The phone at the Rock, explained Gala, looking absolutely mortified, had been ringing off the hook since five A.M. that morning.
Nobody had gotten any sleep until Gaspard had stormed down in a rage of swearing and unplugged it. When it had finally gotten plugged back in, every time they went to pick it up, it was a journalist called Candace from the Daily Post, wanting to know how things were at “Britain’s Worst Hotel!”
The papers didn’t arrive in Mure until the day after publication, it taking that long to get them up there, but Flora, completely confused, opened them up online and was absolutely astounded by what she saw.
“McFAWLTY TOWERS!” screamed the headline, with a freeze-frame of Gaspard tripping over a dog and a plate in the air.
“Scotland’s wackiest hotel,” the story went on, “left by eccentric, flamboyant billionaire . . .”
“Flamboyant!”
Fintan marched into the Rock, his face absolutely puce. “Flamboyant!! Flamboyant! You know what that means.”
Flora patted him on the shoulder.
“They mean gay! They’re calling him a laughingstock! And me! We’re laughingstocks to them! Those . . . those utter bastards!!”
“I know,” said Flora. “I don’t suppose . . . it might be good publicity for us.”
“Britain’s worst hotel?” said Fintan. “Run by fairies. How’s that going to work? Oh, screw it. I’m going to shut it down.”
“But Colton wanted you to run it.”
“I don’t care what he wanted,” said Fintan, his face white with fury. “I don’t care! I hate this and I hate them and I don’t want pricks coming up to look at our ‘eccentric’ hotel and I am going back to the farm and I am going to make cheese and be miserable and everyone else can just fuck off.”
Flora gazed after him in despair, then quickly noticed the anxious faces of Isla and Gala peering out at her from reception.
“Does this mean we’re going to lose our jobs?” Isla asked tentatively.
“I don’t know,” said Flora miserably. “I’m sure he’ll calm down. It’ll be fine.”
She was too cross to go and find Iona, who was hiding out in her bedroom and refusing to come out from underneath the blankets. She had let her phone die because she couldn’t bear the constant beep beep beep of more and more and more incoming messages, and she knew she had to turn it back on, that she would just be scaring her friends and then they’d start coming round and then things really would get bad. It was meant to be funny and make them popular! It wasn’t meant to be “THE WORST HOTEL ON EARTH.”
She plugged it in but still left it on the other side of the room, too afraid to touch it, like a spider or a red-hot poker.
FLORA STALKED INTO the Seaside Kitchen looking for Iona. She did not get angry very often; it wasn’t really in her makeup. But she was unutterably furious. Every single table in the café fell silent as she entered, which gave her a pretty good idea what they’d all been talking about.
“Where is she?” she hissed to Malik, who glanced up at her, startled.
“She hasn’t come in,” muttered Malik.
“Hasn’t she,” said Flora. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“She texted me to say sorry to you.”
Flora looked squarely at Malik. “Do you think that’s how apologies work?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. Tell her to get down here.”
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, a bedraggled Iona in a holey pair of jeans and a farm jumper so threadbare that it absolutely begged for sympathy emerged through the side fire-door entrance into the kitchen, where Flora was making angry scones with chili and Szechuan pepper.
“I’m not sure those will sell,” said Iona softly.
“Oh well, obviously you’re the marketing guru,” said Flora.
Iona’s eyes were red. The girl was so young. Flora almost softened.
“What were you thinking?”
“You said get on the Instagram!”
“To make us look beautiful and wonderful. Which we are!”
“I posted loads of those too!” said Iona, pulling out her phone and showing Flora the many lovely shots: the Endless Beach in a ravishing pink sunset, the bobbing red and blue fishing boats, a heavily filtered shot of the Harbour’s Rest hotel, which made it look bleached out and charming rather than dilapidated.
“And did people share those?”
“Uhm, not so much . . .” Iona’s voice trailed off.
“Why didn’t you ask me if you could post it?”
“You said post stuff!”
“Iona! I have had twenty-five journalists on the phone this morning, every single last one of them asking to be comped for bloody Christmas week!”
“Well, that could be good,” said Iona. “Maybe?”
“They want to make us a laughingstock,” said Flora. Her heart dropped. Everything they had worked for. Everything that was Colton’s legacy. “We already are.”
Her phone rang and she picked it up, listened for a second, then cursed roundly.
“And now our chef’s disappeared,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” said Iona, cringing.
Flora took a deep breath. “It’s not your fault,” she allowed, finally. “But, Christ. What a mess.”
Back at the hotel, Konstantin had wandered down into the lobby to see what was up. Phoneless, he knew nothing about what had happened. But he was still amazed. For starters, nobody had knocked at his door that morning and it wasn’t a Sunday, so he had absolutely no clue why he wasn’t in the kitchen peeling potatoes and the skin off his knuckles while also getting yelled at.
Down in the lobby, Gala was still desperately trying to answer the telephones while Isla was standing, looking concerned.
He frowned. “There has been a nuclear attack,” he said. “Everyone is dead from all the zombies. We are the only people left on earth.”
She looked at him.
“What?” he said. “Come on, it would be cool.”
“Zombies would be cool?”
“Sorry, it’s just most Scottish people . . . Maybe it’s the lack of sunlight.”
“Stop it! You’re being so rude!”
He liked seeing the dimples come out on her face, though. It felt as if . . . well. To make her smile when at first she would barely look at him. Without impressing her or showing off. Goodness, he’d been in this awful uniform the entire time. It was, undeniably, a nice feeling.
Even so, there was no doubt the hotel was very eerie without the usual clatter from the kitchen. Now Gala had unplugged the phone to stop newspapers getting on to them, so there wasn’t even a ring or a conversation to be had. Gala headed out, muttering mutinously about this not being what Uncle Mark had signed her up for.
Isla tried to explain the situation to Konstantin after she’d gone, but he wasn’t really listening. Instead he looked at her slyly.
“What?” she said.
“There’s nobody here.”
“So?”
In response, he ran to the large brass baggage cart and jumped on it, then pushed himself off and glided across the wooden foyer floor.
“I’ve always wanted to do this!” he said, beaming. “Come on, jump on!”
“Oh no, I couldn’t,” said Isla.
“Of course you could! You’re far too well behaved! I bet you never got into trouble at school or anything.”
Isla blushed. He was absolutely correct.
Konstantin came to a stop, whizzing the baggage holder halfway round right in front of her, then jumped off.
“Come on! Your carriage, m’lady.”
“You are being ridiculous!”
“Quick! Quick! I can’t hold the horses.”
Giggling helplessly, Isla accepted his outstretched hand up onto the cart.
“Hold on tight!”
And he rushed her across the smooth floor at high speed, then twirled her around just as she was about to hit the wall, as she shrieked with laughter, her face pink, and he reflected briefly how pretty she looked when she smiled. Her curly hair flew out behind her in a sheet as he made giddy-up noises and started galloping for the door . . . which was where they came face-to-face with a very stony-looking Fintan, who had been shaken out of his dolor following his fight with Flora by the horrific amount of social media abuse that morning. It didn’t help either that he had barely slept, was now in an absolutely filthy mood about it, and woe betide anyone who got in his way.