Read The Inn at the Edge of the World for Free Online Page A

reading
The Diary of a Nobody
on the radio.
    A traveller at an adjacent table was puzzled by this exchange. She had watched Harry and Jessica get on the train separately, and they hadn’t said a word to each other until now. Yet they obviously knew each other well. She had been wondering why Jessica looked so familiar, but gave up racking her memory in order to speculate on their relationship. Father and daughter? Husband and second wife? No, she didn’t think they were married. They were smiling at each other too openly. She concluded, not being a person of great imagination or depth of perception, that Harry was the managing director of an international company, and Jessica was his personal assistant. They were probably travelling to a conference to be held at Gleneagles over the Christmas period.
    ‘Aah,’ said Jessica. ‘Tears are rising unbidden to her eyes and she’s burying her head in the sofa cushions that they might flow unseen. What a
creep
.’
    ‘Would you like to read the
Spectator
?’ offered Harry.
    ‘Thank you,’ said Jessica. ‘Would you like a Polo mint?’
    At this evidence of a new friendship being formed the fellow traveller grew confused again. She made up her mind that the managing director had only just engaged his personal assistant and they were feeling their way as they got to know each other even better.
    After a while they went together to the bar and when they returned the fellow traveller was completely thrown, for they had discovered that they were both going to the island and their relationship had changed. Jessica was always excited and animated by coincidence and Harry was surprised and quietly gratified to have found an undemanding and congenial companion. He had intended to spend his island time alone as far as that was possible, lost in thought in streaming coves and rocky embrasures, and if there were other guests he had expected that he would find himself under the necessity of avoiding them. He had not thought that he might make a friend.
    *
    Anita had sworn not to give a single thought to work for a whole week. She stared out of the window at the unprepossessing scenery and wondered what her fellow guests would be like. It had not occurred to her, as it had to Harry, that there might not be any. A passing conifer plantation reminded her again of her department. She hoped the under-section manager was coping well, but not too well; she didn’t like to feel she wouldn’t be missed. She was picturing the shelves of executive toys and wondering how they were selling when she remembered she wasn’t going to think about work, and stared resolutely at a field and some sheep. She worried a little that they might be feeling cold and hoped she had brought enough woollies to keep herself warm. It was probably always warm in Taiwan where the buyer had spent a week earlier in the year, purchasing a large consignment of Christmas tree fairies with slanting eyes. The buyer had justified her choice with rather too much conviction and Anita was certain that she had bought them after lunch when her judgement was impaired. Anita couldn’t really see why she should have fairies in her department anyway: paper plates, cups and serviettes perhaps, even jigsaw puzzles didn’t seem too out of place, but baubles and fairies could surely have been displayed elsewhere, and she couldn’t see any justification at all for having a rack of Santa Claus suits situated to the left of the Advent calendars. It was hard being titular head of a department and yet at the mercy of another’s whims.
    Rain began falling on the already damp countryside, and she asked herself why she hadn’t taken a package trip to Florida. The reason was that she had thought it more chic to go to a small hotel at the edge of the world. Exotic foreign travel was becoming curiously vulgar: everyone was doing it either for pleasure or business. It was more elegant to be travelling to a small island; the cold and the wet an