Chapter 9
The following week, Isla walked up the steps of the hotel somewhat tentatively.
She’d been to the Rock before, normally to help waitress at parties. But that was different; then she was just in and out the back door in a black skirt and a white shirt, handing round haggis canapés and refilling people’s glasses, except for Wullie Stevenson, who wanted his filled a tad too often, even by Colton’s generous standards.
She’d never really thought of it as anything other than the big house, the hotel. She’d never considered that one day it might be a place where she worked every day.
Nervously, she fiddled with the zip of her padded jacket. Would she be able to handle such a big job? Flora seemed to have confidence in her, but wasn’t it just that Flora was so distracted with the baby and that grumpy boyfriend? And Fintan being so miserable that he wouldn’t even care?
Isla hadn’t always lacked confidence. Not when her dad . . .
Well. There was no point thinking about that now.
The huge oak doors were propped open and a bright fire was burning in the grate. The receptionist, Gala, was a beautiful American girl, a niece of a colleague of Colton’s who was supposedly on work experience and had gotten rather more than she bargained for, but she was friendly enough.
“Isla! Yeah! Sure! Got your name right here!” chirruped Gala.
Isla glanced around. Beyond the welcoming hallway with the flickering fire, the restaurant was sitting cold and empty and the kitchen lay cold and bare. There were so many chairs to fill, so many mouths to feed. Flora kept saying it was just a bigger version of what she was already doing and that there’d be a boss in place, but she wasn’t sure. Not at all.
She passed on through the heavy oak doors at the back of the restaurant into the kitchen. It was huge! State-of-the-art burners and grills, walk-in freezers, a wood-burning oven for bread—wow. Colton had stinted on nothing. Lines of shelving with butter, eggs, flour, everything she could conceivably need, tidy and neat and brand-new.
Well, maybe, she thought. Maybe she could make this work. Her dad would have been pleased. Roddy had adored his only child. Lost in a fishing accident, the industry as dangerous as ever it was, his death had broken everyone’s hearts. Especially his daughter’s. It had turned her mother’s heart hard as flint, everyone said.
ISLA WAS FIRST, but it was a day of arrivals at the Rock, and Flora somehow found herself turning up to help Fintan welcome the new chef. The servants’ rooms on the very top floor of the house had been repurposed to be as comfortable as possible for seasonal staff; Gala had already taken the best one on the corner.
Fintan had gone down to the dock to meet Gaspard off the ferry. Isla found him and looked up at him shyly; she was slightly terrified of him.
“Hello? I’m Isla? In the kitchen . . .”
“Oh yes, hello.” He sank into his traditional sullen silence in case she started to talk about Colton or asked him how he was doing, something he was tired of and normally discouraged.
“I am a bit worried,” said Isla in that quiet way of hers, “that they might not be very keen when they arrive.”
Sure enough, it was an absolute pig of a day. Hail was blowing into their faces; Isla was barely visible inside the zipped-up hood of her puffer; Fintan had an expensive overcoat and a cashmere scarf, but the tips of his ears were bright pink.
He smiled ruefully. “It’s not Antigua.”
Isla pulled open her bag.
“I brought hot chocolate,” she said, “to kind of welcome them if they’d had terrible journeys. Would you like some?”
Fintan was about to say no—he ate rarely these days and never really felt hungry—when he felt how cold his fingers were, even inside the leather gloves he was wearing.
“Okay,” he said.
She poured him out a cup of the most delicious frothy hot chocolate he’d ever tasted, sliding in a couple of marshmallows for good measure. He warmed his hands, then took a sip of the rich, not-too-sweet goodness. It tasted like Christmas and home and warmth all at once.
“Oh my,” he said. “That’s fantastic.”
Isla smiled. “We’ve been perfecting it in the café for years. Have you not tried it?”
“It’s not very good for you.”
Isla didn’t say anything, as she disagreed with him thoroughly and thought a delicious, satisfying milk-based beverage on a cold day probably didn’t do anyone any harm. She caught sight of the arriving ferry bouncing on the gray sea.
Fintan stared out at the waves pounding against the dock that had been the background noise to almost everything he’d done for so long that, like most people on Mure, he couldn’t even hear it anymore. He took another sip. It really was good.
“We need to serve that in the bar,” he said.
Isla nodded. “You could put a shot of whisky in it and have it like Irish coffee,” she said. “Only better.”
Fintan nodded back. “It would be better,” he said. “I should write that down.”
Isla pulled out her phone. “Hot chocolate with booze,” she said into it. Fintan looked at her.
“You talk to your phone?”
Isla flushed instantly. She hated anyone singling her out for anything. “Uh, yeah,” she said, quietly. “When I have to remember something but I don’t want to take my gloves off.”
“That makes a lot of sense,” said Fintan.
The ferry started to churn in reverse, backing up, and they fell once again into a watchful silence.
GASPARD HAD SPOTTED the lean, confused-looking boy in the corner of the bar in the nearly empty ferry. November was not what you’d call peak season for island hopping in the far north of Scotland, and there was barely anyone on board: a few farmers with Land Rovers stowed downstairs; those who had come back from the market enjoying a wee dram at the bar; a clutch of ladies who’d been shopping and to a show in Glasgow, giggling and cheerful and dressed up, albeit with their fleeces pulled back on over the top, now that they were heading into the real world again. And a well-built blond-haired boy looking sulky and completely out of place.
“Hey,” Gaspard had said. “You live in thees end of world? Huh? You can tell me about it?”
Konstantin shook his head miserably. “I’ve been banished,” he said in neatly clipped English with just the trace of an accent. “I’m being punished.”
“Me also,” said Gaspard. “Except I have done notheeng wrong. Notheeng!”
He marched up to the tiny brass bar and rang its heavy ship’s bell, which was really only for decoration, as the barman’s face made perfectly clear as he straightened up from the shelf where he’d been putting glasses away. Gaspard had made several questions about the wine, none of which the young barman could understand or answer, then pointed at one bottle and took the whole thing. After seeing Konstantin looking increasingly miserable, he grabbed another glass and bade him sit down and tell him the whole sorry story, fueled with the terrible wine, which didn’t taste quite so bad by the time they got halfway down the bottle.
The long and short of it was, by the time the boat churned into Mure Town, as the sun was falling over the horizon and the gleam of bigger ships was the only light to be seen, both of them were a) great friends and b) completely roaring drunk.