The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan Page A

mum?”
    Nina made a face. Her mum worried a lot about everything. Usually her younger brother Ant, which was useful.
    â€œI’ll e-mail her as soon as I’ve got a change of address.”
    â€œYou’re not going to tell her you’re leaving the country?”
    â€œIt sounds bad when you put it like that.”
    â€œUh-huh,” said Surinder, who went around to see her mother pretty much every day and rarely came home without a Tupperware box filled with something delicious, and who thought Nina’s relationship with her mother was suspicious in the extreme.
    â€œOkay, okay, I’ll tell her,” said Nina. “Just give me five minutes to get settled. This is all happening awfully fast.”
    Surinder leaned forward on the sofa and topped up their glasses.
    â€œYou know,” she said conspiratorially, “the kind of people who are going to be up there?”
    â€œOld geezers,” said Nina promptly. “I know, I’ve met them.”
    â€œNo!” said Surinder. “No, no no no. I don’t mean that at all. Up there, it’s all guys, you know.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œOf course! Middle of nowhere. Who’s there? Farmers. Vets. Probably a military base nearby. Hikers. Mountain bikers.”
    â€œI’m not sure I’d get along very well with a mountain biker. Bit too much raincoat action. Also, I don’t like being outside.”
    â€œIt’s just a concept. Geologists. Agricultural students. Treesurgeons. Men men men men men! You’ll be hopelessly outnumbered.”
    â€œDo you think so?”
    There had been only two men—Griffin and old Mo Singh—at the library, and eight women. And in the media center there were about forty women, mostly young, Nina had learned in the course of a very excitable e-mail from Griffin.
    â€œCourse! And there’s none here.”
    â€œYou do all right.”
    Surinder rolled her eyes. She got asked out constantly, and was interested in almost none of them, complaining that they were all too metropolitan and she didn’t like beards.
    â€œWhatever,” she said, waving her hand. “You’ll see. Boys everywhere.”
    â€œI’m not going for the boys,” said Nina. “I’m going for the books.”
    â€œBut surely if a boy or two turns up you’re not going to be too disappointed?”
    â€œI told you,” said Nina. “They’re all a hundred and two and live in a bar. And stop whistling ‘Over the Sea to Skye.’”

Chapter Ten
    I t was raining. Living in Birmingham, Nina had thought she knew a bit about rain. Turned out she was wrong. Very wrong. In Birmingham when it rained you popped into a café or stayed inside your cozy centrally heated house or went to the Bullring so you could wander around in comfort.
    Here in the Highlands, it rained and it rained and it rained until it felt as if the clouds were coming down and getting in your face, rolling their big black way toward you and unleashing their relentless showers on top of you.
    Nina wouldn’t have minded, but she absolutely had to get back to the van; it had been sitting out there for five days as it was. She’d packed as much as she could into her largest suitcase, crammed boxes of books into the back of the Mini Metro until she could hardly see out of the rear windshield—it still made barely a dent in the piles in the house, but Surinder was hungover and in a generous mood—then slipped away with many hugs and kisses and a final Tupperware for the road and apromise to visit as soon as she was fixed up, i.e., had finally sold the car and found a place to live.
    But first she needed to collect the van. As soon as she’d arrived, she’d asked Alasdair in the bar, ridiculously, if there was a taxi service, and he’d looked confused and asked her if she wanted Hugh to give her a lift on his tractor and she’d said not to worry. He then,