Christmas at the Island Hotel - Jenny Colgan Page 0,26

so much. He was such an odd person.

“Go to bed,” she said, when they’d finished and there was just the staff meal to clean up. “I’ve got this.”

Konstantin was instantly taken aback by the kindness and, annoyingly, the very obvious fact that he was absolutely shattered. But he couldn’t think about that now; he had half a steak wrapped in a napkin that he needed to get upstairs, so he simply nodded and scuttled upstairs without a backward glance, fed Bjårk, took him out on the roof again, and fell into bed, absolutely out for the count.

Chapter 19

Stupid Bugglas was in the way again. If there was one thing Agot really hated, it was how distracted her beloved uncle Joel had gotten ever since the baby had arrived. Even when Joel had been on the outs with various other members of her family, Agot had adored him from the get-go, which Joel found slightly alarming. He didn’t really know how to talk to children. This was 100 percent what Agot liked about him. He treated her entirely like the small adult she fully believed herself to be.

This was one of the long number of things Douglas had completely ruined, in Agot’s eyes. Uncle Joel was always staring at the stupid baby, or picking up the stupid baby, or asking her if she’d seen what the stupid baby could do now. The things the baby couldn’t do—dance, play shinny, sit up for a tea party, look at pictures of ice-skaters, watch ice-skating on television, talk about ice-skating, and pester her father to watch old Torvill and Dean videos and skate about the kitchen floor on clean dishcloths, pretending to be an ice-skater, much to the annoyance of anyone else trying to get anything done or anyone who didn’t want Boléro in their heads for the next six months—were huge. Agot was trying to shout louder to get them to pay her some attention, but it didn’t seem to be working.

Seeing him cooing over the stupid baby the next day in the kitchen gave her an idea. She went through to where Flora was squinting at her phone. Everyone looked all day at their phones, then if she wanted to do it they said, “No, no phones for you, Agot,” even though if it was bad, why did they do it all day, and then they would say, “Agot, you are being too noisy,” and she would absolutely not be noisy if she had a phone. Why was everyone so stupid? And why was Christmas so far away? When you are five, four weeks is forever.

“Auntie Flora,” she said conversationally.

“Darling,” said Flora, who had been looking at flour sourcing and wondering why the hell Fintan wasn’t.

“I think,” said Agot seriously, “I think Uncle Joel does not love us anymore.”

“Do you?” said Flora.

She glanced above Agot’s head and saw Joel dancing with the baby in the kitchen, little Douglas giggling and reaching up his little fingers. It was a pretty sight.

“What makes you think that?”

“Because it is true.” Agot sighed in a world-weary fashion. “He loves that baby now.”

“I think it’s possible to love more than one person at once,” said Flora.

Agot frowned. “One time,” she said, “I dropped Big Fox and Daisy Duck and Jamford into a puddle at the same time, because it was a wet, wet, wet day.”

Jamford was a small stuffed cow she dragged along, the origin of whose name was lost in the mists of time.

“And,” she said darkly, “I picked up Jamford first.”

Flora thought about that. “Well, yes, I can see that,” she said. “But you picked up Big Fox and Daisy Duck next, right?”

Agot shook her head solemnly. “No,” she said. “Jamford was very muddy, so I had to fix him.”

“And you left Big Fox and Daisy Duck in the mud?”

She shrugged. “Oh, maybe Daddy got them.”

Flora looked at her. “I don’t think Uncle Joel would leave you in the mud,” she said.

“Not me, silly,” said Agot. “You!”

Then she clambered up in Flora’s lap.

“Hmm hmm hmm, oh, look, a phone,” she said, repeating herself and getting gradually louder until Flora handed it over. Agot sat back with a contented sigh, while Flora glanced over at Joel, who had to be in London that night and was patently unhappy about it.

BACK AT THE Seaside Kitchen, Iona had filled her Instagram feed with beautiful shots of the previous night to go with all the lovely pics she already had of the café. She wasn’t getting much traction, and