Christmas at the Island Hotel - Jenny Colgan Page 0,33

and take reportage photographs.”

Isla didn’t know what those were but decided it was best to keep quiet.

“Hey, who’s that?” said Iona in, as usual, a voice that wasn’t nearly quiet enough. She meant Konstantin, who was dolefully chopping the slices in the potatoes, wearing an oven glove because Gaspard didn’t trust him enough not to cut off his own hand again. It didn’t matter that Iona was being loud, though, because Gaspard had the food processor blaring away, drowning out all sound.

“Ugh, he’s a drip,” said Isla. “Some dropout. He’s absolutely useless.”

Which would have more or less been fine, had Gaspard not chosen that exact instant to mute the food processor.

Silence fell in the kitchen apart from the radio burbling away in the background. Konstantin’s pale skin suddenly flushed bright pink, right to the tips of his ears. He concentrated on chopping, the knife sounding clumsy and unruly on the board, and very loud in the quiet kitchen. Isla went bright red too, not helped by Iona bursting out laughing.

There was no time to dwell, however, as Gaspard batted his hands at Iona to get her to leave his kitchen, then rallied them to go faster and faster. The potatoes were beautifully crispy, like tiny toast racks, roasted in local duck fat and sprinkled with rosemary and crystals of sea salt—he used, Isla noticed, quite an alarming amount of salt in almost everything. Perhaps that was a chef secret she was previously unaware of.

“Okay!” shouted Gaspard. “Are we ready? To go? Thees is our first big night of service, so we are ready, table one, you go, table eight!”

The young waiters nodded, looking serious. Isla and Konstantin were plating up together. She sidled up, face flaming.

“Uh, sorry about . . .”

He gave her an extremely imperious look. “What would I care what you think?” he said, blinking.

Stung, Isla went bright red once more, hating him, and back to plating up. The waiters moved at lightning speed as Gaspard looked at the big clock on the kitchen wall and shouted, “Three, two, one, let’s go!”

Chapter 24

In the dining room there was a pleasant hum of conversation. The pâté had been cleared away, and people were spreading napkins and refilling glasses, ready for the new course. There was a pleasant clink of conversation, dominated by Pam, who was also going to be starting the speeches afterward, as she kept telling everyone, and about how this was about the children really, which Flora knew already, and how amazing it was that Christabel was sleeping through the night so they could easily leave her with a sitter. Flora narrowed her eyes at this last bit. It couldn’t be true, could it? Well, maybe it was true, she thought, but Pam was following one of those evil regimented baby care techniques that involved them being left to cry themselves exhausted for hours on end. Flora decided this absolutely had to be it.

“Yes, they’re just so much happier in a lovely structure,” said Pam.

“I thought you never put the baby down,” said Flora, in a voice that came out much more accusatory than she’d intended. Pam blinked at her.

“Well, yes,” she said. “For the first few months. It made her happy and secure enough to be left whenever and however.”

She smiled beatifically as Flora ignored her phone, which was bleeping, almost certainly a message complaining that Douglas was yelling blue murder and Agot was joining in.

Flora headed over to speak to her friend Lorna, who was looking beautiful in a new green dress, earrings sparkling.

“Wow, look at you,” she said.

“I know,” said Lorna. “Too much?”

“Mrs. Docherty is wearing a diamanté fascinator and a jeweled comb.”

“Okay, compare me to somebody else.”

Flora gave her a hug. Lorna didn’t even pretend to hide what she was feeling; Flora was her only confidante.

“So he’s not coming.”

“I’m not sure he’s really a posh dinner kind of a person.”

“You don’t know what kind of a person he is,” said Lorna, too quickly, then bit her tongue. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” said Flora. “Don’t think I’m not sympathetic, because I am. Do you want me to fake a medical emergency so we can call him? Nothing disgusting, just a fainting fit or something?”

“No, don’t,” said Lorna, pointing at Mrs. Laird, Saif’s babysitter, who was wearing a gold dress with batwing sleeves from the 1980s and cackling wholeheartedly with her mates over a gin. “If we ruin Mrs. Laird’s night, she’ll start spitting in the flour.”

“I’m sure she wouldn’t,” said Flora, watching Mrs. Laird cackle once