“Just you and me, kid,” she muttered, handing in her coat.

IN THE KITCHEN, Konstantin was once again despairing. He’d been supposed to practice chopping vegetables all weekend. Instead he’d spent the time hiding in the airing cupboard, the warmest place in the building when there were no guests, reading Ivanhoe and composing desperate missives to his friends back home to launch a rescue mission. He needed to buy a phone and considered stealing one.

“Can I borrow your phone?” he asked Isla brusquely.

“Please?” she suggested mildly.

He grimaced. “Please,” he said, feeling like an idiot.

She handed it over and he took it then stared at it, frowning.

“I can’t remember anyone’s number,” he said.

“I know,” said Isla. “Where’s your phone?”

He shrugged. “It doesn’t work anymore.”

“You can get credit at the shop,” said Isla, “when we get paid.”

“Credit?”

“Phone credit.”

“Will that make my phone work?”

Isla wondered if Konstantin was, in fact, educationally subnormal. “Uh, duh?”

Konstantin looked so upset she nearly laughed.

“You can log in to Facebook if you like,” said Isla finally, when he showed no sign of handing the device back.

“I’m not on Facebook, ” he scoffed.

“Fine,” said Isla. “Give it back then.”

“No, no, hang on. I can sign in to Snapchat and DM.”

He fiddled with some buttons.

“Sure, use my data, you’re welcome,” said Isla, but it fell on deaf ears.

Konstantin had never paid a phone bill in his life. He tapped a few buttons. Then a few more. Then he really did swear.

“What now?” said Isla.

“I can’t remember the password.”

“Well, ask them for a new one.”

“I have,” said Konstantin. “They’ve texted it. To my phone.”

Isla couldn’t suppress a grin, which he noticed.

“It’s not funny,” he said, roughly handing back the phone.

“Noo,” said Isla. “But can I ask . . . why are you here? Without a phone or any money?”

Konstantin sighed. He was always too embarrassed to say he’d been banished. So he shrugged. “I’m meant to be learning things.”

“Well, you can start back at those potatoes.”

SO KONSTANTIN WAS in a filthy mood, because he was falling behind, and Gaspard was in a filthy mood with him, because, as he, Gaspard, never ceased to tell him, when he was seventeen years old he had learned to chop for six hours a day in order to save up for his very first set of knives, the knives he still carried today, because if you wanted to excel at something you had to practice it. Which was exactly what Konstantin had heard from his music teacher, sailing teacher, math teachers, English teachers, science teachers, and art teachers his entire life. He felt about three feet tall.

“Faster! Faster!!”

The menu was simple: pâté, followed by red wine–braised venison with Hasselback potatoes, roasted carrot and turnip, and a beautiful vegetarian haggis dish for the non–meat eaters, but the timing was crucial. There were sixty people out there, all of whom needed feeding at the same time, and if half the room had nothing and half the room had rapidly cooling plates, you could be assured that absolutely nobody would be happy.