Giles rolled over again in his lonely bed and turned the pillow under his head so that his cheek rested against the cooler side. The slivers of greyish light that escaped the edges of his curtains were still too faint for it to be time to get up and he closed his eyes again.

'It was too soon. You took advantage of her.'

'She kissed me back. She kissed me first.'

'She kissed you on the cheek. Both times. Not exactly a sign of passion.'

'Well, she's fragile...'

'Exactly, and you grabbing her like that was the height of gentlemanly sensitivity, I suppose?'

'I just wanted her to know how I felt... and it wasn't just me doing the kissing.'

'And that has nothing to do with taking her by surprise, or because she might have thought you expected something of her after paying for her to come over or because you're her employer.'

'I'm her business partner. It's a totally different thing.'

'And you're sure she's aware of the distinction?'

'It's Anya. Of course she's aware of the distinction.'

'She told you she wanted to learn how to be just her.'

'And I planned to let her. I'm visiting, not moving in with her. That's why I waited until we were at the airport. That way if she seemed uncomfortable about it then I could leave it long enough before the next visit for the awkwardness to diffuse. I didn't know that I was going to end up on a plane out there less than 24 hours after I got home. It's not my fault Joyce is back in the land of the living.'

Giles rolled over again and threw back the covers. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and rested his elbows on his knees to rub at his tired eyes. After a week of seeing Paris from Anya's perspective, coming home had made him feel old again. It made him wonder what a beautiful woman could see in a middle-aged man like him. It made him second guess her every response. It made him wonder when his landlady flirted with him, if perhaps a forty-five-year-old divorcee wasn't more his speed than a youthful ex-demon.

He grabbed his robe from the hook on the back of the bedroom door and put it on as he padded along the hall to his kitchen. He switched on the kettle and pulled a bundle of dark-coloured clothes from the tumble dryer, tossing them into a laundry basket. Then, he transferred his damp whites from the washing machine and set the timer on the dryer for an hour before he pulled a mug from the cupboard and placed a teabag in it. It was far too early to worry about the niceties of making the perfect cuppa and he splashed boiling water into the cup, stirred the bag round with a spoon until it was vaguely the right colour and then flipped the lid on his pedal bin and flicked the used bag into it with a somnolent ease that spoke of habit. He pulled a pint of milk from the otherwise empty fridge and splashed some into the cup.

He carried it through to the living room and set it down on the coffee table before returning for the clothes basket. There seemed little point in ironing everything only to squash it all into a suitcase, but he folded it into neat piles before he fetched the case from the spare room and started filling it again.

Joyce was back, and unlike Buffy her death had been properly recorded. Insurance policies had been claimed on. There were death certificates, autopsy records, records of the house's change in ownership. The gallery had been sold. Sooner rather than later he was going to have to call in the council and get them to use their influence to set everything to rights. It simply wasn't possible to go through any official channel. Their help would, no doubt, come with strings attached, but Giles would have to worry about that when the time came. It was a small price to pay if it meant that Buffy could reclaim some part of her youth.

First, though, he had a duty to discover what had happened and to make sure that it really was Joyce who had come back. That meant his idea of allowing Anya a cooling down period was no longer possible. He looked from the half-full suitcase to the tumble dryer, knowing it would be some time before those clothes were ready to pack. He picked up his cup and made his way to the desk in the corner where his computer was set up. It was ridiculous, of course. Anya would only have been back in Sunnydale a matter of hours. She wouldn't have had a chance to look for an apartment, much less move her things in. It was totally irrational to think that she might be online, but he booted up the old PC anyway, watching the yellow smiley face as it said it was signing him in.

He waited as his scant friend list came up, shocked to see a little blonde icon next to Anya's name rather than the grey symbol that would have meant she wasn't available, the status message next to it proclaiming that she was "hanging out at the internet café".

Suddenly an off-white box took over about half the screen. "Hey!" she said. "I miss you."