Pimlico Summary

Twenty years in the hotel business, Olive easily balances her books and prepares notices for the bulletin board. She keeps a looseleaf file of notes on each of her twelve tenants, particulars that allow her to make each feel special. She sees nothing dishonest about using a memory aid, but has given orders to her executor to destroy the private records, unread, when she dies. People had thought Olive crazy when, at the age of thirty, she left Ireland to buy a seedy hotel to fulfill her lifelong dream. She had ten years' experience working in an Irish boardinghouse to guide her. Her parents had opposed her decision, her father claiming that life in London is lonely. Olive knows that people crave company. She has studied the Irish who returned from working in England, understanding what they would have liked to have found...