The Seaside Kitchen was insanely busy from the second it opened, with the Mure Angel still lighting the dark up the hill ahead.
“It’s a scandal,” said Mrs. Brodie.
“It’s grand, aye,” said Cuthbert McSquib, whose farm had gotten electricity only in 2002 and thought seeing the Mure Angel was a bit like what going to New York City must be like.
Already lots of people had taken pictures of it, and Iona could only assume that when it got light there’d be even more of them. She sold endless coffees and made a happy note to get out the angel cake cutters again to make gingerbread angels. She had a hunch they’d go down well.
The Mure Angel already had a crowd of spectators around it by dawn, and as Iona watched it did the most amazing thing. If you went to the southwest side of the structure, you could watch the very first of the sun’s rays hit it. And as they did so, they bent and refracted in the glass—and a huge rainbow spilled out the other side.
There was an audible gasp from the children watching and even some of the adults. Iona had to yell at them to get out of the way so she could get a good shot, which she did, proclaiming herself the “official photographer.” When you moved someone into the right position, it looked as if a rainbow were dancing off their head. The rest of the front of the statue glowed shining gold. It was undeniably magnificent.
Malcy arrived with the rest of the council—barring Marsali—to close it down at 9:05 A.M.
IT WAS ABSURD, thought Flora, that it was actually easier, in the middle of everything she had going on, to throw Agot a nativity party than usual. They had had one every year since forever; her mother had held them for them all, and gradually the entire village had very much co-opted it as an annual celebration, and Flora would have felt remiss for the MacKenzies not to carry on the tradition, but she outsourced it to the Rock to cater, figuring she might as well get a little recompense for her time and effort given she was doing Fintan’s entire job. He had been less tearful recently, she noticed, and perhaps more thoughtful. As usual, any attempts on her part to get him to open up or talk about things or plan for the future were met with furious disdain.
Anyway. She popped in to find the kitchen at the Rock, for once, in perfect harmony; they were churning out scones and chopping sandwiches, and terrible French pop music was playing but the atmosphere on the whole seemed playful. She still wasn’t 100 percent sure they should have a dog in the dining room but would leave that for another day.
“Drop them off around three-ish?” she said. “And please, do stay.”
Konstantin snuck a glance at Isla. A party. It seemed like a pretty good opportunity, even though she had been pink and nervous all round him that morning. Although she was wearing lipstick, which was new. This was also a good sign. Then she noticed him staring at her lipstick and vanished, and the next time he saw her the lipstick had gone. That was a bad sign. Or was it? He wished it was just a little easier, like with girls who knew he lived in a palace. Or did he, though? He couldn’t remember when he’d last felt so excited, so alive about something. The butterflies were in his tummy absolutely; he couldn’t wait for four o’clock to come. His scones were light as air all of a sudden. He couldn’t quite believe he now cared about the fluffiness of scones, but they reflected his mood and he ran around the kitchen like a puppy when the first lot came out, insisting everyone taste one and grinning his head off.
Isla had disappeared into the bathroom and was leaning her head against the cool wall tiles. How could she have been so stupid? He had spotted she was wearing lipstick straightaway and had looked like a wolf licking his chops. Oh God, was she making a terrible mistake? Was this a ridiculous thing to be doing? What if . . . what if he just wanted to get off with her then sod off back to Norway? He talked about Norway enough, didn’t he? He would be desperate to get back there. He wouldn’t want to be in a hotel kitchen forever—look how he’d organized the statue. He’d want to be with someone like that blond girl.
She looked at herself in the mirror. He was slumming it. She knew it. He was bored and looking for a dalliance. Of course he was. Then he’d go back to one of those nine-foot blond Scandinavian girls. It didn’t matter how often Iona had told her that her dark auburn hair and brown eyes was witch coloring and beautiful. She was still five foot nothing in her stocking feet, and all circles from her round face to her curly hair, round breasts, round bum, and short legs. Her mother had once called her Chorlton, after the round cartoon character, which she hadn’t understood until she was much older, and it had stung deeply ever since, though her mother had said, “Don’t be so sensitive, darling, I’m only joking.”
But here was her dilemma: if he was only messing about, and he almost certainly was . . . she still really, really liked him. Really liked him. So what would be the harm in going for it? Just this once?
She’d asked Iona in several frantic late-night WhatsApp chats so her mother couldn’t overhear, but of course Iona had a very straightforward attitude toward all of this and firmly believed she should get off with him—at the very least—regardless.
Life is long, she had said, wise in her twenty-four years. Do you really want to look back in ten years’ time when you’re surrounded by ankle biters and your tits are hitting the floor and nobody ever even looks at you and you’ve got a mum tum and a long stare and you stay in every night with sick on you like Flora? Do you really want to look back and think, Well, everything sucks but thank GOD I never got off with that really hot bloke that Christmas but instead spent Christmas entirely by myself?
When you put it like that, said Isla weakly. But what if he only wants to take advantage of me?
Take advantage of him! said Iona, knowing Isla’s weak spots irritatingly well. Think of it as practice!
Oh, said Isla, I don’t know . . .
Well, I do, said Iona. He looks like he’d be massive fun. All that energy, for starters.
Isla squeezed her eyes shut. Even to think about him like that . . . Oh goodness, she said.
Well exactly, said Iona. That’s what you want him to get you to say.
SO ISLA HAD washed her hair, even though that was pointless, as it had to be scraped back, and curled her eyelashes and put on makeup, and she’d seen him looking at her again and now it was just overwhelming. Could it . . . could it really be happening? She wiped the lipstick off. Then reapplied it. Then wiped it off again. Then absolutely fell out with herself. This was ridiculous.
She thought about her mother, who was always warning her about putting it about or showing off.
Oddly, this was the thing that steeled her resolve. She was an adult, not a child. And her mother’s rules didn’t seem to bring her much happiness. It was nearly Christmas, there was a party to go to, and a handsome man outside who wanted to take her. Did it have to be more complicated than that?
Yes, whispered her treacherous, terrified brain, but she resolved, just this once, to ignore it. Sometimes, being an introvert . . . it just got too much. That was all.
She reapplied a very thin layer indeed and blotted it so it was almost, but not quite, gone, then forced herself out of the bathroom and back into the raucous, warm, cheery kitchen, where even Gaspard, who was firmly of the belief that scones were not patisserie and never would be even vaguely acceptable, and questioned whether they were a sandwich or a cake or quoi c’est quoi ça, was tucking into one of Konstantin’s scones piled high with local elderberry jam.
She smiled tentatively.
“Okay!” said Gaspard, as they loaded up the trays to put them in the van. “Thees ees a party for tiny children and old people, and I do not know who are the crazy people who leeve on this island so far from the theater because it is horrible and cold, you know, it is a bad, bad island.”
He stopped himself suddenly, completely distracted. Outside, without anyone realizing, it had started to snow again. The whole world was a blur.
Delighted, everyone ran to the windows.
“Look how beautiful that is,” said Konstantin.
“Like home?” said Isla a little nervously.
He turned, delighted she was talking to him again. “Not a bit,” he said. “But I like it anyway.”
“But!” said Gaspard, who hadn’t finished. “It is still a party. In few days we start and we open.
“But today, you should be happy and have fun.”
And they all rushed to the door and started pulling on their hats and coats, almost as excited as the children.
Meanwhile, up at the school, the nativity was unfolding with its usual quota of tears, attention grabbing, and stupefied confusion, typified this year by Conal Feachan of primary one standing stock-still facing out at the audience throughout, one finger stoically up his nose as his horrified parents desperately tried to mime him to remove it, which only caused him to root around slightly harder.
Agot was having none of this.
“I bring tidings of great joy,” she announced, looking less like a miniature angel and more like a fairy, her hair blow-dried for once rather than full of knots or pulled back in fierce braids that made her eyes water. Its near-white blondness rippled behind her like a wave; it was truly beautiful.
Her costume, ludicrously over the top, made her walk self-consciously, and having been entirely convinced that she was the star of the show, it took a lot to get her to stand behind and not in front of Mary, an affronted Effie-Jane McGhie. She and Agot would end up as lifelong enemies, Effie-Jane decided, clutching the doll and trying to catch her grandfather’s eye round Agot’s enormously wide skirts, not realizing that Agot already hated her with a deep and abiding passion because she got to hold the doll. Agot had argued furiously that the angel should bring the baby Jesus doll “from God in heaven? You know? God? In the sky?” pushing even kind Lorna’s patience beyond endurance, and was therefore still making the most of her time in the spotlight.
Being at the front of the stage, she glanced at Conal Feachan, shepherding manfully still with a stout finger up his tiny nostril.
“I is Angel Gabriel. Stop picking your nose,” announced Agot, to gales of laughter from the crowd. Realizing this would be a terrible spur to Agot to show off even more, Flora nudged Innes crossly, only to see him laughing along with everyone else—his daughter could do absolutely no wrong in his opinion—and it was down to Lorna to give her “the look” that sent her to the back of the stage, finally, where she could join Ash, who, after last year’s debacle, when he’d played an innkeeper and Saif had gotten extremely upset about the wearing of tea towels, was safely playing a sheep. Ib, thankfully, was now too old to be in the nativity at all and was in the choir, mouthing the words so he didn’t have to sing along, as he was eleven now and this was patently baby stuff and absolutely ridiculous.
Saif was planning on missing it—everything was too near the knuckle this year; work was still work and he had more than enough on his plate—but at the last minute, Ash’s heartbreak that he might not be there had more than overcome his fundamental objections, and faced with an empty surgery—it was amazing just how much better everyone seemed to feel on the day of the MacKenzies’ famous nativity party—he had closed up early and slipped in at the back, desperate not to attract attention. He made sure, though, that Ash could see him. The little boy instantly waved frantically, and Lorna, fatally, turned round to see him, then cursed herself for doing so.
She couldn’t help remembering this time last year, when they had kissed for the first time. She knew he would be thinking about it too and swore to herself. She had thought things were complicated enough last year. This year it was a million times worse.
She focused back on the nativity play.
“The Wise Men arrived from afar,” said the narrator, stolid Jimmy Donaghy. Good for him. They were going to get this thing done and dusted, then there were carols to sing and people to gouge for some very weak mulled wine, then everyone could go out . . . She peeped out the windows. It was nearing three, thus practically dark, and yes, there it was. Lit up again, you could make out the top of the angel’s head over the crest of the hill. It was still surrounded by people—it had been all day. Frowning, mostly. But she loved it. She thought it was beautiful, even more so now as the snow settled all around.
AGOT WAS REFUSING to take off her costume because people kept saying, “Hello, Angel Gabriel,” when she went up to them and this suited her very well, especially as Effie-Jane had had to take her Mary costume off so ha ha to her, an emotion that lasted right up until Effie-Jane smugly emerged from the girls’ toilets in the stiffest, pinkest party dress Agot had ever seen. It had sequins that changed color when you pushed them over and an underskirt and a unicorn on the front, and Agot was instantly furious again at having to wait till she got home to change into her own party dress, which was not pink and did not have a unicorn on it. It was silver and had a bear on it, and she had absolutely begged for it the last time her mother had taken her to the mainland. She bitterly regretted that now.
But everything was forgotten as the children finished their final songs—as ever, they were “Paiste Am Bethlehem,” the Gaelic carol that could and did make the entire hall weep, and, of course, “Caledonia.” And then the children, bolting down their juice and biscuits, burst out of the school, screaming and yelling and delighting at the nearness of the Christmas holidays, at another exciting event ticked off toward the countdown to the most exciting day of all, their senses getting near hysterical as they met the snowflakes swirling in the playground as well as—most exciting of all—the incredible new angel that had appeared from nowhere to light their path.
As if of one mind, they all dashed toward it. After Malcy’s failure to get the thing taken down that morning—the concrete had come as quite the surprise—he was convening an emergency meeting, so by the time the children got there, some loud grown-ups were already standing in front of it muttering things like “planning” and “you just can’t barge in like this” and “completely illegal,” and somebody was noting things down on a clipboard, and someone else was muttering crossly into a telephone, but of course, as far as the children were concerned, anything and everything grown-ups talked about at any time was irredeemably boring and to be completely ignored at every conceivable opportunity, so this didn’t worry them in the slightest, and as the snow came down they danced ever closer, stunned by its size and beauty.
Taking a detour, Konstantin had been unable to resist going to take another look at his creation. He still couldn’t believe they’d pulled it off. He absolutely loved it. Isla had been walking beside him, making small talk, occasionally sneaking glances at him from underneath her Fair Isle bonnet. Once their gloves brushed in the cold air and she had flinched, and he hadn’t been able to tell if it was the good kind of flinch or the bad one.
Now, seeing all the children there, he ran up, more or less like an overgrown child himself.
“Do you like it?” he called out confidently.
Isla smiled; he wasn’t the least bit nervous talking to anyone. Of course she had no idea how many trips he’d had to make with his father to children’s hospitals and schools.
“Now, in Norway we have a song we sing going round the Christmas tree,” he said. “It is called ‘Jeg Er Så Glad Hver Julekveld.’ Do you know it?”
The children all laughed and shouted, “Noooo!”
“Oh,” said Konstantin. “Is there a song you know that would be good for running round a Christmas tree?”
“There’s ‘O Christmas Tree,’” said Effie-Jane, flouncing out her petticoats. Although she was only five she thought that Konstantin looked like the prince in Frozen. Okay, that prince had turned out to be bad, but he was still a prince, so she had decided to like him anyway.
“That’s a really stupid idea,” came an angel’s voice from somewhere nearby, but rather more people were agreeing.
“Okay then,” said Konstantin, keeping a weather eye on the grown-ups. He knew exactly what they were trying to do and it was very much in his interests to stop this happening, and showing them how much the children loved it could surely only help.
“Now if my glamorous assistant will join me . . .”
He meant Isla and held out his hand. She could barely believe it, but stepped forward and took his hand, and then the hand of the child next to her until everyone had linked hands all the way around the great sculpture. The adults were either pushed out of the way or reluctantly made to join in. Konstantin smiled like it was all a coincidence.
“Okay then!” He whispered to Isla: “I do not know this song. Please quickly help me with this song.”
Isla smiled prettily. “Okay! O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree . . .”
She sounded a little tremulous at first, but the sweetness of her voice at the old melody soon broke through and sounded clear as a bell in the white afternoon, and it wasn’t long before the children joined in.
“How lovely are your branches . . .”
“Oh!” said Konstantin in delight. “I know this!” and instantly joined in in a lovely German baritone: “Wie treu sind deine blätter!”
The children immediately laughed at him and he winked and they all carried on:
“O Christmas tree . . .”
“O Tannenbaum . . .”
Two of the older ladies with grandchildren in the show arrived and joined in loudly and querulously:
“O chraobh na Nollaige!”
And now they really had a party. Once they got to the end of the verse they started going round the tree, and nobody apart from Isla really knew the second verse anyway, so they just did the first one again and then again, as they got faster and faster, until they were whizzing round and round the brilliantly lit statue, singing faster and faster at the top of their lungs, and finally collapsed, all of them, giggling in the snow.
Which more or less started a snowball fight, which Konstantin and Isla got out of the way of as quickly as possible.
“I thought you would be good in a snowball fight,” observed Isla as they marched down the hill, leaving it to the parents to intervene or join in, depending on the personality.
“I am,” said Konstantin gravely. “Too good. I would kill every single one of those children.”
Isla started laughing, she couldn’t help it, as they trudged up the stony lane toward the MacKenzie farm. The van was already parked there, and Gaspard was looking at them crossly for not being there on time to help set up.
“Venez, venez, the lovebirds, come on,” he grumbled, and suddenly neither of them could look at the other.