Meanwhile in the kitchen, all was chaos. Gaspard was shouting, and everyone, it felt like, was crying. The last week had been an absolute trial for everyone, like Big Brother without the calm, cooperative atmosphere. The Norwegian guy was absolutely hopeless, so there was never a pot or pan when you needed it. Kerry wouldn’t do anything without checking with Gaspard first and would stand around doing nothing except eating crisps, which meant Isla being in charge of cakes and puddings and going nuts. Tam was fine, but his job was bringing in supplies; he wasn’t around for long enough to help with anything really useful.
Also, slightly worse, Isla’s initial coldness with Konstantin after the way he’d behaved had hardened into an awkward stiffness. He hadn’t done anything really awful since, just ignored her, and she didn’t know how to talk to him except to tell him how to peel potatoes without skinning himself when he was helping with food prep, or how garlic actually worked, something Gaspard had found so astonishing he’d actually stopped cooking to watch. There was a bad attitude in the kitchen, and they all knew it.
“Okay. Tonight. Try not to be idiots, non?” Gaspard was saying, just as Konstantin dropped the most enormous pan on the stone floor. The noise sounded like a bomb going off, and Isla even let out a tiny shriek. There were French expletives, and Konstantin, white as a sheet, looked like he was going to walk out of the kitchen, even as a pot literally boiled over just behind him. Everyone froze as Gaspard marched toward Konstantin.
“You want work in thees kitchen or not?” he snarled.
“Not,” snarled back Konstantin.
“Well, you can leave.”
“Well, I can’t,” said Konstantin.
It was unbelievable but true. His phone and his debit and credit cards had all been stopped. He’d called the bank to absolutely no avail, because he didn’t know any of the passwords. His friends and relations had been warned by his father not to sneak him any dough, and given that most of them were also completely funded by their parents, and were absolutely terrified by the amount of attention their mums and dads were paying toward the elder Konstantin’s experiment, meant they were very much toeing the line as well.
He couldn’t quite believe it, but he was somehow meant to survive—and feed Bjårk—on the tiny pittance he got, which wouldn’t quite cover a single restaurant meal back home but here was supposed to last him a week.
It was a joke. A stupid, ridiculous joke, and he was near constantly tempted to storm off and tell them all where to stick it.
Except he couldn’t. He had literally no way of paying his way off the island, and even if he got off, by the time he’d saved up for a plane ticket, what would he do—sit at his father’s feet and beg for forgiveness? His pride wouldn’t let him do that.
Well, okay. It wasn’t so much that, because in fact he’d already tried it. And his father had graciously said, “Thanks for the apology. Now get on with your work and I’ll see you in six months.”
He was stuck and mutinous, and he stared at the pan on the floor. The room went silent.
“Pick that up or you go now,” said Gaspard unwaveringly.
They all glanced at the windows. Hail was hurling itself against the glass. A lovely night to be cozy in front of a roaring fire with a good book and a glass of whisky. A frankly ludicrous night to storm off in a snit. The atmosphere in the room grew as icy as the windows.
MEANWHILE, THE DINING room looked as beautiful as ever, the big wooden fire crackling merrily away, its light gleaming off the tinsel. “Scots Nativity” was playing gently, and the scented air gave everyone a thrill. It didn’t matter how old you were: Christmas was coming! And that was always the most exciting feeling. Agot stomped over, irritated that the tree hadn’t come yet, but when she realized the highly polished wood was very slippery, she took off her shoes and was soon skidding round the room in her stripy tights. Flora thought, Health and safety, and filed it away to mention to Fintan later.
Colton had bought a number of old barrels from a distillery that was closing down, and the wood on the fire had the deep aroma of peat and whisky. It was, as Flora always thought, the most comfortable place you could be, with soft chairs and the anticipation of a good meal ahead. Gala had greeted them happily and brought them drinks, and everyone was stretching out good-naturedly. Agot stopped skating and got happily buried in her sketch pad with her felt-tip pens, as usual drawing everyone in her life including Dead Uncle Colton but missing out Douglas, which was, Flora supposed, something of an improvement from when she’d presented them with a mass family portrait with everyone in it including Douglas, but with a huge black scribble across Douglas’s face.
Pam, Charlie, and, irritatingly, Malcy, Pam’s large father, who’d done very well for himself and liked everyone to know it—and hadn’t been scheduled to come—had arrived bang on time, which made Flora anxious. She glanced at Fintan, who patently didn’t care. The problem was the Dochertys were big spenders on this island: golf club dinners, big parties, and weddings. They needed to impress these people. She wished Fintan would at least try.
There was no menu, first off, which Flora looked worried about and Innes frowned at. Fintan was drinking and not paying attention, which was almost as worrying to Flora as the lack of menu was. Well, perhaps this was the modern way and it would be something unexpected and magnificent. She ordered some wine off Gala, and they tried to chat even though there wasn’t even a piece of bread on the table.
“I’m hungry,” came a warning voice from underneath the table, but you couldn’t say it wasn’t a shared emotion.
INSIDE THE KITCHEN, Gaspard was still holding up a knife as if it were a weapon.
For the first time in his life, Konstantin was on his hands and knees, picking something up. He didn’t know what to do with it and was grateful when Tam came and took it from him and put it away in a cupboard.
“Chop!” said Gaspard.
And finally, the cold wind still blowing outside, Konstantin decided that for once discretion was the better part of valor and picked up an onion and a knife without the slightest enthusiasm. He stared at it.
Gaspard had already moved on and was shouting about stock. Kerry and Tam were keeping their heads down, waiting for it to pass. Konstantin tried stabbing the onion and let out a heavy sigh. Isla was just next to him.
“Just chop it,” she hissed. She couldn’t believe they hadn’t gotten more prep done this afternoon, but apparently Gaspard had been out and become distracted by a field full of wild garlic he hadn’t been expecting, as a result of which she was now chopping up head after head of them to stud the lamb. She smelled pungent, she knew, and it would be seeping through her pores for days.
She snuck a look at Konstantin. He was doing a truly horrible job, hacking away at the defenseless onion like it had insulted him in some way. Isla edged away from him a little. Konstantin noticed and hacked again even more viciously. Great. Here he was locked in a dungeon in a howling storm, and even the kitchen girl didn’t want to talk to him. He wanted to tell her that where he came from, the girls who worked in the kitchen loved him . . . then he started thinking of what was going on at home right now. The run-up to Christmas in Norway was incredibly beautiful. The Christmas markets went up early, and the delicious scent of glogg filled the air, as the warm, gingery mulled wine was poured over crushed almonds and raisins in the bottom of the glass and topped with a little aquavit that lifted the entire warming scent of Christmas in your two hands, steam curling off the top.
This year they had had early snow; you could see it on the hills, which were thick with it and dark fir trees that seemed to go on for miles.
They’d take the horses out and go steeplechasing even as the snow fell thickly and the night came on early, finishing with drinks before a roaring fire at the lodge his father kept up near Lillehammer. After Christmas, as the weather hardened, there was skating and of course skiing, the toughest courses, the fastest mountains, to build up your appetite for long hearty lunches filled with laughter and bonhomie at the best time of year.
Here the snow was pathetic, wet and bitty, he thought fiercely. It would barely lie at all, totally useless with all this wind.
Up until now he’d felt only cross and annoyed at being, according to him, kidnapped and forced into servitude.
Now it felt worse than that. He felt exiled from everything he loved. He thought of the pretty houses of Trondheim, of heading out into the woods to catch a glimpse of the northern lights, of sitting in the hot tub at his friend’s cabin. He was almost unbearably homesick. And he’d had to hide Bjårk in his room to keep him out of the kitchen, which wasn’t going to work well for very long, judging by the impassioned moaning that had started up as soon as he’d closed the door.
He heaved a great heavy sigh and looked down on his work again, just in time to watch the incredibly sharp knife Gaspard had brought him slice deeply into his thumb.
Once again, the kitchen froze. The blood didn’t trickle out: it arced, straight up in the air, right over all the already chopped vegetables, spraying across the brand-new factory-fresh whites.
“Faen!!” yelled Konstantin, even though the pain hadn’t kicked in yet, just the shock.
“Merde!” said Gaspard in disbelief, running his hands—themselves scarred and pitted, like all chefs’—through his thick dark hair.
“Obh, obh,” muttered Isla, but mostly to herself.
Then, seeing to her amazement that nobody was doing anything, least of all Konstantin himself, she got up and went to him.
“Come here,” she said.
The boy was white; his already pale skin had all the color drained out of it.
“It’s just a cut,” she said, glancing at it. He looked at her, still shaky, as she led him to the sink and started running the tap. “It looks worse than it is.”
Konstantin was still staring at his finger in disbelief.
“I didn’t realize we were serving finger food,” Isla surprised herself by saying, even as he blinked and put his finger under the running water, wincing as the cold touched the cut.
“That knife was really sharp,” he grumbled.
“Yeah,” said Isla, looking closely to see if he needed a stitch. “Like some kind of kitchen knife or something.”
Everything with blood on it was bundled into the bin just as Gala came in to see if they were ready to start taking food into the dining room. A single glower from Gaspard made it very clear to her that they were not, and she scurried out again, going to find some crisps behind the bar.
Isla examined the wound carefully. Konstantin had very long fingers on a large, strong hand that didn’t look like it had done a day’s work in its life, as indeed it had not. She frowned. “I think you’ll be okay. I can get Saif to put a stitch in it if you like.”
Saif was the local GP, who was just sitting down to dinner with his two sons, Ib and Ash, and wouldn’t have been best pleased to hear he was being called out in a howling gale to fix a ridiculous kid, but Gaspard came up and frowned.
“Non,” he said. Then he snapped his fingers for the word. “Gomme . . . glue. That is it. Glue.”
Gala immediately brought some superglue from behind her reception desk.
“Oui!” said Gaspard, brandishing it. Konstantin and Isla looked at each other anxiously.
“Let me just google that,” said Isla, getting Konstantin to hold his finger up in the air. “Well, the internet says it’s fine.”
“The internet says the royal family are lizards.” Konstantin grimaced.
Nonetheless, he held out his finger and let Gaspard stick the two edges of skin back together. Isla then wrapped it in a blue bandage she’d gotten out of the first aid kit. They were, she noted, running low.
“Do you need to sit down for a bit?” she said, feeling some sympathy for this ridiculous person, so far out of his depth.
“Non, there is no time,” said Gaspard. “Start again! With the onions! This time, keep all of your fingers, please!”
Back in the dining room, they were on their third bottle of champagne—Fintan didn’t mind depleting the cellars Colton had built up for the two of them. At least it was staying in the family. Flora had a glass. She was barely drinking because she was still feeding Douglas, even though he was sleeping beautifully in his car seat under the table.
Pam, of course, wasn’t drinking a drop, as she told everyone who came into earshot at any second of the day, going on to speculate how she’d probably never drink again, she felt so much better than she’d ever felt, and my goodness, didn’t Flora’s eyes look bloodshot, was she sure she was all right?
Christabel was still strapped to Pam—she was getting very big, it couldn’t possibly be comfortable, but it did mean Pam could pull the conversation round to the genius of her child every five seconds. Charlie was sitting looking anxious.
But the boys were getting stuck in, particularly as they appeared to have slightly mistaken the concept of champagne for beer and were more or less drinking it by the pint. Innes kept looking at Hamish as if they might get up and start wrestling in a minute, like the brothers used to when they were children. Agot was banging her knife and fork on the table and singing a song about being hungry and how cruel the world was to five-year-olds. Eilidh was getting a little loose around the eyes, which Flora knew from experience meant she was probably going to start telling the story about how she had started snogging Innes at the table, which he didn’t mind in the slightest but the rest of the MacKenzie siblings found a little unnecessary. And when Fintan had more than a certain amount, it was odds to sods he was going to collapse into tears at some point, which was fine but not ideal in front of the staff he was supposedly managing in the business he was supposedly running. They desperately needed some food to mop it up.
She excused herself and crept into the kitchen. What she saw took her rather by surprise.
“I CAN’T EVEN smell cooking,” she said, outraged. She looked at Gaspard. “Where is the bread?”
He scowled. “I am not happy with the bread.”
He pointed to the fresh loaves that had been made in the bakery that morning.
“Why not?” said Flora.
“Ees local flour?”
“There is no local flour, you dim bulb,” said Flora. “It doesn’t grow here. This stuff is perfectly good.”
Gaspard screwed up his face.
“And the butter is perfectly good, and I know that because it comes from my farm.”
Isla had rarely seen Flora so cross. She scuttled to the fridge and got out the butter.
“It’s fridged,” said Gaspard, pouting.
“That’s your fault,” said Flora.
Konstantin quickly looked away. Someone had told him to defridge the butter, but he hadn’t known what that meant and had therefore completely ignored it.
“Isla, take this out,” said Flora. “Before Innes falls off something and Hamish starts making airplane noises.”
Isla vanished into the dining room. Through the door came a noise that sounded like Douglas revving up. Pam was enjoying every second of this, Flora could tell.
“What are you making?”
“I ’ave no good stock.”
“Well, you’re not making it now! What are you making?”
“I am going to make coq au vin.”
“That takes hours!”
“Ees new kitchen! Ees expected.”
“Absolutely bloody not,” said Flora, almost trembling. “No way. You can’t. Make something—anything—I don’t care. But just make it now.”
She marched to the big fridge and hauled it open.
“Here,” she said. “There’s steak.”
Gaspard looked at it. “So boring,” he said.
Flora was already in the walk-in freezer. She looked up and down all the shelves, shivering in the low temperatures. She was sure she’d seen it in here somewhere . . . somewhere . . . behind the fresh food and the cooking materials . . . Aha!
She returned from the cold storage triumphantly, holding her bag high. “Ahem,” she said.
Gaspard looked at what she was holding. “Ees empossible.”
“Uhm,” said Isla, coming back into the kitchen. “Uhm, Fintan says if we don’t get some food out he’s going to sack everyone.”
This was a complete lie. Konstantin looked up from where he was trying to make his six-foot frame look completely inconspicuous. He saw a look of complicity shoot between Flora and Isla and was impressed. He didn’t think the girl had it in her.
Triumphantly, Flora handed over her freezer find: a large packet of oven chips. Gaspard took it from her as if she were handing him a dead snake to cook.
“Allez,” he said, coldly furious, and struck a match as Isla turned on the grill.
BACK IN THE dining room, Pam seemed to have forgotten her pledge to drink absolutely nothing, as she had been sipping small amounts from a glass and was getting rather giggly, a situation that Flora would have dearly loved to have found herself in, instead of pretending everything was fine when she was in fact incredibly worried.
Everyone dived into the bread in starvation, and it disappeared in minutes. Thankfully the butter didn’t disappoint: it had a smoked garlic flavor that Fintan had developed to seed through it, and it was so delicious Flora could have licked the bowl even as she noticed with a sinking heart that Agot was actually licking the bowl.
And Fintan was calling for more wine, which almost certainly wasn’t going to end well. His eyes had taken on a slightly glassy look, which tended to warn of the arrival of tears. Looking round the room filled with ridiculous, expensive tartan tchotchkes that Colton had insisted on, you felt his presence so strongly and could imagine his loud, cocksure American accent ringing out, his easy laugh, his quick anger and even more surprising kindness. Yes. It was hard.
“Well,” Pam was saying, looking pointedly at her watch and getting slightly unsteadily to her feet. “It’s nice to know that at least you tried, Flora.”
“Oh no, I’m sure it won’t be long,” said Flora in a panic.
“I mean, I thought I’d give you a chance. But this . . . I mean. It’s difficult to run a business. My darling Charlie and I have been doing it for years, of course. We know what we’re doing, don’t we, darling?”
Charlie stared at the floor. Malcy laughed.
“But you can’t just walk in out of nowhere and start from scratch—it’s just not possible!”
“I don’t come from nowhere,” said Flora through slightly clenched teeth. “I come from down the road.”
“Yes, but all the gadding about? Marrying foreigners and whatnot? You don’t really understand what the local community needs now, do you? I mean”—she gave a little laugh—“a bit of dinner at least, don’t you think? And how you’re going to cope with travelers from farther afield . . . I mean, people do have standards, you know. They’ll want a little more than a cheese scone! Which, I notice, we don’t even have.”
Irritatingly she was right about this; Flora cursed herself for not even having thought to bring up some baking. Mind you, she had felt it would be insulting to Fintan and demoralizing to the kitchen if she’d arrived with backup. Meanwhile, short of being able to Instagram the food, Iona had taken to putting sunglasses on a stag head and photographing it instead.
“Okay, Pam,” she said finally as Pam smiled graciously in triumph. “It’s all very new . . .”
Suddenly there was a clatter at the swinging doors and Gala appeared, all flustered, but smiling and balancing the first three plates of food.