Christmas at the Island Hotel Read online

  Dedication

  To the front line staff, all of you, who got up and went to

  work every day whilst the rest of us had to stay indoors.

  You were, and are, the glue that holds

  the world together. Thank you.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Jenny Colgan

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Day and night the great tankers plow the freezing water of the North Atlantic.

  Vast up close—two, three hundred meters, filled with cars and rocking horses and teddies and barometers and valves and bonnets and tea—they are nonetheless still dwarfed by the scale of the ocean.

  Coming in from the west, they cross imaginary lines in the water that the comfortable and landbound hear about only as they fall asleep to the shipping forecast: Rockall, Hebrides, and, over the north of Fair Isle, Mure, the tiny island between Shetland and the Faroes, home to 1,500 souls (in a good year).

  The southwesternmost tip contains the village and the port, and the sailors—from the Philippines, often, and Thailand, the great seafaring nations of the South Seas—are about as far away from home as they can ever get. They look out, often, on the little point of light marooned in the ocean, eyes starved of diversion from the endless dark waves.

  You cannot be a seafaring man if prone to melancholy—you will live away from your family, in close quarters with other men, for nine, ten months of the year, so a positive attitude is best. But even the most sea-hardened occasionally gets a little mournful for home, particularly when he pulls up the binoculars, sees the colored houses of Mure crowded higgledy-piggledy on the wharf, along with the soft gray of the café, the pink of the pharmacy, the black and white of the old Harbour’s Rest hotel.

  There is no deepwater harbor on the island. None of the great container ships will ever land there. But more than a few like to mark Mure’s passing, as it is the last spot of land they will see before Bergen, and the cottages and buildings cluster together, heading upward from the waterside, in a cozy, haphazard fashion, as if leaning against one another for warmth on the bare island with its vast, empty pale yellow beaches and low-bending rushes.

  Sometimes through the binoculars, on a clear day in the summertime, you can see the children wave.

  But now, in the pitch black of an early winter’s morning, it looks like a tiny pinprick of comfort in a world gone dark, as they chug past, the huge ships making light work of the slapping waves, the motion so familiar as to make walking on land a difficult adjustment for the men.

  The island is so small that, at twenty knots, it doesn’t take long for it to disappear behind you, for Apostil or Danilo or Jesus to go back to checking the radar and the fax machine, and to move on to North Uist, to the vast rich fjords of Norway, leaving the quiet island marooned once more under the cold stars, where, in the MacKenzie farmhouse, at the very southernmost tip of the island, the early-morning fire is going and the coffee is heating on the stove, and Flora MacKenzie is currently in the middle of having a furious stand-up argument with her younger brother, Fintan.

  “COLTON’S BAR,” SHE repeated. “Absolutely not. I mean, I understand it, but also we sound like a saloon where girls wear hot pants and fringing and cowboy boots and ask ‘How y’all doing’ and we have a mechanical bull.”

  “Nobody said anything about a mechanical bull,” grumbled Fintan, breathing in the scent of the coffee and the fresh rolls warming in the oven. Then he looked up. “Hmm,” he said. “Mechanical bull.”

  “Do I have to take that coffee off you?”

  Fintan rolled his eyes. “Anything but that.”

  “Look,” said Flora practically. It had only been a year since Fintan’s husband, Colton, had died of cancer. Fintan had good days and bad days. This was not shaping up to be a good day. There weren’t many good days.

  Colton had left him the Rock: the hotel he had always dreamed of opening on the island, and it was finally coming to fruition. But there were a million and one little details and he wasn’t enjoying that side of things in the slightest. The hotel had been useful: it had kept Fintan phenomenally busy and helped keep the grief at bay—sheer exhaustion was his friend when it came to sleeping alone in a very big bed. Plus, they had bookings for Christmas Day. They had to open, and quickly.

  Flora technically had nothing to do with it.

  But somehow, as she already had catering experience running the Summer Seaside Kitchen down on the shore, she couldn’t stop poking her nose in. Also she was meant to be on maternity leave, which, as far as Fintan (and not just Fintan) was concerned, was leaving her with far too much time on her hands to interfere.

  “I think Rogers’s Bar is fine,” said Flora. “Just not so on the nose, you know?”

  Fintan pouted.

  There was a commotion at the entrance to the kitchen. Fintan was staying at the farmhouse, as was their brother Innes and his family. Innes’s daughter, Agot, five, was marching into the kitchen in her nightie, a serious look on her face, a thin wail rising behind her from the corridor.

  “Bugglas Booker is awake,” she said with a sniff. “I think he’s a bad baby, Auntie Flora. He is very cross.”

  “Douglas,” said Flora for the nine hundredth time. “His name is Douglas.”

  Agot and Fintan gave her a similarly dry look.

  “What?” said Flora. “She watches Hey Duggee on TV all the time.”

  “Duggee is a very good dog,” said Agot loudly. Then, “I’m not sure about Bugglas.”

  She marched over to the retired sheep
dog Bramble, and the two of them went outside to examine the vegetable garden. Agot had a very strong resistance to actually eating vegetables, but she liked watching them grow, and there were still a few very late rhubarb stalks.

  “She’s doing that on purpose,” said Flora, heading out. “She can speak perfectly well.”

  “She is,” said Fintan. “And yet you somehow let it rile you.”

  Flora headed toward the back room, even though the baby was barely crying, thinking Agot was ridiculous, and then she realized she was mentally having an argument with her five-year-old niece, which was a waste of time if she’d ever known one, but it didn’t matter, because by the time she got there, Joel was already with him, and Douglas had fallen silent.

  He looked so like his father—black eyes and already, at five months, a shock of black curly hair—it was actually hilarious. Almost everyone who met him had felt the urge to put a pair of glasses on him.

  She stood in the doorframe for a moment, watching them both. Douglas didn’t smile much—he was not at all a smiley baby; his little face was grave and serious, as if he had been born knowing all the mysteries of the universe, which he would gradually forget as he grew older. He also shared his father’s serious demeanor; he was watchful and careful. For a long time Flora had thought that Joel was like that because of his difficult upbringing—he had been in and out of foster homes since he was very little. She was coming to think, however, that in fact Joel’s demeanor was innate, as never was a baby boy smothered with so much love and affection as Douglas, coming in to a home with three uncles at close quarters and his grandfather Eck, who worshipped him and did much of the babysitting duty. Then there were his adopted American grandparents, Mark and Marsha, who sent giant care packages of ridiculously expensive baby clothes imported from France, via New York, which were frankly a little too good for the muddy farmyard and changeable climate of a small, very northern Scottish island, but Flora made sure he was dutifully photographed in them all anyway. The Bookers were just like that.

  Joel didn’t fuss him or sing to him. He just lay down on the bed next to him, and the two of them eyeballed each other. It was the oddest thing, as if something intangible flowed between them through eye contact alone. Joel’s large hand would reach out so Douglas could clasp a finger, and they would commune. Flora didn’t even know how to ask anyone if this was normal behavior. Sometimes Douglas would flap at Joel’s heavy gold watch and Joel would let him. Usually, after fifteen minutes of this, they would both be asleep, the long body gently cradling the tiny one.

  Flora was supposedly on maternity leave, Isla and Iona running the café perfectly well, somewhat to Flora’s annoyance. But it was Joel, her workaholic boyfriend, who appeared to have taken it most to heart, and she couldn’t help occasionally feeling just a little jealous. Which was, of course, completely ridiculous. Everything was great. Fine. Great. I mean, Douglas cried at her but was totally calm with Joel, but she didn’t mind. Not a bit.

  Chapter 1

  Well, which is the best one?”

  Isla Donnelly’s mother, Vera, was looking at her over the old teapot with the flowers and the chip in the top.

  Isla, staring at it, realized something she had never quite put into words before: she hated that teapot. It was the stupidest thing she could imagine, hating a teapot. It was possibly because her mother treated it like a precious heirloom she needed to be more careful with rather than just a dumb crappy teapot. She sipped her tea.

  “I don’t know, Mum,” she said again, trying not to get riled, which wouldn’t help.

  “So, the MacKenzies need someone up at the new posh hotel.”

  Vera Donnelly sniffed loudly. She didn’t think much of the new hotel. Not the kind of thing Mure needed in her opinion, and Vera had a lot of opinions. Too fancy, too expensive—who wanted that kind of thing?

  Regardless, it was set to open this Christmas, and Flora had offered to help Fintan by moving one of her café staff up there.

  Isla sighed. She was, in fact, indeed quite terrified, but she would never tell her mother that. Not good to give her the ammunition.

  “Well, one of us will stay and take over more of the running of the Seaside Kitchen and one of us will go up to the Rock.”

  Isla and her best friend, Iona, had worked in the Summer Seaside Kitchen for years, and neither was looking forward to getting separated. Isla in particular was very much the shyer of the two and absolutely dreading being without her cheeky chum.

  “Yes, but which one is the best job?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Vera carefully picked up her treasured teapot and daintily poured herself another cup of tea. “You know, I just don’t want them taking advantage of you,” she said. “That Flora treats you like a scullery maid.”

  “I’m just learning on the job,” said Isla, who adored Flora and didn’t quite have her mother’s expectations for her. She knew it was difficult being Vera’s only child. She hated constantly adding to her disappointment. “What are you doing today, Mum?”

  “It’s Homes Under the Hammer!”

  “You know there’s a choir rehearsal tonight . . . You should go to that.”

  Isla’s main goal was to stop herself being Vera’s only area of attention.

  “Bunch of busybodying old gossips. No thanks!”

  Isla put on her coat and pulled her tam-o’-shanter down over her unruly dark chestnut curls, which pinged out every which way—unusual on the island, where people had fair or red hair, depending on whether they were descended from Celts or Vikings. There had once been a rumor of Spanish invaders making it as far north as Mure, which would have made more sense of her dark eyes, although the pale skin, lightly freckled in the summertime, was purest Scotland, to Isla’s eternal chagrin.

  “Bye, Mum,” she said.

  “Aye well. Good luck then,” said her mother grudgingly as she left, and Isla reminded herself that her mother loved her and wanted the best for her, even when it felt unpleasant.

  A nor’wester was blowing down from the arctic circle straight into Mure and made walking in a straight line quite difficult, but it wasn’t far to the little Seaside Kitchen, down two cobbled streets and on the seafront.

  The little café was always warm: the baking ovens through the back never really quite cooled down, and on freezing winter mornings it was cozy even before she lit the golden lamps that, together with the cheery spotted tablecloths and the pretty pictures on the wall, made the café so inviting. Iona would already be brewing up coffee, and together they could make a start on the scones, pies, tarts, and cakes for the day, while Mrs. Laird popped off the freshly baked bread. The coffee machine would hiss and grind in a comforting fashion, and the day could begin. And it wouldn’t be long before the first chilled worker arrived, fresh from milking or a fishing boat or waiting on the earliest ferry of the morning.

  Chapter 2

  Two hundred miles to the east, the expensive sheets of the bed were ruffled and crumpled. A pale figure was lying on them unconcerned and snoring heavily. The thick scent of stale beer was in the air.

  A short man with an exceedingly tidy haircut entered the vast room, paused in front of the bed, and coughed loudly. Nothing happened.

  “Ahem,” said the man.

  There was an unpleasant hacking cough from the bed, followed by a snorting and some grunting. A large arm grabbed the shiny coverlet and pulled it over.

  “Go away, Johann,” came a very croaky voice, muffled beneath the covers.

  “Johann has been sent away,” said the man.

  There was a pause in the room.

  “Huh?”

  The young man who emerged from the covers had fair hair sticking up in every conceivable direction, a very tiny amount of stubble, and a confused look in his round blue eyes, which became markedly rounder as he registered whom he was talking to.

  “Pappa,” he said, and there was a notable tremor in his voice.

  He clutched the covers round hi
m. The man staring at him looked disappointed. Again.

  “Uhm,” said the boy, whose name was Konstantin. “I mean, hello. Good to see you. You don’t normally . . .”

  He glanced around at the large, lavish suite. There were pillars in the corners, gilt on the cornicing, and vast, ancient mirrors lining one wall.

  Unfortunately there were also underpants and socks on the floor, empty bottles, books scattered everywhere, a snorting, piglike dog called Bjårk, who hadn’t woken up yet but had left muddy paw prints all over the wildly expensive rug and black-and-white tiled floor, and at least four towels.

  “I don’t normally come here, no,” said the boy’s father, whose name was also Konstantin. There had been Konstantins, in fact, all the way back to the early seventeenth century, when they had first become dukes of Hordaland and the grand castle had been built on the beautiful Forgalfanna peninsula. Titles in Norway had been theoretically abolished. Of course, everyone still knew. An unbroken line. Which, the older Konstantin reflected sadly, was about to be broken when he kicked his dissolute only son down the 118 curved marble steps of the grand entrance hall. “Because it’s a revolting pigsty.”

  “That’s Bjårk’s fault.”

  The hairy creature didn’t stir.

  “Do you recall what happened last night at the state banquet?”

  Konstantin screwed up his face. “The snowball fight,” he said finally. “Yes, wasn’t it brilliant?”

  He remembered the palace windows blazing light as they ran about outside, exhausted, freezing, and soaking, but laughing their heads off.

  “It was not brilliant,” said his father. “You hit the archbishop on the ear.”

  “Well, he should have joined in.”

  “You put snow down the neck of my financial adviser.”

  Konstantin shrugged. “He’s an old stick.”

  His father shook his head. “No. You behaved like a thug.”

  “We were having fun!”

  “And worse than that, you behaved like a bully to people older and weaker than yourself.”

  “With a snowball.”

  But the older man wasn’t stopping now. “This is after the ice races.”

  “I accidentally tripped up—”

  “The entire professional team.”