Free The Loop by Nicholas Evans Page A

His research was to find out how serious an impact this was having on the local horseshoe populations. He lived in a big old rented place, just south of Wellfleet. It looked like a ship, he said. She must come by and visit.
    They took their food off to a corner and he told her who the other guests were and about the video they were going to see. She asked him how you got to shoot a movie inside the womb of a shark.
    ‘With great difficulty.’
    ‘I guess you have to find a really big shark—’
    ‘Or a really small cameraman.’
    ‘Right. Who’s also a gynecologist.’
    Later, watching it, sitting crammed on the couch between Joel and someone else, she wondered if he was as aware of the press of their bodies as she was. His jeans were torn and she couldn’t stop herself sneaking looks at the patch of tanned thigh that showed through.
    The guy who’d shot the video (who was of normal size) talked them through it, explaining that when a female sand tiger has mated, several fertilized egg capsules form in two separate wombs, developing rapidly into embryo sharks complete with teeth. In each womb, one shark fetus emerges as the strongest and then sets about murdering and devouring its brothers and sisters. Only these two are born, already well versed in the art of killing.
    As he talked, the tiny endoscope camera traveled the glutinous pink caves and tunnels of the mother shark, like a Steadicam in a cheap horror movie. You could see a swilling soup of dead baby sharks but no sign of the infant from hell who’d killed them all. Then, at the far end of the womb, a yellow eye suddenly surfaced in the soup, looking right at the camera and a room full of case-hardened biologists screamed in unison. In the laughter that followed, Helen was embarrassed to find she had grabbed hold of Joel’s arm. She quickly let it go.
    Afterward, Bob took her away to meet some other people and every so often she would glance across the room at Joel. And even though he was deep in conversation, he would see her and smile. When they said goodbye, he asked if she would like to meet some horseshoe crabs and, far too promptly, she said she would. He said how about tomorrow and she said fine.
    Within a week they were lovers and a week later Joel asked her to come and live with him. He said he felt he had known her forever, that they were ‘soul mates’, that if she moved in, they could spend the winter side by side, writing their theses. Helen had never heard anything so romantic in all her life. But men weren’t supposed to go around making such rash offers of commitment. So she said no, it was out of the question, ridiculous in fact; and the next morning moved in.
    It was as close to shocking Celia as she had ever come.
    ‘You’re going to live with him?’ she said, watching her pack.
    ‘Yep.’
    ‘After knowing him only two weeks?’
    ‘Sister, if a girl can’t find Mr Right, sometimes she’s got to settle for Mr Right Now.’
    Since her parents’ divorce, she had stumbled from one bad affair to the next. Not that she’d been exactly promiscuous. Even if she’d wanted to be, that would have been tricky, living out in the wilds most of the year. It was just that she seemed to have this uncanny knack of picking the most unsuitable men available. There were exceptions, but mainly they were men that other women saw coming a hundred miles away, who had jerk or cheat or bastard written in neon letters on their foreheads, men she didn’t like or lust after but still somehow ended up with.
    Quite why she chose so badly, Helen had never been able to figure out. Perhaps she set her sights low because, deep down, she was sure no good man could ever possibly see anything in her. Not that the bad ones seemed to see much either, for it was rarely Helen who ended the affair, except when she sensed she was about to be dumped and managed to beat him to it.
    Normally, she stuck in there, even with the worst of them, trying to make it work, striving