Konstantin had never felt so sorry for himself in his entire life.

Chapter 14

T hey were doing a test run for Pam’s charity dinner. Joel had made a stupid joke about how he would come so he would get a chance to see Flora, which had not gone down well and he’d regretted it almost immediately, especially when she had sat with Douglas all afternoon, showing him seagulls until his little fingers were pink—he hated his mittens and tried to bite them—as he pointed at the waves and she grew increasingly freezing. By the time they got into the Seaside Kitchen for a coffee, Douglas was cross and tired and screamed the entire place down, to the point where even her fondest regulars were finding their smiles growing a little fixed. Why was this so easy for everyone else?

By comparison, she was looking forward to going up to the Rock, testing the kitchen’s wings. Iona was coming too to take pictures for the Instagram account.

Fintan was drumming his fingers anxiously on the white tabletop alongside Innes and Eilidh, Innes’s once-upon-a-time ex-wife, newly reunited and making a great show of being disgustingly lovey-dovey all the time.

They’d tried to leave Agot behind with Eck, who didn’t hold with fancy new food, but she was having none of it and had turned up at the front door of the farmhouse in her ballet skirt, her Frozen slippers, and some alarmingly applied lip gloss and with one of her mother’s handbags, looking at them with an expression that would have been cute in a five-year-old if it wasn’t quite so uncompromising.

“I’ll be coming to dinner,” she’d enunciated clearly. “I have thought and thought, and now I have decided. Yes. ”

“Well, I’m not sure that’s—”

“Yes, I think so, Daddy. That baby is coming.”

Innes was a helpless pushover where Agot was concerned, and Eilidh was just so pleased they were back together again—and, frankly, thrilled that boring old Mure island was going to get a fancy hotel, thus not being quite the dead arse end of the world she’d left in a snit two years before—that she wasn’t going to halt Agot either, as a result of which Agot marched straight to the Land Rover fully confident.

“Well, it’ll be worth it to test how the restaurant deals with really difficult customers,” whispered Flora to Fintan, who nodded emphatically in agreement.

There are two ways of getting to the Rock from the south where the village is. On sunny days Bertie Cooper will run you round in the boat to the headland—it’s not far, only five minutes or so, and it’s delightful on a dusky pink evening to be out on the water. You might see a dolphin and you’ll certainly hear the seals barking at you as you land at the jetty with the torches shining up ahead toward the building itself. Fintan had always thought it was one of the most beautiful landings in the world.