“What would you boys like for your fucking breakfast?” Mrs Gallacher said with a beaming smile. She had a broad Scots brogue I imagined must be local and a taste for profanity that was decidedly Anglo-Saxon. “Cooked or continental? Tea or coffee? Fucking orange juice, perhaps?”
“Is the orange juice freshly squeezed?” I ventured.
“Is it freshly fucking…?” She trailed off in apparent disbelief. “You’re in Shetland, not fucking Seville. It comes out of a box from Tesco. Will that do for you, deary?”
Was she doing this deliberately? Was this experiential theatre? I was entranced. I nodded my consent, desperately wanting the exchange to be over so I could load up Tripadvisor and read the reviews for this place. Sunny, eyes full of wonder, was studying the ceiling like he was looking for hidden cameras.
“The bathroom is the door on the left, up the end of the hall, dearies,” she said. “Your towels are on your beds. The Wi-Fi code is on the fucking bedside table. You boys need anything else?”
I said no and thanked her. Sunny, apparently too stunned to form words, shook his head and smiled.
“You’re more than welcome to come watch TV in the front room with his lairdship and me, should you wish,” she said. “Although there’s fuck all on, and we had onions for dinner, which gives us both the kind of gas that melts the curtains. Even the cat has fucked off. But you’d be very welcome, dearies. I could dig you out an N95 mask if it’s an issue.”
“Tempting. But not for me, Mrs Gallacher,” I said. “I think I’ll turn in.”
“Me too,” Sunny said. “Goodnight, Mrs Gallacher.”
“Fucking nighty-bye, then, boys. Sleep well.”
Mrs Gallacher turned and shuffled up the hall, presumably crop-dusting the corridor with her flatulence as she went. Sunny looked like he’d just won the EuroMillions.
“I love her,” he said.
“Do you think the tourist board knows about her?”
“Is it deliberate? Do you think she knows she’s doing it?”
“Perhaps it’s Tourette’s?”
“It’s glorious. She’s like Mrs Doubtfire, if Mrs Doubtfire were inTrainspotting.”
I laughed, despite myself.
Chapter15
Sunny
When Ludo Boche laughs, his face lights up. He has fat, chipmunky cheeks, and they make his eyes squint and his nose crinkle, which makes his glasses lift off his nose. That seems to trigger his nervous twitch, and he pushes his glasses back up onto his face and fixes his hair.
“Can we talk?” I said.
We were standing in the doorways to our respective rooms. I had the sense Ludo had been avoiding me all day—which had at least given me time to build up the courage to ask him to chat. But if I didn’t seize the opportunity now, it would drag into another day—which might make things uncomfortable over our eggs and fucking orange juice in the morning. The smile fell from Ludo’s face. He stiffened.
“Sure,” he said. “You better come in.”
I followed him the few short steps into his room. The stone walls had been plastered and whitewashed. It was decorated with the kind of tat you find in seaside gift shops. There were little wooden seagulls, hand-painted pictures of fishing boats, and, inexplicably, a movie poster forThe Dukes of Hazzard(rated an optimistic fourteen per cent on Rotten Tomatoes). Ludo sat down on the edge of the bedspread. I perched myself beside him. For all I had rehearsed this moment throughout the day, now that the time had come, my body was going into full fight-or-flight mode. My veins were more adrenaline than blood. I put my hands between my knees to stop them shivering and looked up to meet Ludo’s stormy blue eyes.
“I was a bit out of line the other night,” I said. Ludo’s face didn’t move. He was waiting for more. Which was fine. I could go further. “I was rude to you. I was rude about your family. I made a lot of sweeping generalisations, and I was a judgemental prick. If you’re able to forgive me, I’d like to put this behind us.” (You horse-faced trollop.)
It was the most complete apology I could muster without a court order and lawyers on standby to hold me to account for every microaggression I’d thrown Ludo’s way at Maxime’s. Short of uttering the wordsorry, that is.
“Is that your apology?” he said. “Because it doesn’t sound like you’re sorry. I see no evidence of a Damascene conversion. I doubt you’ve changed your opinion about ‘people like me’ in the course of a weekend. You meant what you said—and, what’s more, you still believe it.”
I was not off the hook yet.
“I recycled some old class war clichés and stereotypes and packaged them up as targeted insults,” I said. “They really weren’t targeted at all. I don’t know anything about you and your family beyond who your parents are. It was unfair, and I’m sorry.”
There. I’d said it. With any luck, I’d saved my career. Ludo took a deep breath and set his jaw. Apparently, we weren’t done. I could tell he’d also been rehearsing what he wanted to say and he was determined to say it.
