 Clipper Audio presents an unabridged recording of Vacant Possession by Hillary Mantell, narrated by Sandra Duncan. This work is copyrighted 1986 by Hillary Mantell. This recording is copyrighted 2013 by W. F. Howes Ltd. From the double man-booker prize-winner, a savagely funny tale that revisits the characters from the much-loved Every Day is Mother's Day. Muriel Akson is about to re-enter the lives of Colin Sidney and Isabel Field. It is ten years since her last tangle with them, but for Muriel this is not time enough. There are still scores to be settled, truths to be faced, and vengeance to be reaped. The author begins with the following quotation from Gertrude Stein. And that is what one does. One does not get better, but different, and older, and that is always a pleasure. And a further quotation from Ezekiel chapter thirty-seven verse three. Can these bones live? And now, Vacant Possession. It was ten o'clock in the evening, raining and very dark, a man was walking along the road whistling Santa Lucia. Muriel Akson stood alone at the window of her room, a square plain woman, forty-four years old. She was wrapped in an eyed sedan, and in the palm of her hand she held the boiled egg she was eating for supper. The glow of the street lamps showed her wet slate roofs, the long-lit curve of the motorway outside the town, and a bristling cat in the shadow of a wall. Beyond these, the spines of black hills, cradling the warm egg, Muriel dug in her fingernails to crush the shell. She did not go in for table manners, they wasted time. She began to peel the skin, wincing a little as she did so. She put her tongue into the salted, jellied hollow, and probed gently. The room behind her was dark, and full of the minute crackling her fingers made. She sucked. Thought. Most of Muriel's thoughts were quite unlike other people's. Down below she had the front door opening, a dim light shone onto the path, and a second later her landlord appeared, Mr. Kowalski, shuffling the few paces to the gate. He looked up and down the road. No one. He stood for a moment, his bullet head shrinking into his shoulders, turned, grunting to himself. People complete. Ready to continue?