talk talk talk, bleh bleh bleh.”
Without waiting for an answer, he stood up and stalked into the small kitchen.
“Maree-ong!” he shouted. “You have nuzzing! Nuzzing ees here!”
“You know this guy?” said Fintan.
Marian nodded.
“Is he a dick?”
“Uhm.” Marian truly didn’t want to be unprofessional.
Fintan, reading her face, groaned.
“But,” said Marian, to the sound of a gas burner being turned up high and popping loudly, “he can cook.”
Chapter 8
Fintan went in to watch what Gaspard was doing. What Gaspard was doing was having a cigarette out the window, in blatant defiance of the fire regulations and the many signs posted around the walls.
“What are you doing?” said Marian.
“Sweating the onion,” said Gaspard. “Nobody does eet properly. They do not leave eet long enough. They rush rush rush. And so, dégueulasse.”
He shook his head sadly and leaned back so far out the window, Fintan thought he might fall out.
Fintan couldn’t help himself. His lips twitched ever so slightly. Gaspard tossed his cigarette out the window and went back to the pan without washing his hands. Hearing Marian’s anguished sigh, he theatrically returned to the sink and did so. Then he added some finely chopped bacon, reduced some white wine he had already sampled straight from the bottle, and gave Marian a big telling off on terroir, explaining that if you bought wine for cooking that was worse than your normal wine, you were an idiot, and if you bought that wine for both cooking and drinking, you were also an idiot, and so what was she? Finally he added some cream to the sauce, quickly seared some scallops in another pan with fennel, and served them all the lightest, most delicious lunch Fintan had had in some time, particularly after ferreting around in the back of the cupboard and finding a slightly more acceptable bottle of wine.
“Tiens,” Gaspard grumbled, throwing his food down like a lanky bear.
He disappeared after Marian insisted on his leaving the building for another cigarette.
“I’ll take him,” said Fintan.
“Are you sure?” said Marian. “He’s a pig. And he doesn’t last long in jobs.”
“So why did you show him to me then?”
“Because we were . . . a little short on CVs.”
“Well,” said Fintan, as Gaspard rolled back in, shouting at the top of his lungs what were patently obscenities in French down his phone. “You’ve got him off your hands.”
“For now,” said Marian, glumly collecting the plates. “See you in a week, Gaspard.”
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