 An Experiment in Love by Hilary Mantell, narrated by Jane Collingwood. This work is copyrighted 1995 by Hilary Mantell. This recording is copyrighted 2011 by W. F. House Ltd. It's London, 1970. Carmel McBain, in her first term at university, has cut free of her childhood roots in the North. Among the gossiping flotacious girls of her college digs Tundridge Hall, she begins her experiments in life and love. But the year turns, the miniskirt falls out of style and an era of concealment begins. Carmel's world darkens, and tragedy waits in the wings. And now, An Experiment in Love. Chapter 1 This morning in the newspaper, I saw a picture of Julia. She was standing on the threshold of her house in Highgate, where she receives her patience. A tall woman, wrapped in some kind of Indian shawl. There was a blur where her face should be, and yet I noted the confident set of her arms, and I could imagine her expression. Professionally watchful, maternal, with that broad cold smile, which I have known since I was eleven years old. In the foreground, a skeletal, teenage child, tottered towards her, from a limousine parked at the curb. Miss Lindsay Simon, well-loved family entertainer and junior megastar, victim of the slimmer's disease. Julia's therapies, the publicity they have received, have made us aware that people at any age may decide to starve. Ladies of eighty-five see out their lives on tea, infants a few hours old turn their head from the bottle, and push away the breast. Just as the people of Africa cannot be kept alive by the bags of grain we send them, so our own practitioners of starvation cannot be sustained by bottles and tubes. They must decide on nourishment, they must choose. Unable to cure famine, uninterested perhaps, for not everyone has large concerns, Julia treats the children of the rich, whose malaise is tractable. No doubt her patients go to her to avoid the grim behaviourists in the private hospitals, where they take away the children's toothbrushes and hairbrushes and clothes, and give them back in return for so many calories ingested. In this way, having broken their spirits, they salvage their flesh. I found myself this morning, staring so hard at the page, that the print seemed to blur. As if somewhere in the fabric of the paper, somewhere in its weave, I...