Not Fresh At The Weekend.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here for almost a month now. I notice myself avoiding the paving slabs I know are loose, or taking shortcuts around the back of shops, which would have been an exploration a few days ago, but now I take paths like a local, feeling tartly superior to tourists. I hate the tourists. I can’t even talk about them. The sense of familiarity, that opened like a flower in my mind – or rather it didn’t: it sort of composted in, fermenting, and building up in layers. Anyway, the familiarity that has horticulturally spammed its way into my head, goes beyond the knowledge of the actual, into a sense of place, and a sense of timing. When crossing the bridge across the Esk, cars alternate in front and behind pedestrians, and the timing of this is now unconsciously bedded in, so that I step out into the road recklessly and secure. In the hotel, I no longer feel the need to check my flies or my hair. If I had slippers, I would wear them down to breakfast. As it is, I went down in my socks, drawing an arch look from Sebastian, as though I’d rearranged his cornflakes into the counties of Ireland. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Fawlty Towers, but as I good-morninged the lobby staff the other day, I realised I was turning into the Major. This rotten idea sent me away from my intended goal of the beach and down to Tourist Information, looking up bus times back to Sheffield.

I rang home that night. Norman answered, of course, with his customary “Fold residence.” Which I think is hilarious. I said “This is the master of the house speaking,” and warned him to lay off the sherry. When we’d finished talking, and I put the phone down, I felt like a chunk of my life had come adrift. He claimed he’d been working in the garden, like I was paying him or something, and I know he’s been watching TV all day. Maybe he went out in the garden. I can see how that would be a big deal for him nowadays. Like the time we went to the pub and he practically melted when we left him sat alone. It’s hard to say I miss him. It’s a pathetic thing to say, like I want him to be behind every door that I open. I can picture him now, listening to Steve Wright and making biscuits for himself. What does it mean to miss someone anyway?

I wouldn’t have minded being home for the last few days though. The good weather was like jam in a doughnut. Enough people were already tempted, but still more poured in to this funnel of a town. I stayed in the hotel as much as I could, like an inverted zoo, as they parked up and descended, like slow motion lemmings, into the abyss of cafes and amusements. Parents held on to the shoulders of their dodgy copies, navigating them through the press of bellies and tattoos. I saw one girl scoffing an ice cream with her father’s face. She was just walking around with it, oblivious. It’s possible that she’ll grow out of it – or it’s possible that she’ll take her first boyfriend home in a few years time and he’ll feel sick when he sees what she can’t. I must have spent ten minutes looking at that girl and her dad, until they disappeared into the bottlenecked crowd.

It’s when I see humanity like that, all rebounding and unoriginal, that I realise why the group were all so keen to become vampires. If you were hacked off with normality anyway, a trip to the seaside would just about finish you off. I asked goth-girl what she thought of the chocolate shop that sells Dracula’s Coffins, or all the gift shops selling cuddly bats. It was a little cruel to ask her, I guess. After all, they thought they’d found a way out. They really believed they were going to become extraordinary, and now all they’re left with is souvineer stands flogging jokes about them, making them kitsch.

That doesn’t excuse the most horrendous case of stalling since that bus broke down on Corporation Street and jammed up the whole of town for miles. Every night I meet them at the jetty, and every night they tell me that I’ve yet to complete the test. The blonde says no more than this before he sweeps off mysteriously, but sometimes I hang around with the others for a while – try and see behind the cliché.

Sebastian doesn’t mind the wait anymore. He’s pretty candid in his belief that the whole vampirism cult was an elaborate hoax (practised on the group rather than by them), maybe with a bit of magic behind it, but maybe not even with that. He’s stopped quibbling about what to call them, and just refers to them as “our vampires” now. And while he still believes they know where Challoner went, it’s increasingly unlikely that they know where Challoner is. A couple of weeks ago he was moaning about the trail getting cold and other cop show concerns, but since his lunch dates became a regular occurrence, along with the odd evening rendezvous while I stand on the jetty, Sebastian has become a different man. A stranger man. Somehow his location and his intent have split off – like he’s trying to eat a sandwich in the sea. Aren’t we all though.