Christmas at the Island Hotel - Jenny Colgan Page 0,52

just ordinary potatoes—with their skins on. There were bits of dirt floating in the water.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone as useless as you,” she said, shaking her head.

Konstantin was crushed. He’d felt he was doing well. She caught his expression.

“Oh, don’t worry, it’s solvable. Quick, set the big pot on, there are some local potatoes somewhere and they boil fast. And there are some fresh lardons in the larder.”

Konstantin jumped to what she was saying, and Flora gave Joel a look, as if to say, Look how much better we’re all doing, and found it slightly amusing how excited Joel was suddenly looking about lunch.

TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER and, amazingly, there were mashed peas, fresh tiny boiled new potatoes covered in butter and salt, some little bits of crisped-up bacon, and some sour cream on the side of the old washed table, as Gaspard crossly slung down the pan of lutefisk without even putting it on a plate.

“Okay,” he said. “I am finished with thees experiment. I am going to look for snails. Fintan, you come weeth me.”

The others laughed and beckoned him back and made him sit down, as Konstantin divided the fish and Joel smiled cheerfully as the familiar salty scent reached his nostrils.

“This was about the only happy Christmas I ever had,” he said quietly to Flora. “In Minnesota. I had to go out of state; they couldn’t manage to keep us all on. It wasn’t for long. They were good people.”

Flora laid a hand on his arm. “I think that’s the only nice memory I’ve ever heard you mention from your childhood.”

“Meanwhile Douglas already has a model railway set.”

Flora smiled. “It’s okay, isn’t it?”

Joel tucked in. “Oh, it’s better than that.”

Against all odds—and Gaspard refused to touch it, like a grumpy toddler—the lutefisk was a great hit, and Flora immediately made a mental note to put it on the menu. It was complicated to make, but not difficult, and the ingredients were cheap and local and authentic.

“But eet betrays all my culinary principles,” said Gaspard.

“I thought rules were made to be broken,” said Konstantin slyly.

“Oui, yes, your rules! Not my rules!!”

OVER LUNCH, JOEL found himself explaining the lights situation to the newcomers who couldn’t help, but it felt good to talk to them regardless.

Konstantin thought about it. “Oh well, of course you could find someone.”

“There are no lights to be had in the whole of Scottish mainland,” said Joel crossly. “Or London either. They only keep enough for themselves. I cannot even begin to tell you how inefficient it was for Colton’s trust to pay me to ring up all these people.”

Konstantin shrugged. “Oh well, in Norway—”

“Oh yes, in Norway, in Norway you eat things that are rotting and you screw reindeer,” said Gaspard, who had at least managed to drink the eau-de-vie Konstantin had found in the dusty back of the bar and insisted lutefisk could not be enjoyed without a tiny shot of.

“Well, anyway, there are always a lot of lights up north because, you know, twenty-four-hour darkness. They keep a lot of spares. We’re nearer there than London.”

“But I don’t speak any . . . Oh.” Joel took off his glasses. “Seriously, you’d help?”

Nobody had ever asked Konstantin for his help before. It was a strange situation. Konstantin considered it. “Would it get me out of scrubbing lutefisk off the metal tins?”

“Non,” said Gaspard.

But Konstantin offered to help anyway, something of a new sensation, but a pleasing one.

OF COURSE HE’D theoretically done good things. Normally, it had been Konstantin’s job to turn up and stand at his father’s side for anything important and ceremonial. He had absolutely hated it; it had been the most boring thing ever. Endless speeches and people thanking people for other things and congratulating them and wah wah wah, it just went on and on. Normally standing outside in the freezing cold.

Now, as he made the calls to his homeland, he realized why people got thanked for doing this kind of thing for absolutely no money.

Because it was, frankly, a total pain in the arse. Still better than scrubbing—lutefisk, it turned out, was an absolute bastard to get off a pan—but still a massive time suck nonetheless, particularly when trying to get manpower and goods to a remote island nobody had heard of or could pronounce or spell.

Again and again he tried different companies and got the same results. Too late, already booked. On the hotel computer he did, just once, quickly google himself in Norwegian. A picture