The Girl With Glass Feet Read Online Free PDF Page B

where roads disappeared on leaving the town, as if their builders had been seduced from their intended paths. Ettinsford’s river was technically a strait, the narrowest point in the division between Gurm and Ferry islands. An old stone bridge breached the water at the point, as local legend had it, that Saint Hauda himself had been carried from one landmass to the other by a flock of one hundred and one sparrows.
    In Ettinsford, in Catherine’s, the island’s florist, the bell chimed as Midas opened the door.
    Gustav wiped a fleck of mayonnaise from his lips and looked up. He was red faced and red haired, but his hairline was dissipating faster than it should for a man who had just turned thirty. A cocktail stick pinned together the fat club sandwich on his desk. Three slices of wholemeal bread, rashers of bacon and half a pot of mayonnaise. Midas could smell it through the pollen.
    ‘Morning,’ he said, rubbing his eyes.
    ‘Bloody hell.’ Gustav gulped down his mouthful. ‘You okay?’
    Midas’s hair stood on end and his eyes had bags beneath them. His whole body felt like collapsing. ‘Slept badly.’
    Gustav folded some foil over his sandwich and wiped his hands on an old piece of bouquet paper. ‘What’s up? You going down with a cold? Denver’s got it. Going to be off school by the end of the week, I reckon.’
    Gustav scrunched the paper he’d wiped his hands on andtossed it at the bin. It overshot and disappeared into a dense area of sea hollies with regal blue heads.
    ‘Damn.’
    He climbed out from behind the desk and pricked himself on the hollies as he foraged for the litter. He found it and dropped it in the bin, slapping his hands together as he walked back around the desk.
    ‘Are you going to tell me what’s wrong? Did you get drunk? You have a
good
night for once?’
    Midas played with a lily head. ‘I told you. I couldn’t sleep.’
    Gustav opened a drawer and pulled out the clipboard they used for deliveries. ‘But there’s something else, isn’t there?’
    Midas hesitated, but they’d been best friends for a long time.
    ‘A girl.’
    Gustav dropped the clipboard. ‘Say again?’
    ‘I met this girl yesterday and she – ’
    ‘Midas! That’s great! Secretly I’ve been worried that – ’
    Midas shook his hands. ‘Nothing, you know… it wasn’t a romantic encounter. That’s not why I mentioned it. It’s just…’
    Gustav grinned deliriously.
    ‘… just that there was something unusual about her.’
    ‘There bloody had to be, to keep Midas Crook up all night.’
    ‘She wore some boots. As large as this vase.’ He tapped it. Blue and tall.
    ‘She’s… big-boned, then?’
    ‘That’s the thing. She’s about my height. And thin, almost unhealthily thin.’
    Gustav was confused. ‘She’s not one of those weird fashionable chicks from the mainland…’
    ‘No. I don’t think so. She
is
from the mainland, but she wasn’t weird, apart from the boots. Gustav, do you know anything about conditions? Foot conditions?’
    He didn’t, though he gave him a list of names: Achilles heel,athlete’s foot, fungus nails. None of them seemed right for Ida.
    The pair of them carried on with the business of running the florist. Midas drove some bouquets around town and thought about Ida the whole time. Just after midday he came back shaking raindrops off his jacket. Gustav sat at the desk, on the phone, one hand to his ruddy forehead. He glanced up gloomily when the doorbell rang.
    ‘Yeah, okay,’ he said into the receiver, ‘I’ll see you then.’
    The phone clunked as he put it down and puffed out his cheeks. He sighed and ran his hands back through his thinning hair.
    ‘What are you doing on Saturday, Midas?’
    ‘You want me to work?’
    ‘No. That was my mother-in-law. She’s found some old boxes of Catherine’s stuff. Wonders if I want any of it.’
    ‘Catherine’s
mother
doesn’t want it?’
    He shrugged. ‘She doesn’t like to see it. Said she might throw it