“Uhm,” he said as they were standing side by side again, both of them giggling at nothing and concentrating very hard on listening to the radio. “Uhm, so.”

This was ridiculous. The confident Konstantin of a couple of months ago had entirely disappeared. He wondered, for an instant, if it was possible that the old Konstantin had been . . . a bit irritating and full of himself?

Isla couldn’t keep her voice calm. “Yeah?”

Please, she thought. Please let you not be about to suggest that we go upstairs. Please don’t have plans for something absolutely sordid and not . . . She was building it up, she knew. She had feelings for the pot boy. But at the end of the day he was still just a boy, a normal boy who . . . well. She held her breath.

“Uhm, would you like to go for a drink at that strange place on the harbor later?”

Isla could have burst with joy and relief. She knew she was supposed to play it cool and act like she wasn’t bothered . . . but she was so happy, she couldn’t keep a thing from her face.

“Uhm, yeah, all right,” she said finally, trying to tamp down her smile, which was immediately matched next to her.

Chapter 55

G ala had gone through it with her and, to Flora’s amazement, there were more and more bookings. Flora liked to think, possibly entirely optimistically, they could see past the silly headlines into the lovely rooms, the delicious dinners, the fabulous peace of the place. She wondered if people couldn’t remember necessarily the story, just the hotel itself; the name had stuck in their head rather than whether it was good or bad. She hoped so. Christmas Day and Boxing Day were full, then they would close for a few days, then they had an absolutely full house for Hogmanae too, as well as a band and a full ceilidh. If people couldn’t enjoy that, she thought, well, there was not much she could do about that.

Tonight was their last dry run: they were feeding all the people who went to the community day care—the very oldest residents of Mure and their carers. It was just a good chance to give the kitchen a last dress rehearsal with the waiters in place and make sure they were good to go for the big day. She couldn’t deny: she was excited.

“This is getting ridiculous,” Joel had said as she had collapsed into bed the previous evening as exhausted as only someone doing someone else’s job with a six-month-old could be. Joel never had any trouble sleeping, and it made Flora jealous. Flora never knew how before he’d met her he had rarely slept more than four hours a night, jittery, anxious. Coming to Mure was the first time he’d slept all night in his adult life. The sweetness of the fresh cold air and the sheer ability to relax had transformed his life so entirely he got embarrassed even thinking about it. Waking up once or twice to pick up Dougie still hardly felt like a hardship of any kind.