“Well, not if I’m going to be management. Is Isla going to be management too?”
“I think I’m going to regret this,” said Flora. They were just young girls, after all. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.
“You were right about the big custard creams, though,” mused Iona. “We should do more. Bourbon creams and jam sandwiches, people loved them, and they’re easy to do, you just need the molds. Markup’s good. Oh! And pumpkin spice.”
“What?” said Flora, carefully pretending she knew what Iona meant.
“We need to get pumpkin spice.”
“Uhm, what is that?”
Iona looked unsure for a moment. “I don’t know exactly. But it’s what you have to have on your coffee this time of year. Instagram says so.”
Flora blinked. “Instagram?”
“Yeah. You have your pumpkin spice latte and post it on Instagram.”
“And it makes your coffee taste of pumpkin?”
“I don’t know.” Iona started scrolling through her phone. “It’s just what everyone’s doing, that’s all. And people take pictures of the biscuits.”
“Do they?”
Flora had noticed, in the last year or so, people taking pictures of themselves more and more outside the pretty pale-gray-painted frontage of the little harbor café but hadn’t thought much of it; customers were customers, and tourists did tourist stuff, and even if these days it meant all of them lining up in the exact same angle to take exactly the same photograph, well, she didn’t really think about that very much.
“We need an Instagram page.”
Iona was quite pink in the face now, and Flora realized she was entirely serious and also that she’d thought about this a lot and hadn’t just been cutting sandwiches the whole time.
“We need to show off how lovely it is here and have people come in and link and make sure that tourists come even if it’s just to see us. And—”
Flora frowned. “Hang on . . . have you been having these brilliant ideas all this time?”
Iona looked perturbed and didn’t say anything.
“Am I a terrible boss who never listens to anything?”
“You never asked,” said Iona.
This wasn’t at all the way Flora had predicted the morning turning out.
“Also, I think we should do organic baby food for the mothers group. The markup is—”
“Okay, okay, you’ve got the Seaside Kitchen,” said Flora, smiling. “Just turn us into millionaires by Christmas, please.”
She looked at Isla, who was standing there quietly.
“Are you happy to come up to the big house?” she said. “I know it’s not as glamorous a job, but there’s lots of opportunity to learn in a bigger kitchen, try out different skills, cooking as well as baking . . .”
“Does she have to wash pots?” said Iona.
“Everyone has to wash pots,” said Flora. “That’s how small businesses work.”
Isla looked at Iona a bit sadly. “It’ll be hard to be separated,” she said quietly. In fact, she was gutted to be leaving her best friend. She didn’t like things changing. She wasn’t very good at it.
“You’ll be great,” said Flora.
“I don’t know if I have good ideas like Iona.”
“That’s not really how you should approach a job interview!” said Flora, then, when she saw Isla’s face fall, “I’m kidding! I’m kidding. I’ve seen you work your socks off here for three years. I know how good you are. I’m lucky to have you both and you’re both getting raises.”
“And a marketing budget,” said Iona.
“Iona!” said Flora. “I am intensely cross with you for not telling me all this before.”
“Take it up with management,” said cheeky Iona. “Oh no, that appears to be me!”
Flora shook her head. “Okay, Isla,” she said. “You come with me. I’ll talk you through it up at the hotel. And the calls have already gone out for other staff. It’s going to be fun!”
Isla was already working out what to tell her mum.
Chapter 5
Konstantin was perturbed. There was no breakfast. Not delivered, and not in the great dining room. He ended up heading down to the kitchen, where normally Else would pet him and find a tidbit to eat. After his mother had died he had been so spoiled and coddled by the kitchen staff (beyond even if they’d been allowed to refuse him, which they certainly were not) that he had been a lonely, podgy boy. When his father sent him off to boarding school at fifteen, hoping this would straighten him out, it had gotten better and worse all at once. Worse because he was initially unbelievably miserable. Better because the enforced sport and meager rations had gotten rid of the flab immediately. And then worse again as, to try to make himself popular, he had done his best to get in with the worst gang in the school. Since his father was extremely busy trying to keep up with ceremonial duties, as well as manage his own grieving, he hadn’t always been able to keep on top of his absent son’s behavior too.
Having an unusually large stipend, even for a boarding school boy, allowed him to become accepted into an unruly gang of reprobates who liked to take weekends in Montenegro, Gstaad, Monaco, and Biarritz. They would stay in the flashiest hotels and see just how much they could get away with, which, as a group of northern white aristocrats, turned out to be an awful lot. School hadn’t been so bad in the end. He’d stuffed up his exams, of course, but these things happened. There wasn’t much incentive to take exams when you already drove a nicer car than the head teacher ever would.
And being an excellent shot, a good and brave horseman, and a tremendous skier took work, didn’t it? And effort. His father never recognized that. Though when he’d been tapped to join the national ski team, the discipline and expected hours were, quite simply, unbearably dull—not to mention the nutritional requirements—and he hadn’t attended any practices at all.
So now Anders, his father’s personal secretary, had taken him aside and was talking to him, but every word of it was going in one ear and out the other.
Anders was doing his best to explain yet again. “We’ve found a job for you, and you’re going to be beginning in a week.”
Konstantin screwed his face up in a charming appeal that had always worked like gangbusters with the palace staff. “Yeah . . . noooo.”
“I’m afraid it’s your father’s orders,” said Anders.
“He’s not the boss of me!”
“I’ve been asked . . .” Anders was not a cowardly man, but he hadn’t been looking forward to this in the slightest. “I’ve been asked to inform you that all of your credit cards have been stopped as of this morning, your phone contract has been canceled, and you’ll be leaving in five days. Your tickets are in this envelope.”
Konstantin gawked in astonishment. “What?!”
“Your horses have been restabled and . . .”
Konstantin immediately looked around for Bjårk, who lumbered over—he was frightfully overweight. “You’re not taking Bjårk Bjårkensson.”