Priya (a cannibal romance)

Posted by PK on August 16, 2007 at 16:50:25:

I just picked her out of a line. The girls - young women from Asia or the Middle East or whatever - were queueing up to be processed as usual. She looked nice so I beckoned and called to her and she stepped out of line obediently.

"Yes, sir?" she inquired politely. She had a slight Indian accent but spoke clearly and precisely.

"You speak English?" Of course she did.

"Yes, sir."

I looked her over. She was naked, of course, and flawless, a real treat. Perfect, light brown skin, slim but not scrawny body, dark hair cropped into a slightly ragged pixie cut and lustrous dark brown eyes. She had been shorn and shaved as all the meatgirls had. Not a trace of body hair showed from her head down and she was still slightly damp from her shower.

"What's your name?"

She looked slightly surprised, obviously she hadn't expected it to matter at this point, but she anwered anyway. "Priya, sir."

"Priya, how would you like to be my mistress for a month?"

"Mistress?"

I saw her absorbing the implications of that. This was the crucial point. The first two I'd picked hadn't understood English and the last one had declined on religious grounds. I'd watched for a while with mild regret as she'd rejoined the line and in due course been chopped up, she had been really lovely. On the bright side, though, this one was even better.

"I would be your - bed girl? Sex slave?"

"Something like that, yes. Just for a month, less if you don't come up to scratch. Sorry, I mean, if you don't please me."

"And then....?" she looked, what hopeful?

"Back here to be processed. Sorry, that's the deal." I shrugged apologetically. Keep the livestock too long after they've been imported as meat and you're into issues of illegal immigration.

Priya looked round at the other women being led to the tables and butchered. She looked back at me and nodded, deciding. "Yes, please sir, I think," she said. She still looked a little nervous.

"Don't worry," I reassured her. "I'm not a sadist."

"Sadist?"

"I'm not cruel to my women. I won't beat you. You'll be well treated while you're with me and if you don't like it you can come back here any time you want."

It wasn't much of a guarantee, but the point was that she couldn't be any worse off than she already was, so she had nothing to lose by trying it. If living with me turned out to be a fate worse than death, she always had that option in hand. I could see that the logic of it wasn't wasted on her and she nodded again, more firmly. "I understand you, sir. I will be your....mistress."

"Good," I said briskly. "Follow me. And you don't have to keep saying 'Sir'." I led her out of the abattoir and up the stairs to my office, where my secretary was pretending to look busy on her computer.

"Something for the weekend, sir?" she inquired archly, peering over her plain glass spectacles at Priya.

"Oh, I'm hoping she'll last a bit longer than that. Put her on 'hold' for a month." I read off the stock number stamped in Priya's left thigh. Lisa pursed her lips disapprovingly as she made the necessary adjustment to the database. "If you're worried we'll run short you can always take her place downstairs," I added. "Consent forms are in the bottom left drawer of my desk."

Lisa gave me a frigid glance but I noticed Priya's lips quirk in a faint smile.

I took her home on the bus (I hate cars, never owned one and never will) after dressing her in a spare pair of overalls, to stop people staring. They fitted her like a tent. Some of the buttons were missing and I couldn't help trying to glimpse her tits through the gaps as she sat on the seat next to me. Yes, I know it's ridiculous, I'd already seen her naked. It was just different somehow, sitting next to her and watching her look out of the windows, her eyes alight with curiosity. She didn't know where she was going or what would happen to her there, but she was still alive. She smelled nice too. Once she caught me looking at her and she just smiled faintly again. Knowingly? Shyly? I didn't know. I didn't know her. Not then.

We didn't talk much on the way back. It was hard to think of anything to say. I didn't have to chat her up; she'd already agreed to sleep with me for the next month, and her prospects after that would have made a depressing topic of conversation.

Back at my place, I showed her around in a purely pragmatic way, not trying to charm her but merely hoping to put her at ease. You know: this is the kitchen, these are the bedrooms, there's the bathroom, etc. Priya took it all in with interest.

"Should I wear clothes inside?" she asked, indicating the overalls she'd been wearing. "I do not know what is proper."

"There are some women's clothes in the wardrobe in the guest bedroom," I said. I gave her directions. "Help yourself."

"Thank you." Priya disappeared upstairs while I put the kettle on. She returned shortly, wearing a short, dark blue skirt and a white blouse. "Is this as you wish?" she asked.

"It's perfectly fine," I said. "You look lovely. Cup of tea?"

Priya accepted a cup with thanks. Afterwards, I set about making dinner for both of us, questioning her about her likes and dislikes. Luckily, she didn't seem to be a fussy eater, and we eventually dined on grilled salmon with asparagus and croquet potatoes. Priya ate with good appetite. "This is very good," she commented politely.

After dinner we watched TV for a bit and eventually I left Priya perusing my bookshelves while I went on the Internet. After I'd done my business and answered all my e-mails, I offered her a glass of wine before we went to bed. She drank it and we went upstairs, where she undressed with the air of a lamb awaiting slaughter. Considering her previous position, that amused me.

"Nervous?" I asked.

"No...." She paused and then "..yes," she admitted, "A little."

I could have asked "First time?" and then she would have had to answer "No, I've been nervous lots of times." I've watched 'Airplane!' far too often. Instead, I just asked "Why? Are you a virgin?"

"No," she said after another pause. Now she looked really worried. "Should I be?"

Ah, right. In some societies, virginity is precious. "No, that's fine," I said. "Is that the problem?"

I watched her expression as she battled with some inner uncertainty. "Talk to me," I said gently. "What can you lose?"

Priya nodded as if my words had decided the conflict. "I am not quite a virgin," she stated, "But I am not very experienced either. It may be that I will not please you."

"And then you'll be back in the slaughterhouse tomorrow?"

Priya nodded again.

"Look," I said patiently, "I don't expect miracles from you the first time. Maybe not even the second or the third. We've got a month to find out whether we can please each other. I won't cut you off early unless you're just not willing to try."

That cheered her up a bit. "I will try," she said gamely.

"Don't try too hard," I advised. "Relax. I'll give you a back rub. Lie face down on the bed."

Priya complied rather gingerly, as though she thought the bed would collapse under her. I couldn't help but smile. I started with the most unthreatening thing I could think of: a gentle massage of her neck, shoulders and upper back. "You can talk or not, as you like," I said after a while. "Do tell me if I press too hard. I don't want to hurt you."

"You are not hurting," she said softly. "It is..nice."

She did seem more relaxed, so I moved down to the more provocative area of her buttocks. They were firm, round and frankly looked delicious. Honestly, I bore the girl no malice at all, but it was impossible not to appreciate what a fine pair of rump roasts they'd make when the time came to chop her up. Occupational hazard of being in the meat trade, I suppose. If the same thought had occurred to Priya, she didn't say so and I thought it best not to mention it. "Open your legs a little," I said. She complied and I slipped my hand under her to cup her pubic mound. She flinched away at first, reflexively, then relaxed and let her centre rest in my palm. The flesh was smooth, warm and faintly moist. Was she becoming aroused? No need to rush her. I slipped my hand back out and moved down to her legs. They were slim but shapely, with good, firm muscle on them. Some fine, lean steaks there. By the time I reached her feet, I had the sense that Priya was really enjoying herself. Her occasional utterances of "..nice.." had subsided into throaty little purrs of pleasure. That was a relief, at least I needn't worry about her not being a sensual animal. Last but not least, I addressed myself to her feet. She squeaked when I first brushed the sole of her left foot with my finger. "Ticklish?" I asked.

"Ticklish?" she inquired tentatively. I explained, continuing to massage her feet firmly but gently. "Yes," she agreed finally "I am a little, I think."

"Do you like having your feet stroked?"

"Yes, very much," she said emphatically.

In due course, I asked her to turn over and she complied. I moved up beside her, placed a hand on her breast and kissed her on the mouth. After a slight fumble, she responded. Kissing didn't seem to be a mystery to her, thank goodness. From there, things progressed in the usual fashion. Despite her professed lack of experience, she knew pretty much what went where and what to do and didn't seem at all inhibited about doing it. What she lacked in expertise, she made up for in natural talent and enthusiasm. In short, she was a damn good lay for a novice. Eventually we both subsided, spent, and I rolled off her.

I hadn't bothered about contraception, of course; in a month's time Priya's womb and uterus would be in a bucket with the rest of her entrails. Pity, really, she seemed like a nice enough girl. Then again, lots of the women we slaughtered might have been perfectly nice people. We killed them for meat, for sound ecological and economic reasons, not because they were nasty.

"Was I all right?" Priya asked after we'd got our breath back.

I turned to her and she was smiling hopefully at me. "Very all right," I said warmly. The smile brightened.

"Not for me the chop tomorrow?" she asked, her English vernacular slipping slightly but the tone optimistic.

"No," I confirmed. "Not for you the chop." Not for a while, anyway. Oh well.

She reached towards me then and I responded and we hugged. Yes, I know what you're thinking. She asked me where she was supposed to sleep and I said she could use the spare bedroom if she liked but was welcome to stay with me and she said she preferred to stay so we slept together, with her cuddled up against my side. She was warm and she smelled nice and, yes, okay, I rather liked her. It's only natural to like a pretty young woman you've just fucked when she's being affectionate. It had been too long since I'd split up with my last girlfriend and I was lonely. I'm only human.

So it was that I woke up in the morning with Priya half-sprawled across me with her head on my shoulder. The only odd thing about it was how natural it felt. I didn't get that 'Who is she and what the hell is she doing here?' feeling you get when you wake up after a one-nighter with somebody you met at a party after too much to drink. When her eyes opened, she smiled at me and I said "Good morning" and asked her if she'd like some breakfast before I went to work. She helped me make it, we ate together and I actually kissed her goodbye before I left.

I only do a short morning shift on Saturday and I got through it without paying much attention. Lisa came in for a couple of hours as she usually does, to 'catch up with some filing' and clock up a bit of overtime. If she gave me the occasional arch look, I ignored it. I went down to the shop floor to talk with Arthur, the foreman, and to assure myself that all was running smoothly, which of course it was. We both treated this as a routine formality. Another batch of women had arrived and were coming out of prep (strip, shear, shave and wash, etc) and being lined up by the ushers for the actual processing. Somebody handed Arthur a work sheet as we were talking and I took this as my cue to get out of the way and let the men do their jobs.

When I got home, Priya greeted me warmly, but with her usual polite deference. We had lunch together and I suggested we might spend the afternoon shopping while I showed her around town. Then I remembered that she had no shoes and said I'd better get her some first, but she said she didn't mind going barefoot for a while, she was used to it and the weather was warm. We did find her some shoes and I offered to get her some underwear, but she didn't want any, she didn't see the need for it. I could see her point. Her small, firm breasts didn't need support and you don't need panties under a skirt unless it's cold and she wouldn't be here in winter. I didn't insist.

I'm not going to bore you with a day by day chronological diary of the next month, it was pretty repetitive. Over the next few days I got some inexpensive but serviceable clothes for Priya, to augment the limited wardrobe one or two of my exes had left lying around, and a few other things she might need including her own toothbrush. We slept together as an established routine and she never again exhibited any nervousness about the sex part. On the contrary, she was quite enthusiastic and increasingly forward. If she ever worried about the fact that she only had a few weeks to live, she never showed it and she certainly never complained.

Priya was also a more than passable cook, once she had mastered the kitchen facilities, and she took it upon herself to cook for us both and to do the grocery shopping and general housekeeping. Some of her productions were exotic or eccentric, a mixture of Oriental and Western styles, but never inedible and often delicious. In her spare time, when her jobs were done and I was out, she liked to read. I had more books than she'd ever have time to get through and so, when she asked permission in her usual polite way, I was glad to give it.

The first Monday back at work after the weekend was a little strange. I felt as though I'd been away a lot longer than a couple of days. Lisa greeted me with a slightly pointed "And how was your weekend?" and a raised eyebrow, but I just gave her a bland "Fine, thanks, you?" and she left it there, for the moment at least. In case you wondered, I put up with Lisa's occasional borderline insolence because she was a good secretary. She didn't exactly work hard, but that was because she didn't have to, she worked smart. That was worth allowing her the occasional snide remark as long as she didn't take it too far.

After a couple of boring hours wading through paperwork and taking a few phone calls, I took a break and went out onto the mezzanine overlooking the factory floor. Work was going on as usual, of course. Women were coming in and being processed into various meat products according to the orders on the work sheets. A crisis would have been a welcome change, but we rarely got any of those. The occasional screamer - one of the livestock getting hysterical and going berserk or trying to run - sometimes provided a moment of distraction, but that didn't happen often. They were usually fatalistically resigned by the time they got here and the few who weren't had been mildly sedated and restrained. One in a while we got a protest demonstration outside by the bleeding heart brigade. Since they were usually the same sort of sentimental idiots who thought that 'meat was murder' even back when it was just chickens and pigs, nobody much took them seriously.

Watching the daily routine that day seemed different, somehow. Only a few days ago, Priya had been down there waiting to be processed and, if I hadn't taken a fancy to her, she'd be meat in a butcher's shop by now, or maybe a gutted and impaled body in the cooler section, awaiting shipment as a whole roaster. Dead, anyway. It was an oddly disturbing thought. Not that I was feeling guilty about my part in the meat trade, of course. Some countries just had too many people and not enough to feed them with, that was all there was to it. What were we supposed to do, refuse to buy their excess population and let them all starve together? Go back to the absurd and thankfully now discredited notion of propping up the poorer nations with charity so they could hang on in borderline starvation just long enough to produce another generation of starving indigents? Ridiculous.

I got through the working day and went home to the dinner Priya had made for us. Something with chicken and spices and a kind of salad, I think. I enjoyed it and I told her so, and she liked that. We passed the rest of the evening companionably, went to bed, had mutually satisfying sex and slept together.

That's how it went over the next couple of weeks. I got used to leading a double life, doing my job in work time and coming home to Priya at night. I looked forward to that. I liked living with her. Well, why wouldn't I? She looked nice, she spoke softly, she fucked and cooked well, what's not to like? I did find out a few things about her, too. She wasn't Indian, she was Malaysian. Why did she speak such good English?

"Where I come from, all educated people learn English," she told me. Of course, Malaysia was one of the countries that had been ruled by us British once. Well, it's easy to lose count, there are so many of them. It all came out in bits and pieces as she got more relaxed talking to me and opened up about herself. She had hoped to train as a doctor, but the national lottery had assigned her to be exported as meat and she had accepted that as her duty. Like a lot of Malaysians, and quite a few Britons for that matter, she had Indian ancestry and was technically a Hindu, though she didn't take her nominal religion too seriously. Sacred cows? No. She didn't mind eating beef.

"If I come back as a cow, I suppose I'll be eaten again," she said with a slight shrug. "At least if I'm a British cow. What difference does it make?" She had begun to use contractions as her colloquial English improved rapidly with practice.

Did I mention the sex? Yes I did but I'll mention it again. Once she'd got the hang of it and realised that she could trust me, she was fantastic. It's ungallant to make comparisons, but my last girlfriend, whatsername, Kirsten, well, I thought she was pretty good, but compared to Priya, let's just say I didn't miss her so much any more. Call me shallow if you like, but it wasn't only that. She was also a very agreeable person. I don't mean that she always agreed with me, I made it clear to her early on that she was free to give me her honest opinions and she did, I mean that she never argued just to be contrary. A cynic might say that she was afraid she'd get an early trip back to the chopping block, but I don't think so, I think she was just good natured.

In retrospect, it's easy to see where this was heading. One day I woke up with Priya next to me as usual, looked at her fondly, and got an awful sinking sensation in my stomach at the realisation that she'd be gone before long. Not just gone from me, that was bad enough, but gone for good. I didn't like the idea at all. It didn't seem right.

This is probably why knocking off the livestock, while not actually illegal, is customarily frowned upon. Supposedly this is because of the danger of coming to see them as people. Nonsense, of course, at least in my case. I'd never excused what I did with the silly pretense that they weren't human. I simply kept a sense of perspective and professional detachment about it, or I had before. So much for that, I told myself wryly.

When had it started exactly? I don't know, probably the first time I talked to her. The danger signs had been coming with increasing intensity ever since and I'd simply ignored them. Little things, like the time her pubic hair had begun to grow back and I'd delicately asked her whether she'd prefer to use a razor or depilatory cream. It's not that I'm fanatical about a bare pubic region, though I do prefer it, but that she wouldn't have time to grow it out. I took special care to let her know that it was only because stubble was uncomfortable so she wouldn't think I was just keeping her prepped for the slaughtering line.

I managed to conceal my sinking stomach from Priya when she woke, I hope, but she probably picked something up when I struggled to get my breakfast down and she gave me a big hug when I left. I must have had a visible dark cloud over my head at work, because Lisa noticed.

"Bad night?" she asked with mock sympathy, "Things not going well with your little meat poppet?"

I could cheerfully have strangled her. The thought crossed my mind that, properly butchered, Lisa would dress out to several more pounds of meat than Priya. Pity it couldn't be her on the cutting table instead. I gave her a stone-faced stare and said "Where's that shipping report?" while I entertained the fantasy. It helped a bit. I know, it wasn't nice, and I don't really think Lisa deserved to die just for being a snotty bitch, but what had my 'little meat poppet' ever done to deserve it? Yes, I know, life isn't fair.

I couldn't conceal my mood from Priya that evening, much as I tried. "Is something wrong?" she asked at last, concerned, after I'd struggled to get through a perfectly good dinner.

I could have said 'no' and almost did, but she would have known I was lying. I'd never really lied to her before, I'd just managed to avoid confronting this particular topic for fear of depressing her.

I shrugged. "I don't know," I said, evading slightly, "It's just that I've really enjoyed having you here and it seems a pity I'll have to take you back before long."

"I have enjoyed being here," Priya said - her colloquial contractions came and went - "Very much. And we still have some time left."

Less than two weeks. I shook my head helplessly. "I wish you didn't have to go at all. I'll miss you." She wouldn't be able to say the same thing, of course. She wouldn't miss me at all. One of the benefits of having your head chopped off.

Priya looked at me carefully with an expression I couldn't read. "There are lots of other girls," she pointed out.

I sighed in exasperated surrender. "Oh, all right, I give in. I like you, okay? Really, really like you. A lot. It bothers me that you're going to die soon and that there's nothing I can do about it. Happy now?"

"Yes," Priya said. "Very happy." She was smiling and her eyes were bright with tears.

Everything got mushy then. We hugged furiously and I cried like a big girl while she comforted me. It's true what they say, it does help to let it out sometimes. It was a relief that I wouldn't have to pretend any more that I didn't really care about Priya, at least not to her. The rest of the world could screw themselves, I'd give them the old stone face about it, but not her.

Sex that night wasn't just sex, we made love. It wasn't that much different from what we'd done the previous night, really, we simply had a different understanding. I held her very close for a long time afterwards. It was wonderful and all the world was rosy, apart from the fact that I was falling for a woman who'd be dead in a fortnight. Falling for? Who was I trying to kid? I was sunk, full fathom five.

"Don't be unhappy," Priya said at last.

"I hope you're not going to say 'don't grieve for me'," I said gruffly, "Because I'm bloody well going to whether you like it or not."

"I know," Priya said gently. "You'll grieve because you have a good heart. Just don't do it now. Please wait until I am gone. I know I am being selfish, that it is hard for you..."

"Hard for me?" I began indignantly. I wasn't the one who had a date with a chopping block.

"Yes," Priya said. "I came to this country knowing that I would die here. Alone, I thought, amongst strangers. Instead, I've had some good times and I'll spend my last days with a kind man who cares for me. It is you who will pay the price for that."

I wasn't sure I deserved to be cast as the good guy. "I only picked you out because you're hot and I was horny," I said gruffly. "I kept you because you're good in bed."

"Lucky for me," Priya smiled.

"For me too," I said and kissed her. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. Better to have loved and lost, always look on the bright side, etc. I'd put on a brave face and enjoy the rest of my time with Priya and try not to bring her down. The sackcloth and ashes bit could wait.

At breakfast the next morning, Priya asked innocently, "Do you ever eat woman flesh?"

I almost choked on my cornflakes. I had, of course, quite often in fact. Well, I was the manager of a food processing plant specialising in woman meat and obviously I wasn't a vegetarian. Priya must have worked that out for herself, surely.

"I have done," I admitted apologetically, feeling apprehensive. Would she be disgusted with me? Angry? Disappointed?

Priya just nodded acceptance. "Yet you have not done this since I have been here," she observed.

Whew. She hadn't run screaming from the room. "No. I thought it might be a bit tactless," I said. "I didn't want to upset you." Eating girl meat in front of someone who was about to become it seemed way beyond tactless to me.

Priya cocked her head and gave me an quizzical smile. "Not even at work?"

"No," I said. It was true, I hadn't. You could get it in pies or sandwiches at the works cafeteria but I'd been sticking to things like ham or cheese and salad lately.

"Why not?"

I shrugged. "I don't know, the whole idea just seemed a bit weird. Eating...that...while you were living in my home would have felt....disrespectful? In bad taste? I don't know why."

Priya smiled at me fondly. "You are so sweet. I just asked because I wondered, what do we taste like? Chicken?"

I'd have choked on my flakes again if I'd had any in my mouth. Instead I just spluttered into my tea a bit. I gave her a suspicious glance. She was winding me up, teasing me. "Oh, much better than that. More like cheese and Marmite sandwiches with a touch of lobster thermidor and extra Spam." Priya started to giggle with a bite of bacon sandwich in her mouth. I hoped I wouldn't have to do a Heimlich on her. I waited for her to swallow and get her breath back. "Why do you want to know?"

"I would like to know what I'll taste like. Could we have some?"

The idea was somehow shocking to me, which was illogical, of course. Dear, gentle Priya eating another woman? Heaven forfend. Silly of me. The other woman would be killed and eaten anyway. It's not as if she was asking me to go out on the street and shoot someone for her. I had a brief, wild vision of bagging a likely wench, throwing her down on the kitchen table and saying 'Will this one do?' "I suppose we could," I said. "If you really want to....?"

"Yes, please, if you don't mind..?"

I shook my head. "All right. Any particular part you'd prefer?"

Priya frowned slightly in mock concentration. "Oh, I don't know," she said, "Whatever you think is good." Her expression changed to an impish smile. "Whatever part of me you'd most like to eat."

I was almost ready for her this time, but that still sent a kind of visceral shock through me. "That would be all of you," I said, as calmly as possible.

"All of me? Even my toes and my spleen?"

"I'm not sure what spleen tastes like," I admitted, struggling a bit. "Toes? Chewy, I'd think, but I'm sure yours would be exquisite..."

"I'm sorry," Priya said, suddenly contrite. "This is uncomfortable for you to talk about, isn't it?"

"Just a bit awkward. I'm sorry too, I know you're only trying to keep it light and I do appreciate it. Were you serious about having, er...."

"Yes," Priya said. "Not spleen, though. Maybe just a simple steak. Leg, rump, something with red meat on it. Would that be too costly?"

"Don't worry about it," I said. "Special occasion. Besides, I get trade discount. Leave it to me."

I was in a strange mood at work that day. Not depressed like the day before, but not exactly normal either. I'm not sure if there's a word for what I was. Clear headed but detached, like I wasn't really there or the rest of the world wasn't real. Lisa gave me a few odd looks, but she kept fairly quiet, as if she couldn't make me out. I caught her watching me and gave her a bland, bright smile that made her look away uneasily. I got through the morning's work with abstracted efficiency. I had a chicken salad sandwich for lunch and read the paper for a bit, then went down to the factory floor, where I had a few words with Arthur as usual. Then I told him I wanted to pick out a couple of steaks for dinner.

Arthur didn't need to ask why I hadn't just phoned down and ordered them. "Want to pick 'em on the hoof?" he guessed correctly. I nodded. It was unusual but not unheard of. "Got a particular cut in mind?"

"Two thigh steaks, top of the legs, same heifer," I said.

"Top steaks of both legs?" Arthur asked, raising his eyebrows. It was quite an expensive selection. The very top of the thigh, next to the crotch, is the prime cut of the legs and one of the most prized parts of the body.

"Yes. Special occasion."

Arthur nodded. If he had any thoughts on what that special occasion might be, he kept them to himself. "New batch coming through now," he said.

It was a bit like a flashback to the last time, when I'd picked Priya out. Not so long ago, but it seemed like another age of my life. The women were of roughly the same ethnic mix but I was looking for a particular body type and I passed up several perfectly good dinner prospects before I found the right match. "That one," I said. Arthur cut the girl out of the line and brought her to me. I inspected her carefully. Almost exactly the same build. I came close enough to smell her skin and sniffed. Close enough.

"She'll do very nicely," I said.

Arthur made a note on the worksheet on his clipboard, checking her stock number and repeating "Right.Top cuts, both thighs."

"What is happening, please?" the girl asked. She sounded nervous. Maybe she thought I was going to eat her liver raw with some fava beans and a nice Chianti

She even spoke English, too. Perfect. "Nothing that wasn't going to happen anyway," I explained to reassure her, or maybe myself. "I'm going to have some of your meat for dinner, that's all. What's your name?"

"Sanja," the girl said, looking slightly surprised to be asked.

Deja vu again. For a moment I saw another face looking back at me and the world twisted, but it passed quickly. She wasn't the same. "Somebody might want to know," I told her.

Sanja nodded as if she'd understood something. "Thank you," she said. Such a polite girl.

"You're welcome," I replied. I told Arthur, "Okay, take her. Make it quick and clean."

Arthur gave me a quizzical frown and I shook my head minimally. He nodded. He realised I'd said that for the girl's benefit, not because I doubted his team's expertise.

I watched as Sanja was led to a cutting table where she lay down submissively and was quickly killed by decapitation. I didn't stay to watch her being cut up in detail. Arthur would have my order sent up when it was ready.

Back in the office, I called Priya at home. "Hi, it's me. I've got the meat. It's steaks. No, just get a couple of baking potatoes ready and maybe a salad or something, whatever you fancy. I'll cook them myself when I get home, they won't take long. Yes, me too. See you soon. Bye."

Lisa was looking at me again, an odd expression on her face. "Something wrong?" I asked. She shook her head and looked away.

Priya greeted me warmly when I got home. The old polite deference she'd started out with had been melting away for some time and now, after last night, was completely gone. She was wearing a short, blue sleeveless dress that left a lot of brown skin on show, and open sandals. She looked stunningly beautiful, good enough...... I winced inwardly at the cliche. Of course I couldn't say that.

Then again, why not? "You look good enough to eat," I said boldly.

Priya laughed. "I would hope so," she said. "I'm glad you can say that now."

"You know I wouldn't..."

"I know you would rather that things were different, but they're not," Priya said firmly. "It's all right. Show me the meat, please?"

We went into the kitchen and I unwrapped the steaks. There was a pleasant smell of potatoes baking in the oven and a bowl of salad on the table, along with the standard condiments.

"What part is this? Leg?" Priya guessed.

"Top of the thighs," I said.

"Right at the top? Here?" Priya lifted her skirt and touched the top of her right thigh with her hand. Her lack of underwear was apparent. It was an unselfconcious gesture and therefore all the more intensely, even perversely, erotic.

"Right there," I confirmed, "From a girl with your body type. You said you wanted to know..."

"What I would taste like, yes. You chose her specially?" I nodded. "What was her name?"

"Sanja," I said. "How did you know I'd ask her?"

"Because you knew I would ask you. Besides, you asked mine."

I was taken aback. That was different. "But I was asking you if you were willing to be my mistress, not picking my dinner."

"But you asked my name first," she said. "Before you propositioned me. Is that right, 'propositioned'?"

"Yes, that's right. What would you have done if I hadn't? Turned me down?"

"Probably, yes."

Presumably that made some kind of sense in feminine logic. I shook my head. Who says manners don't matter? "How would you like yours done?"

"The same way you are having yours."

I tenderised the steaks with a rolling pin and fried them in olive oil with just a touch of tarragon until they were medium rare while Priya set out the plates and cutlery and took the potatoes out of the oven. We sat down to eat. I took a bite of my steak, which seemed excellent to me, and waited to see what Priya made of hers. She nodded appreciatively with her mouth still full, chewed, swallowed, and said "Good!" We didn't talk much for the rest of the meal apart from food-related comments: "Pass the butter, please", "More salad?", "Try a bit with mustard on it", and so on.

When we were done, Priya poured us two glasses from the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon she'd opened earlier. "That was really good," she said. She lifted her glass in a toast: "To Sanja," she proposed.

"To Sanja," I concurred. We drank.

"I wonder what she was like," Priya mused a while later, curiously, not morbidly.

"I don't know, really, we didn't have a long conversation," I said. "She seemed nice enough. She wanted to know what was going on when I picked her out, so I told her and then I asked her name. She thanked me, I'm not sure what for, and that was about it."

"She thanked you for doing her the courtesy of talking to her," Priya said. "I would bet you said 'you're welcome' too."

I nodded. "Of course. I was polite, God forbid that I should be rude. And then I watched her being led away to be killed." I made a face.

"Of course. And you think this is, what's the word?"

"Incongruous?"

"That sounds right. And no, it isn't. Times like this are when courtesy is most important."

"I suppose so," I said. She was uniquely qualified to know how a person in Sanja's situation would have felt about it.

"I know so," she said, shaking her head and smiling wryly. "You're funny. Your plant processes many women every day and yet you reproach yourself over Sanja because you spoke politely to her. Would she have been better off if you hadn't?"

I gave her a rueful smile back. "You're right, of course."

I may have mentioned before that Priya wasn't a complainer and I was beginning to understand why. She understood her situation and the reasons for it intellectually and then accepted them emotionally. Not everybody gets that far. She just didn't have that 'Okay, I get it, but why ME?' thing that most of us have. Call it Eastern fatalism if you like, but I don't think so. I'm sure she'd rather not have been picked to be sold as meat but she had been. Why should she waste the rest of her time fretting about something she couldn't change? She'd got me for that.

"Come on, cheer up," she said. "Let's clear the dishes and have another glass of wine and we can watch that Python film again. I wish to practice my Latin grammar."

So we watched 'Life of Brian' again with our shoes off and the lights low, slowly sipping our way through a few more glasses of wine. Priya loved the Latin lesson sketch and the 'What have the Romans ever done for us?' bit, which she said was a brilliant satirical rebuttal of politically correct anti-British-Imperialism, but she also laughed at the lisping speech by Palin's effete governor and the Biggus Dickus jokes. I enjoyed it too, I always do, and more so for being with her, but I also had a vivid, recurring image in my mind of Priya's hand on the top of her thigh, touching the same part of her own body as the part of Sanja we'd just eaten.

Sex that night was wonderful, as usual, but more so than ever. No, it wasn't frantic or urgent, it was slow, gently sensual and totally relaxed. It was like a conversation in tactile language. Priya communicated that she was completely happy and wanted me to be too. For a while, I lost myself in her serenity. I lost myself in her. I think it took a long time, but I had no sense of time while it was happening. We came together. By that, I don't just mean we both had orgasms at the same time. Both of us had one and we shared it. There is no way I can describe that to you, you've either done it or you haven't. It's like you can't explain what sex is like to a virgin. Nudge, nudge, wink wink. You can't explain what this was like to someone who's only had sex. We didn't talk for a while afterwards until I eventually said "I suppose you know that I love you."

"I know," Priya said. "You're not sure that I love you too, but I do. Trust me." She smiled at me in the dark. "Could we have done that if I didn't?"

I trusted her more than I trusted myself.

Please don't get the impression that I'd never cared for a woman before. I'd never slept with a woman I didn't like, or at least thought I liked. I'd never slept with a 'meat poppet' before either. I'd just been sexually frustrated when I picked Priya out of the line. Starving in the midst of plenty, it had seemed illogical to deny myself. I'd only wanted to enjoy her body and treat her as well as possible before I took her back to be slaughtered. I didn't expect that she'd be the one I'd really fall for. Cue Michael Palin in the Spanish Inquisition sketch: "Nooobody expects..."

I had Python on the brain. Or the Brian. Well, you don't, do you? When you're a teenager you imagine you're in love with every girl you fancy. Then you have sex and you get over it. After that, if you're lucky, or unlucky, you connect with somebody on a level you didn't even know existed and you go mad. You're not just you any more. You're you and her. An item. One flesh, as the marriage ceremony puts it. Just my luck to have fallen in love with someone who had less than two weeks left to live and whose flesh would be on display in a butchers window after that.

Priya understood her situation perfectly, as I said. She wasn't thinking 'Okay, I get it, but why ME?' I was thinking 'Okay, I get it, but why HER?' She was part of me.

"No," I said, "You're right, we couldn't have. I've just never done that before. I mean, sex, yes, obviously, but not like that."

"Really? Never?" Priya sounded surprised. Well, she would be. She was relatively sexually inexperienced, maybe she thought it happened at some point in every relationship.

"No," I said, "Only with you."

Priya said, "I am honoured. And lucky." She sounded pleased.

It sounded a bit odd to me, put like that. I wasn't at all sure I deserved the 'honoured' bit and, as for 'lucky', well, that was hardly how I'd have described her situation, but I could see her point of view. "The honour is mine," I said gallantly.

Priya smiled ruefully. "But not so lucky for you, you think?" she guessed, "I'm sorry."

"I'm not," I said. "I don't regret it. I can't." It was true. When you're really in love with somebody, you can't wish you weren't. At least, I couldn't, you can speak for yourself. I couldn't look at Priya and think "I wish I didn't love her." It would be like wishing I wasn't me or that she didn't exist, which was more or less the same thing. I can't explain it any better than that, as I said, you've either been there or you haven't.

You may be wondering what I'd expected to happen. Did I think I could have spent a month sleeping with an attractive and likeable girl and have no regrets at all about taking her back to be chopped up? No, of course not. Even pig farmers get fond of their pigs sometimes and get a bit sentimental when the time comes to slaughter them. They do it anyway. I expected that I might become a little fond of Priya, or whoever I'd picked, and then I'd get seriously drunk and maybe do a bit of crying into my beer the night after, but I'd get over it as I got over the accompanying hangover. After all, as Priya had pointed out herself, my plant processed women every day and any given one of them might have been a perfectly nice person if I'd got to know her. Sanja had probably been a nice person and now she was dead and we'd eaten her. Had she been glad to know who would do it? Had it made it any easier for her to lie down and wait for the end to come?

Priya snuggled up to my side in the now familiar position. I put my arm around her slender back in the usual way. She spoke my name. I turned to her. "Please remember that you have never done me harm," she said. "Only good. Never forget that. Promise me?"

I knew perfectly well what she was trying to do. I would grieve for her, she couldn't help me with that, but she didn't want me compounding that with guilt. Logically, she was quite right. I hadn't forced her to become my lover and I'd never mistreated her. Laugh if you like, but I despise men who are needlessly cruel to women. I had nothing to reproach myself with. "I won't forget, I promise you that," I said. "Goodnight, love."

Priya fell asleep easily; I could feel it from her regular breathing and her steady heartbeat. It only took me an hour or two more. I didn't grudge one minute of it, not one precious second.

My dreams were disturbing, but I only half-remembered them, as you do. Things were a little odd at breakfast. Priya seemed distracted, maybe even worried, which was unusual for her. She'd woken up cheerful and affectionate, as usual, and we'd gone through all the little morning rituals together, but when we were actually eating breakfast, I got the impression that there was something on her mind.

"Okay, out with it," I said in that half-joking tone you use not to sound threatening.

Priya actually started and looked guilty. She opened her mouth and shut it again. She put down her cup of tea.

"Something's on your mind, love," I said. "Do you want to tell me? If you say 'no' I won't ask again."

Priya nodded. "I was wondering if you will eat me when I am dead," she said frankly. She looked at me, her expression both anxious and apologetic.

I had been more than half expecting something like this to come up. "Is that a question or a request? Do you want me to?" Priya looked uncertain. About what? "If you don't, just say so.."

Priya shook her head. "I would like you to, but..."

Yes, it all came together. I'm not totally thick. "You're worried that it would be hard for me, aren't you? You want to go out knowing that I'll eat some of you, that your death will mean something to someone who loves you. You didn't just want to know what you'd taste like, you wanted to know what you'd taste like to me."

"Yes," Priya admitted.

Obviously I'd guessed it earlier when I'd ordered the same parts of Sanja for both of us. It's easy to see in retrospect, it's different if you're living it. I'd known all along what she was up to on some level, I just hadn't wanted to put it together. That would have meant accepting the fact that she would die and I was still having a hard time with that, can you blame me? "And then, when you realised how much you meant to me..."

"I had intended to ask," Priya said. "As a favour, but then I thought..it might be too much to ask."

I took her hand. "Nothing is too much for you to ask," I said fiercly. "Nothing, ever. Never forget that. Promise me?"

She got that happy tears look again. I can still remember how she looked then, every detail. Her hair had started to grow out just a bit. Nothing much, just not quite the shorn heifer look she'd had when I picked her. She was wearing one of my old T-shirts, faded and threadbare but clean. "I promise," she said.

If this all sounds a bit bizarre, you just have to see it from her point of view. Think about it. Why had Sanja thanked me when I'd only told her I was going to have her for dinner and asked her name? Because it made it personal. I'm sure she understood the economics of her situation and knew that nothing I said would change it, but at least I'd spoken to her, if only for a few seconds. She wasn't just going to end up in a butcher's shop as anonymous pieces of meat, she'd be dinner for somebody who at least knew her name. A pity I hadn't told her mine, but that couldn't be mended now. How much more would it mean to Priya? Some things you have to get right first time because you only get one chance.

"I'll be with you at the end too, if that's what you want," I told Priya. "And before you ask if it will be hard for me, yes, of course it will, it will hurt like Hell. I'm not being noble, I just don't want to spend the rest of my life regretting that I wasn't there for you when you needed me. I couldn't live with that. Okay?"

"Okay," Priya said dubiously. I could see that she didn't like the idea of putting me through that, but she saw my point. What do you do with a girl like that? I hugged and kissed her and told her I'd walk to work. I needed some air, I needed time to think.

"You decide what you want to do," I said before I left. That was it, I was committed. If Priya told me she'd like to have her lungs, liver and heart boiled up with onions and oatmeal and served in her stomach as haggis, I'd have to do it. Of course, she'd never do that. She wasn't cruel, she'd never subject me to the horror of Scottish cuisine, but a promise was a promise. I really would have eaten her spleen and toes if she'd wanted me to.

What did I really want? It's just too obvious for words. I wanted to marry her and live happily ever after, of course. Sorry, but there's a reason for the cliches. I think I've done this bit before, but the first time you fancy a girl you kid yourself that she's your one true love. The first time you really do fall in love, what do you want? You want her, forever. Maybe even kids some day. Just not to lose her. That's the main thing. Except I couldn't do that.

I'd have sent her home if I could. I'd have lost her then, but at least she'd still be alive. I could still feel her body in my arms, so warm and small and vulnerable, so vital.......so fucking precious. Yes, okay, that's a just personal reaction. All human interactions are, aren't they? We only really care about the people we know and love. I've never sympathised much with the bleeding hearts who wring their hands and wail about starving babies in Africa or wherever. Of course it's unfortunate, but if you don't want your kids to starve, stop having more kids than you can feed. Duh. It's not rocket science. Anyway, it's none of my business. But Priya? None of this was her fault. Why her government had instituted some sort of national lottery to cull the population instead of just shipping out the useless gits I don't know, but I could hazard a few guesses. Maybe the same sort of misguided, politically correct egalitarianism that had thankfully gone out of fashion here. Maybe the lottery was corrupt and they thought they'd get more money for healthy, attractive young women than the hoi-polloi. Eastern countries have always undervalued women compared to the West, but they do like our money.

We, of course, have a far better use for their undervalued women than they do. We like eating them. Tasty cooked or raw. Okay, cooked, unless you're a werewolf. There are any number of cooking programmes on TV about how to serve them up. Frankly, I find most cooking shows about as interesting as the ones with overpaid yuppies trying to get even richer buying properties in the South of France, Eastern Europe or any of those new Third World countries that went bottom up when the inflated economic miracle of the European Union collapsed. Britain survived through not subscribing to the silly paper money fantasy of the Euro. It's lucky that we had a good Chancellor at the time, or we'd have been in the same sinking boat. Before long we could probably look forward to cooking French women. I'm sure they'll taste as good as any of the others, with or without garlic.

Sorry, I'm venting a bit here, not to mention rambling, but how I felt at the time was just that I'd rather see anybody going to the chopping block than her. That's what happens when you fall in love. The law, politics, even basic morals, they don't matter any more, you get obsessed. I'd have walked miles over broken glass just to see her smile at me, just to look into those warm brown eyes one more time.

So, walking to work, I started looking for women to put in her place. Half seriously, you understand. I couldn't just kidnap somebody and expect her to pass for Priya in the slaughtering line, could I? Still, I could dream, and speculate a bit. Like this: Oh look, there's one now. About the right age.....no. Too tall, too light skinned, too dark....that one? Pretty lass, about the right build and colour, hair too long but that's easily fixed...she sees me looking and, good grief, she smiles at me. Does she think I'm flirting? I smile back and look away casually, indicating that I was just caught fancying her. She'll probably get a lift out of that, walk with a little more spring in her step. It would never occur to her that I was thinking of having her killed and butchered to spare my meatgirl lover.

Monstrous, you're probably thinking. Take some innocent young woman off the street and murder her? Who could do such a thing? Well, take off that neat business suit - she probably works in an office - and shave her and she's just as much a meat animal as someone like Priya, no more, no less. Or maybe you think I do this all the time, see every woman I look at as a heifer, meat on the hoof. Well, I don't, or at least I didn't.

"You're in a mood," Lisa said pertly when I finally reached the office.

"Don't you start," I warned her.

Lisa sniffed.

That's when I decided to kill her. I spent the morning dealing with routine jobs while fantasising about how I could do it and get away with it. I'd much rather have killed Lisa, who annoyed me, than some innocent girl on the street who just looked a bit like Priya. I couldn't quite see how to make it work. I got through the day somehow.

I was about to eat dinner that evening when Kirsten turned up. Priya was serving up when somebody knocked on the door and there she was.

"Mind if I come in?" she inquired as I stood there dumbstruck for a moment.

"What happened, the gorilla you left me for ditched you for a nice little chimpanzee?"

"Fuck you too," Kirsten said. "I ditched him."

"He was rubbish in bed," I interpreted.

"Pretty much," Kirsten admitted. "Bigger dick than yours but didn't know an erogenous zone from a hole in the wall. Heard you were fucking a meat cunt."

You wonder why I didn't mind that she left me?

"Yes, and she's better in bed than you ever were," I retorted. I was never good at sparring with Kirsten because I don't lie easily. I didn't have to. I viewed Kirsten's expression with satisfaction as she realised I was telling the truth. "Come in and meet her."

Now Kirsten looked a bit put out as I turned around and led the way to the kitchen, but she followed automatically. "This is Priya, the..."

"Hello," Kirsten cut in hastily. "Um..."

"Priya, this is Kirsten," I completed the introduction.

"Pleased to meet you," Priya said politely. "Will you be joining us for dinner?"

"Ah...I shouldn't...." Kirsten was trying not to stare too obviously at the 'meat cunt', who looked composed and immaculate in a simple skirt and blouse.

"It's just a lamb and bean casserole, Greek style," I said. "There's plenty to go around."

"Well..." Kirsten was obviously tempted, either by curiosity or the smell of the food. Priya had already produced another plate. "Oh, all right. I mean, yes, thanks." She took a seat at the table, looking completely at sea. Priya served her the plate, now loaded with casserole.

We all sat down and ate.

"This is very good," Kirsten said at last.

"Thank you," Priya said. "I saw the recipe on a television programme. I like to cook."

I could almost read Kirsten's mind from the expression on her face. "You're very good," she said.

"I hope I will be," Priya replied, straight-faced, "The cooks on the television programme said that this dish could be made with the flesh of a lean young woman. Wine?"

"Maybe one glass," Kirsten choked out. Priya poured it.

One glass? Yeah, right. Well, it would break the ice a bit. I just hoped things wouldn't get out of hand. Kirsten was always unpredictable when drunk. After a couple of glassed more, she opened up.

"So, what's the deal with you and my ex here?" The plates had been finished and cleared away.

"Ex?"

"Ex-girlfriend. Former lover...?"

"I am his mistress," Priya explained. "I was about to be slaughtered when he offered me the position for a month. I accepted."

"And when the month is up?"

"I will be slaughtered and he has kindly agreed to eat some of me."

"How very generous of him," Kirsten said, draining her glass and reaching for the bottle.

"Yes," Priya said, with a very slight edge in her voice. "It was."

Oh, fight, fight! Catfights are fun to watch. Well, no, not really, unless they're naked and wrestling in baby oil.

Kirsten backed down. Slightly. "So you're happy to be his dinner?"

Priya's hackles settled down a bit. "Yes," she said. "I will be killed in any case, I would rather be eaten by someone I love. Wouldn't you?"

It wasn't a situation that Kirsten had ever encountered. "I'd rather not be killed in the first place," she said.

She'd never loved anyone either, I thought.

"Nor would I," Priya said. "Unfortunately, we do not have that option."

Kirsten picked up on the pronoun 'we'. "Which means," she pronounced with half-drunken sagacity, looking at me, "You don't want to kill her either." She smiled.

Well, duh....prize for the bleeding obvious...."No," I said, "I don't. To be perfectly honest, I'd rather kill you. Not that I hate you enough to want you dead, but I love her and I don't love you. Clear?"

"As crystal," Kirsten said. "Look, I just came here to see if you still fancied fucking me. My last boyfriend was a dud and I was horny. I heard you'd got so desperate you were shagging a meat cunt. Sorry, Priya, no offense, got to admit he's got good taste picking you. Bad luck about getting chopped next week or whatever. I'd better get a taxi and bugger off."

"You're too pissed to use a phone," I said. "Kip down in the spare room."

"Or you could sleep with us," Priya suggested, winking at me.

"I'll think about it while I throw up in the toilet," Kirsten said. She staggered off.

I gave Priya a 'what the fuck' look and she shrugged. "I like her," she said. "I'm sorry, I should have asked you first, but I thought it might be fun."

"You'd really like to sleep with Kirsten?"

"I don't know, I have never done it," Priya said. "There is an English saying that you should try everything once except incest and folk dancing. What is so terrible about folk dancing? It sounds like fun."

"I'm not sure I'd stop at incest if I had a good looking sister and she was into it," I admitted. "Look, if you really fancy a threesome with Kirsten and she's agreeable, I'm willing to give it a go, but I don't know if she will be."

Kirsten returned looking somewhat steadier. "Sorry," she said, "False alarm. I was drinking too fast. Think I've got my second wind now."

"That's okay," I said. "Sorry if I was a bit brusque before. I can call you a taxi but you're welcome to stay a while if you like."

"Please do," Priya said. "We don't have many guests to come visiting."

I'd never invited any. I hadn't invited Kirsten, come to that, until she'd just turned up, and I'd only asked her in to rub her nose in the 'meat cunt' crack. People say things like that to avoid facing the fact that the women we kill and eat are humans. I was beginning to resent that more than I used to, for the obvious reason.

"If you really don't mind," Kirsten said, more to Priya than me.

"You would be welcome," Priya said.

Kirsten looked at me and I nodded. "In that case," she said, "Anybody fancy a joint? Helps me drink slower."

I've just remembered that I haven't described Kirsten physically. She was about average height for an Englishwoman and well built without being overdeveloped. Imagine a girl who used to be on the school hockey team and did quite well at it. In other words, considerably bigger than Priya. She had a mop of slightly wavy dark blonde hair in no particular style and strong features that came somewhere between handsome and interesting and touched on beautiful in the right light or if you were stoned or fucking her.

I don't remember the exact sequence of events after that and I'm not going to bore you with a detailed account of them anyway. We had a few more drinks over the course of the evening, talked, listened to some music, occasionally flipped through the TV channels and watched things we couldn't follow because we'd come in at the wrong time, and so on. I shared a joint or a few with Kirsten and we even got Priya to take a few tokes, though she coughed a bit because she didn't usually smoke.

It had started out rough but turned into a pleasant evening. Eventually, Priya decided it was time to go to bed. She was yawning and that meant she wanted sex or sleep and preferably both.

"We're going to bed, " I told Kirsten. "Too stoned to call a taxi, sorry. You can sleep in the spare bedroom or with us."

"You serious?" Kirsten looked at me. It wasn't something we'd ever done when we were together.

"Buggered if I know. My Mistress suggested it. Don't ask me how it's going to work."

"It's like folk dancing, I think," Priya said. "You just do it."

"What the fuck, why not?" Kirsten said.

A threesome with two attractive women is supposed to be every man's fantasy. Personally, I'd always suspected that it would be awkward, a logistical nightmare. Maybe I was overthinking it or maybe it only works if you're stoned enough and in the right mood. There was an awkward moment when Kirsten neary fell over taking her panties off and another when Priya knocked over the bottle of wine we'd brought with us and nearly soaked the emergency joint, but we managed to get into bed and after that...

It was good, okay? I don't remember who did what to whom or why or in which order but it worked. Don't try this at home without several drinks, a blend of Morroccan and Afghan hash and two horny females with no inhibitions, or whatever works for you.

We slept together with Priya snuggled up to me as usual and Kirsten with her arms around her from behind. Oh, work it out yourself, I'm not going to draw a diagram. It was sex but not as we know it, Jim. It shouldn't have worked but it did and I was too shagged out to argue.

"Awake at last," I noted the next morning as Kirsten finally opened her eyes. "Remember where you are?" She looked as if she were thinking about it for a few seconds and then nodded. "Any regrets?"

"Shit, no. Best fuck ever," Kirsten replied, yawning and stretching "Well, for a good long while, anyway. Who'd have thought a chick could do that? Maybe there's some mileage in this bisexual thing."

"No more gorillas, then?"

"Not unless they can find my clit without a map. Where's Priya?"

"Downstairs making breakfast. Smell the bacon?"

Kirsten propped herself up on an elbow. "Smells good," she said. "Great cook and a great fuck too. No wonder you like her. Almost a shame she's going to be a pile of girl chops in a week or two." I just looked at her. "All right. It IS a shame. What she can do with her hands and her tongue..."

"Kirsten..."

Kirsten sighed. "Okay, I like her. Satisfied? She's wonderful. Much nicer than me. Wouldn't take much, of course."

"She likes you too, God knows why, or she wouldn't have slept with you and I certainly wouldn't have made her. Maybe she thinks under that hard-nosed bitch act you put on there's a decent person struggling to get out."

"That's rich coming from somebody who works in a woman-killing factory."

"Which didn't stop you sleeping with me or eating the stuff I brought home. Let's not do this again, Kirst."

"You're going to have to kill her, aren't you?"

"Thank you for reminding me. Yes."

"And you really love her? You weren't just pushing my buttons?"

"Yes, and no."

"Poor you. First time?"

I was out of Airplane jokes. "Yes. I thought I loved you. Maybe I did, a bit, maybe I just liked fucking you. You were pretty good and you were never boring. Annoying and abrasive, yes, boring, no. She's something else."

"The real deal?" Kirsten raised a sceptical eyebrow. She couldn't help it. "I don't know whether I pity or envy you if that's true. I'm sorry she has to die, really. I do rather like her, but what can I do about it?"

"Nothing. That, at least, is none of your fault."

"Thank you so much. How did it start? You just saw one in the abattoir that you fancied and brought her home for a quick shag, perk of the job?"

It was actually nice to talk about it for once, get it off my chest. "More or less. Hadn't been laid for a bit after you buggered off and there were all these women, some of them quite pretty, going to waste. It seemed like a reasonable idea at the time. Whoever I picked out would get a temporary reprieve so no harm, no fault. I did ask her first, I'm not a rapist."

"Fuck me or die now, your choice, no pressure?" Kirsten got that irritating smirk on her face.

Cheap shot. I wasn't going to rise to the bait. "Yes, okay. But I didn't sell her for meat, somebody else did that. Oh, screw it, I'm not going to argue. You want breakfast or not?"

"Shit, yes. I could eat a horse." Kirsten got out of bed. I couldn't help noticing that she had a lot of good meat on her bones. Plenty on her rump, from my perspective.

"Move to France," I suggested. "Otherwise you'll have to settle for bacon and eggs."

"Starting with the dick," Kirsten said as she tried to find her clothes. "Do the frogs ever eat horse dick like the Spanish do bulls' balls? Screw it, who needs panties anyway? Throw me a shirt or something. Deep fried horse dick sounds nice."

"I doubt you could eat a whole one," I said, tossing her a shirt. "It's bacon and eggs on toast with grilled tomatoes and creamed mushrooms or you can fuck off and get a McBreakfast from the local fried shit shop."

"I'll eat whatever Priya cooks, thanks," Kirsten said equably, pulling one of my old rugby shirts over her head.

Well, at least she was saying 'Priya', not 'meat cunt'. Progress of a sort.

Priya welcomed us to the kitchen. "English breakfast," she announced cheerily, attired as usual in a short skirt and blouse. "I love it." She smiled at Kirsten, who smiled back faintly and muttered 'Bloody Hell' under her breath. I gave her a raised eyebrow look but didn't ask.

Priya did, after we'd eaten. "Is something wrong?" she asked Kirsten, who had been unusually subdued and polite.

"No," Kirsten said. "Great breakfast. That'll set me up for the day."

Priya gave her the same look I had.

"Oh all right, gang up on me," Kirsten complained. "It's just that you look so.. I don't know. Cheerful. Normal. Like nothing's wrong. Happy domestic scene. In a week or two, you'll be meat. Dead. People will be sitting around a table like this and eating YOU. Why aren't you worried? Doesn't it bother you?"

"I don't have time to be worried," Priya said, smiling. "In a week or two, I'll be meat, as you said. Does it bother you?"

"Yes," Kirsten said. "You're somebody I slept with, not just, well.."

"Meat?"

"Good meat, I don't doubt, but.."

"Good, you think? Would you like to eat some of me?"

I actually saw Kirsten's nostrils flare as she scented Priya. "Damnit, yes, I would," she said. "I just wish..."

Priya leaned over and kissed Kirsten. "Thank you."

"For what?" Kirsten gruffed, but she was both pleased and uncomfortable. "I can't save you. What do you want me to do, have one of your tits for dinner when you're dead?"

"Why not? You seemed to like them last night," Priya teased.

"Oh God." Kirsten rubbed one eye with her fist. "I wasn't really going to bite. I don't usually fuck women, but..."

"It's okay," Priya said. "You didn't hurt me and I enjoyed it. I thought you did too."

"I did," Kirsten admitted. "Best fuck ever, as I told your..." she looked at me. What, lover, killer, rapist?

"Lover," Priya decided for her. She said it proudly, as if she'd never had one before, which she probably hadn't.

Kirsten took her hand. "I am so, so, very sorry," she said. It was a new thing for me. Kirsten always avoided the sloppy emotional stuff.

"I'm not sorry that I met you," Priya said. "I wanted to. Fucking with you was good."

"I don't know if I can do it again," Kirsten said. "It was great, but..."

Priya nodded. "Come again, any time."

I walked Kirsten to the door. "Thank you," I said.

"Yeah, right. I got a good lay and a good breakfast. No problem."

"You're welcome."

Kirsten started to walk away. She stopped and turned around. "I don't suppose there's any way you could...?" She looked cautiously hopeful but not optimistic.

"Not kill her? Trust me, I've thought about it."

"I'm sure you have." I saw the hope leave her face. "Oh well." She sounded sad and resigned.

"You really do like her," I said.

Kirsten shrugged minimally. "What's not to like? She's beautiful, she's sweet but not sickly..... I'm not besotted but I know a good person when I see one even if I'm not one myself. Well, sometimes. Besides, she's a good lay...."

I hadn't often seen Kirsten this way before. Well, never, actually.

"Tell her I'll order one of her tits when she gets chopped," Kirsten said.

"Will you?"

"If she says it's okay, I will. That's what she wants, isn't it? To know who's going to eat her?"

It was. "And if it's not okay with her...?"

"Then I won't. Give me some credit."

I believed her. I said so. "I believe you."

"Tell her I'll eat her left tit and thoroughly enjoy it." Kirsten made a wry face.

I couldn't help smiling. "She'll like that."

She nodded and walked away.

"All right?" Priya asked as when I came back in.

"Okay. She said, and I quote, 'Tell her I'll eat her left tit and thoroughly enjoy it.' She also said she won't if you don't want her to. I think she really meant it." I shook my head.

Priya smiled. "You look surprised. Why is that?"

"She likes you. Kirsten doesn't often like people, especially beautiful women, and she doesn't do warm and fuzzy."

Priya gave a sort of dismissive shrug. "Kirsten is an unhappy person. She pretends to be bad but she is not. It is...it's..." she frowned, looking for the right words. "A performance? Like a play?"

"An act," I suggested. "She's pretty convincing, most of the time. Fooled me, anyway."

Priya smiled more broadly. "You are a man. In matters of the heart you are honest and simple." She gave me a mischievous look.

I gave her a menacing glare that was pure affection. The light in Priya's eyes danced as she laughed.

"Tell her she is welcome to eat my left tit, or any part of me," she approached me and drew me into an embrace, "That you don't eat first," she purred.

We kissed, if you can call it that. The way Priya kissed...well, songs have been written about how it feels when it's that good and when you're a kid listening to pop music you don't know what it means until it happens. I can't describe it, I'd end up with an entry in a Bulwer Lytton contest for bad prose with stuff like 'Our tongues entwined'. It's not like that. Kissing Priya was better than fucking anybody else. Put together the sexiest kiss you ever had with the electric shock you felt the first time you ever kissed a girl and it was sort of like that.

When we came up for air, Priya said, "You do know that she loves you, don't you?"

"What?" Was she kidding me?

"You don't," Priya observed. She shook her head. "Men!" She kissed me again with the voltage turned down a bit. "Go to work."

I did as she told me. I got through the morning well enough but at lunchtime I phoned Kirsten.

"She said 'Tell her she is welcome to eat my left tit'," I told her after the usual exchange of pleasantries.

"She really said that?"

"Yes."

"Was she serious?"

"Yes."

There was a pause. "Okay, tell her I will. Anything else?"

"Nothing much." I wished I could shrug over the telephone. "I'm just plotting to kill my secretary and substitute her body for Priya's."

"Need any help?"

Sometimes I wondered about Kirsten. "It was a joke."

"No, it wasn't," she said.

"And you're offering to help because?" I might as well humour her.

"I met Lisa once, remember?" I barely did. "She's a bitch, not that I should talk. I like Priya, I don't like her. Got a plan?"

"Not really, just needed to vent a bit."

"Call me back when you've got one. Otherwise, tell Priya that I'll eat her after she's chopped. It's a promise."

The line went dead. Lisa came back from the cafeteria. I don't suppose she had any idea that I was plotting to murder her, but she'd been cutting down on the snippy remarks lately, so who knows? Maybe she sensed something. I didn't much care. I went down to the processing room to talk to Arthur. If I couldn't come up with a way to save Priya, which frankly seemed unlikely, I needed a backup plan. Kirsten had said "You're going to have to kill her, aren't you?" That had stuck in my mind. I didn't actually chop the women myself, I was just the manager, I let other people do that.

It took a bit of explaining. "I want you to show me how to kill a woman," I said.

Arthur told me at some length that it was a skilled job and there were union rules and so on. I could tell that he didn't think much of the idea. I was management, white collar. Chopping the chicks was working man's work.

I insisted without quite saying that he'd be fired otherwise. He relented, not without reservations.

"There are standards," he said. "You have to have them done properly by trained operatives or you'll get some jobsworth from the Health and Safety people saying you're using untrained people who might cut their own fingers off, and then there's PETA with that stuff about inhumane treatment of livestock.."

"I know all that," I said patiently. "I'm not going to take anyone's job away. I just want to get my hands dirty. You can train me all you like. I'll practice on dummies if that's what you do. Then I want to kill a woman myself. As quickly and painlessly as possible."

Arthur was not one of the world's great brains, but he wasn't entirely stupid. "Ah," he said.

Dear reader, if you are indeed entirely stupid, he'd probably clocked the fact that I was going to insist on killing my meat poppet personally. Yes, that was my great backup plan and I'd have to practice on dummies or whatever it took and have a live rehearsal with a real woman before I trusted myself to kill Priya as gently as possible. Believe me, I know how absurd that sounds. There is no nice way to kill a person. I just didn't trust anyone else to do it. If you think that's insane, have you ever been in love with somebody you might have to kill? No? Thought not, so keep your snide comments to yourself. I still had to ask Priya if that's what she wanted, but if she did I had to be ready.

Because neither did she.

How do you kill the woman you love? Practice. Okay, old joke. Believe me, or don't if you like, I was quite well aware of the absurdity of the situation. I spent the afternoon practising my swing. There's a lot more to killing a woman than meets the eye, but isn't it always like that? You think golf is just hitting a ball with a stick but then you get into it and it's all woods and irons and postures and a whole culture of specialist jargon. All I wanted to do was make sure that if anybody chopped Priya's head off it would be me and that I'd do it properly. Not so much to ask, is it?

It was bloody exhausting.

"You're probably best with the sword," Arthur said at last. "You've got an eye for it. Trouble is, it's hit and miss. You only get one shot. If you're not sure, there's the guillotine...."

That at least couldn't go far wrong but it didn't appeal to me much and I thought it wouldn't to Priya either. I should probably ask her. I couldn't think how I could bring that up over dinner, and that brought back the usual fantasy. I've heard that some people fantasise about killing women. I've seen it done often enough for real that I don't. Me? I fantasised about not having to kill one. Just one. Mine. My Priya.

"Just think of me as meat," Priya said when I made love to her that night. "That might help." She was in a playful mood and I went along with it. She insisted that I fuck her - her words - from behind and imagine myself skewering her as if my dick was a spit. I got into it a bit. It wasn't too hard to imagine what a fine, lean roaster she'd make. Her back was lovely and the pressure of her taut rump against my belly......don't ask.

"You're meat," I muttered into her ear as I fucked her. "I'm going to enjoy eating you." I continued in that vein for a while and I think Priya got into it too. She came hard and I rode her.

Afterwards, she snuggled up to me as usual. We couldn't help it. "You still love me, don't you?" she said. No, it wasn't really a question.

"Priya, I know you're meat. Nice try, but it doesn't help. I knew that when I took you. Yes, you're meat and you'll be good meat but I still love you and that isn't going to stop."

"Can't say I'm sorry," Priya said. Her on and off contractions were improving. Maybe it was the sex.

"So stop trying to help me. I'll eat you when you're dead but I'm not ever going to be glad that you're going to die, okay?"

"Okay," Priya said. Then she spread herself over me and we made love the way we usually did. There are no words for that. I don't know how long it took. When we were back to the standard cuddling position afterwards, I was left with the problem of how to broach the question.

"Is something wrong?" Priya murmured. She could read my moods from my body, the shape of the silence or something.

I sighed. Now I'd have to tell her or she'd be worried, and she'd know if I lied. "I've been wondering whether I should kill you myself," I said. That I didn't want her dead at all didn't have to be said. "And the problem is whether you'd prefer it. It's not the sort of thing a man usually has to ask the woman he loves and I wasn't sure how to bring it up."

I felt Priya relax a little as she accepted that I was telling the truth and then she tensed a bit. "Oh," she said.

"Problem?" Two can play at this body reading game. Priya was silent for a moment. "You think it would be hard for me, don't you?"

"Yes."

"It just takes a bit of practise," I said, "But I think I'm getting the hang of it."

Priya made a noise between a sob and a snort of laughter. "You!" she said with affectionate indignation and slapped me gently, burying her face in the hollow of my chest.

"We've been through this before," I reminded her. About eating her. "Remember what I said then?"

"Nothing is too much for you to ask," Priya recalled.

"I also said 'never forget that'. Priya, love, do you think I could live with myself if I didn't do everything I could for you? Consider it a favour to me if you like, but you tell me whether that's what you want. If you'd rather I just held your hand while it happens..."

"May I think about it?"

"Do you even have to ask? You can keep your options open until the last minute if you want to."

Priya kissed me. "I'll think about it," she said. "Thank you."

I just gave her an affectionate squeeze. Nothing more needed to be said. All in all, that had gone better than I'd expected. We went to sleep.

The next afternoon, I resumed my practice under Arthur's strict tutelage. Surprisingly enough, it went quite well. Eventually Arthur declared that I was ready for a live subject.

"You're sure?" I asked nervously.

Arthur shrugged. "Up to you," he said. "You've got the aim dead on, it's not going to get any better than that. The only problem is if you choke, some people do, and that could happen if you practice now till Doomsday. Worst that happens then is we'll have to finish the heifer off ourselves. Should I have one brought in here?"

Frankly, I'd have preferred that, but it might give the men a bad impression, make me look like I was chicken. "No," I said, "I'll do one on the floor."

You know how stage fright feels? Ever been in the school play or had to speak in public? Well, it was like that but worse. You want to be anywhere else, even if it means having a fainting spell and being carried off, but somehow you do it anyway. I let Arthur make the arrangements while I watched carefully, noting little details of the processing room like I never had before.

All too quickly, a girl was led up to the cutting table Arthur had picked out for me, its usual operator standing back with a carefully neutral expression. The girl looked at me and the sword I was carrying and quickly averted her eyes. She was helped up onto the table and made to lie down on her stomach with her neck over a chopping block. Her short hair made the vertebrae of the neck clearly visible, along with the very fine, soft hair on it. She had gooseflesh and she was trembling slightly. It made my own nervousness seem ridiculous and I steadied a bit. The least I could do was give her a clean finish and not hack at her like an amateur. An idea occurred to me.

"What's your name?" I asked her. This was a trick I'd seen doctors use. They ask you something and then stick the needle in quickly while you're still talking.

"A - Anjali," the girl said and I brought the sword down sharply. It went straight through her neck and her head fell off into a bucket. Her body twitched and blood spurted from her neck for a few beats and then she was still. I'd done it. I'd killed her.

"Good stroke," Arthur said, sounding slightly surprised.

"Not bad, sir," the worker said gruffly. "Hope yer not after ma job."

"No, thanks," I said with forced lightness. "That was just the easy bit. I'll leave the hard work to you. Take over." I gave the man a comradely pat on the shoulder, thanked Arthur, and made my way back to the office. My knees were weak and shaky and I felt dizzy. I hoped nobody had noticed.

You may wonder why it bothered me. Well, I wondered that myself. I was just as responsible for the deaths of all the women we processed as the men who actually did the deed and always had been, I had always known that. I was not particularly sentimental about it either, it was just a job. Why should it be different just because my hand had wielded the blade? Morally, in a strictly abstract sense, it wasn't. On a gut level, it felt different. I had felt the shock of the blade shearing through Anjali's neck and hitting the block beneath; I had smelt the blood. I could still see her face in my mind's eye.

On another level I was quite pleased with myself because I'd done a good, clean job of killing her. And, again, a bit guilty about feeling pleased with myself. I wondered if Anjali had appreciated it. How had it felt to her? Maybe I should have asked her. They say you stay conscious for a few seconds after your head is cut off. I imagined picking Anjali's head out of the basket and asking 'How was that for you? Did it hurt? Blink once for yes...'.

I even thought about going back and doing another one. I could ask the question and get a bit more practice in at the same time, killing two birds with one stone, so to speak. After all, suppose my success with Anjali had just been beginner's luck? I evisioned myself chopping girls' heads off all afternoon, asking each of them one question or as many as I could get in before they died. Did it hurt? Did you enjoy that? Were you scared? Did you come when I killed you? Do you come here often? Fancy a drink later?

I wondered if the first time you kill a person you always go a bit funny in the head. By the time I reached my office, I was chuckling to myself. That may sound grotesque, but you had to be there. Lisa gave me a guarded look and said nothing. I did some of the managerial work they pay me for and went home. Oh, I forget, not right away. I got a few bits of Anjali for dinner, including one of her breasts. Kirsten had said she'd eat one of Priya's tits after she got chopped and the two of them had been getting along well, so I thought Priya might like to know how she'd taste to Kirsten. Chicks like personal stuff like that. That made me a bit late going home.

On the way back on the bus I phoned Kirsten. I don't know why exactly. I suppose I just wanted to talk.

"Oh, it's you," she said.

"'Fraid so."

"What's the crisis? Keep it short, Doctor Who is on in ten minutes."

"I know, Priya records it for me. Thing is, I just killed a woman..."

"Occupational hazard, isn't it?" Kirsten sounded impatient and slightly bored. No change there, then.

"Personally."

"Oh. Fun, was it?"

I couldn't imagine for a moment why I was bothering to talk to her. "Not exactly. Do you think you could see your way clear to having dinner with us just once more?"

The line went silent for a minute.

"I'm not going to beg," I said.

"When?" Kirsten asked.

"Any time before Priya dies."

Another silence, shorter. "Okay. Tell me when. I'll be there. Give her my....well, you know. Say I said 'Hi'"

"Thank you," I said.

"It has to be done fast," I said. "I don't have forever." Because neither did she.

How do you kill the woman you love? Practice. Okay, old joke. Believe me, or don't if you like, I was quite well aware of the absurdity of the situation. I spent the afternoon practising my swing. There's a lot more to killing a woman than meets the eye, but isn't it always like that? You think golf is just hitting a ball with a stick but then you get into it and it's all woods and irons and postures and a whole culture of specialist jargon. All I wanted to do was make sure that if anybody chopped Priya's head off it would be me and that I'd do it properly. Not so much to ask, is it?

It was bloody exhausting.

"You're probably best with the sword," Arthur said at last. "You've got an eye for it. Trouble is, it's hit and miss. You only get one shot. If you're not sure, there's the guillotine...."

That at least couldn't go far wrong but it didn't appeal to me much and I thought it wouldn't to Priya either. I should probably ask her. I couldn't think how I could bring that up over dinner, and that brought back the usual fantasy. I've heard that some people fantasise about killing women. I've seen it done often enough for real that I don't. Me? I fantasised about not having to kill one. Just one. Mine. My Priya.

"Just think of me as meat," Priya said when I made love to her that night. "That might help." She was in a playful mood and I went along with it. She insisted that I fuck her - her words - from behind and imagine myself skewering her as if my dick was a spit. I got into it a bit. It wasn't too hard to imagine what a fine, lean roaster she'd make. Her back was lovely and the pressure of her taut rump against my belly......don't ask.

"You're meat," I muttered into her ear as I fucked her. "I'm going to enjoy eating you." I continued in that vein for a while and I think Priya got into it too. She came hard and I rode her.

Afterwards, she snuggled up to me as usual. We couldn't help it. "You still love me, don't you?" she said. No, it wasn't really a question.

"Priya, I know you're meat. Nice try, but it doesn't help. I knew that when I took you. Yes, you're meat and you'll be good meat but I still love you and that isn't going to stop."

"Can't say I'm sorry," Priya said. Her on and off contractions were improving. Maybe it was the sex.

"So stop trying to help me. I'll eat you when you're dead but I'm not ever going to be glad that you're going to die, okay?"

"Okay," Priya said. Then she spread herself over me and we made love the way we usually did. There are no words for that. I don't know how long it took. When we were back to the standard cuddling position afterwards, I was left with the problem of how to broach the question.

"Is something wrong?" Priya murmured. She could read my moods from my body, the shape of the silence or something.

I sighed. Now I'd have to tell her or she'd be worried, and she'd know if I lied. "I've been wondering whether I should kill you myself," I said. That I didn't want her dead at all didn't have to be said. "And the problem is whether you'd prefer it. It's not the sort of thing a man usually has to ask the woman he loves and I wasn't sure how to bring it up."

I felt Priya relax a little as she accepted that I was telling the truth and then she tensed a bit. "Oh," she said.

"Problem?" Two can play at this body reading game. Priya was silent for a moment. "You think it would be hard for me, don't you?"

"Yes."

"It just takes a bit of practise," I said, "But I think I'm getting the hang of it."

Priya made a noise between a sob and a snort of laughter. "You!" she said with affectionate indignation and slapped me gently, burying her face in the hollow of my chest.

"We've been through this before," I reminded her. About eating her. "Remember what I said then?"

"Nothing is too much for you to ask," Priya recalled.

"I also said 'never forget that'. Priya, love, do you think I could live with myself if I didn't do everything I could for you? Consider it a favour to me if you like, but you tell me whether that's what you want. If you'd rather I just held your hand while it happens..."

"May I think about it?"

"Do you even have to ask? You can keep your options open until the last minute if you want to."

Priya kissed me. "I'll think about it," she said. "Thank you."

I just gave her an affectionate squeeze. Nothing more needed to be said. All in all, that had gone better than I'd expected. We went to sleep.

The next afternoon, I resumed my practice under Arthur's strict tutelage. Surprisingly enough, it went quite well. Eventually Arthur declared that I was ready for a live subject.

"You're sure?" I asked nervously.

Arthur shrugged. "Up to you," he said. "You've got the aim dead on, it's not going to get any better than that. The only problem is if you choke, some people do, and that could happen if you practice now till Doomsday. Worst that happens then is we'll have to finish the heifer off ourselves. Should I have one brought in here?"

Frankly, I'd have preferred that, but it might give the men a bad impression, make me look like I was chicken. "No," I said, "I'll do one on the floor."

You know how stage fright feels? Ever been in the school play or had to speak in public? Well, it was like that but worse. You want to be anywhere else, even if it means having a fainting spell and being carried off, but somehow you do it anyway. I let Arthur make the arrangements while I watched carefully, noting little details of the processing room like I never had before.

All too quickly, a girl was led up to the cutting table Arthur had picked out for me, its usual operator standing back with a carefully neutral expression. The girl looked at me and the sword I was carrying and quickly averted her eyes. She was helped up onto the table and made to lie down on her stomach with her neck over a chopping block. Her short hair made the vertebrae of the neck clearly visible, along with the very fine, soft hair on it. She had gooseflesh and she was trembling slightly. It made my own nervousness seem ridiculous and I steadied a bit. The least I could do was give her a clean finish and not hack at her like an amateur. An idea occurred to me.

"What's your name?" I asked her. This was a trick I'd seen doctors use. They ask you something and then stick the needle in quickly while you're still talking.

"A - Anjali," the girl said and I brought the sword down sharply. It went straight through her neck and her head fell off into a bucket. Her body twitched and blood spurted from her neck for a few beats and then she was still. I'd done it. I'd killed her.

"Good stroke," Arthur said, sounding slightly surprised.

"Not bad, sir," the worker said gruffly. "Hope yer not after ma job."

"No, thanks," I said with forced lightness. "That was just the easy bit. I'll leave the hard work to you. Take over." I gave the man a comradely pat on the shoulder, thanked Arthur, and made my way back to the office. My knees were weak and shaky and I felt dizzy. I hoped nobody had noticed.

You may wonder why it bothered me. Well, I wondered that myself. I was just as responsible for the deaths of all the women we processed as the men who actually did the deed and always had been, I had always known that. I was not particularly sentimental about it either, it was just a job. Why should it be different just because my hand had wielded the blade? Morally, in a strictly abstract sense, it wasn't. On a gut level, it felt different. I had felt the shock of the blade shearing through Anjali's neck and hitting the block beneath; I had smelt the blood. I could still see her face in my mind's eye. And, again, a bit guilty about feeling pleased with myself. I wondered if Anjali had appreciated it. How had it felt to her? Maybe I should have asked her. They say you stay conscious for a few seconds after your head is cut off. I imagined picking Anjali's head out of the basket and asking 'How was that for you? Did it hurt? Blink once for yes...'.

I even thought about going back and doing another one. I could ask the question and get a bit more practice in at the same time, killing two birds with one stone, so to speak. After all, suppose my success with Anjali had just been beginner's luck? I evisioned myself chopping girls' heads off all afternoon, asking each of them one question or as many as I could get in before they died. Did it hurt? Did you enjoy that? Were you scared? Did you come when I killed you? Do you come here often? Fancy a drink later?

I wondered if the first time you kill a person you always go a bit funny in the head. By the time I reached my office, I was chuckling to myself. That may sound grotesque, but you had to be there. Lisa gave me a guarded look and said nothing. I did some of the managerial work they pay me for and went home. Oh, I forget, not right away. I got a few bits of Anjali for dinner, including one of her breasts. Kirsten had said she'd eat one of Priya's tits after she got chopped and the two of them had been getting along well, so I thought Priya might like to know how she'd taste to Kirsten. Chicks like personal stuff like that. That made me a bit late going home.

On the way back on the bus I phoned Kirsten. I don't know why exactly. I suppose I just wanted to talk.

"Oh, it's you," she said.

"'Fraid so."

"What's the crisis? Keep it short, Doctor Who is on in ten minutes."

"I know, Priya records it for me. Thing is, I just killed a woman..."

"Occupational hazard, isn't it?" Kirsten sounded impatient and slightly bored. No change there, then.

"Personally."

"Oh. Fun, was it?"

I couldn't imagine for a moment why I was bothering to talk to her. "Not exactly. Do you think you could see your way clear to having dinner with us just once more?"

The line went silent for a minute.

"I'm not going to beg," I said.

"When?" Kirsten asked.

"Any time before Priya dies."

Another silence, shorter. "Okay. Tell me when. I'll be there. Give her my....well, you know. Say I said 'Hi'"

"Thank you," I said.

Kirsten came to dinner two days later. She brought a bottle of wine and some of her own stash of good hash. Priya received her warmly with a hug, but Kirsten had something to say first.

"Before we start I've got a confession to make," Kirsten said, "I found out how I could save you, but I'm not going to."

"How?" I demanded, starting to get angry, "And why not?" Priya didn't look angry, I noticed. Of course, she wouldn't.

"Because the only way I could do it is by offering to take her place," Kirsten told me. I saw Priya nod. She'd probably guessed. "Sorry," Kirsten said to Priya. "I'm not that unselfish. The whole 'far, far better thing I do' just isn't me."

"Don't be sorry," Priya said. "I couldn't expect that of you. Nobody could."

"So you can throw me out now if you like," Kirsten said to me.

Now I remembered. It was possible to do that, it was just so rare for anybody to actually do it that it hadn't occurred to me. I certainly wouldn't have expected Kirsten to, or even to have thought about it. "Nobody could expect that," I conceded. "I'm just a bit touchy on the subject, sorry."

"I know you'd rather see me dead than her..."

"Kirsten, I didn't mean..."

Kirsten shook her head. "I'm not blaming you. You love her, I get it. I'd feel the same way in your shoes. I just wanted to get that out of the way. Elephant in the room thing."

Priya smiled that smile that lit up the world for me. "We have elephants in Malaysia," she said. "But it is difficult to fit them into a dining room."

And that was that. We had dinner together, drank the wine, smoked a bit of dope, just a pleasant social evening. It was surreal. Priya and Kirsten chatted like old friends though they'd only met once before. Priya wanted to play 'Barrett' because she'd become fascinated with the works of the genius Syd. Did you know that the guitar track on Dominoes was done in reverse in one take? Well, I did and I made sure everybody knew that I knew. I'm not sure the girls were all that interested but, bloody hell, how did he DO that? It's a guy thing. Okay, cue the music:

"It's an idea, someday in my tears, my dreams don't you want to see her proof? Life that comes of no harm you and I, you and I and dominoes, the day goes by..."

Kirsten had heard it before, of course, but she hadn't paid much attention to it. She listened again because she was stoned and because Priya liked it. As a red-blooded male heterosexual, I'm supposed to be thick as a brick about emotional matters but, you know, I don't always need to be hit over the head with it. Kirsten liked Priya a lot. Really a lot. After a certain amount of hash you can read body language like a book with illustrations. We wouldn't have to twist her arm to go to bed with us. I was beginning to wonder if I should just tell them to get a room if I was superfluous. That's the whole male insecurity thing kicking in. I should have known better.

"Fireworks and heat, someday hold a shell, a stick or play overheard a lark today losing when my mind's astray"

I think we played the whole thing twice. After the third joint I had some difficulty finding the tracks I wanted to play. It took me half a century or five minutes to locate "Wolfpack" and then two minutes to get "Four Sticks", that one's programmed in. If you don't like "Four Sticks" from Led Zep 4, the one with the funny symbols on it, you're not worth talking to.

I missed out on "And so to F...." by Brand X that night except that we did it. Kirsten didn't throw up, she wasn't that drunk, we didn't have any awkward moments, we all just went to bed together as if that was just the thing you do after a pleasant social evening. Seems to be all and it's rosy it's a beautiful day. That's a quote from the Barrett album if you wondered.

Want to know how the sex worked? Tough luck, it was private. It was good, okay? Better than the last time we'd done it.

"I could get used to this," Kirsten said afterwards when we were all sated and snuggled up. "Pity I won't be able to. Sorry, Priya, not trying to bring you down."

"I know," Priya said.

"It's a mystery to me," Kirsten rambled. "You know, I thought maybe I could have let myself like you because you were going to die?"

"Yes," Priya said.

"Kirsten..." I warned. But Priya gave me a squeeze that told me she was okay with it.

"Maybe it was that at first. I'm a selfish, jealous bitch. Now I'm really pissed off about it. I keep thinking it's not fair. Yes, I know that you know that and you've accepted it and everything but....sorry, I'll shut up now."

"You can shut up now," Priya said. "I understand." She gave Kirsten a gentle kiss.

Kirsten was crying silently. In the dim light I could see her face running with tears. It was a shocking sight. "I do like you," she said. "I do, really, very much. I know I don't..."

"It's all right," Priya said. "I know you do."

Women, eh? You just want a nice threesome orgy and it gets all emotional. Okay, just kidding in that rugged masculine way. Got to keep up the stereotype. It's just that I wasn't used to seeing Kirsten that way. Maybe it had to take Priya's imminent death to get through her armour. Buggered if I knew. I'd just had sex with two attractive women and I was literally shagged out. I didn't think Kirsten really just liked Priya, I think maybe she loved her a bit. I thought for a moment the three of us could work well together. Or maybe that was just a male fantasy. Maybe if Priya wasn't destined for the chopping block it wouldn't really work. How could I know? I liked Kirsten more for liking Priya, but Priya... my lady. Love of my life and all that silly stuff. I went to sleep with my doomed lover and my sort of ex-girlfriend. I had to get up in the morning and kill a few more women, so I needed my sleep.

Kirsten looked a bit subdued and sheepish in the morning. "Sorry about all the waterworks last night," she gruffed. "Getting sentimental in my old age."

"It's not sentimental to show you care if you really do like her," I said gently. "It's quite normal and nothing to be ashamed of."

"So I've heard," Kirsten said drily, then hesitated and went on. "I think it's worse than that. I think maybe I sort of love her a bit which is ridiculous, isn't it?"

"I'm not in a position to point the finger," I pointed out. So, I'd been right about that. I wasn't going to gloat about it, though.

"No, but that's you and this is me. Cold-hearted bitch me, remember? Besides, I hardly know her. And she's a girl. Well, obviously, but...."

"So what? You didn't have any problem with that last time. You're not homophobic..."

"No, but that was just sex. It was fun. Getting all mushy and romantic about a chick, that really is a bit too gay."

"Getting mushy and romantic about anybody is a bit too gay for you," I said. "Does that bother you more than the fact that she's going to die?"

Kirsten flinched and turned it into a wry grimace. "I suppose not. Of course not. Shit, this just isn't me. Falling for a sweet, beautiful, doomed chick. It's 'Love Story' all over again. Fetch me a bucket or shoot me now. God, how long have you been like this?"

"Not sure. It was a week or two before I admitted it to myself but I think I was actually hooked on the bus bringing her home." Hooked? That faint smile, the look of curiosity in her eyes. I hadn't realised it myself until I'd tried to explain it to Kirsten. Bloody hell, I thought. It was true. I'd been hers all the time. Okay, everybody who had already worked that out, pat yourselves on the back.

Priya stirred between us. "Morning," she said, sleepily brown-eyed and lovely, "Time 'sit?"

"Breakfast time," I said, kissing her. She started to get up.

"No," Kirsten said, also kissing her. "You have a lie-in. I'll do it."

"Are you sure?" I asked warily. Kirsten was not exactly the domestic type.

She gave me a look that said she knew exactly what I meant. "I think I can just about manage bacon and eggs," she said lightly, with just a slice of lemon.

I looked at Priya. She usually cooked breakfast, not because I made her do it but because she liked to. She insisted that it was her 'proper place' as my slave wench, one of those little private jokes between us. "That would be lovely, Kirsten, thank you," she said warmly.

Kirsten gave Priya another quick kiss on the brow and slid out of bed. She grabbed one of my rugby shirts, just like last time, and slipped it over her head. Without bothering with a skirt, she padded out barefoot, heading for the kitchen.

"Doesn't she have a lovely body?" Priya commented slyly. Yes, I'd noticed and she'd noticed my noticing. You can't get anything like that past a woman.

"Lots of good, saleable lean meat on it," I agreed, straight faced. "She'd make a great whole roaster too."

Priya mock-punched me. "She's a Greek Goddess," she said. "Legs like a horse..."

"Not everybody would take that as a compliment."

"You know what I mean. Muscular and graceful too. English women are so big.."

Well, that was true. Kirsten was quite a lot bigger than Priya, but I think I've mentioned that before. Let me check. Yes, right, I have. Okay.

"...and she's so nice..."

"Priya, my darling," I cuddled her up and tickled her until she giggled, "Kirsten is not nice, she is not a Greek Goddess, possibly a grumpy Valkyrie..."

Priya snorted. "She's nice to me...." she adopted a terrible Yorkshire accent she'd copied from something she'd seen on TV. "Ah speak as ah find, lad."

I almost said 'You'll have to work on that' but of course she wouldn't have time. I set the thought aside. "You seem to bring out the best in her. I didn't even know she had a best."

"She's lovely," Priya protested.

This went on for a while longer and guess what happened? Yup, you got it. The half serious argument turned into lovemaking. Yes, sorry, mushy stuff again, it was lovemaking and not just a quick fuck.

Afterwards, we lay there silent for a while and then Priya said, teasingly. "She is SO nice."

I gave in. "She's nice to you because she loves you. Don't tell her I said so and don't tease her about it. She's very sensitive..." I stopped. I should have smelled burning bacon by now. Kirsten hadn't come back to ask why we hadn't come down for breakfast yet either.

"Yes," Priya said. "She is."

Kirsten was sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper with her bare feet up, unselfconsciously showing all of her long legs and a bit more. She folded the paper and got up unhurriedly when we came in. "Ah, here you are at last," she said mildly, "I think I timed it about right." There was bacon laid out in a warming frying pan, baked beans in a saucepan and bread under the grill. "I'll just turn these up and pop the eggs in when the pan's hot. Should be about ten minutes. Tea's in the pot."

"Thank you, that sounds lovely," Priya said.

"Sorry about the delay," I added automatically. Kirsten didn't usually like to be kept waiting. Well, who does?

She just shrugged. "Only to be expected." She busied herself at the stove.

"Aren't you going to be late for work?" I knew I was but I didn't care.

"Bugger work. I'm off sick, 24 hour virus."

Priya kissed her lightly on the cheek, going up on tiptoes to do it. "You're sweet. I don't know why everyone says you're such a horrible bitch," she joked.

"Because I am," Kirsten returned amicably, "I'm just having an off day. Nobody's perfect."

Who was this patient, good-natured blonde woman and what had she done with the real Kirsten? I didn't like to ask, so I didn't. Maybe her apparently genuine affection for Priya and sympathy for her plight had reached the real Kirsten under the brittle exterior, as my darling insisted. Or maybe she'd revert to type when Priya was gone, like Superman gets his powers back when you take away the kryptonite. I was content to enjoy the peace while it lasted. We enjoyed a pleasant breakfast together, which by the way was perfectly edible despite my misgivings, and eventually I decided I'd better show my face at work before they realised they didn't need me.

"I suppose I'd better go too," Kirsten said, with more formal courtesy than enthusiasm.

"Oh, please stay," Priya said. "We can go shopping together...." she looked at me. "If that's all right?"

"That's fine," I said.

I came back from work to find Kirsten still there, helping Priya make dinner and set the table. After my customary hug from Priya, she explained hopefully that Priya had said she could stay the night again if it was okay with me.

"Whatever my Mistress wants," I said. "No, really, you're welcome."

"After that I'll leave you two lovebirds alone for a bit," Kirsten said. To Priya: "I'll spend the rest of the week contemplating which bits of you I'll eat at your wake."

"I thought you wanted my left tit," Priya said, serving dinner up. "And what's a wake?"

"It's a funeral where people eat and drink a lot. In the circumstances, I thought we might have you."

"That's a nice idea. Just don't drink so much that you throw me up."

The banter proceeded in this vein as we ate. You might think it an odd topic of dinner conversation, but I doubt you've ever been in that situation. It went something like this:

"I'll try not to. Oh, I'll have your left tit all right, but it doesn't seem enough somehow. I might save that for later. Besides, there's so much good stuff to choose from."

Priya raised an eyebrow as she swallowed a mouthful of fish. "Help yourself to any part of my body you fancy. I won't be using it." She paused and addressed me with arch deference, "Anything you haven't picked first, of course, Lord and Master."

"Of course," Kirsten said politely in an 'after you, Cyril' voice and forked an asparagus spear.

"I think I'll have all of you," I said suddenly. "Less a few more parts for Kirsten, if you like. We're the only ones here who know you. Unless you'd prefer to be shared out by strangers..."

Priya paused. "Are you..." I suppose she was going to say 'serious' and thought better of it. "I mean, won't that be very expensive?"

"Not exactly cheap, no, even with trade discount, but so what? It's not as if I'm going to make a habit of it."

Priya tried to make light of it. "You're not going to get another nice girl to replace me?"

"God no, never again. I'm glad I met you and I wouldn't have missed it for the world but I can't do this again. I can't bring some poor girl home and try to keep her at arm's length in case I get too fond of her either, it wouldn't be fair. You're a one-off in more ways than one."

"I'll take a share," Kirsten said helpfully. "I think I could run to maybe a whole leg..."

Priya grinned. "Won't you get sick of me? What's for dinner, oh no, Priya steaks again..."

"I'm sure you'll be delicious to the last bite," Kirsten said, blowing her a kiss.

Priya smiled and blew one back. Then her face clouded. "Won't it remind you of me every time and make you sad?" she asked seriously.

"I'll miss you for a lot longer than that anyway," I said and glanced at Kirsten. Only all my life. "We both will. Honestly, what do you think of the idea?"

Priya smiled again, widely. "Just the two of you to eat all of me? I love it. Best present ever. Thank you SO much."

She meant it, too. If you haven't got the hang of this yet and it sounds crazy, try to see it from her point of view. Of course, I'd had weeks to do exactly that and it still sounded a bit surreal to me at times so don't feel too bad. If only we could give her a better present, like her life. I saw the same thought cross Kirstens face and our eyes met in a quick glance.

"Oh, cheer up you two," Priya said. "I was meat when I came here, we all know it."

For a moment I saw a flash of anger on Kirstens face. I knew how she felt. Raging against a cruel fate and all that. I'd been there. She let it pass. "And now you're meat with friends," she said. "I get it, really. Just bums me out sometimes, don't mind me. Any idea how you'd like to be cooked?"

And things were back on track. You've heard a few 'gallows humour' jokes, no doubt. Everybody's seen the cartoon with the man facing a firing squad who's offered a blindfold and a last cigarette. He declines the smoke saying "No thanks, I'm trying to give them up." Well, it's laugh or cry, isn't it?

Priya did have a few ideas and she shared the recipe we'd used for breast of Anjali, since Kirsten was going to have hers. Watching them chatting like old friends was odd, I suppose, but I was getting used to that. Almost.

After the dishes had been put away, we spent another convivial evening together. Music, wine, the usual stuff. Evil Kirsten didn't put in an appearance. Not that she had lost the edge of her wit, but there was no gratuitous malice in it. If I hadn't known what a stroppy bitch she could be I'd have sworn I was in the company of not one but two likeable and intelligent women. And both of them attractive and about to go to bed with me. It had to be a dream.

Priya wanted to watch Doctor Who again. The Parting of the Ways struck a chord in her. She loved the bit where Rose as the Bad Wolf comes out of the TARDIS and destroys the Daleks. "I want you safe....My Doctor...protected from the false God." Chick power, right? Wrong, unless you think the TARDIS is a chick. Well, we discussed that for a bit as you might imagine. Or you might not have a clue what I'm going on about, sorry, too complicated to explain. Anyway, by the end of it, I could quite easily imagine Priya as my saviour. She would dare anything for me, she was loyal, she was my ideal woman, etc. Well, I was a bit stoned at the time.

Later, Kirsten went over the finer points of the British system of population control, but only because Priya asked her to. I'm not sure how we got into that, you know how conversations like that tend to ramble.

"So, one person, one child?"

"Yup. One birthright awarded at puberty. Who you share it with is a personal choice. Immigration is strictly controlled, limited by the emigration statistics. Sometimes extra birthrights are awarded for special merit to balance any lost by infertility or genetic defects. The general aim is a healthy population with zero growth. This is a small island."

"It sounds like a very sensible system to me. If my own country had adopted it..."

"You wouldn't be here with us cannibals. We're the Morlocks, you're...well..."

"I think the analogy breaks down about there," I put in. "The Eloi were sheep. Priya.."

"Yes, I know, victim of a fucked up system. Sorry, Priya, don't mean to disrespect your country, but really...."

"It's not your fault. You are right."

"It's not yours either. I just had the good luck to be born British. Now I meet a woman I really like and she's a meat ... girl. Woman. Whatever. I'm selfish, I'm no altruist, it really only pisses me off because it's you. I can see how it all works, I just don't like it when it affects me. Puts my own piddling problems into perspective, anyway. If I could do anything about it.."

Priya started to take her clothes off. "You can," she said, "You can eat me."

"I'm going to. What, now?" Kirsten was halfway between jocular and confused. I think I got it just before she did.

"Touch me," Priya asked. "Tell me what parts of me you are going to eat." She removed her top.

It made sense of a sort. She wasn't afraid of being eaten as such, in fact she wanted to be. It was almost all that made the prospect of her imminent death bearable. All very logical. It just jarred with me a bit. One minute we're discussing Doctor Who and the next I'm getting my nose rubbed in the fact that Priya would be dead soon.

"I don't know," Kirsten said dubiously. "Isn't this a bit weird? Picking bits of you like cuts on a meat chart while you're still breathing?"

"I won't be there to watch you pick them afterwards," Priya pointed out gently. She wouldn't be there to see us eat her either, I thought, she wanted to know beforehand so she could hold that thought in her mind when I cut her head off.

"I know, it just seems a bit ghoulish. Sorry, I didn't mean..."

"No, I'm sorry," Priya said. "I'm being selfish." She started to dress again.

"Oh, rubbish, you're just an amateur," Kirsten said with mock gruffness. "I could give lessons in 'selfish'. If anyone deserves to be indulged a bit, it's you. Come on, get the rest of your kit off. Let's see the menu."

I had to agree with Kirsten on both points. Treating Priya as a piece of meat while she was alive seemed grotesque at first, but from her point of view it was comforting and God knows she needed and deserved all the comfort she could get. Kirsten and I had a lifetime to get over it. I remembered guiltily that I'd still been evaluating Priya as meat the first time I'd taken her to bed. Just a few weeks ago and it might as well have been another age.

So that's how we ended up with Priya sitting naked on the living room carpet with me and Kirsten handling her body in a fair imitation of farmers checking out a veal calf they were thinking of buying. She was livestock and, at the same time, still the person we both loved. How weird is that?

The thing is, she loved it. That helped.

"I think I'll take the whole right leg," Kirsten decided at last. "It's beautiful and there's lots of good, lean meat on it." She was caressing the limb in question at the time. I was stroking Priya's slender back.

"I'll take good care of it for you," Priya promised. "Regular walks, a bit of yoga, proper grooming..."

Kirsten was holding Priya's ankle when she suddenly shook her head and looked away. "It'd look even better still attached to the rest of you."

I could hardly disagree. Priya comforted Kirsten and the three of us ended up making love again. At some point we adjourned to the bedroom. It got complicated, I suppose, but it all seemed perfectly natural at the time.

"If things had gone another way," Kirsten asked Priya afterwards, "Would you have eaten me?"

"Yes," Priya said. "If you didn't mind. I don't think I'd want to eat a person I didn't like, but I'd eat you."

"Thank you. He told you, didn't he?"

I could actually hear Priya hesitating. Or feel it. She wouldn't want to give me away or lie to Kirsten.

"Yes, I did," I admitted. "Sorry Kirst..."

"Doesn't matter. She'd have guessed anyway. No way a shallow, selfish bitch like me could care what happens to a meatgirl unless she'd been afflicted with the love thing."

"Please don't do that," Priya begged. "I don't like it when you hurt yourself."

"Sorry," Kirsten said. "I seem to be saying that a lot lately."

"Take the night off," I suggested.

Eventually, we did that. We went to sleep.

For a bit, anyway. I woke up at four o'clock in the morning, the hour of the wolf, to the sound of Kirsten sobbing quietly.

"Are you all right?" I whispered.

"No," Kirsten hissed. "Fuck off back to sleep and let me be miserable on my own."

Priya didn't say anything, she was tucked up between us and sound asleep. She always slept soundly, like she didn't have a care in the world.

I went back to sleep. I dreamed. I can't remember all of it, but it was emotionally fraught and disturbing. I suppose it got mixed up with the Doctor Who episode. What I remember is that Priya went back to the TARDIS and left me. She said we were out of time and she had to go. The sense of loss was devastating. I wanted to wake up, the way you do when you're waking up and realise that you're dreaming.

And I awoke on the cold hillside...

La Belle Dame sans merci hath thee in thrall...something like that.

And then I woke up. Kirsten was asleep, her arm protectively over Priya, who was still asleep too.

I went downstairs barefoot so as not to disturb them. I put the kettle on. Out of time. Just a few more days. Then, no more Priya ever again.

I was halfway through making breakfast when I turned to see Kirsten in the doorway, wearing nothing but the rugby shirt and a sheepish expression.

"Sorry," she said, "Yet again."

"For what?"

"Snapping at you. The bitchy me is not dead, it seems."

"The bitchy you wouldn't have cared enough to be that upset. Forget it. Where's Priya?"

"Having a shower. I don't care if I smell. Want a hand?"

"Slice a couple of tomatoes and put them on the grill."

Priya came down in time for breakfast looking, as usual, immaculate in a clean skirt and blouse. We had tea and toast, of course, with grilled bacon and tomatoes and scrambled eggs with Wensleydale cheese. Conversation was sporadic until we'd stuffed ourselves enough.

"I just had a thought," Kirsten said to me casually. "How much for her ovaries?"

Priya raised an eyebrow. "You want to eat my ovaries?" she drawled. "How very...intimate." I think she'd been watching a few too many classic British films on afternoon TV. That or Silence of the Lambs.

"Not very much, actually," I said, giving Priya a look of mock reproof. "Not many people like organ meat. They have some use in scientific research, but there's no shortage...." Now we slaughter so many women, of course not.

"I would loooove you to eat my ovaries," Priya drawled. "With fava beans and a nice Chianti..."

Yes, Anthony Hopkins has a lot to answer for.

"That's not what I want them for. I want to have your child." She looked at Priya intently. "Only if you approve, of course."

Priya's face was a picture. I expect mine was too. "You want to...clone me? Give up your birthright?"

"Shit, no. I'm not that unselfish. Besides, a clone wouldn't really be you, I know that. I'd have one of your ova spliced with mine. We Brits are very good at genetic technology. I'd have a daughter that was the product of you and me."

"You can do that?" Priya paused. "Of course you can. Are you..." I had a moment of deja vu. I supposed she was going to say 'serious' and thought better of it, yet again. "Kidding? No, sorry..."

"You're going to die in a few days. Would I kid you? Look, do you like the idea or not because if you do I WILL do it..."

"I love the idea," Priya said fervently. "Such a gift..." she shook her head.

"Yes," Kirsten said. "A gift from you to me. I would be proud to have your child."

Priya looked at Kirsten. "I am so honoured.."

"She'd be brought up British of course, can't help that...."

"I should hope so."

"What would you like us to call her?"

"Susan," Priya said.

"Not very Malaysian, is it? Or is it? What do I know about Malaysia?"

"No, it's a good, solid English name. My country sold me for meat so, as the expression is, sod 'em. Bring her up as a loyal subject of King William. Give her bacon and eggs for breakfast.."

"I'll make sure she watches Doctor Who..."

"And the Promenade concerts. Anything by Ralph Vaughan-Williams.."

It could be a bit awkward, I thought, telling her that we'd eaten her mother. Oh, and who's this 'we' anyway? Well, I'd want to know Priya's daughter, of course, so I'd have to keep in touch with Kirsten. Frankly, I was too stunned to speak for a bit.

I think Priya was too, but women can always talk unless they're unconcious. She and Kirsten were still bantering lightly, but she was also smiling with tears in her eyes. "I cannot believe this," she said at last. "I mean I do believe you, but..."

"It's the least I can do," Kirsten said.

"No it is not," Priya contradicted firmly. "The least you could honorably do would be to eat me as you promised to, mourn me for a while and then move on. This is a very, very big commitment. It is more than I could possibly have hoped for."

It was certainly more than I would have expected of Kirsten. "It's a brilliant idea," I admitted. "And very generous. I'll make the necessary arrangements." I'd have to put the order in at the same time as I had Priya's saleable meat booked for delivery to me and Kirsten. Having a woman's ovaries preserved wasn't difficult but it had to be booked in advance or they'd just be thrown in the offal bin for sausages or dog food or whatever.

"What I meant was it should have been me," Kirsten said. "I could have gone in your place. I thought about it last night. I just didn't have the courage."

Priya looked puzzled and a bit outraged. "Why should it have been you? You have done nothing wrong."

"You obviously don't know me very well."

"I know that you have always been kind to me."

"It's an aberration. I'm not like this."

"Yes, you are. Will you take good care of Susan?"

"I'll try. I'll probably be a lousy mother. It would make more sense if I died and you had your kid yourself. I'd dress out to more meat than you would, anyway. You'd hardly make a decent breakfast...." She started to cry.

"No," Priya said. "You will not die for me. If you offered I would not accept. You're not getting out of this. You promised."

Kirsten got up, Priya got up. They kissed as passionately as two people who were about to have a kid together should do. Modern romance, eh? Well, I couldn't grudge them the moment. I put the kettle on again. My head was spinning.

"What are we going to tell Susan?" Kirsten asked at last, echoing my own thoughts as I joined the group hug.

"Tell her the truth when you think she's ready to understand it," Priya said. "Tell her that you ate me and tell her why it happened and why she was born. She will want to know. I would."

I supposed we'd have to. Sooner or later Susan would wonder who her father was. How would she feel about the fact she hadn't got one? If I got involved in her upbringing (how, exactly?) she might think it was me until she noticed I didn't look anything like her. If genetics worked in their usual way, she'd probably be darker than either of us. Well, it was a problem for another day. Nobody ever said parenting was easy.

We all exchanged hugs and kisses for a while and then Kirsten said she'd better get to work.

"Not stopping for another cup of tea?"

"No thanks, I'll leave you two in peace."

"Will you be coming back tonight?" Priya asked.

"I'd better not. You should spend some time together without me butting in all the time."

"But you're not....." Priya looked at me.

"You're not intruding, Kirst. Never thought I'd hear myself say that, but really, it's okay." And it was, I realised. I'd have to think about that.

Kirsten shook her head looking baffled, pleased and slightly embarrassed. "I'll think about it," she said.

After she'd left, Priya and I had another cup of tea. She looked dazed. "Susan..." she murmured as if tasting the name, her eyes dreamy.

"I like it," I said. "I have to say I never saw that coming. I think she'll do it too." I wanted to kick myself as soon as I said it. Take away her hope why don't you, moron.

Priya's eyes widened. "Of course she will," she said. "Kirsten is a very honest person."

"I suppose she is in some ways," I admitted. "But this is....well, it's not like her. If you'd met her before the Pod People replaced her..."

I don't know if Priya got the reference, but she got the idea. She smiled. "She tried to be nasty to me when we first met but she couldn't because I was going to die. She is too decent to kick someone when they are down. A heartless person wouldn't care."

When I got to work, Lisa wasn't at her desk. Maybe she was out on the mezzanine watching the action on the cutting floor as she sometimes did on her breaks. I'd never asked her why she did that; if she enjoyed it she never said so and it didn't seem to improve her disposition, her expression was always the same when she came back. I had work to do.

I had to look up Priya's stock number from the time I'd had her put on hold, as the marking on her left thigh had long since faded away. Then I had to schedule her termination. It was a grim job, but necessary before I placed the pre-orders. Right leg, left breast and uterus (special treatment, viable) for Kirsten, everything else for me. Processing otherwise as normal. We'd get her chopped up as if ready for the butcher's; I couldn't face cutting off bits of her body time after time, demolishing her day by day. It was bad enough thinking about that lovely, vital woman reduced to dead meat in the first place. I checked everything three times. Priya would die on the last cutting session of the last legally allowable day of her 'hold' period. It was the best I could do and far from enough. I thought about having a word with Arthur about getting her processed after the usual hours so we could have some relative privacy. I'd have to book overtime for some of the crew but I doubted they'd mind that. Then again, what if Priya preferred to do it in the morning? I'd have to ask her; there was still time to rechedule at a pinch. I checked everything again and filed the orders. It was a sort of relief to have done what was necessary, but there was also a depressing sense of finality about it. Priya's time and date of expiry was set.

Lisa came back in without a word of explanation. "Good morning, sir," she said without warmth and with barely a hint of disapproval. Well, I was a bit late. Her expression was also a little sour, a little disapproving. Well, all as usual then.

"Good morning, Lisa," I said. I'd long since learned to ignore her moods. I didn't waste much time plotting her murder either, beyond the occasional wistful fantasy. I'd never have got away with it; I was a business manager, not a master criminal. We got through the morning the usual way and there's not much more to say about it.

At lunchtime, I went out onto the mezzanine myself and watched the processing moodily. It was all a bit depressing. Yes, I know, you'd have to have a thick skin to be in this business anyway and I'd had plenty of time to get used to it. I wasn't about to join one of the abolitionist nut groups or anything like that. It was all very sad for the women who got chopped, but what else could we do? Overpopulation and a meat shortage have one obvious solution and this was it. It's a tough job, as the saying goes, but somebody has to do it. Maybe I should go down there and kill another woman just to keep my hand in. I know how that sounds, even though I wouldn't be doing anything that wouldn't have happened anyway. I decided not to. Maybe I should get into another line of work when this was over. I was about to turn away when I saw a man about to botch his job. He was about to cut a woman's head off with a cleaver when he turned round to make some remark as he swung offhandedly at the woman's neck. He missed and struck too low, the cleaver hit her at an angle and she screamed in pain. I was down the emergency ladder so fast I don't remember doing it and crossed the floor in a fury as the man clumsily tugged the cleaver out of her back. I think there was a bit of a commotion going on, I wasn't listening.

I shoved the man out of the way and took the cleaver myself. "You fucking moron," I snarled. He backed away as if he thought I'd use it on him. I have to admit I was tempted. The woman was still screaming and sobbing. "I'm sorry, miss," I said and took her head off with one stroke.

Arthur was there. "Sorry, sir," he said. "New boy. I thought he was trained..."

"Hey, come on, it was an accident." It was the idiot.

"We don't have accidents," Arthur said coldly.

"It was negligence," I said. "I saw it. He's fired."

"Hey, come on, she was just a..."

"Stop right there," I advised him. I must have looked a bit grim because he shut up. I still had the cleaver in my hand.

If I expected an argument from Arthur, I didn't get one. "You're a fucking disgrace," he told the idiot. For the benefit of the other workers he added, "When the boss can do your job better than you do..." he shook his head. "Get out now. You'll be paid to the end of the day but I don't want to see your face in here again."

The idiot looked around for support from his co-workers and got nothing but stony stares. He left. For some reason I looked up and saw Lisa watching from the mezzanine. She turned away and I wondered briefly if she'd enjoyed the show.

I managed to choke down a sandwich and some tea for lunch and then I phoned Kirsten at work from the cafeteria. "Kirst, there's something I need to know."

"Fire away."

"The kid. Susan. You're really going to do it?"

There was a pause. "Yes," Kirsten said frostily. "I am."

"I'm sorry," I said. "It's just..."

"She'll be dead and she won't know if I don't? I just said that to comfort her? Yes, I know."

"Exactly."

"I will keep my promises to her for the same reasons you will. And one more. I'll eat her and I'll have our child."

"One more?"

"I want her child. I'm selfish, remember? I want to keep some part of her because I love her. I don't know why and I don't understand it any more than you do." The ice thawed a bit, I could hear it. "Can't say I blame you for doubting me. I would if I were you. She likes it, doesn't she?"

"Kirst, she's over the moon. You should have seen her. She trusts you."

"And you don't."

"I'm honestly not sure. I want to. I think I do."

"If I let her down you'd be perfectly justified if you killed me."

"No," I said, "I won't do that. Coming to dinner?"

Pause. "You really don't mind?"

"No. Priya really likes you..."

"And what she wants, she gets."

"Yes, absolutely. And I don't mind either, honestly. You've been good company lately."

"I don't know what's got into me."

I could have thought of a dozen ribald replies to that one. "I'll pass on that," I said. "About the kid..." I paused. "I shouldn't have asked that, you didn't deserve it. I'm just a bit tense. I put in the order this morning."

"Oh." Pause. "That must have been rough."

"You could say that. See you tonight then?"

"Okay. See you later."

"Bye."

I put the phone down. That had been an odd conversation. If she let Priya down I'd be justified in killing her? No, I bloody well wouldn't. At worst it would have been a lie kindly meant. I'd be disappointed, surely, but that would hardly be sufficient cause to murder her. Surely she didn't think I would? I turned it over in my mind as I walked back to the office. It didn't seem to add up in any other way than that Kirsten took her promises to Priya very, very seriously indeed and she was making sure I knew it. Okay, that was good.

Lisa glanced up as I walked in but didn't say anything. I couldn't read her expression so I just nodded and sat down. I phoned Arthur.

"Boss."

"Everything all right down there?"

"Under control. The stock got a bit restless for a while but we're back to normal."

"Good. About the other thing....I should have let you deal with it. You know I leave hiring and firing on the floor to you...I just got a bit narked."

"You did all right. I'd have fired him anyway. Fucking cowboys like that give the job a bad name."

"Thanks for backing me up. It could have been awkward." It never hurts to keep your foreman on your side and Arthur was a good one.

"No problem." A pause that meant 'anything else?'

"Arthur, do me a favour? I didn't get the number of the one I finished. Can you get me a few cuts? Three thigh steaks?"

"Should be okay. I'll check the orders."

"Thanks. I'll let you get on."

When I put the phone down I caught Lisa at the last moment turning back to her computer. She'd been listening. Was she an informer working for the bloody Health and Safety inspectors? I'm sure there was a regulation somewhere about not doing what I'd done. Reckless use of an emergency ladder or something. Fuck it. I phoned Priya and told her Kirsten was coming to dinner and we'd be having steaks. She was pleased.

"Will she be staying?"

"I don't know, we'll see. Pri, I think you were right. She's serious, she'll do it."

"I know she will," Priya said. "See you soon. I love you."

"I love you too," I said, clearly enough that Lisa wouldn't have to strain to hear it. Yes, I'm in love with my meat poppet, so fucking what? She'll be dead soon and then if I get fired you can gloat all you like you miserable cow.

I got home with the steaks nicely wrapped in butchers paper. Priya greeted me warmly as usual. After the hugs and kisses, she took the meat into the kitchen. "Who was she?" she asked.

"I don't know. I had to kill her so I thought I should eat her. Silly, I suppose..."

"Had to?"

I explained. "So there wasn't time to ask her name. She was in pain...."

Priya nodded.

"That's why when you go I have to do it myself. I can't risk that happening to you."

"I understand. I wish you didn't have to go through that."

I shrugged. "Worst thing in the world except all the alternatives," I said, paraphrasing Winston Churchill. I didn't have to explain any more than that.

"When am I going?"

I told her. She nodded again. Then she came to me and I held her for a while.

"It has been so good," she said at last.

"Better than anything that's ever happened to me," I said.

"You shouldn't have to do it. You could just hold my hand."

"Whatever you want, love." I'd have to ask Arthur who was the most reliable worker at making a clean kill. It wasn't that difficult, couldn't be if even I could do it. I was just overreacting. Maybe. "I will be there with you." One way or another.

"And there will be Susan.."

"I believe Kirsten will do it. If she doesn't I'll hire a surrogate mother, use my own birthright, whatever works."

"I want Kirsten."

I didn't know what to say. I couldn't force Kirsten to do it. She would or she wouldn't. I suppose I could have been jealous. What would be wrong with implanting one of Priya's ova with my DNA and using a surrogate? Nothing, but I guessed that Priya had already imagined Susan, thought about how she would look, and set her heart on the idea.

Priya let me go. "Sorry," she said. "Being a bit 'needy' there. That's the word, isn't it?"

In her place I'd have been curled up in a foetal position sucking my thumb or begging for my life. Brave doesn't mean fearless. Priya was the bravest person I'd ever known but she didn't want to die. "You've been watching too much TV," I said. "Let's get dinner started."

We did that. Kirsten turned up on time with a bottle of wine, the traditional gift of a dinner guest.

"Something smells good," she said as she hugged Priya.

"It's just baked potatoes," Priya said. "We'll have the steaks rare."

"Beef steaks or people meat?"

"Girlflesh," Priya said, "You'll have to get used to it."

"Yummy. One thing before we start," Kirsten said, "Here." She handed me a legal document.

"What's this?"

"Briefly stated," Kirsten said, "It says that if I don't do what I promised you can kill me and my body is your property. You can kill me..."

"No!" Priya exclaimed, horrified.

"...and eat me, or sell me to the butchers or just toss my body on a rubbish tip for the rats."

"No," Priya said again, shaking her head. "Not like that."

"Bloody Hell, Kirst," I said.

"You can check it..."

"Kirsten," I said in a formal tone, "Do I have your word that you will do it?"

"Yes, but with that you don't need it."

"Do I have your word? Yes or no."

"Yes."

"Then I don't need this, do I?" I ripped the paper into shreds and threw them in the bin. "We don't want to force you and I don't need to hold this over your head. We believe you and if we're wrong we don't want to get Susan that way." Priya smiled and relaxed. "Sorry if that sounded a bit pompous but legal documents have that effect on me."

"All that hard work wasted," Kirsten grumbled.

"Not entirely. If I ever doubted that you're serious about this, I apologise."

"Fair enough, I suppose. Who are we having for dinner, then?"

"I don't know." I explained again, briefly.

"Bloody Hell." Kirsten shook her head. "I'm glad you fired the pillock. Poor girl. Oh well, I'm sure she'll be delicious. Not as delicious as you, of course," she told Priya politely.

"Of course," Priya said archly.

Everything was back on course, it seemed. I'd always thought of Kirsten as rather selfish, and if I ever accused her of unselfishness about having Pri's kid she'd no doubt protest that she was in love and so not guilty by reason of insanity, but the bit with the paper had impressed me. I didn't say so because that would have embarrassed her, so we all did the proper British thing and ignored or made light of it.

"This really IS good," Kirsten said as she tucked into her thigh steak. "Makes me wonder what I'd taste like."

"Probably very good," I said professionally. "You're young and healthy, with good muscle tone. Hard to say for certain as we don't get many Caucasian girls coming through."

"Would it make any difference?"

"Possibly. It's not just skin colour, there are differences in body type, metabolism, diet and so on."

"Even different breeds of pig don't always taste alike," Priya agreed. "Why should people?"

"That's why you've been eating girl steak, isn't it?" Kirsten guessed. "You wanted to know."

"Yes. I won't be around to eat me. We started with a girl called Sanja because she was the same race and build as me. Now, I just like it." She shrugged. "Why not? I'm glad I'm going to be eaten, especially by you two. It would be a waste to kill me and not do."

You might think this was a rather painful topic of conversation in the circumstances, not to mention tactless, but it wasn't like that really. It was more like talking to a blind man or a cripple and not trying to pretend you hadn't noticed.

"Quite right," Kirsten said. "In your place I'd feel the same way." She winced. "Ouch! That was tactless, even for me."

"Why?"

"Because I could be in your place. Sorry."

"Oh, don't start that again. You're not going in my place, and I'm not sorry."

I did feel Kirsten was being a bit hard on herself. "She's right," I said, "Eat your girl steak and be glad it's not you." Kirsten gave me a me a quizzical half-smile. I smiled and shook my head meaning it's okay, I wasn't resenting her because she'd live and Priya wouldn't. I think I saw gratitude on her face, something I wasn't used to seeing there. "Pity we'll never know what you taste like, though."

Kirsten shrugged. "Neither will the rats, thank God."

"That was a bit florid, Kirst. Toss you on the dump?" I raised an eyebrow in mockery.

"I was making a point and overdoing it a bit, sorry. Drama Queen, that's me."

"Don't worry, if I ever decided to kill you, I'd eat you myself. Why should the furry little bastards get the good stuff? They'll eat anything, you'd be wasted on them."

"Thank you for that." The tone was dry, but she meant it.

"Wine, anyone?" Priya asked. The conversation turned to happier topics.

The evening turned into another pleasant one and I won't bore you with all the stuff that was much like the last time. At one point Kirsten said she really ought to go home and leave us to it, but Priya insisted that she should stay. I agreed, and not only because it was what Priya wanted.

"I need to pee," Kirsten said, "I'll think about it. Talk about me while I'm gone if you like."

We did.

"You really don't mind her staying?" Priya asked.

"No," I said. "I should, but I don't. God knows why."

"You like her, admit it. You should marry her," Priya teased.

"You have got to be joking," I said. Marry Kirsten? Good grief. "I'd marry you if I could, but..."

"You can't." Pause. "You would? Really?"

I gave her a puzzled frown. "Of course I would. Why so surprised? You know I love you."

"Yes, but..." Priya thought about it. "You would, wouldn't you? May I consider myself engaged?"

"By all means do." It would be the world's shortest engagement, but you do what you can.

Priya scooted over and gave me a hug and a kiss. "After my tragic demise, you can marry the mother of my child who's also our mistress and sell the story to the News of the Screws or the people who make those terrible soap operas."

"You're serious about this, aren't you?"

"Why not? She's intelligent, attractive, nice..." A teasing look with that one.

"She's not nice." I couldn't deny the other things, a fact that wasn't wasted on Priya.

"Yes she is. And you'd be close to Susan. You'd be her Daddy."

There was that, and the fact that if Kirsten and I broke up again the poor kid would suffer. "I'd like that last part," I said, "But..." But what? I'd have to think about that. "I can't replace you."

"No, you can't. I'm me. She's Kirsten."

"Anyway, she wouldn't do it."

"Wouldn't do what?" The lady in question had returned.

"We're engaged," Priya said. "We'd like you to help us commit adultery. We don't have time for incest or folk dancing."

"That's a sin, isn't it? Congratulations, by the way."

"Thanks. Technically, I'm not sure," I said, "In a Biblical sense. But it probably is."

"Count me in, then."

So we 'sinned' at great length, but really it was just lovemaking. Yes, it did get a bit raunchy but nothing you could describe as nasty unless you live in the Bible Belt, that area of the USA dedicated to bigotry, religion and homophobia, or the Middle East which is much the same. We were British (at least two of us were and one wanted to be) so 'sin' meant a bit spicy, as in fun. We sent all the people who didn't like fun to the colonies a few centuries ago. Okay, we didn't send them, they just left in disgust. Whatever. What do you want, a history lesson?

We made love and, yes, three people can do that. You just have to trust each other and then you can do anything. I trusted Kirsten, at least not to hurt Priya. I was big enough and ugly enough to look out for myself, as they say in Australia. If you've never made love to two women at once, you probably want more details than that. Okay, here are a few. You're not in charge. If you do that, you're not making love, you're just using them like sex dolls or a harem. I tended to let them decide which of them I actually entered at any given moment. Either of them was capable of experiencing orgasm without being penetrated at the time. Doesn't sound very sexy when I get technical, does it? It's hard to explain if you haven't done it and I'm not about to write a manual on it. It either works or it doesn't, suck it and see. Is a three-way mutual climax possible? Personally, I'd have said 'no' but actually it is. I know this because it's happened. It wasn't anything you'd find in the Kama Sutra. More like physical jazz. If it comes together, you come together.

For a while, Priya's impending demise was a problem for another day, as was whether or not I should marry Kirsten. Logically, it made sense. She was indeed intelligent, attractive and sexy but nice? We went to sleep.

I woke at four in the morning, the hour of the wolf. Yes, again, but Kirsten was quietly asleep with her arm thrown over Priya. I'd had a dream, and not the Martin Luther King sort. I was in a meat storage locker. I don't remember the details but some of the meat was Priya. I hadn't seen her being killed, I'd turned up late. I recognised her left leg but her head was missing. I went looking for it, I had to tell her I was sorry.

"It's all right," somebody said comfortingly. "She's just food." I think it was Lisa's voice. "Don't worry about it."

The food was nestling comfortably between me and Kirsten, the people who soon have to eat her. I could smell her skin, feel her warmth, feel her heartbeat and her breath. I could see her face in the pale moonlight, it was serene, untroubled. I could see the fine blonde hairs on Kirsten's forearm wrapped over her, far stronger than Priya's. Kirsten wanted to protect her, so did I. We were animals nestling for comfort in a world of predators and there was nothing I could do. I wanted to howl at the moon but that would have woken the ladies up so I just lay there thinking until I fell asleep again.

I woke late. Kirsten was already awake and Priya was gone. For a moment I almost panicked, an echo of the dream, I suppose.

"She's making breakfast," Kirsten reassured me. "She insisted. Bad dream?"

"You could say that."

"Can't say I blame you. Sometimes I can't believe this is really happening."

"Tell me about it." I suppose I sounded bitter. "Serves me right for falling in love with a meatgirl."

"Don't call her that," Kirsten snapped. She looked like she was about to hit me. I would have let her, but she relaxed. "Feeling sorry for yourself, are you?"

I got the point. "Pathetic, isn't it? Yes, you're right. We get to be unhappy but she dies."

"Yes, I hate that as much as you do, but at least she'll die knowing she's loved. You gave her a month, a good month, and that too. Hang onto that and bear up. For her, at least."

Kirsten being philosophical, kind and supportive. Watch out for flying pigs. "She thinks we should get married, did you know?"

"Bloody Hell."

"I know. We'd just make each other miserable again."

Kirsten looked thoughtful. "Do we have to?"

"What, get married or make each other miserable?"

Kirsten shook her head. "I suppose you'd want to be Susan's father. What I meant was, do we have to make each other miserable? Is it compulsory?"

"Well, you're an evil-tempered, selfish bitch and I can be a bit of a prat sometimes. Marriage made in Heaven, I'd say."

"Suppose I gave up evil for Lent just to see how it takes? It is a bit of an effort."

"Giving up?"

"Being evil. I think I'm getting a bit tired of it."

"You're taking this seriously, aren't you?"

Kirsten shrugged. "It's a thought. I'm going to be a mother soon and I'll need a breadwinner. You're not so bad for a prat in charge of a woman killing plant and at least it's a steady job. I could do worse."

As a romantic proposal, it lacked something. Still, I could do worse myself. Kirsten had great legs and she smelled good. My nostrils flared. Something was different. She didn't smell evil any more? Maybe it was the scent of Priya on her. Maybe I was going out of my mind. Well, my mind was not a pleasant place to be at the time.

Kirsten got out of bed. "Was it just me or was last night something...different?"

"You were there." Despite myself, I could help admiring her body as she shrugged a shirt on. The way a woman's body moves, muscles sliding gracefully under skin smoother than a man's....mmmm..

She turned round, showing her breasts for a moment before she buttoned up the shirt. "No, seriously."

It had been different. "It was different," I admitted absently. Shame to cut up an athletic body like that. Roasted alive on a spit, though...oh good grief. What was I thinking?

"Penny for your thoughts?" Kirsten's expression was halfway between quizzical and exasperated. If you don't know what that looks like you've never been with a woman.

Oh, in for a penny, in for a pound. "I was thinking you'd be better as a live roaster than cuts of meat in a butcher's shop," I said. Now she could hit me.

"Because I'd look good like that and last a long time? Probably," Kirsten said. She snapped her fingers at me. "The sex?" Bringing me back to the topic.

"Awesome," I said. "Well, sex with Priya always is, for me. Thing is, having you there didn't totally ruin it."

"That's what I thought. Nice to know."

"Breakfast in two minutes," Priya called from the kitchen. Not loudly, but we both heard it.

We had breakfast. The whole thing, a variation on Priya's preference for the 'full English'. Bacon and eggs with grilled tomatoes, Cumberland sausages and fried black pudding on toast, and then more toast (granary bread) with marmalade. Chunky orange marmalade with the peel in it, from Tiptree, washed down with cups of Darjeeling tea, milk and no sugar.

Priya served us both before she sat down to eat. She looked, as usual, immaculate in a short blue skirt and a white blouse. She was barefoot as she usually was indoors; she rarely wore shoes except to go out shopping. I liked that. I loved her toes. I loved her eyebrows. I loved everything about her. Kirsten was a very attractive woman in many ways and technically an ideal match for me, but Priya was something else.

Kirsten ate with good appetite but she didn't say much until she'd finished. When she did, what she said was "That was lovely, Pri..."

"I'm glad you enjoyed it."

"Now take me to the plant and have me cut up," Kirsten said to me.

There was a long moment's silence. "That's not funny, Kirsten," I said coldly. Priya just looked stunned.

"It wasn't meant to be. Have you got any tranquilisers? I'll have to sign the substitution form and I don't want my hand to shake." She looked suddenly stiff and pale and her arms were folded across her chest.

"Are you out of your mind?"

"Yes, probably. Come on, let's get this done before I come to my senses. If you've got a form here I'll sign it now so I can't chicken out." She looked petrified but resolute.

What on Earth had brought that on? Half an hour before she'd been talking about getting married. One breakfast later she drops this bombshell.

"No," Priya said. "I cannot allow this." I might have known she'd say something like that, dammit.

"It's not up to you," Kirsten said. "I can't allow this to happen to you. I can't stand it any more." She looked at me for support. "Tell her."

Damn, damn, damn. Why couldn't she have said this a few days earlier when it would have been easy to say yes? Well, okay, not easy but not so hard. Obviously because a few days before she didn't love Priya and wouldn't have wanted to. I looked at my Mistress and she was shaking her head at me, no. "I can't do it, Kirst," I said. Part of me wanted to kick myself. All I had to do was agree and my dear Priya would live, and I couldn't do it because she didn't approve. Bloody women. Bloody stupid me.

Kirsten stood up stiffly. "If you won't help me, I'll find someone who will," she said.

"Please," Priya said, "I'm begging you, don't do this. It's not right. It's the most wonderful thing I have ever heard of and I love you for it, but it's still wrong."

"Why?" Kirsten demanded angrily. "You could be happy. You're twice the woman I ever could be, I'm just twice as much meat..."

"No, you are not," Priya said. "Well, all right, you ARE twice as much meat but..." she was smiling and shaking her head and crying, and then she was across the room and hugging Kirsten fiercely. It looked funny, as usual, with over a head's difference in their height. Kirsten loosened up almost painfully and hugged Priya back rather more carefully and then she started crying too but with deep, racking sobs. Her knees gave way and she folded to the floor like an unstrung puppet collapsing in slow motion. Priya followed her down as gracefully as she could, but it was obviously an effort.

A lot of things ran through my mind, including 'bugger, I'm going to be late for work again'. I'd hardly had time to get used to the idea that Priya might be saved before it was snatched away again, which was probably a mercy. I could still hardly believe that Kirsten had tried to do it. I even wondered briefly if she'd known that Priya would stop her, but that was an ungenerous thought. She'd been terrified.

"I'm so sorry, Pri," Kirsten said. Sorry for trying or sorry she'd failed?

"I'm not," Priya said. "It was very brave of you. Silly, but brave."

Kirsten smiled with an effort. "It wasn't silly," she said gruffly. She looked at me and took a breath. "Sorry about the waterworks. I can still do it." She looked back to Priya. "Think about it. Really. You can still have Susan, you'd have my ovaries. Of course a shrimp like you would probably need a cesarian...." The colour had come back to her face and she seemed in control of herself. She brushed Priya's hair with her hand. "I would be honoured to be eaten by you." She looked at me again. "Both of you."

Of course, if she substituted for Priya at my plant, as opposed to doing it somewhere else as she'd threatened, she would replace Priya on the stock list, which meant we'd get all of her meat as I'd already ordered. That would be a lot more meat which would affect the price, wouldn't it? I actually thought about it. Oh well, I could let Lisa deal with it, she should enjoy that, with her usual purse-lipped disapproval. I smiled at the thought.

I squatted down next to them, almost banging my knee on a table leg. "Thanks, Kirst, but..."

"You can't do it," Priya said.

"Yes, I can." Kirsten looked at me defiantly. "I can!"

"I believe you," I said. "I'm amazed, frankly, but I do."

"So why not...?"

"I want to live, Kirsten dear," Priya said gently, "But not like this. Not at the cost of the life of someone I care for, a brave and wonderful person who has shown me nothing but kindness and love. I would rather die."

Kirsten shook her head in exasperation. "You don't deserve this..."

"Nor do you. I came here expecting to die alone and found two people willing to care for me. Do you think I would want to kill one of them in order to survive? I couldn't live with that. My life would be.....tainted. I would never forgive myself."

"I might have known," Kirsten said. She looked at me. "I don't suppose you can talk some sense into her?"

I could have tried. I would have failed. Oh well. "I doubt it," I said. "Besides, I'm not entirely sure that she's wrong. I'd have tossed you on the fire for her a week ago - not that I ever really wanted you dead, you understand..."

Kirsten nodded that she did understand and held no grudges about it.

"But now? I like you quite a bit more than I did before and I don't know that I'd have had the guts to do what you offered to do if I had the option. I'm impressed." I shrugged.

"I wasn't trying to impress anyone...."

"I know, that's why I'm impressed." I sighed. "Stop being so bloody defensive." I was close enough to Kirsten to smell her and feel the heat from her body. Sex machine, a few dozen pounds of meat or a human being? Tick all of the above. "I'd be happy to eat you if you had to die but you don't. It's not going to happen. She's right, dammit."

"So it was all for nothing," Kirten said bitterly. "Giving you false hope. I fucked up again."

"Bloody Hell, Kirsten, buck up," Priya said lightly. "Stiff upper lip and all that jolly old rot. You didn't fail." She kissed Kirsten on the cheek. "You made me proud of you. I will never forget that."

Kirsten looked at Priya and something in her expression made her almost beautiful. No, maybe not almost. Then her mouth twisted into a grimace. "Until you walk into the slaughterhouse and they cut your head off," she pointed out.

"I'll be thinking of you when my head drops into the bucket," Priya said wrily. She put her hand into Kirsten's unruly mop and ruffled it. "Don't die for me, dear. Live for me."

I winced at the image of poor Pri's head dropping into a bucket like a discarded potato peeling. I'd have to do something about that. What, exactly? Have someone catch it and hand it to me? Then I could make sure she saw a friendly face as she died, maybe even give her a last kiss. It was a macabre thought. What then? Have her head embalmed and preserved as a memento?

"Something wrong?" Priya asked, sounding concerned.

"Oh no, everything's fine," I said with heavy sarcasm.

"Well, apart from that," she qualified.

I sighed. "I was thinking I'll have to get somebody to catch your head," I admitted. "Sorry, it's a bit gruesome."

"I started it," Priya said. "It's a nice idea." I could hear Kirsten muttering 'nice!' under her breath through gritted teeth.

"And then what? Do you want me to keep it?"

"What, and have it on the mantlepiece staring at you?" She shuddered theatrically. "No, thanks. Bury it in the back garden or something. If you want to remember what I looked like, take a photograph."

This was all getting a bit morbid. "I suppose I could. Why don't we all go to the park this afternoon, feed the ducks and have our pictures taken? I can do a couple of hours this morning, take the afternoon off and meet you somewhere for lunch."

"A walk in the park," Kirsten said moodily.

I kissed her on the forehead. "Got a better idea?"

She shook her head despondently.

I gave Priya the usual hug and kiss and asked "Will you be okay?" She nodded. "Look after her?"

"Leave it to me," she said, patting my arm.

And half an hour later I was sitting on the bus, going to work as if nothing had happened. Hey ho, hey ho. Of course I went over it in my mind, as you do. Do you ever get those 'I should have said' moments? What could I have done differently? Could I have fixed it so that Kirsten took the bullet for Priya in a way that made it somehow all right? I couldn't see how. The view from the bus window showed sunny streets with people going about their business as usual. It would look exactly the same in a few days' time, Priya would be dead and the sun would still rise. For all I knew, this might be the same bus I'd brought her home on. It was a relief to get off at the drab industrial estate where I worked. Walking up to the entrance, I wondered why I bothered.

Of course, I had some arrangements to make. I had a chat with Arthur before going up to my office. Lisa wasn't there, probably out watching the meat girls get chopped up, so I got on with some routine work, the more boring the better. I pretty much cleared my desk in an hour or so. Ten or twenty minutes into it, Lisa came in and we exchanged minimal nods. Finally I said "I'm taking the afternoon off, hold the fort."

Lisa nodded. "Long lunch with the poppet?"

"Something like that," I said offhandedly.

"She must be very good."

Where to start on that? "Yes," I said, "She is."

"Going to top her yourself?" Lisa cocked her head slightly.

For a second, I didn't know what to say. My first impulse was to spit out 'None of your bloody business', but I didn't want to give her the satisfaction of seeing me get angry. "Yes," I said shortly.

"Like you did the other one?"

I remembered seeing Lisa watching as I'd finished off the poor girl the idiot had maimed. "I should hope not," I said impatiently. "That was an accident." What was she getting at?

"No, the other one," Lisa said, as if talking to an idiot. "Before that."

Oh, Anjali. The one I'd killed with a sword, just for practice. Lisa must have seen that too, I hadn't bothered to look up at the time. She probably knew I'd ordered Priya's meat as well. Being no fool, she had put two and two together. "Yes," I said. "Just like that. I needed a trial run. It's considered bad form to botch the job when killing one's mistress. And no, you can't watch. Anything else?" I must have said it a bit sharply because Lisa reddened as if I'd slapped her. If she'd pushed me any further, I just might have, much as I hate hitting women. She opened her mouth to reply, shut it again, shook her head and turned away.

I left, letting off steam mentally by imagining ways to murder Lisa yet again. Push her off the mezzanine while she was absorbed in watching the slaughter? I could probably get Arthur and a couple of the others to swear it was an accident. Of course, it wouldn't do any good even if I got away with it. You can't just substitute one woman for another just because she happened to be dead when you found her, like roadkill. "Yes, officer, it was an accident, honest. Look, I found her so can I have her meat?" No, unfortunately you couldn't do that, I'd checked. There had to be some possibility I'd overlooked, but I couldn't see it and we were running out of time.

At the bus stop, I phoned Kirsten's mobile. It was a few minutes before she answered. "Hi Kirst. Feeling any better?"

"Just a bit. Pri's been trying so hard to cheer me up I had to let her."

"You're still at our place? Where is she?"

"In the bath."

"I'm surprised you're not in it with her."

"I was, I had to get out to answer the phone."

"Oh, sorry about that. Had any ideas about lunch?"

"Yes, Raphael's. Table for three, one'o'clock sharp. My treat, no argument."

It certainly was a treat. Raphael's wasn't cheap. "I'm not arguing. I'll see you there, and give my love to Pri."

"I will." A pause. "I'm sorry about this morning."

"Don't be. It was an incredible thing to do."

"Tried to do. I failed," Kirsten said sombrely. "She's still going to die and I'm going to live. Don't you hate me just a little bit for that?"

"No, actually, I don't. You might as well say I failed too. We couldn't make Pri accept something that went against her nature. Stop blaming yourself, you don't deserve it."

"Thank you."

"Oh, get back in the bath before you catch a cold. I'll see you in.." I checked my watch, "Forty minutes."

Well, that was a mental image that would stay with me while I wandered round the town centre for half an hour. Much better than pushing Lisa off a balcony or under a bus, which was just arriving.

Raphael's? Just a trendy and overpriced restaurant, but the food actually was good, if not that much better than we could cook at home. Fusion cuisine, slanted towards Greek/Italian/Turkish/Thai. Well, it was different and why eat out if it isn't? I've never understood why people eat at Pizza Hut or burger joints. You can grill a hamburger, bought or home made, and stick it in a toasted bun with some lettuce, tomato and onion in less time than it takes to get to MacWhatsits, much less get served. I wondered if Raphael's was serving anything with lobster in it.

When I eventually got there, Priya and Kirsten were already seated. They made an oddly handsome couple, chatting and smiling as if they'd known each other for a long time. Priya wore her usual simple blouse and skirt and I thought that if you put her on the cover of Vogue dressed like that, no woman would want to wear anything else. Kirsten was wearing a rugby shirt with denim shorts, an outfit that suited her perfectly. When they saw me, Priya got up and rushed into my arms while Kirsten smiled fondly at both of us. I kissed Priya as if I were about to throw her to the floor and fuck her on the spot. She smelled of warm Priya-skin with a hint of lemon and thyme from the bath salts. I doubted that the lobster would taste better than her.

When we came up for air, I said, "You're going to have to work on that British reserve."

"You should talk," Priya retorted. "Anyway, I approve of British reserve. It means you only have to kiss people you really like."

"Fair point." As we sat down, I leaned over and kissed Kirsten, who looked surprised and rather pleased. I noticed that several people were trying not to stare at us. I suppose they envied me, the men anyway, and maybe some of the women too. Well, who wouldn't envy a man dining with an athletic blonde and a pocket Aphrodite. If they only knew one of them would be dead soon, they might think twice. And then again, they might not; some people might actually get off on it. I just tried to put it out of my mind. "We'd better tone it down before somebody chucks a bucket of water over us," I said loudly enough to be heard by anyone trying to eavesdrop.

We eventually ordered a complex dish comprising various sorts of meat with dipping sauces and some sort of fancy salad, accompanied by a basket of exotic breads. It involved a lot of experimentation, eating with your fingers and passing things around. If you remember your first time in an Indian restaurant, you'll get the idea. I enjoyed it all, apart from the occasional 'Paint it Black' moments. You know that old Stones song? The point of view of some poor bloke whose girlfriend has just died. Everybody goes around like nothing's happened while he's in mourning:

"I see the girls go by dressed in their pretty clothes, I have to turn my head until my darkness goes.."

Like that. But there she was, still alive, looking happy. It was a bit surreal. I think they call it cognitive dissonance. Sometimes, when Priya wasn't looking, I caught Kirsten's eye and imagined I saw the same shadow there.

After the meal, we went to the park and fed the ducks with bits of bread we'd stuck in our handbags and pockets, walked for half an hour or more through leafy paths in the woods and got slightly lost. You can't get really lost in a park in Britain, it's hardly Alaska, but you sometimes end up not quite where you expected. We found our way back to somewhere near the entrance, where an event was occurring. You can always tell because a crowd always gathers around an event.

"What is happening?" Priya wanted to know.

"Morris dancers," Kirsten said. "Strange creatures who only come out in the summer in the vicinity of lots of beer."

"This is a British custom?"

"Yes, sort of. It's a tradition."

"English, really," I said.

"I want to see!" Priya said. She was too short to see over the crowd, even on tiptoe.

Kirsten picked her up and sat her on her own shoulders as easily as you'd lift a ten year old child. One of Priya's sandals fell off. She either didn't notice or didn't care, she was avid for the spectacle. All I could see for a moment was her bare right foot. I looked up a second later and Kirsten was looking at me. A lot was said in the next second, none of which we'd ever said in the time we'd supposedly been lovers. Funny expression, that. Just a nice way of saying we were fucking each other. I was nearer to loving her then than I ever had when we'd been a couple. I probably could marry her if I couldn't have Priya, but wouldn't that be treating her as second best and wouldn't that be a bit insulting?

Priya applauded every dance and when it was finished and Kirsten put her down, she said "That was wonderful."

"Pointless, but wonderful," Kirsten said. "We British are good at that."

"I love this country," Priya said happily.

The whole afternoon was like that. We bought ice creams, had a go on the rowing boats on the boating pond, even joined in a game of frisbee with total strangers. All just carefree fun. Once I saw a young woman in a short skirt strolling with her boyfriend who had what looked like a stock number tattooed on her left thigh. For a moment, it made me angry; it wasn't something to be taken lightly. Then again, for some people it was just an erotic fantasy. They weren't to know I was living with the real thing. It got me thinking, though. Could there be some way I could use the idea? Get some fantasist to play a game and trick her into signing a consent form? Unethical, of course, but tempting. Also probably impractical. I was never good at being devious and I'd have to conceal it from Priya even if it worked.

On the way home we passed a butchers' shop with human meat displayed in the window. It didn't use to be like that, they used to sell it under the counter, with discreet notices in the papers. Legal, but not on open display in polite society, like prostitution in the old days. It was becoming more socially acceptable. I approved of that in principle, why be hypocrical about it? I just didn't want Priya to see it. She did.

"Don't look, love," Kirsten said anxiously.

It's all right," Priya said. She examined the display while Kirst and I squirmed with shame and embarrassment. Silly of us, I know. A young woman's breasts and filet had been laid out as a centrepiece to an assortment of her other meats. It was attractively arranged, I had to admit, with the woman's head behind it. I recognised the name of the shop. It had been supplied by the company I worked for, of course. We were the local supplier, who else? The breasts were about the same size and colour as Priya's. It could have been her in there in a couple of days if we hadn't bought her body. "I like it," Priya said at last. She glanced at us. "What's wrong?" We just looked at each other. "Oh, I see. Do you think I'm one of those people who think meat grows in plastic bags?" She gave us a fondly mocking smile. "I must say I'm glad I will be eaten by people who love me, but this girl..." she shook her head. "She will never know that she looks delicious, but she does. I could eat that 'filet' myself."

"I'll buy it for you if you like," Kirsten offered.

Priya shook her head. "I didn't mean...you don't have to..."

Kirsten pushed the door open and strode to the counter. "Chick pussy in the window," she ordered brusquely.

"Kirst, I think Pri means it's expensive."

"I know." Kirsten gave Priya a look. "He'll be eating yours in a couple of days. Want to know what it tastes like? Thought so. You'll never get another chance." She turned to the man at the counter. "Chick pussy, pronto." She seemed a little angry.

He didn't argue. I wouldn't have. We got the 'chick pussy' and left. I quickly checked the time. We could get back, make and eat dinner and still be in plenty of time to watch Doctor Who. Priya would hate it if we missed that.

Kirsten was still thinking about the display, she couldn't let it go. "Does it really not bother you seeing a woman chopped up and laid out in a window like that?"

"I'm sorry it had to happen to her," Priya explained, "But we all know it does happen - you've seen me eat the meat myself - so why pretend it doesn't? I liked the honesty of it. Besides, it was a beautiful display and quite erotic in a way. If you two weren't going to eat me, I'd like to be laid out like that."

It was a discussion Priya and I had had before, but Kirsten hadn't really had time to get used to the idea. "So you don't mind being food?"

"No, just being killed, but since that will happen anyway, why should I? Anyway, you know I want you to eat me."

Kirsten had to give her that one. "I thought you didn't want to be eaten by strangers?"

"No, I just prefer to be eaten by you. There's a difference."

"And if we weren't going to do that, you'd be quite happy to be displayed like that?"

"'Happy' might be putting it too strongly," Priya said with a wry smile, "But if you were going to be food, wouldn't you want to be attractive food?"

"Oh, I give up," Kirsten said in mock exasperation, but she didn't seem angry any more.

"No, really, wouldn't you?"

"I suppose so, yes," Kirsten admitted reluctantly.

"So by displaying her attractively like that, the butcher is showing her respect."

"As a piece of meat."

"That's better than none at all. And the head is there to say, 'yes, she was a human being, we're not afraid to admit it'.

"And because some of the customers get off on the idea."

"Probably," Priya admitted. "Does it matter? The result is the same."

"You're both right," I said. "It's advertising, a sales thing, but does that mean it's worse than selling her under the counter or grinding her up for sausages? We were just miffed in case it offended Pri and because it's a reminder of what's to come. They weren't to know she'd see it."

"Fair enough," Kirsten said, mollified. Meatgirls don't normally walk around for a month before they get processed. "Well, I hope you enjoy your treat."

"I'll look forward to it," Priya said. "Thank you."

We headed home. I was still thinking about the girl with the tattoo. Should I have stopped her and asked her if she wanted to do it for real? Almost certainly she wouldn't, but wouldn't it have been worth trying? I once knew a man whose chat-up line was 'Want a fuck?' He usually got refused and sometimes slapped but once in a while it worked and he got laid. Maybe I wasn't trying hard enough.

A young woman of about Priya's age was walking by at that moment. "Excuse me, miss?"

"Yes?" The girl paused politely. "My girlfriend here is going to be slaughtered in a couple of days..." I indicated Priya.

"I'm very sorry to hear that.."

"And I wondered if you'd like to take her place. Just thought I'd ask."

"Not really, thanks. I don't much fancy being slaughtered." The girl glanced at Priya. "No offense."

"None taken," Priya said looking, what? Fascinated?

"Wish I could help, but.." the girl shrugged. "Is this some kind of joke? Are we being filmed?" She looked around for the camera or possibly the men in white coats with butterfly nets.

"No," Kirsten said.

"My girlfriend's girlfriend," I explained. "And it's not a joke."

Now the girl started to look alarmed and looked around again, probably for a policeman or at least witnesses.

"It's all right," Priya said gently, "We're really not dangerous lunatics. What's your name?"

"Susan," the girl said warily.

Priya's eyes widened. "Very pleased to meet you," she said, holding out a hand. "I'm Priya."

The girl took Priya's hand with reflexive courtesy. "My pleasure. Are you really...?"

"Yes," Priya said. "Bit of a nuisance but there you go. My lovers aren't too pleased about it."

"Oh. I really am so very sorry. I didn't mean to, er..." she looked embarrassed.

"It's quite all right," Priya said again. She kissed the girl - Susan - lightly on the cheek and let her go. "Bless you. Have a lovely day."

The girl stepped forward impulsively, took Priya by the shoulders and kissed her. Then she gave her a hug and said "Bless you too. I wish I could..." She sounded close to tears, the sweetheart.

"I know." Priya patted her on the back consolingly.

After the girl had excused herself as gracefully as possible and left, Priya gave me an odd look. Kirsten seemed amused.

"What? Oh come on, it was worth a try," I protested. Kirsten nodded.

"Didn't you notice what she looked like?" Priya inquired.

"Quite pretty, I thought." Dark grey eyes, skin a shade lighter than Pri's, build about halfway between hers and Kirsten's, wavy chestnut brown hair....oh my God. "Oh," I said.

"She was beautiful," Priya said, eyes shining. "Beautiful."

Kirsten put her arm round Pri's shoulders and gave her a quick hug. I joined them. I don't believe in fate, really, but sometimes these odd things happen and you wonder. So much for my cunning plan. I couldn't have got Pri to let me sacrifice a Susan for her, especially one she thought looked like her future daughter would. Oh well, it had been a long shot anyway.

We decided to have fajitas for dinner, mainly because it's easy and because Priya had never tried them. You just fry up some meat or other, beef usually, with maybe onions and bell peppers, toss in some Tex-Mex spices or add sauce later, make a bit of salad and eat the stuff wrapped up in tortillas, which you can get ready made in packets and heat in the microwave. As an appetiser, I cooked the filet Kirsten had bought for Priya. I sauteed it lightly in butter, in a separate pan, with a pinch of tarragon, for maybe two or three minutes. You don't want to overcook or overseason it or you might as well be eating anything. If it was underdone, better that than burnt. Priya ate it slowly, one small bite at a time, while Kirsten and I finished cooking the meat for the fajitas.

"What's it taste like, Pri?" Kirsten asked.

"Like pussy lightly cooked in butter," Priya said facetiously.

"Oh come on, I've only ever tasted one and that was yours, raw."

"Well, it's like that, but cooked. Honestly, it's not like anything else. It's lovely. A bit chewy, but that's okay. I wonder if it's an aphrodisiac. Want to try a bit?"

"No, that one's yours. Anyway, I don't need an aphrodisiac."

"Maybe you can have a bit of mine when it's done." She looked a question at me.

"Why not?" God knows she'd earned the right to share.

Kirsten made a face. "I'd still prefer to keep yours raw, but in that case, thanks, I will."

Priya ate the last of the filet. "If it's anything like Amelia here, you should enjoy it."

"Amelia?" I wondered. We hadn't known the name of the girl in the shop.

"She has to have a name. She tasted like an Amelia. Quite refined, but with sexy undertones."

"Ooookayy...."

Kirsten and I took plates, a bowl of salad, warm tortillas and a chafing dish of hot, spiced meat into the lounge and we ate with our fingers, sitting on the floor. I opened a bottle of light beer for each of us. I put the TV on with the sound low in case Doctor Who started before we'd finished.

"I suppose you'll be staying the night again?" I asked Kirsten as the meal wound down.

Kirsten took a breath. "Look, you two, just because I came over all dramatic this morning doesn't mean you have to put up with me every night. Honestly, it's okay..."

"I think the proper term is 'we three'," Priya said, licking her fingers. "It won't be for much longer so why don't we all stop pretending and just enjoy it while we can?"

"That's practically moral blackmail," Kirsten mock-protested. She looked at me, uncertain.

"Whatever works," Priya said airily.

"You want to stay," I said, "And we want you to. Yes, me too, really. It's a no-brainer. So shall we argue about it for half an hour and pretend to twist your arm or shall we clear the dishes before the show starts?"

"Say the magic word," Kirsten said archly.

"Kirsten, please stay."

"I would be delighted."

We got the dished cleared with minutes to spare.

Doctor Who was good, it was a Stephen Moffat episode, but there wasn't much worth watching after that so we made our own fun, as they used to say. I put some music on and Kirsten got quietly stoned and watched while Pri and I played chess. She won, but only because I shared a bit of Kirsten's joints and got distracted when the music took over my brain. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. Kirsten challenged me to an arm-wrestling contest which I won, of course. I'm a bloke, after all, we average twice as strong as women in the upper body and I wasn't in bad shape for a former rugby player gone to seed, but it wasn't quite as easy as you'd expect. Kirsten is a very strong woman and she was in better condition than I was.

We had a couple more drinks and Pri took a little hash and things got a bit silly and a lot of fun. We had loopy arguments and conversations that went off on tangents. I mentioned that 'The Piper at the Gates of Dawn' was possibly the best album ever (don't ask me why) while Kirsten said that Love's 'Forever Changes' was. Priya half agreed with me, being a Barrett fan, but wasn't sure it was actually better than the solo 'Barrett' album. She couldn't comment on 'Forever Changes' because she hadn't heard it yet.

Kirst and I agreed that she had to hear it. By this time we were all a bit stoned. I got lost in the music.

"What do you think?" Kirsten asked after it finished. "In twenty four words or less."

Pri thought about it. "Savage," she said. "It's like a trap. It sounds so pretty at first and then it bites you. I'm trying to think of another word. Creepy?"

Arthur Lee, arguably the American Syd Barrett, had written that album when he thought he was going to die.

"At her request she asks for nothing You get nothing in return If you want she brings you water If you don't then you will burn.."

Kirsten was thinking the same thing. We made eye contact. The woman in the song was, to me, Kirsten as she used to be.

"You go through changes, it may seem strange Is this what you're put here for?"

And had she really changed?

"At my request i ask for nothing You get nothing in return If you're nice you'll bring me water If you're not then i will burn...."

And had that been me?

People read things into music that may or may not have really been there but there are still things that stick in your mind. Kirsten and I still had a connection, some unfinished business. We could deal with that after Priya was dead, we agreed. All of that passed between us in a second.

"Creepy, but brilliant," Kirsten said aloud.

"It is," I agreed, "But compare it with this." I put 'Piper' on.

"Not fair," Kirsten protested insincerely, "We'll be more stoned when we hear that." She was rolling a joint to make sure that we would be.

Astronomy Domine came on and I felt relieved. I could feel my pulse steadying and then building to the sheer exuberance of it. Priya was smiling, so all was right with the world. She was happy, that was the main thing. Happy and she was going to die in less than two days. How did she do that? Oh yes, I know, she didn't have time to be unhappy. Yes, right. I'd have been shitting bricks. If life was so good for her now, wouldn't that make it harder for her to lose it? Maybe I should have spent the last month making her life so miserable that she'd be looking forward to ending it. Your mind goes off on tangents like that when you're stoned. I was still fighting the inevitable. At the same time, I was listening to tPatGoD, the ultimate album. I'd heard it so many times I can't count but it always sounded fresh to me. When 'Flaming' came on I let myself believe for a minute or three that saving Priya was possible because it makes anything sound possible.

Lazing in the foggy dew Sitting on a unicorn. No fair, you can't hear me But I can you.

Watching buttercups cup the light Sleeping on a dandelion. Too much, I won't touch you But then I might....

Screaming through the starlit sky Traveling by telephone. Hey ho, here we go Ever so high....

"Definitely not fair," Kirsten whispered, but she was smiling. Let's share the illusion, the hope...try some stoned contact telepathy. It works, trust me.

She was letting me win because Priya was loving it. By the time Interstellar Overdrive came on we were floating on clouds. The Piper wound down through the whimsy of 'Gnome' with the haiku in it -

Look at the sky, Look at the river, Isn't it gooooood..

To the mysticism of Chapter 24 and the wistfulness of 'Scarecrow', ending with the unnerving 'Bike'.

Priya laughed. "Piper wins," she said. She kissed us both in turn. "Don't think I don't know what you're doing."

"Who, us?" Kirsten said.

"All movement is accomplished in six stages," Priya said, "And the seventh brings return. Which means it's time for bed unless you have anything to top that. I want to go to bed and fuck you both until I pass out."

"You're starting to sound like Kirst," I grumbled. Priya's vernacular was definitely improving and her accent was almost gone. It was hard to stop thinking things like 'in another month she'll sound like she was born here'.

"I'm so proud," Kirsten said. "Still, it's a good idea."

So we did that, sort of. I'm not going to go into details. We made love for quite a long time and eventually went to sleep. I didn't remember dreaming at all and I woke up feeling comfortable and contented until I remembered that it was Priya last whole day. Tomorrow, she'd have to die. I had a whole day to come up with some last ditch scheme to save her or I'd have to take her back to the plant and either cut her head off or watch somebody else do it. Talk about a choice of two evils. What had seemed like a regrettable necessity a month before had turned into an impending disaster. People have gone berserk over less. I imagined myself 'going postal' as the Americans say and turning up at work with a gun and shooting everybody in sight. Of course, that wouldn't do any good and besides, I didn't have a gun. Going mad might have been a relief but I remained depressingly lucid. What would tomorrow be like? We could have another nice day out, of course. A lovely walk in the park and then a quick trip to the slaughterhouse. Oh look, Pri, it's half past four. Finish your ice cream, it's time to go.

I looked at Kirsten and Priya, still peacefully asleep, and a terrible thought occurred to me. I could kill Priya now. A bit of pressure on the carotid artery, and she'd never know, never wake up, never have to face that last walk to the block. Would that be a kindness? Kirsten would wake up with Priya dead in her arms and she'd probably never forgive me for that or for cheating her of the chance to say goodbye. I touched Priya's neck gently and she murmured in her sleep. I couldn't do it. I slipped carefully out of bed and went downstairs to make breakfast.

I went through the motions with automatic efficiency, still brooding. I couldn't cheat Priya of her last day either, but wasn't there the germ of an idea there? I could kill Priya myself in her last hour and carry her into the plant already dead. Not strictly standard procedure, but was there a rule against it? I didn't care. They could fire me if there was and anybody bothered to report it. I'd ask Priya tomorrow afternoon, it wasn't a subject I felt like bringing up at breakfast, we'd had enough drama lately. I'd have to carry this one on my own for a bit.

I took my time but by the time I put the eggs in, I was still on my own. Were they still asleep? I supposed I'd better check, so I went upstairs. I found Priya and Kirsten in what you might describe as an intimate embrace. "Would you like breakfast in bed, ladies?" I asked primly.

Kirsten looked up, shamefaced. "Sorry, we just, er..."

"Yes," Priya said, unabashed. "Breakfast for three. Bring it up, 'Jeeves'. Then get your kit off and join us. We can eat it together and then....."

"We'll finish what you started? Sounds like an offer I can't refuse."

I finished making breakfast and brought it up. We ate it in bed together, all of us naked. It wasn't easy keeping three plates of full English breakfast steady, so it got a bit messy; we didn't mind, it just meant we occasionally had to lick bits of creamed mushroom sauce, baked beans, egg yolk and bacon fat off each other. This didn't so much change into making love as it was a part of it. The post-eating part was just a continuation of the meal. I don't know how to describe it except to say that it certainly wasn't fucking and it was only tangentially related to sex. If you want to get technical, I didn't enter anybody and I didn't ejaculate. There wasn't exactly what you'd think of as an orgasm but there was something else. There was some kissing. Remember when I said that kissing Priya was better than fucking anybody else? Well it was like that but all over and with three of us. Eventually we just held each other and fell asleep again for about half a hour and that was part of it too.

If I described it as a taste of Heaven you'd probably think of an advert for Cadbury's chocolate flake bars, but I can't come up with anything better.

Priya woke up first, I think. "You two should go to work," she said gently.

Kirsten got up on one elbow and gazed at her. Yes, gazed. Totally entranced, besotted, love- struck, mooncalf look. "I don't want to leave you..."

I didn't either. Not ever. "Bugger work," I said.

"What we just did," Priya said, "Was beautiful. Please leave me with that for a while. I want you to go before you start feeling sorry for me again. Take a break. Find some time to compose yourselves."

Kirsten and I looked at each other. We were in complete sympathy. How any times had that happened when we'd been together? Roughly, never. Occasional coincidences of mutual lust don't really compare.

"How long?" Kirsten asked.

"As long as you need," Priya said. Yoda had nothing on her. Yet not backwards did she to speak need.

"What will you be doing?" I asked.

"Putting the bedsheets in the washing machine," Priya said. "And looking forward to seeing you both again. Now go." She kissed us both.

We went. We picked up a few items of clothing and left Priya in peace. Before we left the house we took a quick shower together. We soaped each other's backs and did all the usual things people do who are totally at ease with each other.

"I should feel angry," Kirsten mused. "I'm sure I should."

"Maybe you got tired of it," I suggested.

"Maybe it's just pointless," Kirsten said. "Being angry won't help. Nothing I can think of to do will."

I had to agree. It was hopeless, totally hopeless. I could fantasise about ways to save Priya but nothing I could think of would work. I could beat myself over the head with it, but what good would that do? "So how DO you feel?"

"I don't know how to describe it. I should feel sad, but that's pointless too. When she's gone I'm going to hurt so much I'll probably wish I was dead. Right now, I feel sort of exalted, like I'm living in a different and better world because I know her. Does that make any sense?"

I recognised the symptoms. "It does if you're in love."

Kirsten shrugged slightly. "I am, I suppose. It fits the general description, no point pretending I'm not. Personally, I'd always thought it was bullshit. Moon in June, hearts and flowers: - sentimental crap. You fuck people when you're horny and if you like them you stick around for a while."

"And you stuck around because, what, I was good in the sack?" It was just a question, I wasn't bitter. Yes, dear reader, I had been a bit stung when she left me. I was over it.

"Yes, you were," Kirsten said. "And, yes, I did like you. You never hit me."

"It would take a braver man than me..." I started to say. I meant it as a joke. Then I got it.

"No," Kirsten said. "A coward." She turned away, turned the shower off and tossed me a towel.

"I wouldn't have thought you were the sort of woman who'd put up with that," I said, frowning as I dried off.

"I'm not any more." Kirsten sighed. "It's a boringly cliched story. I was young, naive and in love or thought I was. I didn't know the meaning of the word, really. He was older, charming, hunky and handsome. The first time he hit me he was 'sorry' afterwards and I forgave him. Stop me if you've heard it before."

"He swore he'd never do it again and you believed him because you wanted to but he did it anyway," I guessed. Things were starting to fall into place. She was right, it was an old story.

"Yes. The third time I hit back and he beat me badly. Strong woman versus stronger man; no contest unless the woman's a trained fighter or armed. I got out after spending a night in casualty pretending I'd walked into a door several times. Two more dysfunctional relationships later, I gave up on romance and took self defence classes instead. Sex was sex, why dress it up? You only get hurt."

"And me?"

Kirsten made a face. "I was starting to like you a bit too much. I knew you'd never stay with a hard-nosed bitch like me once the novelty of the sex wore off and you realised you could do far better, so I left first."

"That's a bit harsh. If you'd been more like you are now, I might not have left you at all." I finished dressing.

"Maybe not, I didn't want to take the chance. Maybe I thought I didn't deserve any better. You're thinking 'low self-esteem', no doubt."

"It had crossed my mind. And you're thinking 'knowing the name of the problem doesn't automatically solve it'."

"Bingo."

We walked down the stairs and to the front door. A thought struck me. "The gorilla, did he...?"

"No," Kirsten said. "Gorillas are big, but not particularly vicious. Unfortunately, not particularly bright either, or much good in bed. I just got bored."

Thank God for that. If King Kong had hit Kirst I'd have felt obliged to go round and punch him in the face, and probably got beaten up too. A man's gotta do, etc. Now I thought about it, she hadn't looked bruised. I nodded. "And came running back to me to find you'd been replaced..."

"By exactly what I'd expected all along. A superior model. I'd heard you were knocking off one of the livestock and it turned out to be her. A proper woman, somebody better than I ever could be. I came to sneer and stayed to worship the ground she bloody walks on."

"You're far too hard on yourself, Kirst. I've seen quite a bit of what you could be lately and it looks pretty damned good from where I'm standing."

"Thank you. Maybe there's hope for me yet." Kirsten smiled lopsidedly. "I just don't like the price tag."

"What price? Pri was going to die anyway." I grimaced involuntarily. "If you hadn't run out on me she'd be long gone already. I don't see how you can work that out to where what's going to happen to her is your fault."

We were standing outside on the pavement by then. It looked like being a nice day.

"I know. I just don't like giving up on her."

"Neither do I. Well, I'd better get going. What are you going to do?"

"Go to work, like the Mistress said. I'll tell them I've had gastroenteritis but I'm feeling a bit better now and I'm fairly sure I'm not contagious any more. That way I can leave when I like and they'll hold the door open for me and pay for my taxi."

I laughed. "Very cunning. Well, I'll see you later."

We kissed goodbye affectionately and I set off to work. I decided to walk, it was only a couple of miles and it would give me time to think. I had a lot to think about. Funny how things work out. If Kirst hadn't had a run of bad boyfriends that had turned her into an emotionally armoured bitch, we'd never have met Priya and Pri wouldn't have had her last happy month. The 'last' part being the fly in the ointment. I knew perfectly well there was little chance I could do anything about it but soften the blow, but I couldn't give up looking until the final moment. I went over it in my mind again and again, but I couldn't see anything I hadn't before. I could refuse to bring her back but the immigration authorities would get her in the end, I'd be arrested and also fired, which meant I might not even get Priya's ova and then no Susan.

I wasn't any further forward when I got to the plant. All I had was that Pri had been right about Kirsten all along. What was it she'd said? I didn't recall the exact words at the time, but I remembered the general idea. Since I've written all this down, I'll refer to my first recollection of the conversation:

"She tried to be nasty to me when we first met but she couldn't because I was going to die. She is too decent to kick someone when they are down. A heartless person wouldn't care."

She'd seen through Kirst right away, due to superior feminine intuition or maybe the fact that she didn't have a history with her, while I'd been stung once before. It all made sense in retrospect, as these things usually do. I went in.

As luck would have it, I caught a screamer, the first one I'd seen in months. One of the girls being delivered panicked and ran wild, dodging the men who were herding the livestock towards the preparation rooms more by luck and surprise than strategy. She headed straight for me. Maybe because I have a kind face, or maybe because I wasn't dressed in overalls or a security uniform, she seemed to think I could help her. It was hard to be sure as she was jabbering urgently in a foreign language and I didn't understand a word. I took her in a comforting embrace and murmured something like 'there, there, it's all right', assuming the tone of voice would get through even if the words didn't. She clung to me, sobbing. I reached up to her neck and gently strangled her. I cut off the blood supply to her brain via the carotid and it's painless if the victim isn't struggling. She went limp in my arms.

"Is she dead?" one of the stock handlers asked. They preferred to keep them alive because it was less work if they could walk than carrying them.

"Just unconscious," I said. I handed the girl over. She hardly weighed anything. She was unshaven and smelled a bit and she was thin and frail looking, not much meat on her at all. I've mentioned that Priya was small by English standards but she was well made and healthy and a couple of inches taller, a Malaysian She-Hulk compared to this poor, scrawny waif. Probably half starved for most of her life. Boiled up, she might make a decent pot of soup.

Well, that's where overpopulation gets you. Sorry, but it is. "Don't let her wake up," I said.

"But that's not..." the stockman didn't want to contradict the Boss so 'standard procedure' went unsaid.

I nodded understandingly. "You don't have the authority?" I suggested. "More than your job's worth?"

He looked relieved. "Yes, sir," he said.

Bugger standard procedure. What had the kid to look forward to, a few more moments of terror if she woke up? "No problem," I said. "I do." I grabbed the girl's neck again.

"Sir, you can't...."

I held the grip until I was sure the girl was dead. "I just did. Carry on."

The oaf just stared at me, holding the dead girl's body awkwardly. He looked affronted, offended, discomfited, whatever. Well, now he'd have to lug the meat through the shaving, washing and weighing routine, the poor dear. My heart bled for him. He looked over his shoulder at his colleagues, some of whom were grinning. He'd pulled the short straw, he might actually have to do some work.

"Yes, I killed her," I said. "What a pity. And she had such a promising future." I suspected that it was a waste of irony. "MOVE!" He flinched at the tone. "If you want a job to come back to tomorrow..."

He moved. Everybody else contrived to look busy. The Boss was in a mood. I went off to have a word with Arthur about the special arrangements for the next day, when I'd have to kill Pri. I could do it like that if she wanted. I'd have to do it looking her in the eye and holding her. She'd probably prefer it that way. I couldn't bring myself to trick her, she deserved to have a choice. I wanted to keep as many options open as possible so I told Arthur to prepare for the chopping block, after hours one. It didn't take long.

After that, in a sort of obsessive fugue, I visited the prep rooms. The livestock were just finishing their shower and shave and being weighed. I asked some of them what the dead screamer's name was. There was a tradition that when you catch a screamer you get to eat her 'filet'. I wasn't sure I wanted to, but just in case, I had to know her name.

The livestock flinched away from me like sheep from a wolf. Maybe I looked a bit savage and they thought I was going to kill them too. It might have been funny considering their circumstances but I wasn't in a jocular mood. It took a while to find one of them who understood the question and said the girl's name had been Sami.

They actually looked relieved when I left. The Big Bad Wolf was going away, all they had to do was line up in an orderly fashion and have their heads chopped off. People are funny like that.

You may have got the impression that I was not quite right in the head at the time. I went up to the office to catch up on some work and was wondering whether I should order Sami and cook her in an oven (should be about as much meat as a turkey) when I put some Vangelis on headphones to calm me down. Better than librium, music to hang-glide by. It had been recommended to me at a chess congress years ago as stress relief. I tried to imagine that I was off in the clouds and not having to kill Pri, tried not to wish I was back in time with her and, yes, Kirsten too. I tried and failed. It takes a lot to pull my trigger, I'm not a violent man, but....

'To the Unknown Man' sounded uncomfortably like a dirge and that wasn't helping. I switched to 'Pulstar' and it sounded jejeune, irrelevant. I was about to switch to the Albedo track (I'd always liked that though Kirst thought Vangelis was all facile bollocks unless it was on the soundtrack to 'Blade Runner') when I sensed some human presence in the room, as you do.

Well, sort of human. "You're very good at killing women, aren't you?" That was all I needed. Lisa was back.

"It's a gift," I said. "Quite useful in my line of work. Sorry, OUR line of work." Sneer at me if you like but don't forget you work here too was implied. One more word and I'd gut her with a paper knife. Or something. I didn't have one. So what? I didn't need one. I could just strangle her, she was right, I was good at that. Down, boy, I told my inner child. Refocus. Start again.

Lisa had come in from the mezzanine looking tight-lipped and abstracted.

"Good morning," I said flatly. She didn't return the greeting, just stood there looking at me with an odd expression on her face.

"I want you to do it," was what she finally said. "Like all the others down there. Cut my head off. Turn me into meat."

"What?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Was this her idea of a joke? If so, it was in very poor taste.

"Consent form's on your desk." Lisa said shortly.

And there it was, properly filled out and signed. I examined it very carefully, I can tell you. I nodded. Was that why she'd been watching all the poor girls we processed getting chopped up? And I'd thought she was either gloating or an undercover government inspector. I kept my voice level with an effort. "All right. Clothes off," I ordered brusquely. "Or would you rather strip in the stock room with the others?"

Lisa undressed, starting with her useless glasses. Without them and the sour expression, she wasn't bad looking. Off came her blouse, button by button, then her skirt, her bra and finally her shoes. She had no panties on. Had she ever worn any? There she stood, naked and trembling slightly, one youngish adult Caucasian heifer in good condition. About an inch or so under Kirsten's height and less muscular, breasts quite large without being excessive, good skin tone. Perfectly edible, at a first assessment. Her large, dark-pink nipples were erect. She looked clean and she'd also depilated herself, so there'd be no need to shave her.

I nodded and very casually picked another form out of my lower left desk drawer, the substitution one. I filled it in quickly, including Priya's stock number. "Just sign this," I said, handing it over, "And we'll get on with it."

Lisa scanned the form indifferently. "So you can keep your little meat poppet a bit longer?" she guessed, her lip curling in distaste.

"Yes." Quite a lot longer, actually, but I wasn't about to tell her that.

"Why should I?"

"Because you want me to kill you with the sword, don't you?" I guessed, praying it would work. "If you don't sign this, I won't do it. You'll go to the stock room and wait with the others until the boys on the floor are ready for you. What difference does it make to you? You're just meat now."

"And if I do..."

"VIP treatment. I'll have it done exactly how you want it, on my word." It was difficult to keep from sounding too desperate. She was obviously insane and might deny my dear Priya her life on a whim. "It will take you all of ten seconds."

Lisa tossed her head in disdain. "You've fallen for that little cow, haven't you? And you never even looked at me once."

Jealousy? Bloody Hell. I could have pointed out that she'd never tried to attract me, quite the opposite, but I couldn't be bothered. "Sign, or you go in the scraps grinder alive and come out as dogmeat," I snapped. Oh God, I hoped that wasn't what she actually wanted. Had I overplayed it?

"You'd really do it, wouldn't you?" Lisa stared at me with what looked more like respect than anything I'd seen from her before.

"In a second. Come on, what do you care anyway? You'll be dead in a few minutes."

"I don't..." Lisa paused. Petty spite warred with her vanity, at a guess, while I crossed my fingers and prayed again that she really didn't wan't to be dogmeat.

It was probably only a pause of a few seconds though it seemed like half an eternity to me, but than she shrugged and signed the form. "You'll get tired of her soon enough anyway," she muttered shrewishly.

I didn't care. It was all I could do not to punch the air and shout 'WooHoo'. I could almost have hugged her. Instead, I said with false calm "We'd better get you weighed." I phoned Arthur on the shop floor. "Slight change of plans, sorry. I want to move up a certain stock item and get her done today. Right now. Don't worry about the overtime I booked, you'll get paid for it anyway and you won't even have to stay late. Okay? Thanks. In about five or ten minutes. Can you get the sword out? Yes. I'll explain when I get down."

Of course I wanted to call Pri and Kirsten and tell them the good news but I had to hang on to my professionalism a while longer. Even a mad bitch like Lisa deserves to be handled properly, and I didn't want the slightest thing to go wrong. She would be humanely dispatched in front of witnesses and all the paperwork done before I could let off steam. "All right, Lisa, let's go."

She nodded curtly and followed me out. She was breathing heavily and I hoped she wasn't going to panic and bolt. It was a nuisance when they did that. "How long have you been planning this?" I inquired, hoping to distract her.

"Before I came here," she said distantly. "That's why I took the job."

It made sense of a sort, in retrospect. She had been overqualified for the position. I remembered the frosty look she'd given me when I'd mentioned the consent forms as I booked Priya out. Maybe she hadn't wanted to be rushed into it. "Just making your mind up?" I guessed. She nodded. "What clinched it for you?"

"You did," Lisa said. "The way you took that heifer's head off with the sword..." She shuddered. "It was beautiful."

I'd guessed right. Beautiful? Silly cow. It was a clean kill, that's all. "I thought I did a decent job of it," I admitted. No point getting into an argument now. "It's wrong to make them suffer."

"That's why you finished off the other one, isn't it? You actually care about them, don't you?" Lisa seemed faintly incredulous.

"And you don't." It wasn't quite a question.

"I envied them," Lisa said distantly. Away with the fairies.

"Well, you won't have to any more, will you? Just a few minutes more and I'll do you just like I did Anjali. Having second thoughts?"

"Would it matter if I was? Would you let me go?"

Not a chance in hell. "No, sorry," I said. I wasn't sorry, of course, but it doesn't hurt to be polite. I'd take her head her head off neatly and hope she still thought it was beautiful. Just like I'd have to do Priya soon, I thought automatically, then it hit me again and my mind jumped tracks as if I'd had an electric shock. No. I wouldn't have to kill Priya, ever. It was hard to get my head around it. My heart raced and I felt dizzy. This couldn't be real. I must be dreaming. In a minute I'd wake up. Did you ever have a nightmare and wake up realising with relief that it wasn't real? Sometimes it takes a while and you're not sure. How would you feel if it happened the other way round?

"Something wrong?" Lisa sounded puzzled and slightly vexed, rather than concerned.

I almost laughed out loud. "No, nothing." I pushed open the door to the preparation room. "Up on the scale, please." Lisa complied. Several girls were waiting there with a stockman. I nodded to them as I noted Lisa's weight and wrote it on a stock processing form with the stock number that had been Priya's. Then I took out a marker pen and wrote the number on Lisa's left thigh. She smelled of both fear and arousal. "Nice legs. Looks like I'll be having you for dinner tonight," I said cheerfully. Lisa gasped 'oh!' and gulped. "Something wrong?"

"My number. It's hers. You've ordered me." She sounded shocked. Presumably she'd only just realised the full implications of what she'd done.

"Problem with that?" As if I gave a toss.

There were tears in her eyes. "I wanted to be in the butchers' window," she whispered meekly. "But it doesn't matter now..." She sounded so pathetically sad that I actually felt sorry for her. I'm such a bloody softie.

"What you want doesn't matter," I agreed, "But don't worry, I can change the order. I'm the bloody manager, aren't I? I'll see most of you goes to the butchers' and just take a few steaks for me and my 'poppet', okay?" Why be too hard on her? Besides, I didn't really want to be eating Lisa for weeks. "Your fine tits and pussy will be on a tray in the butchers' window for all the world to see, I promise."

"Oh, thank you!" Lisa said. She sounded genuinely grateful, another new experience for me.

Definitely a nut job, but I wasn't complaining. "Okay, you're ready to go," I said and led her out to the cutting floor. The men were just finishing a batch, Arthur had halted the next lot to let the 'special order' through. He probably still thought it was my pet meatgirl and was wondering why I was in such a hurry to chop her. He looked surprised to see Lisa.

"Isn't that your secretary?" he wondered. She obviously wasn't one of the usual stock.

"Was," I said. "Now she's livestock. A very specific item." I nodded at the marking on Lisa's leg and then showed him the paperwork. "A substitution." Another piece of paper, a work order signed by me authorising the stock item's immediate slaughter.

Arthur nodded. "This all looks in order," he said. If it wasn't, of course, my authorisation made me personally responsible for it so it was no skin of his nose. Lisa was watching the last two of the current batch being laid on tables. Thunk! Off went one of their heads. She was trembling and fondling herself. "Don't get too many of these," Arthur commented. Thunk! Off went the last one's head. Lisa gasped.

"No, we don't. We might think about repricing her meat." 'Don't get many of these' was an understatement. Some people think it's quite common for women to succumb to the erotic lure of the chopping block but it's really quite rare. Some suicides choose it as a cleaner way to go than the usual botched do-it-yourself efforts, but not many.

"I'll leave that to you and the sales department," Arthur said. "I'll keep the meat on ice until you decide. Want any reserved?"

"Half a dozen thigh steaks, right leg, thanks," I said. Might as well see what she tasted like.

The meat was trembling and shifting from foot to foot with fear or anticipation as she watched me pick up the sword. "On the table, Lisa," I said. She climbed up awkwardly and lay down, neck over the block. Oddly enough, I found the sight perversely arousing. Maybe it was because I sort of knew her. Maybe I was just looking forward to eating her with Pri and Kirst before I went to bed with them for what now would not be the last time. I ran my hand down her smooth back and caressed the base of her spine, pressing down on the coccyx. She made a low, throaty moan and ground her hips and pubis against the table. I should have had this filmed. "Ready?" I asked.

"Yes!" she gasped.

I took a steadying breath. Neither delaying nor hurrying, I laid the blade across her neck to get a clear line, lifted the sword and brought it down in one smooth motion. Lisa's head came off neatly. Her body convulsed violently, then twitched a couple of times and was still.

"Very nice," Arthur approved. "Looks easy when you see it done, but not many people can do that right."

"Thanks," I said absently. I picked Lisa's head out of the bucket. Was there a spark of life left? Just in case there was, I said "Thanks, Lisa." I thought I saw a flicker of something in her eyes for a moment but maybe I imagined it. A second later there was nothing, she was gone. I put the head back. "Okay, Arthur, standard cut up job. Keep her meat on hold for a bit. I've just got some paperwork to do and then I'm off for a while, you're in charge."

I didn't stay to watch Lisa being cut up, I had more pressing matters to deal with. Yes, the paperwork. I made sure everything was in order, stamped, photocopied, filed, scanned, sent to the relevant authorities in triplicate marked do not mold, findle or sputilate. I couldn't allow the slightest possibility that anything could go wrong. It was literally a matter of life and death. I took about an hour doing things that should have taken me maybe ten minutes. Then I changed the orders so that most of Lisa would go out as butcher's meat. I like to keep my promises. I sent an offer to the shop we'd found 'Amelia' in. They'd probably jump at the chance to display a prime Caucasian female in the window.

Finally I allowed myself to phone Kirsten. "How's the bellyache?"

"Under control but I may have a relapse at any time. What's up?"

"Get yourself over to our place pronto. I'll explain when I get there."

"What...?"

"Kirst, trust me."

"I think I feel a bit sick..."

"Good girl."

When I got home, Kirsten was already there. I put my bag down on the kitchen table and we went through the usual hugs and kisses of greeting.

"All right, O Lord and Master," Kirsten said at last. "What's the crisis? And what's in the bag? Is it a surprise?"

"About three pounds of meat," I said. "Lisa's." I'd picked up the steaks on the way out.

Kirsten's eyebrows shot upwards. "What have you done? Finally murdered her? No that I'd blame you, but...."

"Killed her, yes, murdered, no. She volunteered. Apparently she had a sort of death fetish."

"Oh, the poor girl," Priya said.

Kirsten gave her a pitying headshake. Then she did a double take on me. "I don't suppose you...I mean did she...oh my God. Oh my God..."

I pulled a photocopy of the substitution form out of my pocket and handed it over. "Remember your stock number, Pri?"

Both of them scrutinised the document. "I don't believe it," Kirsten said, awed. "Is this really what I think it is?" I nodded. "How did you..?"

Pri shook her head, looking dazed. "Why would she..."

"Not for you," I said. "She'd already signed her consent. She wanted to go a certain way, and I said she could if she signed this too. It meant nothing to her." I didn't think I should mention the scrap grinder threat.

Pri looked as if she were about to faint. "Does this really mean...."

"You don't die tomorrow," I said firmly. I couldn't blame her, I could still hardly believe it myself. "We get to keep you. If you want, of course..."

"Of course," Pri said. "And I was SO looking forward to having my head chopped off tomorrow. Well, can't be helped, this will have to do." Then she did faint.

Kirsten caught her and carried her into the lounge. She woke up a few minutes later on the sofa with her head in Kirsten's lap and me offering her a cup of sweet tea. When she was coherent again, she asked "Am I dead and in Heaven or is this real?"

"Real," I said, stroking her bare right leg from the foot all the way up, under her skirt and up to her bare pubis. She giggled when I tickled her there.

"Naughty," she said.

"So," Kirst said, stroking her hair, "You want to stay here or bugger off back to Malaysia?"

"I can't go back," Pri said.

"Understandable, I suppose..."

"No, really, she can't," I said. "She doesn't exist there, she's legally dead." Once she'd been selected as livestock for sale she'd lost all her rights, of course.

"Oh, I'm sorry..."

"Don't be, I'm not," Pri said. "My life there is over. I'd rather stay here and be eaten by you two than go back there even if I could. What happens now, can I apply for British citizenship?"

"Yes," I said. "Briefly, once the substitution is verified, you get the legal rights Lisa had. She was a citizen, you were livestock. Now she's livestock, deceased. It works both ways. You just have to verify it at the registry office, sign a paper, fingerprints, DNA sample, etc. A formality. As far as I know, Lisa didn't have any children so if your DNA has no defects you also get her birthright."

Pri's eyes widened and she looked up at Kirsten. "Susan!" she exclaimed. "You don't have to..."

"I want to," Kirsten said. "Don't worry, we cunning British have other ways of extracting ova than slitting a woman's belly and gutting her." She leaned over and gave Pri an inverted kiss while slipping one hand under her blouse and unbuttoning her with the other. I think you can see where this was going.

"You do realise," I said, "That we'll have to get married?"

"Of course," Priya said.

"Congratulations," Kirsten said gallantly. "You'll make a lovely couple."

"Couple? Silly," Priya reproved. "He means you too. We're a triple."

Kirsten looked at me and I nodded. She went limp for a second and then recovered. "You're serious?"

"Let's not start all that again," I said. "Do you want to marry us or not?"

"Yes, of course, but.."

"But nothing. We both love Pri and she loves us. As for you," I shrugged, "The Kirsten I've been seeing lately is somebody I could easily get used to living with. Think you could too?"

"I think I could," Kirsten said thoughtfully. "It has been pretty good, hasn't it? There's just one problem...."

"What problem?" Priya asked seriously.

"I was rather looking forward to EATING YOU UP!" Kirst growled in a Big Bad Wolf impression as she nuzzled Pri's breasts and pretended to devour them.

I flipped the sound system on. It was playtime so I picked something appropriate, upbeat and offbeat both. St. Elmo's Fire by Brian Eno.

Brown eyes and I was tired We had walked and we had scrambled Through the moors and through the briars Through the endless blue meanders.

In the blue August Moon In the cool August Moon

Over the nights and through the fires We went surging down the wires Through the towns and on the highways Through the storms in all their thundering....

I don't know how long we fooled around for, but we stopped for a breath after a while. We were tangled up and half undressed. My penis, fully erect, was inside Kirsten. The player had cycled through 'Before and after Science' and back to good old St Elmo.

Then we rested in a desert Where the bones were white as teeth sir And we saw St Elmo's fire Splitting ions in the ether.

"You sure you want to marry me?" This can be an awkward question coming from a woman you're currently having sex with.

"Yes," Priya said.

"Yes," I agreed. "Worth a shot, don't you think?"

"Do you love me?"

"Yes," Priya said.

"I don't know if I'd go that far yet," I said. I had to be honest. "I like the new you a lot. I think I may be heading that way."

"Thing is, we know you're going to marry Pri. A triple? Some expert opinion has it that triples are less likely to work than pairs or foursomes...."

"Experts my arse. You've been watching daytime chat shows when your bosses think you're working. What matters is whether WE think it will work. It's a risk and you've been hurt before. Do you want to take that risk or spend the rest of your life wishing you had? Pri and I, we're solid, but you bring something else to us. It could be great, better than anything you've imagined. At least think about it. Pri's not going to die tomorrow so we'll still be here."

"No pressure then?"

"None at all. Take your time. Hungry?"

"Just a bit."

"I'll slap some Lisa steaks on the grill."

"Should we be eating somebody we don't like?"

"Be charitable. If Lisa hadn't gone troppo we wouldn't be able to keep Pri. Forgiveness is a virtue. Besides, I said I'd have her for dinner and I don't like to go back on my word. You two can suit yourselves. I've got some leftover Thai prawn curry in the fridge that I could warm up..."

"Lisa steak, medium rare," Pri said quickly.

"Might as well try it," Kirsten agreed.

I slipped out of Kirst and the general tangle with some difficulty. "Carry on without me," I said and went into the kitchen. I couldn't be bothered to get dressed so I tied a towel round my waist as an improvised apron to stop hot fat splashing my wedding tackle. I took my time preparing the steaks and trimmings; nothing was urgent any more. I was still getting used to that but I enjoyed the feeling.

When I was done I took the food into the lounge. Kirst and Pri were still half naked and snuggled up, watching a Torchwood rerun on BBC5. I paused the programme, the TV could record the rest for later. "Grub's up," I said. "Grilled leg of snooty secretary with salad and wholemeal bread." We tucked in.

"This is good," Priya said after a couple of mouthfuls.

"Not bad at all," Kirsten admitted. "Nice to know she was good for something."

"Oh, be fair," I said. "She was a pretty good secretary too. Annoying, yes, and rude, but efficient. Why do you think I never fired her? Now I'll have to find another one."

"Be sure to pick somebody tasty looking just in case," Kirst suggested. Pri punched her lightly.

I could just imagine that. "Your qualifications look fine, Miss Smith. Now if you'll just strip off so I can see how you'll do as meat if you decide to get chopped up..." Might be a bit off-putting.

"I could do it," Pri said. "Fill in for her until you find somebody qualified, anyway."

Kirsten looked concerned. "Wouldn't that bother you?"

"No," Pri said. "Now, tell me again. The tall one in the coat who you said looked 'shaggable'..."

"Captain Jack. Seriously yummy."

"He's gay," I pointed out.

"So why was he coming on to the pretty, dark girl?"

"Martha," Kirsten said. "She's pretty shaggable too. And he's not exactly gay, he's bisexual." Priya looked confused.

"She's right," I admitted. "The character is bisexual, the actor is gay."

"He's very convincing," Pri said. "Now where did that Dalek come from? I thought they were all gone. Or did this happen before...."

I let Kirsten explain while I finished my Lisa steak. She did taste very good, maybe I should have ordered more of her. I must admit I found the idea of Priya working as my secretary a bit bizarre and not a little disturbing, but I couldn't find any logical reason why not. How was it any odder than me working there while I was living with an ex-meatgirl? And Pri had never been the sort of person to avoid facing hard realities. "Pri," I said, interrupting a long explanation from Kirst about why the Dalek was there, "Do you really want to do it?"

"Yes, if you like," she said.

"What makes you think you'll be any good at it?"

Priya shrugged. "It can't be that hard. I can use a computer and answer the telephone. I must be better than nothing at all, and that's what you'll have until you get a proper one. Besides, I'm going to be a citizen, I should get used to earning my keep. And I could help with screamers..."

"How?"

"I don't know, maybe talk to them? I know Hindi, Urdu and Cantonese as well as English..."

Kirsten shook her head. "And I can't even speak French."

"Why should you? You won the Napoleonic wars. You live in a country with one language.."

"There's Welsh. I can't speak Welsh either."

"Nor can most of the Welsh," I pointed out. "And even those who do can speak English as well." I turned to Priya. "Okay, you're hired as a temp. You start tomorrow."

Now Kirsten looked really worried. "Are you sure that's wise?"

"If she doesn't like it, she can resign," I said. Pri didn't need wrapping in cotton wool, she was tough.

"I'll be fine, love," Priya said. "What are you worried about? Do you think I'll be tempted to go back to the meat line? I am not a fool like Lisa, not that I wish to speak ill of the dead. I have spent a month learning how good my life could be and schooling myself to accept that it would end soon. I will not go back. Trust me."

Kirsten took a breath. "All right," she said, but she gave me a look that said 'take care of her anyway'. I loved her for it.

"Now that's settled," Pri said, "The television programme?"

What happens after the story ends with 'happily ever after'? Read on.

I pressed 'resume' and we watched the rest of it. I'd seen it before, of course, but Pri hadn't and it was still better than anything else that was on. It's an old story, the more TV channels there are, the less there is that's worth watching. We spent the rest of the day in an unremarkable fashion. For us, anyway. It's funny how quickly you get used to things changing. The fact that Kirst insisted on us all getting stoned and listening to Led Zeppelin might have helped a bit. Pri particularly liked 'The Immigrant Song'. By bedtime it was almost as if we'd always been like this and the time when we'd thought Priya had to die was just a bad dream. The loss of the deadline didn't make the lovemaking any less passionate. Yes, we fucked. Imagine that. You should be so lucky. Get over it.

Going to work the next day was an odd feeling. Everything was the same in a way, but everything had changed. It was liked revisiting your old school as an adult, or somewhere you worked ten years before. It's the same, but you're not. Besides, Priya was with me. For always. Maybe it was the same bus I'd brought her home on, peeking at her tits through her borrowed overalls.

I'd asked her again the previous day whether she was sure she wanted to do it. Wouldn't it be difficult for her? Traumatic even?

"No," she'd said. "I need to go back to the plant. I don't want to have nightmares about it in my later life, now that I'm going to have one."

I think I just about understood that. I'm a bit slow sometimes, but I get there.

I took Pri into the cutting room, at her request, and introduced her to Arthur as my new temporary secretary. You might think that could have been awkward, as he would have been in charge of having her butchered if I hadn't picked her out for some light sexual relief. Somehow, it wasn't.

"Pleased to meet you, Miss Jones," Arthur said politely. Pri had chosen the new surname from the Torchwood episode we'd watched. They shook hands in a perfectly civil fashion. As Pri turned to go, Arthur caught my eye and mouthed 'Lucky bastard.' It wasn't a boy's locker room leering look, just genuine appreciation that Pri had class.

I couldn't disagree with that. In a simple outfit of blouse, skirt and sandals, she looked amazing and, more than that, she had a quality to her that can't be bought. Of course, I'm biased, I love her. I did have the odd moment of cognitive dissonance at seeing her there with any clothes on at all. I remembered picking her out of the line. Even naked, she'd still had that poise, that self- possessed dignity. That hadn't changed. Was that what had drawn me to her? Or had my dreams just pulled her through my garden gate? I'd come running to tie her shoe any day.

Priya didn't flinch from the sight of the women being led in to be slaughtered, either, not that I'd thought she would. One of them was weeping quietly. Pri walked up to her, put a hand on her shoulder and said something in a language I didn't even recognise, much less understand. The woman nodded and replied, seeming to brace herself. We went up to the office.

"What did you say to her?" I asked.

Priya cocked her head at me quizzically and smiled. "What do you think?"

"No idea. Something like 'keep a stiff upper lip' but in one of those funny Malaysian languages?"

"I wished her peace of mind and the courage to face her fate with dignity," Priya said. "In other words, yes, 'keep a stiff upper lip'. You British have such a way with words."

"WE British", I reminded her. The woman would be dead in a few minutes but she might have found some comfort in that for the little time she had left. I nodded approval. "Well done."

It's a bit weird playing the boss to your lover, but Pri and I took it in our stride quite easily. It was far nicer than working with Lisa (RIP) once we got the hang of it. On the way home, she insisted on going to the butchers shop where Lisa's tasty parts were on show in the window, just as she'd wanted, to pay her respects or something.

Since I was in an understandably good mood, I offered to buy her Lisa's filet. Well, you only live once. She declined.

"I would prefer to be eaten by people who know me and love me," she said. "I think Lisa would have preferred to have her private parts eaten by total strangers. I don't understand that, but I must respect it."

"We never loved her or even knew her very well," I pointed out. That made her fair game.

Pri shook her head. "It still wouldn't feel right. She had it all, everything I always wanted. She was a free British citizen with rights and she threw it all away. If she hadn't, I'd be on the chopping block about now." She looked again at the window display. "This is where she wanted to be. Let's leave her there."

I thought Lisa's filet looked pretty appetising on a bed of parsley, but I detected a hint of melancholy in Pri's voice, so I said "Does this mean you don't want another Lisa thigh steak?" We had three left. All the more for me.

Pri wrinkled her nose. "Mmm, Lisa thigh steak," she said in a Homer Simpson voice. "Bring it on."

Kirsten was waiting for us when we got home.

Dear reader, I married her, of course. Pri, I mean, as soon as her citizenship was confirmed. Kirsten insisted on being our 'illicit' mistress, at least until Susan was born. When she was in a weakened post-partum state we took advantage. It had taken me a while to get over the fact that Kirst had ditched me, but I'd managed it long before she did. I exercised my famous tact. "All right, I love you, we both love you, you awkward bitch. Now will you fucking well marry us and stop pissing us about?"

"Oh, all right then," she said. So we married her too.

Susan is four years old now. Dark grey eyes, skin a shade lighter than Pri's, build about halfway between hers and Kirsten's, wavy chestnut brown hair. Beautiful. It doesn't get any better than this.