Gala had gone through it with her and, to Flora’s amazement, there were more and more bookings. Flora liked to think, possibly entirely optimistically, they could see past the silly headlines into the lovely rooms, the delicious dinners, the fabulous peace of the place. She wondered if people couldn’t remember necessarily the story, just the hotel itself; the name had stuck in their head rather than whether it was good or bad. She hoped so. Christmas Day and Boxing Day were full, then they would close for a few days, then they had an absolutely full house for Hogmanae too, as well as a band and a full ceilidh. If people couldn’t enjoy that, she thought, well, there was not much she could do about that.
Tonight was their last dry run: they were feeding all the people who went to the community day care—the very oldest residents of Mure and their carers. It was just a good chance to give the kitchen a last dress rehearsal with the waiters in place and make sure they were good to go for the big day. She couldn’t deny: she was excited.
“This is getting ridiculous,” Joel had said as she had collapsed into bed the previous evening as exhausted as only someone doing someone else’s job with a six-month-old could be. Joel never had any trouble sleeping, and it made Flora jealous. Flora never knew how before he’d met her he had rarely slept more than four hours a night, jittery, anxious. Coming to Mure was the first time he’d slept all night in his adult life. The sweetness of the fresh cold air and the sheer ability to relax had transformed his life so entirely he got embarrassed even thinking about it. Waking up once or twice to pick up Dougie still hardly felt like a hardship of any kind.
“I know,” groaned Flora, staring at some spreadsheets that were swimming in front of her eyes. “Innes says this should be easy to read, but I don’t think Fintan even opened the message.”
There was a silence.
“I mean, I can’t sack him,” said Flora. “It’s his hotel.”
“But you’re doing everything! It’s not right! You should be enjoying your baby!”
A bolt of fear went through Flora’s heart. Did he know?
“I am!” protested Flora, even as Douglas was tugging on Joel’s fingers. “I do! I love the baby.”
“Uh, yeah, I know,” said Joel, baffled.
Flora’s eyes strayed back to her email. “I’ll get him in tomorrow. If he can pull the old Fintan charm on the old ladies, that will be good for business.”
The old Fintan charm hadn’t shown itself for quite some time, but you could live in hope.
“Have I told you,” said Joel, “how absolutely amazing and fabulous you’ve been and how proud of you I am?”
“For opening ‘the worst hotel in the world’?” grumbled Flora.
“Oh, that’s all over and done with now,” said Joel, putting Douglas to bed and pulling her close to him.
He was completely and absolutely wrong.
Candace couldn’t believe it. Sometimes life depended on luck, she knew, and in this case, she liked to think that she’d made the luck on her own.
She stared at it again. Amazing. She’d talked to her friend on the picture desk, who was just as obsessive a reader of Hello! magazine as she was, and they’d tracked back through the pictures, knowing he was Norwegian, and—ta-da! With a bit of help from Google Translate they’d been able to easily put together “Tragedy of Young Norwegian of Noble Descent” with lots of pictures of his amazing castle and stories of the death of his beautiful mother.
Then, under his real name, racy stories of his dating models, pictures of him falling out of nightclubs, and a tabloid nickname, the Party Prince. There was also a small gossip item about him, speculating at his missing Christmas parties and wondering whether he was in rehab, as well as links to his social media accounts that proved the matter beyond doubt and were also full of ridiculous pictures she could easily pull, with him shooting deer and posing next to Ferraris. It was absolute gold. It was patently clear he’d been banished.
She had his quotes about Mure and how he couldn’t wait to go; she had pictures—as well as the freeze-frame pulls from the video—and now it was absolutely up and ready to go. This was brilliant. She was going to get promoted for sure. It had absolutely everything: money, good-looking people, nobility, tragedy, shame, and, her readers’ favorite thing, someone being punished ferociously. It couldn’t fail. They’d have it up by the evening, clickbait of the finest order.
She emailed off the final copy for the page mock-ups with satisfaction. Then she headed out to get the last flight of the evening. God, she’d be pleased to shuck off this crap hole and get back to London. How could they handle being so far away and stuck in the middle of nowhere? It was absolutely freezing all the bloody time and there was nothing going on. Although to be fair, that statue wasn’t bad.
Anyway, her work was done. She was out. She packed her neat little wheelie bag and headed through the snow to the airport.