Read Online Bodies and Sole by Hilary MacLeod - Free Book Online

though.” Hy looked closer into the cabinet. “Not all the ones here.”
    â€œOh, yep, those are all island snakes.”
    â€œThey can’t be island snakes. There are only two kinds here. They must be from away.”
    â€œCaught ’em and skinned them myself.”
    And then it came to her. The snakes were from away – and from the island. The bizarre fall of snakes from the sky last summer. An unexplained phenomenon that had chosen The Shores as it target. There’d been no official recording of them by species. They fell too fast and slithered away just as quickly. Truth was, Ian, the self-styled scientist, was terrified of snakes, and hadn’t pursued even one.
    As they left Big Bay, the idea began to unfold in Hy’s mind about Moira’s wedding dress.
    But would she go for it?

Chapter Eleven
    The boys were settled, her art in place.
    Vera took turns spending evenings with them. She’d never been that handy but she’d learned that elderly gentlemen liked a woman knitting or crocheting or engaging in some form of feminine art, sitting with them in the evening. She’d taken the habit of making crocheted covers for toilet paper in pastel Phentex yarn. She’d expanded from there to making antimacassars to keep natural oils off the backs of armchairs. Only one of her boys used an armchair, and he was not the least bit oily, but she had to do something to while away the hours.
    None of them were great conversationalists, or was it just that they had run out of conversation with her?
    â€œWhat are you reading, dear?”
    The most she got was a grunt. Or at least it sounded like a grunt. Blair’s eyes were, as usual, glued to his latest book.
    She looked at the walls around them. In fact, she couldn’t see any walls. They were all covered, floor to ceiling, wall to wall, in bookshelves jammed with books.
    He’d read every single one of them and Frank delivered more every day.
    She was surprised Blair could even keep up with them. He was having a hard time. They were stacked in piles at his feet, tomes as yet unread.
    He was plowing – chronologically – through every work of fiction ever written, she thought. Certainly all the main stuff. He was now well into the nineteenth century – terrain that was more familiar and palatable to her than Beowulf and Chaucer’s incomprehensible early English. But she never read herself, just crocheted at his side every third evening and anticipated when he’d come to the last page.
    Even then he rarely uttered a word, not one that she could remember in recent history. He just held up that book in a certain way, and she knew. He was finished. She’d slip it out of his hands, find it a place in the bookshelves, arranged alphabetically by author, and then pick up one of the ones at his feet and slip it into his waiting hands. It didn’t usually matter which one. He always seemed content with her selection. He certainly never objected. The smile on his face was her reward.
    Each of her ex-husbands got two evenings a week of her company, and all three appeared satisfied with the arrangement.
    The truth was that Vera was an incredibly boring woman, and so they were probably happy to be left mostly to themselves.
    Charlie, the artist, would not even turn from his easel to greet her when she came in. He was a slow and meticulous painter, and the same work could sit on that easel night after night, week after week, month after month. He always returned, though, to the same unfinished painting. The painting of her. There it would be, suddenly produced and propped up on the easel. There would be no crocheting then. She would have to stand and pose for him. Sometimes she felt his eyes were hinting at more – at a renewal of their marital relations. But he’d never been any good at it, and the thought of him pawing her body made her shudder. You would have thought his artist’s hands would have