Christmas at the Island Hotel - Jenny Colgan Page 0,44

going to lose our jobs?” Isla asked tentatively.

“I don’t know,” said Flora miserably. “I’m sure he’ll calm down. It’ll be fine.”

She was too cross to go and find Iona, who was hiding out in her bedroom and refusing to come out from underneath the blankets. She had let her phone die because she couldn’t bear the constant beep beep beep of more and more and more incoming messages, and she knew she had to turn it back on, that she would just be scaring her friends and then they’d start coming round and then things really would get bad. It was meant to be funny and make them popular! It wasn’t meant to be “THE WORST HOTEL ON EARTH.”

She plugged it in but still left it on the other side of the room, too afraid to touch it, like a spider or a red-hot poker.

FLORA STALKED INTO the Seaside Kitchen looking for Iona. She did not get angry very often; it wasn’t really in her makeup. But she was unutterably furious. Every single table in the café fell silent as she entered, which gave her a pretty good idea what they’d all been talking about.

“Where is she?” she hissed to Malik, who glanced up at her, startled.

“She hasn’t come in,” muttered Malik.

“Hasn’t she,” said Flora. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“She texted me to say sorry to you.”

Flora looked squarely at Malik. “Do you think that’s how apologies work?”

“No.”

“Neither do I. Tell her to get down here.”

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, a bedraggled Iona in a holey pair of jeans and a farm jumper so threadbare that it absolutely begged for sympathy emerged through the side fire-door entrance into the kitchen, where Flora was making angry scones with chili and Szechuan pepper.

“I’m not sure those will sell,” said Iona softly.

“Oh well, obviously you’re the marketing guru,” said Flora.

Iona’s eyes were red. The girl was so young. Flora almost softened.

“What were you thinking?”

“You said get on the Instagram!”

“To make us look beautiful and wonderful. Which we are!”

“I posted loads of those too!” said Iona, pulling out her phone and showing Flora the many lovely shots: the Endless Beach in a ravishing pink sunset, the bobbing red and blue fishing boats, a heavily filtered shot of the Harbour’s Rest hotel, which made it look bleached out and charming rather than dilapidated.

“And did people share those?”

“Uhm, not so much . . .” Iona’s voice trailed off.

“Why didn’t you ask me if you could post it?”

“You said post stuff!”

“Iona! I have had twenty-five journalists on the phone this morning, every single last one of them asking to be comped for bloody Christmas week!”

“Well, that could be good,” said Iona. “Maybe?”

“They want to make us a laughingstock,” said Flora. Her heart dropped. Everything they had worked for. Everything that was Colton’s legacy. “We already are.”

Her phone rang and she picked it up, listened for a second, then cursed roundly.

“And now our chef’s disappeared,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” said Iona, cringing.

Flora took a deep breath. “It’s not your fault,” she allowed, finally. “But, Christ. What a mess.”

Chapter 32

Back at the hotel, Konstantin had wandered down into the lobby to see what was up. Phoneless, he knew nothing about what had happened. But he was still amazed. For starters, nobody had knocked at his door that morning and it wasn’t a Sunday, so he had absolutely no clue why he wasn’t in the kitchen peeling potatoes and the skin off his knuckles while also getting yelled at.

Down in the lobby, Gala was still desperately trying to answer the telephones while Isla was standing, looking concerned.

He frowned. “There has been a nuclear attack,” he said. “Everyone is dead from all the zombies. We are the only people left on earth.”

She looked at him.

“What?” he said. “Come on, it would be cool.”

“Zombies would be cool?”

“Sorry, it’s just most Scottish people . . . Maybe it’s the lack of sunlight.”

“Stop it! You’re being so rude!”

He liked seeing the dimples come out on her face, though. It felt as if . . . well. To make her smile when at first she would barely look at him. Without impressing her or showing off. Goodness, he’d been in this awful uniform the entire time. It was, undeniably, a nice feeling.

Even so, there was no doubt the hotel was very eerie without the usual clatter from the kitchen. Now Gala had unplugged the phone to stop newspapers getting on to them, so there wasn’t even a ring or a conversation to be had. Gala headed out,