East of the Sun Read Online Free PDF Page B

I’m very pleased to meet you.” When she held out her hand, he shook it reluctantly.
    “Charmed,” he said. “I’m sure.”
    When at last he smiled, she noticed he had the same buck teeth as his aunt. Also that his eyes couldn’t quite meet hers. She could feel herself starting to dislike him already, but felt that this was very unfair of her. If anyone should understand how awkward a person could feel being picked up at a school by a perfect stranger, it should be her.
    “Well, shall we collect your things?” she said. “The taxi’s waiting outside; we’re going straight to Tilbury.”
    “Who’s paying for it?” he asked her sharply.
    “Paying for what?”
    “The taxi, of course. I haven’t got a bean.”
    “Your aunt,” she said, determined not to resent his tone. Their arrangement was five pounds in travel expenses.
    As she followed his long thin legs upstairs, she tried to neutralize the sense of panic she’d felt at Mr. Partington’s words. Her own trunk was packed, the entire trip organized, she couldn’t afford to exaggerate his crimes; after all, she rationalized, lots of children did a bit of amateur thieving. She and her friends had pinched the occasional pear drop or something harmless like a pencil from the sweetshop near school. They’d done it for dares; it was almost part of growing up.
    “So, how long have you been here?” They’d reached the first landing and she stood beside him.
    “Ten years.”
    “Gosh, long time.”
    “Um.”
    “It must feel rather strange leaving.”
    “Not really.” His voice was so completely without expression. She felt she must stop asking him questions. For all his assumed nonchalance, he might be upset, even mortified, at the thought of leaving this place under a cloud.
    The door at the top of the stairs had a large wodge of felt underneath it to keep drafts out. When he’d pushed the door open with his foot, she saw a row of white beds, probably ten in all, with green counterpanes folded neatly at the base of them. At the end of the room, a large window looked out onto a sky ready to dump more rain onto sodden fields.
    He led her to a bed halfway down the room with two suitcases beside it.
    “My trunk’s gone on ahead,” he told her.
    She was struck by the silence, the cold in the dormitory, and then relieved to see a note pinned to his pillow with his name written on it in an untidy schoolboyish scrawl, assuming it was someone wishing to say good-bye. Without reading the letter, he tore it up and dropped the pieces of paper into a wastepaper basket underneath the bed.
    “There,” he said. “All done now.”
    The note had brought a flush of color to his otherwise chalk-pale cheeks. His young man’s Adam’s apple bulged in his neck. She pretended not to notice. He is more upset than I realize, she told herself, remembering how she’d both hated and felt safe at her own freezing-cold convent boarding school in North Wales.
    “Shall I put these in your case?” she asked. There was a razor strap and a soiled vest under his bed. The vest had worn thin and had yellow sweat marks under the armpits.
    “No, I’m leaving them behind.”
    “So,” she said with an attempt at brightness, “shall we be off? I’ve already spoken to Mr. Partington.”
    “Yes.” He was moving around his bed like a large stunned animal, looking about the room for the last time.
    “Do you want this?” She picked up a photograph that had been facedown on the washstand.
    When she turned it over she saw a tall, square-shouldered man in khakis making a self-consciously jokey face at the photographer with what looked like mile after mile of bleached sand dunes behind him.
    “My father,” he said. He unclipped his suitcase and crammed the picture on top of some badly packed clothes.
    “Are you sure it won’t break there?” She was conscious already of sounding like an irritating grown-up.
    “I’ll risk it,” he said. He closed the suitcase.
    She carried one of