Sublime

Als Tierärztin musste sie sich mit einer Menge seltsamer Kreaturen herumschlagen. Damit meinte sie allerdings nicht die Patienten. Nein, diese waren niedlich, knuffig, putzig – und der Grund, warum Audrey Smart sich überhaupt für diesen Beruf entschieden hatte. Audrey hatte noch nie

Grace Macaulay, then: seventeen, small and plump, with skin that went brown by the end of May. Her hair was black and oily, and had the hot consoling scent of an animal in summer. She disliked books, and was by nature a thief if she found a thing to be beautiful, but not hers. She didn’t know she couldn’t sing. She was inclined to be cross.

An air altogether of occupying a time not his own – might he be more at ease in an Edwardian dining room, say, or on a pitching clipper’s deck? Very likely.

Occasionally she would seem to become the sole focus of his interest, and he’d interrogate her with the attention of a student making notes: why did she have to wear a hat on Sundays? Why did she never wear jeans? Why didn’t she have a television? Was it true she’d never been to the cinema? When she answered, she said either it was because her fath