by Jenny Colgan
‘But why?’ he kept saying, his face going pink. ‘Why?’
‘Well,’ said Colton, who looked aggrieved and not unlike a man who was not happy to have been denied a steak. ‘I just said I wanted to recruit the best and my people got on to it and —’
‘That’s what happens when you want something done?’ said Fintan. ‘You have to get people on to it?’
‘Well, yeah. I’m quite busy,’ smirked Colton.
‘Telling people to get on to things,’ said Fintan.
There was a pause.
‘Yeah, and…’
‘What?’
‘And now some prawn marmalade,’ said the waiter. Fintan waved him away irritatedly.
‘So you came here into our community and decided that someone else who wasn’t ever here should make decisions about us?’
‘He’s meant to be one of the top experimental chefs in the world,’ said Colton.
‘Yes. Experiments in horrible things,’ said Fintan. ‘And why does it say “locally sourced”? Excuse me, waiter. Why does everything here say “locally sourced”?’
Joel, Flora noticed, was watching all this with a wry smile of amusement. He seemed to be almost enjoying himself, for once; or engaged, at least. Why, oh why, did she find horn-rimmed glasses so incredibly attractive? Had she always thought this or was it just because he wore them? His eyelashes were so long they were brushing against the glass. She wondered briefly, taking a sip of wine, what would happen if, while Fintan and the waiter appeared to be having an argument, she simply slid her foot…
No. No no. No. She was at work.
She took another swig of wine.
‘Um…’ The waiter looked hot and embarrassed. It was bad enough having the boss in. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘We use local salt.’
‘Which salt?’
‘Hebridean rock salt.’
‘The Hebrides are two hundred nautical miles from here.’
The waiter coughed.
‘I believe that counts, sir.’
Fintan blinked.
‘So you’re telling me you just sprinkle salt on everything.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘And that magically turns it into “locally sourced”.’
‘It’s a key ingredient, sir.’
‘I don’t believe “locally sourced” is a legal term,’ observed Joel drily.
‘Hang on,’ said Colton. ‘So I’m telling my friends and clients and customers that what we’re getting here is the very best of Scottish produce…’
Fintan pushed his plate away and took another swig of his wine, which he had been drinking like beer because he normally only drank beer.
‘Sorry, can I have a look at the cheese board?’
The waiter’s blink rate was now through the roof.
‘Um, I’ll see…’
‘You won’t see,’ said Colton. ‘You’ll bring it.’
The waiter disappeared, and the maître d’ replaced him, looking pink and sweating in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with the temperature.
‘Is there a problem, Mr Rogers, sir?’
‘We don’t know,’ said Colton. ‘That’s why we need the cheese board.’
A trolley was rolled in with what was clearly a selection of chilly, recently unwrapped bought-in cheeses, including a suspiciously industrial-looking white Cheddar. Fintan sniffed them in turn.
‘Know your cheese?’ said Colton, amused. He’d watched Fintan necking the wildly expensive Bordeaux he’d ordered.
‘Yes,’ said Fintan. He cut himself a slice of each, and chewed them slowly.
‘How much does your cheese plate go for?’
‘Twenty-one pounds,’ said the waiter. ‘You get four for that.’
‘You’re ripping people off,’ said Fintan flatly. ‘This isn’t… this isn’t the real deal.’
‘Well, there’s a lot of pasteurised cheese…’
‘Yeah. It’s crap.’
‘In the States, it’s illegal to eat unpasteurised cheese,’ said Colton. ‘Filthy European habit.’
‘How many people does cheese kill every year?’ said Fintan. ‘I’ll tell you how many: none.’
‘What about listeria?’
‘Yup, that’s why we have nonety-none people hospitalised every year with listeria,’ said Fintan.
‘I was wrong about you,’ smiled Colton. ‘You do know your cheese.’
Colton, Flora noticed, had angled his entire body towards Fintan, and was watching him with an air of sly amusement.
She realised suddenly that she hadn’t speculated at all on Colton’s sexuality; had assumed he’d be one of those men who trailed a flock of expensive ex-wives. She had absolutely no idea if he was married, had a girlfriend, what. She wondered if Fintan had noticed, and glanced at Joel.
To her total surprise, he caught her eye and gave her the tiniest of grins. She instantly tugged her head around and stared straight ahead.
‘So you can suggest better?’ Colton was saying to Fintan.
‘I make better,’ said Fintan. ‘We have better butter, better fishing, far better oysters… I mean, you name it. Mrs Laird in the village, her bread is a million times better than this. Flora can outcook anything here. And we have much, much better cheese.’
Colton eyed him for a second.
‘You make better?’
‘Christ, yeah.’
‘Show me.’
Fintan shrugged.
‘I’ll send some over.’
‘No. Show me now. Have you got some on your farm?’
He clicked his fingers at the maître d’.
‘You’ll need to send someone.’
Fintan got up to go.
‘No, no, you sit down. Someone else will do it.’
A member of the catering staff hurried out of the kitchen, and Fintan told him where to find the various types of cheese, and to take the butter out of the fridge – but the stuff in the cow dish, not the paper, he explained, as if he didn’t believe the waiter would know the difference between real and bought butter. The man practically scurried out of there as if his job depended on it, which it did. The maître d’ explained that the chef wouldn’t come out to speak to them: he was too scared. Colton sighed, ordered gigantic whiskies all round and they headed back into the bar to wait.
Joel hung back and walked with Flora. She couldn’t help her heart leaping. She could smell a tinge of something expensive – lime cologne – and even though he had obviously shaved that day, a distinct hint of stubble was already noticeable along his tight jawline. Her senses felt so finely attuned to him, to every tingly iota, to the very aura that surrounded his body, that she forgot about everything else: the restaurant, the island, the job, the fact that he was her boss. How could he not notice how she felt? Or was he so used to it from every woman? Or perhaps he simply didn’t care.
‘Unusual strategy,’ he observed as they moved through.
‘I know,’ said Flora. ‘Sorry, do you want me to take him home?’
He turned to her.
‘Is he gay?’
‘No,’ said Flora.
She paused.
‘I’ve been away for a while.’
Joel blinked.
‘You don’t know if your own brother is gay?’
‘It’s not the kind of thing I’d… Do you have siblings?’
Joel had drunk too much of the good wine, and eaten too little of the bad food; he didn’t mean to blurt out what he said next, and he cursed himself as soon as he did.
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
Flora stopped abruptly. Joel froze.
‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’ she said.
‘I mean, no,’ said Joel. ‘I mean, even if I did, it wouldn’t matter.’
‘I didn’t say it mattered,’ said Flora. ‘I said that I… I’m not a hundred per cent sure.’
Joel nodded and walked on ahead of her, moving towards the large picture window as she stared, confused, at his back and toward
s the landscape beyond.
Outside there was a gentle fog rising, rendering everything softer and more mysterious. The water was still absolutely perfectly flat as a pond; it looked less like the sea and more like a gentle pool of smoke. The long, flat, familiar outline of Mure rose up behind them in pastel shades of green and brown, the little lights of the harbour just visible around to the right.
Joel glanced at his watch.
‘This place is nuts,’ he said. ‘It’s ten p.m. and it looks like eleven o’clock in the morning. I can’t sleep at all. When does it get dark?’
‘It doesn’t,’ shrugged Flora.
‘What are you guys, like Finland?’
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘We’re far further north than that.’
He turned round to look at her, bathed in the strange white light from the window. Once again, he noticed, her eyes were the colour of the sea, even though the sea he was looking at now was grey from the mist, not green as it had been the other day. It was as if her eyes changed with the water. It was so strange.
Flora was feeling strange, but not for that reason. She was watching Colton, who’d headed out the front door and lit a large cigar out on the wooden deck, and was now offering one to Fintan. Fintan paused for a couple of seconds – Flora was reasonably sure he’d never had a cigar in his life, but what did she know? – then accepted, and they moved to sit on one of the expensively hand-hewn wooden benches, with the expensive cashmere blankets strewn over them. Little candles in jam jars fluttered everywhere, even though their lights weren’t needed; and the air was heavily scented with something that smelled amazing but was in fact designed to keep the midges away.
‘It’s like Avalon,’ Joel was saying, turning back towards the sea view. ‘Like a mirage; like the entire thing will fade away at any minute.’
‘I think you’re confusing us with the mobile phone signal,’ said Flora, and was rewarded with a hint of an extremely rare smile. But he didn’t take his eyes off the floating horizon.
Chapter Twenty-six
Bertie dashed back with the boat as fast as he could; the waiter was utterly terrified that he’d upset Mr Rogers. To Innes and Eck’s bemusement, the young man had crashed into the dairy and basically grabbed everything he could find. Glancing around, Innes had added Flora’s leftover fruit cake and oatcakes to his haul, along with various jars from the larder.
When they saw him rushing back up the lit path, Joel and Flora left the house and joined Colton and Fintan on the terrace. It was chillier now, but braziers had been lit, so it felt cosy instead. The music had been turned off, and there was nothing to be heard except the low cooings of birds, which seemed to know it was night-time even if nobody else did, and a barking noise from the water.
‘Are there dogs here?’ said Joel, glancing around. The others laughed.
‘Seals bark too,’ said Flora.
‘You’re telling me I’m listening to a pack of barking seals?’ said Joel. ‘Seriously, man, this place is completely made up.’
They all watched as, marching like a slightly tiddly toddler, a grouse processed slowly along the red carpet behind the waiter. Then, suddenly, they all burst out laughing.
‘Completely fucking made up.’
‘There you go,’ said Colton. He raised his glass to Joel. ‘Everyone falls under its spell sooner or later. The entire damn place is woven out of clouds.’
‘Whatever you say,’ said Joel.
The waiter, looking terrified and slightly breathless, handed over a huge basket.
‘Here you are, sir!’
Plates, knives and more whisky arrived without anyone appearing to do anything. Colton drew out the oatcakes together with two rounds of dark yellow butter – one studded with crystals of salt that caught the light, the other plainer and darker – and three cheeses: the hard, the soft and the mix.
Flora took a breath; there too was some of her mother’s chutney, and her chilli jam. She couldn’t work out how it had got in there. Quick-thinking Innes, it had to have been. Fintan was desperately searching for somewhere to put out his cigar. He looked nervous and proud.
Colton frowned.
‘Seriously, if your plan here is to poison me with bacteria… I mean, this stuff is full of bacteria…’
‘All cheese is bacteria,’ said Fintan. ‘Your body currently has about a hundred and thirty billion different strands of bacteria in it.’
‘Yes, that’s why I drink probiotics.’
‘Really? I thought it’s because they taste like strawberry milkshakes.’
‘That too.’
Fintan got up and picked up a small knife. Leaning over the heavy oak table, he carved thick wedges of all the cheeses. He settled back down and gave everyone a challenging look.
Oddly, Joel went first, ignoring the oatcakes and simply scooping up a large piece of the blue cheese and popping it in his mouth. Everyone watched him closely – Flora making the most of the opportunity to look at his lips – as he blinked, quickly, as if slightly surprised by something, then brought his hand down from his mouth.
‘Well,’ he said.
‘What are the first symptoms?’ said Colton. ‘I mean, do you just start puking or what?’
Deliberately Fintan took a piece of the soft cheese and spread it on a slice of bread. Flora grinned and dolloped chutney on a piece of the rye before adding a chunk of cheese on top. God, she had forgotten how good it was. She didn’t want to appear greedy, but they’d had no dinner, and it was all she could do not to grab the entire lot and stuff it in her mouth. Washing it down with twenty-five-year-old Laphroaig, she realised, was also an absolutely perfect combination.
Joel couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a woman eat with such genuine pleasure. He found his mind wandering briefly to whether she had other appetites she couldn’t control. Then he put the image out of his mind and focused on his client.
‘Okay, okay, what is this?’ said Colton. ‘Last one to eat the deadly cheese is a coward? I should warn you, my nutritionist told me I’m probably lactose intolerant.’
‘What are the symptoms?’ asked Flora curiously.
‘Mood swings, tiredness…’
‘Maybe you’re just a grumpy bastard,’ said Fintan, and there was a slight pause – nobody, but nobody ever took the piss out of Colton Rogers, mostly because he spent a ridiculous amount of time with people whose lives depended on him paying their salary. Then Colton laughed and made to cuff him.
‘Uh-uh,’ said Fintan, feinting out of the way. ‘Try it.’
Colton’s face was comical to watch. If Flora, as a massive cheese fanatic, had adored Fintan’s creation, it was nothing to how a man raised on American cheese and finally tasting something so full and bursting with flavour and richness and full-bodied depth and nuttiness was going to react.
‘Good God in heaven,’ he said eventually. ‘Jesus. Joel, you tasted this?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Have you ever had anything like it?’
‘I have spent some time in France.’
‘I have spent some time in France,’ mimicked Colton. ‘You pussy. I bet you didn’t get anything as good as this there.’
‘No,’ said Joel, sounding surprised at himself. ‘I don’t think I did.’
Colton cut himself another thick wedge, then another. Suddenly Flora realised that Innes had put the fruit cake in the basket, and she immediately instructed the Americans how to take a bite of the cake, a mouthful of the hard cheese and a sip of the smoky, peaty whisky, washing them all down together.
For a time there was no sound except for some slightly orgasmic noises that could easily be misinterpreted.
‘My God,’ said Colton eventually. ‘I mean, my God. I mean.’
‘Taste the butter,’ said Flora evilly.
‘You’re trying to kill me.’
‘Not before you’ve had some butter. Try the salty stuff on the rye. Nothing else.’
Colton tasted a corner and waved his hands ab
out.
‘Christ. Right, now you’ve ruined me for butter.’
Fintan smirked.
‘You haven’t touched the blue.’
Colton looked at it regretfully.
‘Oh Christ, man, I don’t think even I can go that far. I’m just a Texas boy, you know! Mozzarella on pizza and American Jack on everything else. That’s all I know.’
‘You have to try it,’ said Fintan. ‘You want to be accepted…’
‘You want me to eat cheese that actually has veins in it? Blue varicose veins?’
‘Buk buk baaaaaaaak.’
Colton smiled.
‘Can’t do it, my friend. There’s a line.’
In answer, Fintan jumped up and cut a slice off. He came round the table and started advancing. Flora was absolutely startled. Colton blinked several times. It was apparent that nobody had treated him like this for a long time. Possibly ever. How strange it must be, thought Flora, to be so rich that everyone tiptoed round you. Was it nice? Was it strange? Did anybody ever know?
But the two of them had taken off onto the beach, Colton laughing, holding his hands up over his face, and an expression in Fintan’s eyes Flora had never seen before. The sullen, guarded look was gone, as he pretended to wrestle Colton to the ground to make him try the cheese. In the end, he rugby-tackled him down onto the sand. Flora’s hand flew to her mouth.
How could she have been so blind? So caught up with her own life, her own dramas and feelings? Fintan had been a quiet teenager, but there had never really been any debate in the house, had there? He would go into farming like all the other lads, make a good living, keep the circle of the seasons turning, go to Inverness a couple of times a year, bet on some horses, maybe. Watch the shinty. Find a good strong local lass. That was just what boys on Mure did, and she hadn’t questioned it any more than her ancestors had.
She watched as a giggling Colton sat in the sand, finally acquiescing to try a bit of the cheese, then screwing up his face in mock horror.