EXTRACT FROM HOXTON KIRBY

“I can do your nails whilst we talk if you like?” said Scurley. “Gives me something to do with my hands.” They went over to a nail bar. Liv placed her pale white hands on the bar. Her fingers were long and thin, her nails sharp. Angela took one of Liv’s hands in her fatter one. She smiled openly. “You have beautiful hands.”

“Thank you.” said Liv.

As she buffed Liv’s nails, she began to talk. “I was turned by my employer in 1871, I was a parlour maid." She carried on conversationally. “He said he loved me that I was everything to him, I wasn’t. I drove a stake through his heart in 1876,” said Angela absently. Liv raised her eyebrows, to stake another vampire was almost heresy. “I suppose I was different to the thoroughbreds he was used to. A game girl, isn’t that what they called them.” Her fingers curled around Liv’s hand tightly. She cocked her head “So, were you murdered?”