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after we’d sampled the delights of London, was to have a gander at Potter’s Museum in Bramber. We broke in one night, when the well-to-do tourists had already gone home.
    We strolled in the silence, between tableaux of dead kitties with ribbons tied around their fluffy necks, as they posed on hind legs, like miniature First Lifers at the altar: bride, bridegroom and vicar. Others modelled frilly costumes, as they sedately supped at a tea party: a polite society of corpses.
    That was Ruby’s number one lesson, and it didn’t take me long to get it: it’s not us Blood Lifers, who dream of death - it’s you First Lifers.
    It fascinates, possesses and excites you. So you hold it close, precious for those quiet moments. You fear it. Yet you still seek it out vicarious. Even though you always know it’s coming, you still love the shadows.
    Blood Lifer’s aren’t death; they’re merely part of something bigger.
    ‘See how they play games too?’ Ruby had whispered.
     
     
    After, we travelled by night to Dover, crossing the English Channel to Le Havre, by coach again and then a trip by boat up the Seine to Paris.
    When Ruby spoke French it was beautiful, mesmerising – and perfect. I foolishly reckoned she’d be impressed with my mimicked attempts.
    Ruby, however, only laughed, dragging me away. ‘Do not frown so. We will find you a tutor. A good tutor. A proper tutor.’
    ‘But I…Wasn’t it right?’
    ‘There’s a difference between right and the feel of it coursing through your blood. You must learn to listen and feel. Not parrot.’ Tutors ? It was like being a kid again. Every evening I awoke to Ruby’s naked outline pressed to mine, in the crisp Parisian air, with her long, red hair spread like curtains, over the white of the sheets. Yet when I’d roll over in the four-poster (a new luxury indeed), and slip my hand to Ruby’s knockers, her emerald peepers would snap open, cold and hard as hell. ‘If you wish your trinkets not to be rent or be-torn, I would remove your hand and concentrate on your lessons instead.’
    Fencing, riding, dancing… Ruby said all men must have these accomplishments. Even Blood Lifers.
    When at last Ruby was satisfied (and she was bloody hard to satisfy), we hired a carriage and flew on to Italy.
     
     
    It wasn’t until we arrived in Turin that Ruby finally rewarded me for my patience in my lessons, teaching me new ones as she did so, which I never wanted to end.
    We didn’t surface for several months from the ecstasy of each other, except to hunt in the ancient streets.
    From there we rode to Florence, where Ruby became my Cicerone, guide and tutor; it was a revelation. I was walking in this vast world, which I’d once enviously watched gliding by on the Thames. Now the earth was revealed, spread before us like a sodding banquet; the greatest works of First Lifers, were as if ours alone.
    In the blackest night, we’d wander the deserted piazzas, staring up at the Duomo’s terracotta and white dome; Brunelleschi , fifteenth century , Ruby would murmur and then point across the piazza at a Gothic bell tower, which soared into the star-lit, Tuscan sky: Giotto’s Campanile , she’d add.
    Or we’d perch on a crumbling wall high over the city. Ruby would rest her nut on my shoulder, as we were serenaded by the haunting Gregorian chants of San Miniato’s Benedictine monks, during vespers.
    We ate two of the monks after; they tasted sweet, like nectar.
    You’d expect monks to be peaceful, but one duffed me right up, before I bit. I guess it was the outfit, which caused me to hesitate - all that black - or maybe the chanting had made me sleepy. Yet after the first taste, I fumbled, and he legged it, his skinny shins kicking, like a long-legged hare.
    Ruby laughed at me; I hated it when she did that. ‘After him then, my brave hero.’
    ‘In this heat?’ I leant against the cool stone, probing the swelling around my purpling peeper. ‘Lost my appetite.’
    I watched