Getting undressed, I drank my tea, then wrapped in my dressing gown, I walked down the corridor towards the bathroom and took a quick shower. I was impatient to get in the bed.

Removing my copy of Dracula and the baby shoes from the drawer of my nightstand, I pushed them both under the pillows, curled beneath my quilt and let the sleep take me, hoping, praying for another dream about Vlad. But, this time, all I got were several unclear images of him sitting in that dark, cold cell, absorbed in writing a letter.

This only confirms what you've been thinking, I reasoned with myself grumpily when I woke up in the morning, even if you can see him most of the nights, you cannot make him see you every time. But why?

All the questions I could not answer were driving me mad. Even though it was my day off, I just could not stay in the bed, doing nothing, I felt too restless for that. So I got up as soon as my room got bright enough for me to move around without switching on the light.

I got dressed and had my breakfast, then, remembering my promise to cook the evening meal, I resolved to go shopping. There wasn't much to cook from in Lia and Anne's kitchen. The girls, apparently, didn't like to waste their free time cooking. I, on the other hand, had got used to it in the castle, and now I was missing all those hours spent by helping Cook to prepare meals when I had nothing better to do, waiting for Vlad to come back home...

Slowly but surely I'm making progress, I noticed, as I let my mind stroll freely back to Vlad and my life in the castle, while I filled the supermarket trolley with all kinds of ingredients. Paying attention to skip potatoes, tomatoes and other products Cook hadn't known or used, I opted for more ancient root vegetables, then asked one of the shop assistants for the right kind of wholemeal flour to make a piece of bread and a cake... I'm getting better at this, at thinking about him and my other life without crying...

When I got back in the flat, both girls were already out, and I had the kitchen to myself. Taking advantage of the situation, I quickly made up my mind to cook before going out with William, then just warm everything up once I returned.

I checked the multitude of food that now occupied more than half of the kitchen table with satisfaction-- I managed to buy most of the things I needed. Except for mead. Oh, well. I couldn't drink it anyway.

It took me hours, but at half past two in the afternoon, everything was ready, and the kitchen that had looked like a battlefield while I was cooking was tidy and pristine clean again. The small flat was filled with mouth-watering aromas of my creamy vegetable soup with barley, a simple stew in which I had to substitute venison, impossible to find in the supermarket, for beef, a piece of wholemeal bread, flat, because Lia had no suitable bread pan, and a cake -- a dry, very sweet and crumbly tart with honey and raisins. Vlad's favourite.

Finally, once all the food was sitting in various pots on the cooker, ready to be warmed up later, all except the cake, lying hidden in the oven, I sat down to my late lunch.

As soon as I reached for my phone to call Anne, as I didn't know if Lia had told her about tonight, it started ringing.

William! I groaned inwardly, seeing his name on the screen.

"Hi," I muttered when I picked up, unable to force myself to sound excited. Or at least enthusiastic. Can't he just wait until four o'clock?

"Hello," he said, his voice laced with joy, hinting at a smile I could not see. "I thought I'd drive, and I don't mind coming over to Barnes and picking you up at home. So you don't need to take the bus. Maybe I could come earlier... "

Why is he acting as if we were still a couple? I mused, feeling my exasperation rise.

Driving around overcrowded London on a Sunday afternoon would take ages. Evidently, he didn't mind, as long as we would be together. There were times when I would not mind either, but now... When will he understand that nothing between us is as it had been before?!

"No, William, I'll meet you in Hammersmith. By the tube station at four, as we have said. No car. Please," I announced decisively. I was not going to give in.

It took him a while to respond, but in the end, he agreed. He knew me well enough not to argue.

"As you wish. See you soon, Mara."

"I'm Samara!" I called, but the line was already dead.

This is all Lia's fault, I shouldn't have agreed to meet him... I despaired later as I dragged myself towards grinning William, already waiting for me in front of the station.

"Hi," he said, producing a single red rose from behind his back.

"William!" I protested while he leaned down and kissed me on the cheek. But there was nothing to do, William will be William. "Thanks for all those flowers you sent me home, by the way. Mum really liked them," I muttered, realising that I hadn't even thanked him yet.

"Please don't. I'm glad that at least your mum enjoyed them," he said, looking at me reproachfully and making me feel guilty... but not enough to make me retract my words.

Seeing that I was not going to say anything else, he offered me his arm and led me down the dim staircase towards the underground platforms.

I stuffed the rose in my handbag as we boarded a very crowded, noisy, and overheated train. Maybe the car hadn't been such a bad idea, I should have agreed, I mused, trying not to concentrate on all the known and unknown smells assailing my lately oversensitive nose from all directions.

"Why did you insist on meeting in Hammersmith? I thought you were off, I could have come to pick you up at home," William asked, leaning closer to me instead of raising his voice over the noise of the speeding train.

A bit too close.

I took a step away from him, bumping into someone standing right behind me and had to choose between standing pressed into a stranger or my ex-boyfriend.

Sighing with frustration, I took a half-step back towards William before I answered his question. "I moved out. I've been living with Lia and Anne since Friday." There was no reason not to tell him.

He gave me a surprised, enquiring look, a silent 'Why?' written all over his face. But he did not ask, and so I did not tell him. He changed the subject instead and I let him rattle about his theatre, only half-listening, while I focused on keeping as much distance between us as possible, the fast and not exactly smooth motion of the train making it extremely difficult.

Finally, after some twenty interminable minutes, we got off in Baker Street.

I let William take me by my hand and pull me behind him through the crowd of tourists streaming constantly in and out of the station.

"What are we going to do here?" I asked, clueless, pulling my hand from his grasp once we were out in the street.

It was only half past four, but it was nearly dark, the overcast sky threatening with rain. Moreover, after the heat of the train, it felt absolutely freezing outside. I shivered as I followed William down the road.

"Give me ten minutes, and I'll show you." He smiled.

It took us less than ten minutes to reach the pale green cupola of the Planetarium. No way.

"Madame Tussauds?" I asked, unbelieving. He couldn't be serious. Out of all the places he could have chosen...

He didn't know that, but I hated the Wax Museum. I had been here, once, a long time ago. Miss Clark, one of my primary school teachers, brought our class here for a day trip to show us our most famous and important kings and queens. While my schoolmates loved them, the 'life-like' wax statues freaked me out. To me, they looked like hideous, scary, dressed up corpses. I ran away. By the time anyone realised that I was missing, I was by the lake in Regent's Park, feeding my lunch to ducks... My teacher had to call my parents and even the police to find me, I recalled with a shudder.

It had been an awful experience, and I definitely didn't wish to repeat it now.

"You said you'd take me somewhere I haven't been to, but I've been here." I tried my luck, knowing it was useless as he had already booked our tickets.

He laughed, surprising me. "Your mum said you'd try. Well, that school trip doesn't count. You ran away before you could see anything. Come, you might like it now," he insisted, taking my hand again and pulling me across the road congested by a multitude of cacophonous cars and tourist busses, the traffic moving at snail's pace.

"Did Mum tell you about it?" I asked as we skipped the incredibly long queue of visitors, Why would anybody want to come to this place?!, and headed towards the entrance reserved for those with booked tickets.

"She did." He smiled as we were let inside by a pretty, blonde attendant whose cheeks turned bright pink in response to William's smile. Unfortunately, the girl did not ask if she could keep him, I'd be more than willing to leave him with her... "When I called on Friday. You were not at home. We talked for a while, and I told her I wanted to take you here."

I only nodded while we moved further inside, rendered speechless half by what Mum had done, That traitor!, and half by the atmosphere of the place. It was... creepy. As unpleasant as I remembered it from all those years back.

"I thought you might appreciate it more now." William added, his blue eyes brimming with apprehension.

I took a deep breath and shook my head. "Why did you think that now it would feel different than then?" I asked, looking around cautiously as we walked across one of the well-lit rooms, full of excited tourists and... corpses. Yes. The statues still looked like dead people to me.

"Because 'then' was fifteen years ago. I thought you might have changed your mind." He took my hand in his one more time as if he was afraid I'd run. "You still don't like them," he muttered after a while, sounding crestfallen.

I only shook my head again in response.

"All right. I just need to see one of them really; it's for the play we're rehearsing. Then I'll take you rowing to Regent's Park, if you want. Deal?"

"Fine. Just don't take too long, please," I begged, letting him lead me from one bright and busy room to another, then, eventually, to a darker, more quiet, and mysterious looking part of the museum.

Who did he need to see here?

"Hmm... what play did you say you were rehearsing?" I asked some time later, unable to contain my curiosity any longer.

"Steven Dietz's Dracula," he said, even as my eyes landed on him.

Vlad III, the Impaler.

Oh no.

I staggered to a stop in the middle of the dark and empty room. The wax statue, masterfully illuminated to look absolutely creepy and terrifying, was disgusting. It was nothing like Vlad, thanks goodness. It looked like I have always imagined the evil vampire Count from Bram Stoker's book, in that scene where he fell out of his coffin and stared, shocked, into the rising sun, just before he crumbled into dust.

Still, just the thought that it was representing him, the man I loved, and it looked so... dead and revolting was making me want to cry, hit William, and run, all at the same time.

"You forgot that play script under my pillow. I read it, and it was good! So I proposed the play in the theatre and they all agreed. We've been rehearsing it for weeks now." William's voice came from somewhere behind me as I stood rooted to the spot, staring at the statue, unable to move.

How could they do this to him? All the world believes him to be like this, an ugly, cruel monster...

"I wanted to see the vampire. To understand what is so very different about him, why wasn't I given the role of Count Dracula."

"But this is not the count from your play, William." I said, exasperated. It was worse than that. "This is supposed to be Vlad III, the medieval prince that..." but I wasn't able to explain the difference to him, I didn't even know what to say.

"The cruel warrior prince who inspired Bram Stoker to write his Dracula," William finished my sentence.

"No... it's not him." It wasn't Vlad.

"Of course it is, and you know it, Mara. It was you who told me that Stoker wanted to call his book simply 'Vlad III' before he came up with the name 'Dracula'".

That awful, horrid, abominable writer! It was his fault that all the universe believed that Vlad was Dracula. And it was my fault that William brought me here today-- if I hadn't left that book in his bed... You and your silly habit of sleeping with books under your pillows!

"Anyway," William went on. "Now that I see him, I do understand. I look much better than him." He laughed. "I gladly accept my role. Dr. John Seward, M.D., suits me just fine. And," he added, his voice, lowered to a whisper, coming from somewhere too close to make me feel comfortable, "that takes us back to your book. I thought you could come over to my place later, to pick it up..."

Suddenly, I was very aware of the unbearable heat of the museum. Of the strange, unpleasant smell of wax polish. And William's arms wrapped around my waist from behind because I hadn't even noticed how or when they got there.

"What do you think, hmm...?" he murmured, his lips brushing softly against my earlobe while his hands pulled me closer into him.

I tore my transfixed gaze from the statue in front of me, turned round, and pushed him away, using all the strength I could muster.

"No way, William. You can keep the book. Just leave me alone!"

I rushed from the room, scattering a small group of teen girls who had been watching us from the doorway. They must have noticed William's very close resemblance to one of the royals representing statues and were intrigued by it.

"It is him!" I informed them seriously, slowing down as they didn't move out of my way fast enough. "Go!"

And as one they went, moving as a synchronized gaggle towards William, giving me time to disappear from the building before he could catch up with me.

"Mara, wait!" His voice trailed behind me, but I did not stop, I needed to be alone.

Pulling the hood of my dark coat up as soon as I was outside, I dived into the constant stream of people moving along the pavement, and let it carry me towards the Regent's Park, like all those years ago.