The following week, Isla walked up the steps of the hotel somewhat tentatively.
She’d been to the Rock before, normally to help waitress at parties. But that was different; then she was just in and out the back door in a black skirt and a white shirt, handing round haggis canapés and refilling people’s glasses, except for Wullie Stevenson, who wanted his filled a tad too often, even by Colton’s generous standards.
She’d never really thought of it as anything other than the big house, the hotel. She’d never considered that one day it might be a place where she worked every day.
Nervously, she fiddled with the zip of her padded jacket. Would she be able to handle such a big job? Flora seemed to have confidence in her, but wasn’t it just that Flora was so distracted with the baby and that grumpy boyfriend? And Fintan being so miserable that he wouldn’t even care?
Isla hadn’t always lacked confidence. Not when her dad . . .
Well. There was no point thinking about that now.
The huge oak doors were propped open and a bright fire was burning in the grate. The receptionist, Gala, was a beautiful American girl, a niece of a colleague of Colton’s who was supposedly on work experience and had gotten rather more than she bargained for, but she was friendly enough.
“Isla! Yeah! Sure! Got your name right here!” chirruped Gala.
Isla glanced around. Beyond the welcoming hallway with the flickering fire, the restaurant was sitting cold and empty and the kitchen lay cold and bare. There were so many chairs to fill, so many mouths to feed. Flora kept saying it was just a bigger version of what she was already doing and that there’d be a boss in place, but she wasn’t sure. Not at all.
She passed on through the heavy oak doors at the back of the restaurant into the kitchen. It was huge! State-of-the-art burners and grills, walk-in freezers, a wood-burning oven for bread—wow. Colton had stinted on nothing. Lines of shelving with butter, eggs, flour, everything she could conceivably need, tidy and neat and brand-new.
Well, maybe, she thought. Maybe she could make this work. Her dad would have been pleased. Roddy had adored his only child. Lost in a fishing accident, the industry as dangerous as ever it was, his death had broken everyone’s hearts. Especially his daughter’s. It had turned her mother’s heart hard as flint, everyone said.
ISLA WAS FIRST, but it was a day of arrivals at the Rock, and Flora somehow found herself turning up to help Fintan welcome the new chef. The servants’ rooms on the very top floor of the house had been repurposed to be as comfortable as possible for seasonal staff; Gala had already taken the best one on the corner.
Fintan had gone down to the dock to meet Gaspard off the ferry. Isla found him and looked up at him shyly; she was slightly terrified of him.
“Hello? I’m Isla? In the kitchen . . .”
“Oh yes, hello.” He sank into his traditional sullen silence in case she started to talk about Colton or asked him how he was doing, something he was tired of and normally discouraged.
“I am a bit worried,” said Isla in that quiet way of hers, “that they might not be very keen when they arrive.”
Sure enough, it was an absolute pig of a day. Hail was blowing into their faces; Isla was barely visible inside the zipped-up hood of her puffer; Fintan had an expensive overcoat and a cashmere scarf, but the tips of his ears were bright pink.
He smiled ruefully. “It’s not Antigua.”
Isla pulled open her bag.
“I brought hot chocolate,” she said, “to kind of welcome them if they’d had terrible journeys. Would you like some?”
Fintan was about to say no—he ate rarely these days and never really felt hungry—when he felt how cold his fingers were, even inside the leather gloves he was wearing.
“Okay,” he said.
She poured him out a cup of the most delicious frothy hot chocolate he’d ever tasted, sliding in a couple of marshmallows for good measure. He warmed his hands, then took a sip of the rich, not-too-sweet goodness. It tasted like Christmas and home and warmth all at once.
“Oh my,” he said. “That’s fantastic.”
Isla smiled. “We’ve been perfecting it in the café for years. Have you not tried it?”
“It’s not very good for you.”
Isla didn’t say anything, as she disagreed with him thoroughly and thought a delicious, satisfying milk-based beverage on a cold day probably didn’t do anyone any harm. She caught sight of the arriving ferry bouncing on the gray sea.
Fintan stared out at the waves pounding against the dock that had been the background noise to almost everything he’d done for so long that, like most people on Mure, he couldn’t even hear it anymore. He took another sip. It really was good.
“We need to serve that in the bar,” he said.
Isla nodded. “You could put a shot of whisky in it and have it like Irish coffee,” she said. “Only better.”
Fintan nodded back. “It would be better,” he said. “I should write that down.”
Isla pulled out her phone. “Hot chocolate with booze,” she said into it. Fintan looked at her.
“You talk to your phone?”
Isla flushed instantly. She hated anyone singling her out for anything. “Uh, yeah,” she said, quietly. “When I have to remember something but I don’t want to take my gloves off.”
“That makes a lot of sense,” said Fintan.
The ferry started to churn in reverse, backing up, and they fell once again into a watchful silence.
GASPARD HAD SPOTTED the lean, confused-looking boy in the corner of the bar in the nearly empty ferry. November was not what you’d call peak season for island hopping in the far north of Scotland, and there was barely anyone on board: a few farmers with Land Rovers stowed downstairs; those who had come back from the market enjoying a wee dram at the bar; a clutch of ladies who’d been shopping and to a show in Glasgow, giggling and cheerful and dressed up, albeit with their fleeces pulled back on over the top, now that they were heading into the real world again. And a well-built blond-haired boy looking sulky and completely out of place.
“Hey,” Gaspard had said. “You live in thees end of world? Huh? You can tell me about it?”
Konstantin shook his head miserably. “I’ve been banished,” he said in neatly clipped English with just the trace of an accent. “I’m being punished.”
“Me also,” said Gaspard. “Except I have done notheeng wrong. Notheeng!”
He marched up to the tiny brass bar and rang its heavy ship’s bell, which was really only for decoration, as the barman’s face made perfectly clear as he straightened up from the shelf where he’d been putting glasses away. Gaspard had made several questions about the wine, none of which the young barman could understand or answer, then pointed at one bottle and took the whole thing. After seeing Konstantin looking increasingly miserable, he grabbed another glass and bade him sit down and tell him the whole sorry story, fueled with the terrible wine, which didn’t taste quite so bad by the time they got halfway down the bottle.
The long and short of it was, by the time the boat churned into Mure Town, as the sun was falling over the horizon and the gleam of bigger ships was the only light to be seen, both of them were a) great friends and b) completely roaring drunk.
FINTAN WAS STRICKEN as they arrived.
“Voilà!” yelled Gaspard, turning into the wind, where hail had started and spiked into the face like daggers. “Welcome to hell, non?”
Konstantin lurched off the ferry, the difference in the motion between sea and land and the frankly rough wine having a predictable effect. As Isla watched him, horrified, he wobbled over the gangplank and threw up heavily over the side.
“Oh Christ,” said Fintan.
Gaspard kept up a constant slew of loud questions as they walked to Fintan’s Land Rover, Isla silent by his side. Konstantin had come via some kind of client of Joel’s, and Fintan was utterly dismayed. What kind of young lad got drunk on his way to his first job?
And Gaspard was looking like he was hell-bent on proving why he couldn’t get a job anywhere except at the tail end of nowhere, because nobody wanted to work in the islands, and nobody wanted to work for him. Fintan felt bitterer than the acidic wine sloshing in the men’s stomachs. This whole enterprise—Colton’s pride and joy, the dream of his life—was going to fail. Fintan was going to fall flat on his face.
“So you have cellar?”
“You can’t stay here if you drink,” Fintan said steadily.
“I ’ave not ’ad one seengle drink on this soil!” protested Gaspard noisily. “Not one! It was my final celebration of life as a free man.”
“This isn’t prison,” said Fintan gruffly.
“Oh yes, yes it is, actually,” said the young man, who up until now had been very green and quiet. Suddenly he straightened up and shouted, out of nowhere, “Stop!!”
Assuming he was going to be sick again, Fintan did so. And immediately, Konstantin turned and started running toward the boat, which was filling up, ready for the return crossing.
“Well, he didn’t last long,” observed Isla.
The small party watched him with consternation, waving his arms and shouting, charging down the hill to the men putting away the gangway. “Waaaiiittt!” he yelled.
“I hate this job,” said Fintan despondently.
“Me also,” said Gaspard, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it, somewhat miraculously, in the full force of the oncoming wind.
“I FORGOT MY dog!” Konstantin panted to the tall, kindly captain of the ferry, who had been very unimpressed with both of the men coming to work on Mure; he took as keen an interest as everyone else in the success or failure of the Rock.
“Did you now,” said the man. Grudgingly he opened the rope that blocked off the gangway and Konstantin, slightly fuzzily, ran into the hold, where Bjårk was filling his traveling box a little snugly.
“Bjårk! I am so sorry. I am a terrible, terrible man,” he said. “Well, so everyone else says. I was probably just having a bad day,” he added, kneeling down.
Bjårk, as it happened, was happily in the process of forgiving him, as he wanted out and, ideally, a snack, and then perhaps another snack. Indeed, Konstantin felt in his pocket and found a packet of crisps that had been on the bar and that he’d completely forgotten was in there. He opened them up, sniffed them—they were a flavor he was not familiar with—and passed them all on to Bjårk, who didn’t care either way.
The captain had come down to the hold and was staring at him.
“You give crisps to your dog?” he said incredulously. “The dog you didn’t even remember you had?”
He shook his head and felt sorry for Fintan. Konstantin returned a haughty stare. He was used to everyone being nice to him and fussing over him. Being cross with him wasn’t really done, unless of course it was his father.
Instead he hauled Bjårk, who didn’t want to leave the huge raft of fascinating smells coming from all over the boat, down the gangplank with every ounce of dignity he could muster, which, given he was half drunk, splashed with water, and heaving a large, hairy beast whose muzzle was covered in crisp crumbs, wasn’t much.
FINTAN AND ISLA stood watching them approach. Gaspard was delighted and waved cheerfully.
“Hey! Monsieur Chien,” he shouted cheerfully. Bjårk wagged his tail in return.
“Okay. Now we can go,” said Konstantin stiffly, arriving back and slightly peeved that nobody was making a move to carry his ancient leather suitcase for him.
“But . . . but . . .” Fintan started to stutter.
As he did so, the dog walked up to him and licked his palm. Bjårk smelled, inexplicably, of shrimp cocktail. His tongue dangled cheerfully.
“We don’t have room for a dog!”
Isla gave him a side-eye. Colton’s two dogs, ridiculously expensive deerhounds, lived around the place perfectly happily, and everyone quite liked having them around, even though they were trained to tear you limb from limb on hearing a key word that Colton appeared to have taken with him to the grave and Fintan was terrified of saying by accident one day.
“We absolutely didn’t say dogs were allowed. Obviously we wouldn’t offer you a job like that.”
“Okay fine,” said Konstantin, bored now, who made to turn round and catch the ferry back.
Isla gave Fintan a hard stare.
“Okay,” said Fintan finally. “Okay. We’ll sort it out later.”
And the very strange party made their way in silence to the Land Rover.