But things, Isla was starting to notice, were coming along well. The ovens worked brilliantly and fired the potatoes in record time; the whisky sauce was smelling absolutely delicious. The starter was a selection of local pâtés, which had been made in advance and stored in the huge fridges; the mushroom, white pepper, and brandy was so very delicious Isla simply couldn’t imagine it was made from things you could find on the island, but Gaspard assured her both that this was the case and that he absolutely 100 percent wasn’t going to poison anyone this time, and Isla had stared at him for a long time and he had said, “Ees joke,” but she wasn’t 100 percent convinced.

Outside, she could hear the happy din of pleased donors, as the champagne kept coming and people readied themselves to open their checkbooks. It was nice to have something like this on the island, when everyone could get together and complain about the people who visited the island. And because it was getting into Christmas party season, there was a nice feeling of kicking everything off in style. She wished her mother would have come. She’d have got her a ticket, got her out of the house for once. Her mother had harrumphed and told her it was a completely stupid waste of time and the MacKenzies were going to ruin themselves up at that big house, everybody knew it, and Isla would be out of a job, and they’d hardly want her back at the café—it had been running much better since she left.

Iona slipped into the kitchen.

“You’re not supposed to be back here.”

“I know!” said Iona. “Hee hee. I came to laugh at you because I don’t have to work nights. Oh, and take reportage photographs.”

Isla didn’t know what those were but decided it was best to keep quiet.

“Hey, who’s that?” said Iona in, as usual, a voice that wasn’t nearly quiet enough. She meant Konstantin, who was dolefully chopping the slices in the potatoes, wearing an oven glove because Gaspard didn’t trust him enough not to cut off his own hand again. It didn’t matter that Iona was being loud, though, because Gaspard had the food processor blaring away, drowning out all sound.

“Ugh, he’s a drip,” said Isla. “Some dropout. He’s absolutely useless.”

Which would have more or less been fine, had Gaspard not chosen that exact instant to mute the food processor.

Silence fell in the kitchen apart from the radio burbling away in the background. Konstantin’s pale skin suddenly flushed bright pink, right to the tips of his ears. He concentrated on chopping, the knife sounding clumsy and unruly on the board, and very loud in the quiet kitchen. Isla went bright red too, not helped by Iona bursting out laughing.

There was no time to dwell, however, as Gaspard batted his hands at Iona to get her to leave his kitchen, then rallied them to go faster and faster. The potatoes were beautifully crispy, like tiny toast racks, roasted in local duck fat and sprinkled with rosemary and crystals of sea salt—he used, Isla noticed, quite an alarming amount of salt in almost everything. Perhaps that was a chef secret she was previously unaware of.