges of their wings, singing the sweetest, most treacherous songs that have ever been heard in any of the worlds that live side by side in the quantum continuum of existence -

'No,' he said, biting his lip with a blunt canine. 'We must not be tempted. I am a man of honour, after all. Whatever deep dishonour may stir in the uttermost abyss of my being, and it does, you may believe me. My love, I have come to find you because Rupert has some letters I wrote you in Sanguinaria. He wants to show them to Bloodlouse.'
'Bloodlouse!' I cried, shuddering. 'But I got rid of him. He's gone.'
'He's reconstituted himself,' Rudolf said, miserably contemplating a potato plant I had not yet buried.
I shuddered once more. Here I was, in this world, in the middle of a quadrangle of tangled love and lust - my darling husband here, only recently recovered from his heart attack, Bloodlouse in Sanguinaria - and who is to say that Rupert may not reveal my dwelling in this life to him - Rudolf, and Rupert. There is only one thing for it.

I must acquire nine pieces of gold, find Hundinus, and unlock the gates between the worlds. Rudolf must come, too. We must play this thing out where it started - and Rudolf and I must get back in time to vote on Thursday.

Rudolf shinned over the garden fence, tearing his jeans in the process, but luckily not breaking the fence - and disappeared before my dog could emerge to bark at him. Where to get the gold, though, at such short notice, and without breaking into my savings? I am racked with anxiety.

Ah, yes. John Lewis delivered – what was it? Something necessary and not very exciting. (The next delivery will be of coat-hangers, I have finally decided that it’s not very chic to keep my best clothes on rather run-down plastic-coated wire hangers that we got from the dry cleaner in the early ‘80s in Hong Kong – not chic, because they ruin my clothes).

So, where did I finish last time. Ah. I found myself sailing away on bat-wings of rapture and then –

There was a hammering at the windows of the castle. I sprang up, drooling with frustration, ran to see what was wrong. Albert and Liza were already there. It was daylight, we thought, who should be calling at this hour but some Mob who had somehow managed to fly up – had they hired a helicopter to invade the sacred technology-free spaces of Sanguinarian air?

No, there was a sudden eclipse, plunging the country into the deepest darkness; and in it had appeared Rupert, the captain of vampire guard who was holding Bloodlouse in the tower twenty miles away. He had come to tell me that Bloodlouse had escaped into the brief night of the eclipse. I knew my spouse was doomed. This was no great loss, since Rudolf was so much preferable, so I invited Rupert in. There was a glint in the captain’s bloodshot eye, a glint of wickedness, that lit in me a spark of deepest red fire – always I had been attracted to the trustworthy and the tender, but now, alas, I was about to be ravished by the evil and unreliable. I knew, just from the look on his face, that he would betray me, just as I was about to betray the lovely Rudolf – but oh, the time in between –

(the manuscript is broken off at this point, singed and irregular at the edges)

To fly between worlds, between Sanguinaria and here, to deposit on my doorstep a deep red rose, still slightly tacky where the blood hasn't yet dried - for me to send back a white rose in return - Fairtrade from Waitrose - is quite an undertaking. I'm not quite sure how I have managed it. Only a few days ago, a moon-month exactly since I came back here, I was wandering in the garden in the moonlight and a bat descended, the rose was there. The next night the bat came and picked up the rose I had bought from Waitrose. When the flittering creature took hold of it, the bloom flushed pink, then deeper and deeper red, and then vanished altogether.
I have a cold now, but it's worth it.

Oh, Rudolf! I loved you so much, yet I had my Duty. I was married to Bloodlouse, after all, and had to spend every day in his arms, in an eight-foot wide coffin, to embrace him, passionately, on the scarlet sheets - but every time my thoughts turned to the stalwart Rudolf, captain of my guard. Then one day, Bloodlouse looked at me and withdrew his fangs in the very act of sinking them into my throat. 'You little cheat, Chernya!' he snarled.

I knew then that the moment had come. It took a lot of planning, a secret visit to the Blood Bank, bribes - but one evening he didn't appear to the pre-breakfast gathering. He was nowhere to be found. (He was, in fact, being held by vampires I had suborned, in a tower twenty miles away from our castle).

Now of course his throne could not remain empty, that would have been against the Law. And though Rudolf was far better-looking than my royal spouse Bloodlouse, it's amazing what a lot of makeup can do. So he played the part of King. I stood beside him, I held his hand, he raised mine to his lips and gently bit my wrist-vein -and one morning he picked up the double-edged sword that lay between us in the wide coffin and tossed it out. The next minute we were in each others's arms. He fanged me. The exstasy of that moment is beyond description. I felt myself sailing away on bat-wings of rapture and then -

damn, there's the door. My John Lewis delivery. I shall post again, later.