Flora didn’t think that was true for a moment. But she stuck a smile on her face and did her best.
To be fair, Jan looked nice. Okay, she hadn’t dyed her hair, so it was short and rigidly quite grey, or removed her glasses. But it was the first time Flora had ever seen her out of a fleece, and for sure, she had the most tremendous legs. She wore a chic, straight knee-length dress that showed them off nicely and a slightly 1980s-style but somehow appropriate white jacket. No veil, but she looked like herself. Charlie of course was in his kilt, as were the other men, with a black tie for once and a Bonnie Prince Charlie short black jacket with a black waistcoat underneath it.
Flora ducked out of sight as he came into view, back in the kitchen like Cinderella, while the plates with the hot canapés on them were rolled out – scallops, and neatly cut venison, and little haggis bonbons, piping hot with a horseradish cream. Inge-Britt, the manager of the Harbour’s Rest (and one-time amour of Joel’s, which Flora tried uncomfortably to forget and Inge-Britt, who had a fairly healthy Icelandic attitude towards this kind of thing, already had genuinely forgotten), was laying out glasses of ordered-in Prosecco, some of which had been poured too early and was already going flat – although Flora didn’t like to mention that.
Flora squinted at the crowd coming through. There really did seem to be an awful lot of people … Jan had been insistent that there was catering for a hundred people, which was plenty, obviously, but there were far more than Flora had been expecting showing up.
Not only that, but there were lots of children. Jan had definitely not mentioned children … Many of them, Flora assumed, were part of Jan and Charlie’s outreach groups that they ran together, taking children from the mainland in difficult situations out on adventure holidays. While this was an entirely laudable aim and a wonderful thing to do, Flora sometimes wished that Jan didn’t show off her moral virtue quite so regularly.
But the problem with these children was they couldn’t wait for a buffet. They didn’t know they were meant to hold off until everyone had a drink and was settled and organised so the speeches could begin and everyone could behave reasonably. They went straight to the heaving buffet table and immediately began stuffing their faces with whatever they could find.
‘No!’ said Flora, horrified, as her lovely display was being ruined before the guests had even got in to see it.
She came out of the kitchen, not even caring that she hadn’t cleaned up or put some lipstick on. The boys, startled, looked up at her guiltily and a hush fell on the room. Jan turned round with an expectant look on her face. Flora immediately felt herself blush bright pink.
‘Um. I mean, hello. Would you like to wait until everyone is here and everyone can start the buffet together?’
She put on her most ingratiating face and was aware how fake her voice sounded. In fact, she sounded like she’d been chasing away hungry children from food. This was not really the look she’d been after.
Jan bustled over, a pitying smile on her face. ‘Not to worry, Flora … Everyone here is our guest.’
Flora tried to pull her aside. ‘But … but we’ve only got food for a hundred guests! You said a hundred!’
The room was now absolutely packed, and the boys had gone straight back to stuffing their faces.
Jan tinkled a little laugh Flora hadn’t heard before. ‘Oh, it’s hardly difficult, what you’re doing, is it? It’s lovely to welcome all our friends to celebrate our marriage …’
Charlie came up behind Jan, grinning nervously and looking rather sweaty.
‘Oh … yes … Congratulations,’ said Flora. ‘I’m very … I’m really pleased for you.’
Jan tightened her grip on Charlie’s hand proprietorially. ‘Well, of course you would have to say that,’ she said. She looked around. ‘I see the American appears to have left.’
Flora blinked. There were even more people slipping in through the door, including a few disreputable Harbour’s Rest drinkers that she was reasonably certain wouldn’t have received an invitation in a million years. ‘So, anyway … Do you know how many you’re expecting?’
‘Flora,’ said Jan. ‘This celebration is important in our community. It’s important to all of us. Obviously you moved away from the islands.’
And then I moved back, thought Flora mutinously.
‘But for those of us who’ve always stayed here, who believe in the island as our home … this is an important day for all of us.’
‘So … how many?’
‘Everyone is welcome,’ said Jan. She glanced over at the rapidly diminishing buffet table. The boys were throwing vol-au-vents at each other and crumbs were getting underfoot. ‘Oh dear, it’s looking a little thin.’
And she glided across the floor as if the situation were nothing to do with her.
Flora turned, grabbed Isla and Iona into the kitchen and hooked Fintan, who’d been heading over for a gin and tonic.
‘Everything,’ she hissed. ‘We get everything we’ve got in stock.’
Fintan frowned. ‘Well, she’s not having the ageing range.’
Fintan had started to lay cheese down, like wine, in preparation for the Rock reopening. It was extraordinary stuff, really beautiful, and Flora sometimes wished they could sell it on the open market. It would make a fortune.
‘Anything,’ she repeated. ‘Anything that’s in the freezer, anything lying about, and everyone start baking. The quickest thing – Iona, you do sandwiches. Run down to the Spar.’
She was sad; up until now they’d used the best of everything.
‘Buy up whatever ham they have. All the cucumbers.’
She thought about the local shop’s cucumbers. They could be a little tired, to say the least. Cucumbers had to travel a long way to reach the Northern Isles.
‘Put loads of butter on everything. Oh Christ,’ she moaned. ‘We won’t have time to make any more bread. See what Mrs Laird has.’
The girls, to their credit, worked at lightning speed with what they had. They found every piece of fruitcake – Flora stockpiled them for the kitchen, did them in huge batches. They also found a vast pile of frozen gingerbread Flora had forgotten she had, and ended up microwaving it into a pudding and adding custard. They scraped every crumb out of Annie’s Seaside Kitchen and served it up to an increasingly drunken and demanding crowd, even stooping, eventually, to ransacking Inge-Britt’s stock of crisps simply to give Jan’s guests something to eat.
Finally, after what seemed to Flora about twenty hours of rowdy people and dancers and bar bores and singers, and after the speeches were made, the cake was cut and the free bar was shut, there was not a crumb to be found, and people, sensing the main affair was over, started to drift off.
In the kitchen, the girls were working like Trojans washing up, and Fintan had pitched in like a good one. Flora was flat out, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, sweat on her brow. She looked around. There wasn’t a scrap left; they’d even used the sausages Inge-Britt served in the morning, and the eggs, to make a last-minute frittata they’d cut into slices. There wasn’t a single thing left untouched. The mess, though, was everywhere.