Extract from MRS. MARTIN

(Short extract taken from midway in Mrs. Martin's chapter, which follows on from CLARA)

It didn’t matter that he was so much older. It didn’t matter that he looked as if he was pieced together from an assortment of domestic items (ears like handles, nose like a cup hook, teeth like discoloured piano keys). He was the first person who had ever been kind to her and she began to think that maybe this was what love could be.

Every lunchtime he would ride his bike over to the library (where she worked as a receptionist) bringing something special from the bakery for her desert.

Monday: Custard filled bun

Tuesday: Strawberry donut dusted with icing sugar

Wednesday: Batch of freshly baked star-shaped cookies sprinkled with little coloured dots

Thursday: Chocolate brownie

Friday: Cheese twists and lemon-filled dough-drops

On afternoons after work he would ride back to the library to meet her, so that he could walk her home. Three miles is far when your knees are bad, but she was worth it. At the time she lived alone in a small apartment up the stairs of an unpainted four-storey building in a “rough neighbourhood”, he called it. Young men loitered by the corner. Street lights did not work. Garbage stank to high heavens. Rats, the size of puppies, frequently ran across the road to get to the other side. Either that, or they sat heavily on the steps, like pets waiting for their owners ...

(Cont'd)

***

(The woman in this chapter/extract is somehow connected to the one in the next)

An extract a day (until the launch) from ...

Daisy Chain
A stream-of-consciousness novel by Elspeth Duncan
Launch of e-version:
Friday May 7, 2010
6:00 - 7:30 p.m.
National Library/NALIS, P.O.S.
You are invited.