Listen to me,” commanded Gaspard.
Konstantin had made it down ten minutes later. Being unused to a uniform, he was wearing his trousers back to front. Isla moved as far away from where he was standing as she possibly could.
“The next time this happens, you will be doing all the potato peeling, you understand? For one week, two week, four week.”
“Yes, all right,” said Konstantin, who was confused. Surely they’d been friends yesterday in the bar.
“You do what I say in thees keetchen. Then all will be happy. Or you do not do as I say and boo-hoo there is absolute tristesse, you understand?”
Nobody did understand, but they could make a stab from his scary tone of voice.
Gaspard had been through a lot of restaurants and found his manner tended to make people scared of him and leave, unless they were good, committed, or—and this was very much what he was counting on at the moment—had absolutely nowhere else to go. He didn’t care which.
Modern-day restaurants, with their cost centers and portion control and budgets, didn’t suit him. But here . . . he’d sneered at the kitchen, but it wasn’t bad, not really—done by someone with money to spend. Here, there was a chance for him. And nobody was going to stand in his way this time, certainly not some posh teenage drunk and a clutch of locals who probably shared one eyebrow between them.
KONSTANTIN HAD ASSUMED Gaspard was kidding about the potatoes. He emphatically was not. The third time he took the skin off his knuckles—he’d never peeled one in his life—Isla finally got tired of listening to his strangled epithets and ransacking of the first aid box. His hands were a riot of blue bandages. Everyone else ignored him. After the potatoes he started washing pots as everyone else got to try out cooking stuff. This was absolutely rubbish and incredibly boring, and it took hours. He tried to catch the eye of the girl who’d been upstairs, but she was resolutely not looking at him. Gaspard just shouted. The blank-faced girl, Kerry, worked like a robot and ignored everybody. His hands were cut, red, and chafing from the hot water. He smelled absolutely terrible; the smells of food got everywhere. How could it be so hard and boring at the same time? He hated his stupid father with an absolute vengeance. He hadn’t even been able to tell his friends where he was going. Not only had they stopped his phone, they’d stopped his Wi-Fi. He was completely alone in the universe because of his stupid father, having to grovel and make himself filthy with a bunch of random dicks. It was a joke that had gone too far.
Konstantin had never felt so sorry for himself in his entire life.
They were doing a test run for Pam’s charity dinner. Joel had made a stupid joke about how he would come so he would get a chance to see Flora, which had not gone down well and he’d regretted it almost immediately, especially when she had sat with Douglas all afternoon, showing him seagulls until his little fingers were pink—he hated his mittens and tried to bite them—as he pointed at the waves and she grew increasingly freezing. By the time they got into the Seaside Kitchen for a coffee, Douglas was cross and tired and screamed the entire place down, to the point where even her fondest regulars were finding their smiles growing a little fixed. Why was this so easy for everyone else?
By comparison, she was looking forward to going up to the Rock, testing the kitchen’s wings. Iona was coming too to take pictures for the Instagram account.
Fintan was drumming his fingers anxiously on the white tabletop alongside Innes and Eilidh, Innes’s once-upon-a-time ex-wife, newly reunited and making a great show of being disgustingly lovey-dovey all the time.
They’d tried to leave Agot behind with Eck, who didn’t hold with fancy new food, but she was having none of it and had turned up at the front door of the farmhouse in her ballet skirt, her Frozen slippers, and some alarmingly applied lip gloss and with one of her mother’s handbags, looking at them with an expression that would have been cute in a five-year-old if it wasn’t quite so uncompromising.
“I’ll be coming to dinner,” she’d enunciated clearly. “I have thought and thought, and now I have decided. Yes.”
“Well, I’m not sure that’s—”
“Yes, I think so, Daddy. That baby is coming.”
Innes was a helpless pushover where Agot was concerned, and Eilidh was just so pleased they were back together again—and, frankly, thrilled that boring old Mure island was going to get a fancy hotel, thus not being quite the dead arse end of the world she’d left in a snit two years before—that she wasn’t going to halt Agot either, as a result of which Agot marched straight to the Land Rover fully confident.
“Well, it’ll be worth it to test how the restaurant deals with really difficult customers,” whispered Flora to Fintan, who nodded emphatically in agreement.
There are two ways of getting to the Rock from the south where the village is. On sunny days Bertie Cooper will run you round in the boat to the headland—it’s not far, only five minutes or so, and it’s delightful on a dusky pink evening to be out on the water. You might see a dolphin and you’ll certainly hear the seals barking at you as you land at the jetty with the torches shining up ahead toward the building itself. Fintan had always thought it was one of the most beautiful landings in the world.
This was not one of those times. The wind that had nearly blown Konstantin and Bjårk Bjårkensson off the roof the previous week was bucking harder. The ferry that day had taken a few tries to get to where it needed to be, and even then the passengers disembarked a trifle green. Gusts were flapping smaller cars out of the way—the farm’s and the Rock’s Land Rovers could be trusted to take them the few miles up the narrow bumping track that served as the inland road, but you wouldn’t want to be in a little tin can, however much Flora might have hankered after a chic little pastel Fiat 500.
Gray clouds dropped out of the sky as night was now falling at four P.M. Sheep huddled close to the mountainside, trying to keep themselves warm, and Flora inhaled the scent of sleepy warm baby beneath her in the car and lightly twirled one of his fine black curls, pressed beneath his best woolly hat with ears—all hats came with ears these days, Joel had observed, puzzled as to why.
“That baby is very hairy,” observed Agot from the opposite seat, where she was cross because she was in a baby seat “even though,” she complained the entire way, “I am not that baby.”
“He is.” Flora smiled. “Hairy babies are lucky.”
“Yes,” said Agot. “He is lucky he doesn’t have to sit in a stupid baby’s seat or eat stupid Dead Uncle Colton’s food.”
“Agot,” remonstrated Innes. She had started calling him Dead Uncle Colton after the funeral, and although Flora had furiously tried to get her to stop, Fintan told her he didn’t mind it. In fact, it was comforting because she brought him into every conversation, every game she played. She didn’t lay a tea table for her dollies (who were usually to be heard getting strict tellings off—who knew where she had even learned them, given that Innes was useless at it and the primary school specialized in encouraging play, not discipline) without including Dead Uncle Colton in the family lineup and was absolutely convinced that he watched every single thing she did. Fintan found it an unending comfort. Flora, watching the little sprite, with her white-blond hair and tiny dancing figure, sometimes wasn’t entirely sure she didn’t see ghosts.
“That’s enough.”
Agot lifted her stubborn little chin and stared out the window crossly, pausing briefly en route to shoot Douglas an utterly filthy look. Flora sighed inside. They were meeting Pam and Charlie there too, so they could “discuss menus.” Please, please, let it go well.