It didn’t help that Flora liked almost anyone who came with a dog attached. Back at the hotel, she had found the whole thing patently hilarious, to Fintan’s fury. She looked Konstantin up and down. It was very unlike Joel to make this kind of request for anyone, and it had been very hush-hush. So she knew absolutely nothing about the younger boy except that he was Norwegian and, by the look of things, a bit of a drip. He stood tall in the doorway with his blond hair flopping over his eye, gazing at the Rock as if it were the worst place he’d ever seen.
“Okay, Isla, can you show Konstantin where he’s going to be sleeping and take him round the kitchen? And is it Gaspard . . . ?”
But Gaspard had already disappeared. From the back of the long corridor, Flora could already hear the whoosh of a burner being turned on. She frowned. Fintan had mentioned he was “temperamental.” It appeared to be rather worse than that. Crazy, drunk, and covered in tattoos seemed about the size of it. Fintan himself looked absolutely disconsolate and desperate to get away, even though he should be settling everyone in and leading his new team. Oh lord. This was like herding cats. She felt a sudden wish to be at home, snuggled up with Dougie and Joel in front of some ideally really, really terrible television. She had a bad feeling about . . .
“Oh, hello! Cooee!!”
Flora turned round slowly. There was Pam, who led the Outward Bound group.
Flora would never like to say she had a nemesis. But had she had a nemesis, it would have been Pam, who had never quite forgiven her for, years ago, getting off with her boyfriend. For like two seconds. Actually, Flora suspected, correctly, that Pam found it slightly more annoying that Flora had never given it a second thought afterward, not once she and Joel had found each other.
Pam’s baby, Christabel, was strapped to Pam in a woven homemade baby wrapper that looked oddly confrontational. She was red of face and had her father Charlie’s heavy eyebrows and a permanent frown.
“Hello,” said Flora, smiling at Christabel at least.
Pam blinked, and her voice took on an instant pitying demeanor. “Oh, Flora. Where’s little Douglas?”
“He’s at home with my dad,” said Flora. “Ten minutes down the road. I’m just going home.”
Pam smiled sympathetically. “It’s so hard to be apart, isn’t it? Such a shame you can’t have him with you. What a shame you don’t get any maternity leave.”
“I’m on maternity leave now actually. Just popped in.”
There came the sound of loud swearing in French from the kitchen, and Fintan immediately headed off in the opposite direction, shouting, “Flora, can you see what that is?”
“You know,” said Pam, “I never put Christabel down. Never! It’s called attachment parenting? It’s how our ancestors would have done it in the old days.”
Before catching scrofula and dying at thirty-two, Flora almost said, but managed not to.
“We’re always together, she and I. Mummy and baby! How it’s meant to be.”
Christabel screwed her face up crossly.
“Of course it’s different with girls.”
“Is it?” said Flora, genuinely curious, then annoyed with herself that she’d fallen for it. She knew she should always keep her distance. The problem was Pam was the only person she knew with a baby, and she would have loved to have asked her lots of things—like was it normal to want to get away from your baby sometimes, and was it all right to be a bit resentful of being knackered all the time? But Pam was obviously having an absolute ball.
“Oh yes. Girls and their mums. It’s a special thing.”
Flora thought about her own mum, who had died far too young, and smiled ruefully.
Pam was now talking to the baby.
“Poor little Douglas doesn’t get to spend time with his mummy, does he?” said Pam in a baby-waybe voice, bouncing Christabel’s fingers up and down. “Poor ickle baby Douglas.”
“Is there something you want, Pam?” said Flora, realizing too late she’d betrayed her frustration, which in Pam’s world she’d totally chalk up as a win.
“Oh. Yes! Dinner for the Outward Bound sponsors. But, Flora, these are . . . these are important people. Sponsors and people coming from the mainland. You know, the Seaside Kitchen is all very adorable and so on, but these people . . . they’ll be expecting something quite good?”
Flora tried to breathe in through her nose and out through her mouth. The most annoying thing about this was that they needed a soft launch, a chance for the kitchen to run through its paces before they opened properly at Christmas.
“Well, we have a new chef, so we’ll have a menu for you to take a look at.”
“Oh, good,” said Pam, clapping Christabel’s little fingers together. “Not that you’re not, you know, wonderful, at what you do. But a real chef . . .”
There was a bang from the back of the kitchen. Gaspard marched into the main hallway. Despite the fact that there were brand-new whites ordered in for him with his name on them, he was wearing a pair of filthy old checked trousers with a packet of cigarettes clearly hanging out the back of them.
“Your fridge—no good. Your oven—no good. Your cupboards—no good. You need to change—poof!—everything.”
Pam blinked. “Yes, I’m sure that’s true.”
Gaspard stopped. “’Ello, tiny baby,” he muttered in a soft voice much different from anything Flora had heard so far. “Ah, she is very sage.”
“She isn’t,” said Pam crossly. “She’s pink, thank you very much.”
Christabel, however, was cooing loudly in Gaspard’s face. She had her father’s pale coloring and round cheeks.
Pam was waving her hand in front of her face. “I’m sorry, I don’t like smokers near the baby?”
Gaspard gave her a long look, then glanced at his hands as if he had a lit cigarette there he hadn’t known about (it was, to be fair, always possible). As he backed away, Christabel started to bawl.
“So,” said Pam fussily. “Send over the menus, please, we’ll be thirty.”
Gaspard blinked. “’Ow can I send over menus?”
“Just. Tell. Us. What. You’re. Making,” said Pam, speaking very loudly and clearly as she liked to do when speaking to foreigners. “We’d like one full turkey and all the trimmings, one vegetarian option, and one gluten-free.”
Gaspard stared at her, then looked at Flora as if to clearly say, What in the hell do you expect me to do with this woman? Flora felt caught between a hard place and, well, the Rock, she supposed.
“We’ll get you something as soon as possible,” she said to Pam, who looked skeptical as she turned around.
“Of course, obviously we’ll be expecting a big discount,” she said, “seeing as it’s for charity and you’re just basically having a test run. You should probably do it for free,” she added pointedly.
“I think for everything to be great for your charity you should buy good produce,” said Flora smoothly. Pam’s family was one of the richest on the island. “Which costs money, I’m afraid.”
“Produce, which all mysteriously comes from your farm,” said Pam.
Flora put her best smile on again and hustled her out the door.
“I am not doing turkey,” Gaspard was already threatening, within earshot.
“It’s Christmas!” said Flora. “Please! We’ll never hear the end of it. Please do turkey at Christmas.”
“Turkey is ’orrible! Is huge dry chicken! Huge dry unhappy chicken!!”
“I’m sure they’re not—”
“Do not eat unhappy animals!! Is unhappy! That is why”—he paused for emphasis—“so many fights at Christmas.”
Flora looked at him. “What are you talking about?”
“People, they are so sad, they fight at Christmas, boo-hoo. Everyone sad. Is all EastEnders.”
“That’s a fictional television show.”
“Christmas Christmas Christmas, fight fight fight.”
“You’re saying people fight at Christmas because turkeys are unhappy?”
“Exactly, yes.”
There was a pause.
“So what would you . . . ?”
“L’oie. Goose. You have goose at Christmas. Delicious goose.”
“And geese are happy?”
“You know geese?”
“I do,” said Flora, who was terrified of geese; she’d been taken to a wildlife park on the mainland as a child and one had nearly broken her arm.
“Geese, they are fierce! They are strong! They hate everyone. Cacar!!”
“That’s not the sound a goose makes! They honk!”
“A goose, he has an ’appy life. I ’ate you, he say. Cacar! Everybody move. Happy goose.”
“Not foie gras.”
“Oui, foie gras! ’Appy, ’appy goose, something to eat, yes, please.”
“No,” said Flora. “No foie gras, it’s cruel.”
“Okay,” said Gaspard, not in the least bit perturbed. “Free-range goose.”
“Thank you.”
“Cacarrrrr!!”
“Honnnnkkkk!!”
I like him, thought Flora.
It had happened the previous month. Entirely with Joel in mind, Colton had left a large bequest to a fostering charity on his behalf. This was embarrassing enough in itself, but they’d also asked him to speak, which he did, about his own childhood and his new life in Scotland, with a baby, and Colton’s hotel.
Afterward, Joel had found himself next to a portly short Norwegian man.
“You have a new baby?” the man had asked him.
Joel nodded.
“How’s it been?”
Joel half smiled, which was more or less as demonstrative as he could ever get in company. He had been up with Dougie at four, giving him a bottle as Flora slept, happy as Larry. He’d reminded himself to get started on Colton’s Christmas lights—Colton had likewise requested that the island be made more Christmassy, a responsibility that fell on Joel as his foundation’s lawyer—and looking round at the smart room he was in in London, with a huge, chic silvery tree and cutting-edge modern baubles, he made a mental note to remind himself again. Unfortunately, someone had just offered the possibility of him showing off pictures of Douglas, which made it immediately fall out of his mind again.
He whipped out his phone to show pictures of the little dark-eyed baby boy.
“Oh, he’s . . . he’s amazing.” The man smiled sadly, then he sighed miserably. “Ah. Then they grow up.”
“You have children?” said Joel, who was of the unshiftable view of new parents: that their children would of course be different.
“A son,” said the man. “Layabout, more like.”
He blinked.
“He needs a job, in fact.”
There was a pause.
“What kind of job?” said Joel carefully. He wasn’t crazy happy about bringing on board people’s privileged children. They tended to take up more time than was strictly necessary and be frankly horrified that they were expected to work every single day, that people might occasionally tell them that what they had done wasn’t wonderful and perfect, and that they couldn’t just get immediately promoted.
“Oh, anything,” said the man. “He should really start at the bottom. He’s never held a proper job. Have you got anything an idiot can do?”
Joel smiled. “Probably, but I’m sure you wouldn’t want to . . .”
But the man took another swig of his wine and was warming to his theme. “No, do it,” he said. “Get him cleaning floors, washing pots. I insist! I’ll sponsor the charity too if you do it. Yes. This is it.”
And Joel could hardly refuse that. And so it was arranged.
NOW, ISLA STOOD in the kitchen, looking at her watch. It was time for the new kid Konstantin’s shift to start—everyone else was there, but he hadn’t shown up yet. Which was not ideal, considering he only lived upstairs. Gaspard was late too, but she kind of expected that. Still, it was frustrating.
The double swing doors that led to the dining room suddenly burst open and two people came through: Gaspard and a plain, doughy-faced woman.
“Thees is Kerry. She is my sous chef.”
Isla frowned. “Does Fintan know?”
Gaspard shrugged. “I don’ care. I need more help. Ees beeg job.”
Kerry was already tying on a cap round her head. Isla tried to smile hello, quite excited about the possibility of a female friend in the kitchen to take Iona’s place, but Kerry returned a stony look.
Gaspard looked around. “Where is my boy who cleans pots?”
“I don’t think he’s up yet,” ventured Tam, a stolid redhead from one of the most northern farmsteads who absolutely didn’t care what job he had to do in this hotel as long as it didn’t involve walking up and down the side of a hill in the pouring rain all day for the next forty years like his father, three uncles, three brothers, and nine cousins were all doing. He would scrub the floor with a toothbrush if it meant not wearing nine jackets and getting sewn into his underwear.
“Well, go get him!”
Tam frowned. “Where is he?”
Gaspard shrugged. Isla sighed.
“You know?” demanded Gaspard.
Isla flushed bright red. She didn’t like being picked out to do anything. “Same place as you, in the roof—”
“Go! Get him!”
“But—”
“Feerst thing in my kitchen.” Gaspard flexed his arm, and all his tattoos stood out. His face suddenly looked rather menacing. “We say ‘Oui, Chef,’ okay? You are in a real kitchen now, leetle girl! Ees real job, not pretend! Okay? You understand? Not pretend?”
Isla froze.
“OUI, Chef!”
She had absolutely no idea what he was talking about as everyone stared at her.
“Come on,” he snarled.
And then he paused, until he drew out of the utterly humiliated Isla a rather half-hearted “Wee, Chef!”
He nodded curtly, and Isla scampered off up the stairs, feeling wretched. It had been all right being shy in Flora’s kitchen. Iona could pick up the slack for noisiness, and Flora was kind enough that she never noticed. Isla even spoke up from time to time. It wasn’t impossible, when she felt comfortable.
But when it came to strange foreign men yelling at her, or, like now, asking her to do something utterly preposterous like go up to a strange man’s bedroom . . . her face was absolutely flaming and she wanted to burst into tears, and the thought of how it would be to burst into tears on your very first day in a new job was so awful she couldn’t face thinking about that either. So she bit her lip incredibly hard and went past the corridors leading to the Rock’s twelve boutique rooms, all beautiful, and up a hidden staircase to the old attic rooms, which in their day had housed the servants. And now, she supposed, still housed the servants. All were open except for one at the very end of the hallway. She pulled herself together and knocked loudly.
There was no answer. She tried again, harder.
“Hello?” she said. Then, louder: “Hello?”
She touched the door, which, to her horror—she had been hoping to turn back and say she hadn’t found him—started to creak open. It was too late now; she was stuck there and would have to hope for the best.
“Uhm . . . Chef sent me upstairs to . . .”
There was still no sound of movement from inside the room. Curious, she pushed the door farther and glanced inside. The bed was completely unmade; possessions were strewn everywhere. But the room was empty of people. And the window was flying open.
She frowned. Surely he wouldn’t have made his escape; they were three stories off the ground. And it was only a job, not prison, whatever he thought. She blinked. Had he gone?
Isla found herself going to the open window, her heart beating quickly. She was struck suddenly by the most horrifying thought: What if he’d fallen? Tried to climb out and slipped on the wet pipes?
It was freezing in the room. The wind blew right in off the sea, and there were little flecks of rain bouncing off and around in the maelstrom. The curtains were dancing; papers were jumping off the desk.
Slowly she advanced.
“Uhm . . . Konstantin?” she said, the odd consonants taking shape in her mouth.
As she moved there was a sudden flurrying noise and a wouf!! as a massive, hairy something exploded in her face. She screamed and dropped her phone.
“What?” came a voice.
Shocked, she’d fallen back a few paces and tripped, sitting heavily down on the unmade bed. There was little space in the room for anything else. A bemused-looking figure with rumpled hair appeared at the window, standing as if in midair, only half his body visible. Isla was so shocked she could barely speak. With his white shirt and pale skin, she thought for one terrifying moment she was looking at a ghost.
“Oh,” he said, eyes wide. “Santa got my letter!”
He had a slightly flat, barely traceable Scandinavian accent. Isla jumped up as if the covers were hot.
“Wh-where . . .” she stuttered. Konstantin showed her that the window of his room let out onto a flat gable—dangerous, unfenced off, but wide enough for his big dog to stand and, she could now see, have a gigantic pee.
“I don’t think you can let your dog pee on the roof.”
His face puckered. “Well, he cannot fly, so you see I have no choice.”
Isla blinked. He shivered and jumped back in through the window, encouraging his clearly overweight dog to do the same behind him, even as he scrabbled and whined for help, and Konstantin ended up hoofing him over ungraciously.
“So what are you, the welcoming committee?” he said, still smiling. He was used to having a certain effect on young women.
“You’re needed downstairs,” stuttered out Isla, pink to the tips of her ears. “It’s time to work.”
“Really?” said Konstantin, pouting. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather stay and have a quick . . .”
He had been about to say “cup of coffee,” in the hopes of staving off work a little longer, but Isla had been brought up to be very wary of strange men—there weren’t many on Mure, which was why they were all so terrifying.
“Get back!” she shouted. “Get away from me!”
“No coffee then?” protested Konstantin, as she stared at him menacingly, reversing out back into the corridor. He added impishly, “You know, it was you who turned up in my bedroom.”
Finally, Isla found her voice. “Piss off, you disgusting sex case!” she screamed. Then she turned and bolted back down the hall.
“Wouf!” said Bjårk.
Konstantin frowned, thoroughly awake now. He’d been called a few things in his life, but that seemed rather harsh.
“Sorry!” he hollered down the corridor, but it was too late.