“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 came up of him looking absurdly drunk with two models draped over him and a gossipy headline in Se og Hør saying “No Sightings of the Playboy Prince . . . Is He in Rehab?” and he winced and turned round quickly in case anyone at the hotel had seen it. Thank God they didn’t read the Norwegian papers. He had been briefly outraged, wanted to say of course he wasn’t in rehab—but the real story, of course, was worse, and oh my goodness, the last thing he needed was everyone to know he’d actually been banished. He’d shut the web page and decided to block everything out from the outside world. It was actually rather easier to do that on Mure than he’d realized.