Christmas at the Island Hotel - Jenny Colgan Page 0,22

with it and dark fir trees that seemed to go on for miles.

They’d take the horses out and go steeplechasing even as the snow fell thickly and the night came on early, finishing with drinks before a roaring fire at the lodge his father kept up near Lillehammer. After Christmas, as the weather hardened, there was skating and of course skiing, the toughest courses, the fastest mountains, to build up your appetite for long hearty lunches filled with laughter and bonhomie at the best time of year.

Here the snow was pathetic, wet and bitty, he thought fiercely. It would barely lie at all, totally useless with all this wind.

Up until now he’d felt only cross and annoyed at being, according to him, kidnapped and forced into servitude.

Now it felt worse than that. He felt exiled from everything he loved. He thought of the pretty houses of Trondheim, of heading out into the woods to catch a glimpse of the northern lights, of sitting in the hot tub at his friend’s cabin. He was almost unbearably homesick. And he’d had to hide Bjårk in his room to keep him out of the kitchen, which wasn’t going to work well for very long, judging by the impassioned moaning that had started up as soon as he’d closed the door.

He heaved a great heavy sigh and looked down on his work again, just in time to watch the incredibly sharp knife Gaspard had brought him slice deeply into his thumb.

Once again, the kitchen froze. The blood didn’t trickle out: it arced, straight up in the air, right over all the already chopped vegetables, spraying across the brand-new factory-fresh whites.

“Faen!!” yelled Konstantin, even though the pain hadn’t kicked in yet, just the shock.

“Merde!” said Gaspard in disbelief, running his hands—themselves scarred and pitted, like all chefs’—through his thick dark hair.

“Obh, obh,” muttered Isla, but mostly to herself.

Then, seeing to her amazement that nobody was doing anything, least of all Konstantin himself, she got up and went to him.

“Come here,” she said.

The boy was white; his already pale skin had all the color drained out of it.

“It’s just a cut,” she said, glancing at it. He looked at her, still shaky, as she led him to the sink and started running the tap. “It looks worse than it is.”

Konstantin was still staring at his finger in disbelief.

“I didn’t realize we were serving finger food,” Isla surprised herself by saying, even as he blinked and put his finger under the running water, wincing as the cold touched the cut.

“That knife was really sharp,” he grumbled.

“Yeah,” said Isla, looking closely to see if he needed a stitch. “Like some kind of kitchen knife or something.”

Everything with blood on it was bundled into the bin just as Gala came in to see if they were ready to start taking food into the dining room. A single glower from Gaspard made it very clear to her that they were not, and she scurried out again, going to find some crisps behind the bar.

Isla examined the wound carefully. Konstantin had very long fingers on a large, strong hand that didn’t look like it had done a day’s work in its life, as indeed it had not. She frowned. “I think you’ll be okay. I can get Saif to put a stitch in it if you like.”

Saif was the local GP, who was just sitting down to dinner with his two sons, Ib and Ash, and wouldn’t have been best pleased to hear he was being called out in a howling gale to fix a ridiculous kid, but Gaspard came up and frowned.

“Non,” he said. Then he snapped his fingers for the word. “Gomme . . . glue. That is it. Glue.”

Gala immediately brought some superglue from behind her reception desk.

“Oui!” said Gaspard, brandishing it. Konstantin and Isla looked at each other anxiously.

“Let me just google that,” said Isla, getting Konstantin to hold his finger up in the air. “Well, the internet says it’s fine.”

“The internet says the royal family are lizards.” Konstantin grimaced.

Nonetheless, he held out his finger and let Gaspard stick the two edges of skin back together. Isla then wrapped it in a blue bandage she’d gotten out of the first aid kit. They were, she noted, running low.

“Do you need to sit down for a bit?” she said, feeling some sympathy for this ridiculous person, so far out of his depth.

“Non, there is no time,” said Gaspard. “Start again! With the onions! This time, keep all of