Margaux · The Booking

Margaux was on the phone to a woman in Surrey when she saw the name.

She had not, when she answered the phone, been intending to write a name down at all. She had been intending to politely tell the woman in Surrey, for the second time that morning and the eighth time that month, that the Strathaird Hotel did not, between the first of November and the first of April, host weddings. The boats were not safe. The road across the Sleat was not safe. The chef was on a long-promised six-month sabbatical in Lyon. The Strathaird gardens, in November, were a colour Margaux could only really describe as bog.

Margaux had been intending to use the word bog on the woman in Surrey if the woman in Surrey continued to press the point.

The woman in Surrey was pressing the point.

The woman in Surrey was a wedding planner, and the wedding planner was saying, in the voice wedding planners used when they were being charged by the hour, 'Yes, but Mr Hollis has indicated that he is prepared to be — flexible. Around the chef. Around the boats. Around the bog. He has asked me to ask you whether the off-season rate, with full house exclusivity, would be acceptable for an event of forty-six guests over the weekend of the eighth.'

Margaux had been on the bookings desk of the Strathaird Hotel for nine winters and three summers. Margaux had been raised, by her mother, on the bookings desk of the Strathaird Hotel. Margaux had learned to add a column of numbers in pencil at the age of seven, sitting on the high stool at the end of this same desk, with the same view of the same loch out of the same wide unwashable window. The bookings desk of the Strathaird Hotel was the place Margaux had lost her first tooth, sat her A-levels, kissed Calum MacKinnon the night of the school dance, written her university acceptance letter, and, four years and three months later, cried for forty minutes without making a sound on the morning she had broken off her engagement.

She knew the bookings desk of the Strathaird Hotel.

She knew, with the small precise certainty of a woman who knew the bookings desk of the Strathaird Hotel, that her hand, on the green leather-bound ledger, had already, in pencil, begun to write down the name Hollis.

She stopped her hand.

She said, into the phone, very carefully, 'Mr Hollis. Could I — could I just have the first name on that, please.'

The woman in Surrey said, 'Of course. The groom's name is Edwin Hollis. The bride is Imogen Reilly.'

Margaux's hand, on the ledger, did not, this time, move.

—

Edwin Hollis.

Edwin Hollis of Edinburgh, son of Iain Hollis, grandson of Old Wilf Hollis who had sold the family farm in 1986 and bought, with the proceeds, a six-storey townhouse off Heriot Row that the Hollis family had been falling out of and back into for forty years. Edwin Hollis, who had read Land Economy at Cambridge, who had played open-side flanker for the second fifteen, who had been, between the autumn of his second year and the spring of Margaux's third, the boy Margaux had agreed to marry. Edwin Hollis, who had been wearing his grandmother's engagement ring in the breast pocket of his rugby blazer when he had asked her, on the second-to-last day of her third-year exams, on the wooden bench by the river at the back of King's. Edwin Hollis, whose mother had taken Margaux for tea at the New Club in May 2018 and had said, kindly, twice in the same sentence, we shall be so happy when you are settled, dear.

Edwin Hollis.

Edwin Hollis, who had not, since the morning of the fourteenth of June 2018, on the gravel sweep in front of his parents' house in Heriot Row, with her grandmother's engagement ring in the palm of her left hand and a black taxi waiting at the kerb with the meter running, spoken to her again.

Edwin Hollis.

Margaux sat very still on the stool at the bookings desk of the Strathaird Hotel, with her left hand on the green leather-bound ledger, and Margaux looked, without quite meaning to, at the only thing on the desk that was not the ledger or the pencil or the phone — a small framed photograph of her mother as a young woman, standing on the steps of this same hotel in 1981, with her arms folded against the cold and a small startled smile on her face that Margaux had inherited.

The photograph did not, in any way Margaux could detect, advise her.

—

The wedding planner in Surrey said, 'Hello? Are you still there?'

Margaux said, 'Yes. Yes — I — yes. I'm sorry, the line did a strange thing for a moment.'

The wedding planner said, 'Quite all right. I can hold while you check the calendar. We're looking at the weekend of the eighth of February, four nights' exclusivity, full board, drinks reception in the long bar on the Friday, ceremony in the south room on the Saturday, dinner under canvas if the marquee can be brought — Mr Hollis has indicated that the marquee may not be possible at that time of year, that's part of why we wanted to discuss flexibility —'

Margaux said, 'I'm afraid the marquee is not possible.'

The wedding planner said, 'Quite all right. We can use the long bar for the dinner. Mr Hollis is keen — and I should say,' the wedding planner added, in the voice wedding planners used when they were about to win something, 'that Miss Reilly is also keen, but Mr Hollis has been the one driving — Mr Hollis is keen that the venue is the Strathaird specifically. He has indicated that he has — strong personal feelings about the Strathaird. I'm given to understand it is a place that has, ah, meant something to him.'

Margaux watched her own hand, on the ledger, very slowly close around the pencil.

Margaux said, 'I see.'

The wedding planner said, 'May I take it as a provisional yes?'

Margaux said, into the phone, in the voice of a woman who had been raised on the bookings desk of the Strathaird Hotel and knew, with the small precise certainty of a woman who had been raised on the bookings desk of the Strathaird Hotel, when a no was not going to be a no she could reasonably hold the line on, 'Let me take down the deposit details. The off-season rate is three thousand four hundred per night, exclusive of catering. Catering for forty-six guests over four days will come in at —'

She wrote down the deposit details.

She did not, while she wrote them, look at the framed photograph of her mother.

—

Her mother came in twenty minutes later.

Her mother, Eileen MacRae, was sixty-eight years old, was the proprietor of the Strathaird Hotel, was widowed nine years ago last August, and was — to Margaux's continuing relief — a woman who could read the back of her daughter's head from twenty feet away in a low-lit hall.

Her mother said, from the doorway, without taking off her wax jacket, 'What.'

Margaux said, without turning, 'Edwin Hollis has booked a wedding at the hotel.'

Her mother stood very still in the doorway for a beat that was, by Eileen MacRae's standards, conspicuous.

Her mother said, 'When for.'

Margaux said, 'February the eighth. Four nights. Forty-six guests. Full house. He's paying off-season.'

Her mother said, 'And the bride.'

Margaux said, 'A woman called Imogen Reilly. I haven't heard of her. I'd have to look her up.'

Her mother said, 'Don't look her up.'

Margaux said, 'I know.'

Her mother came into the room. Her mother took off her wax jacket, very slowly, and hung it on the hook by the door, and she came over to the bookings desk, and she stood next to Margaux on the bookings-side of the desk and looked down at the ledger.

Her mother said, 'You wrote his name.'

Margaux said, 'I did.'

Her mother said, 'In pencil.'

Margaux said, 'I always write deposits in pencil.'

Her mother said, 'I know you do. Margaux, my darling, you can rub it out. It's three months away. You can phone the woman in Surrey back this afternoon and say there has been a — what's the word — a calendar conflict. You can find a calendar conflict in five minutes. We have a calendar conflict in February — it's February, the whole month is a calendar conflict.'

Margaux said, 'I'm not going to.'

Her mother said, 'Mar.'

Margaux said, 'Mum. I'm not going to. He picked the hotel. He picked us. He picked the weekend his grandfather died, which is not, you and I both know, an accident, and he picked the off-season, which is not an accident either, and he picked a wedding planner in Surrey who would do the negotiating for him so he wouldn't have to speak to me, and I have his deposit and I have his bride's name and I have a booking I am, frankly, in need of. I am not going to phone Surrey back and lie to her.'

Her mother said, 'Mar.'

Margaux said, 'Mum.'

Her mother looked at her, for a long moment, in the small particular way her mother had of looking at her — the look her mother had used, on the morning Margaux had come home from Edinburgh in 2018 with her overnight bag and her grandmother's ring in a small velvet box and her face in a state Margaux's mother had had the grace, that morning and ever since, not to comment upon — and then her mother put one hand, very briefly, on the back of Margaux's neck.

Her mother said, very softly, 'You are extraordinarily stupid, my darling.'

Margaux said, 'I know.'

Her mother said, 'I am going to be entirely on your side in this, and I am going to be entirely insufferable about it forever afterwards.'

Margaux said, 'Yes.'

Her mother said, 'You will write the bride's name in the ledger now, and you will write it in ink, and we will be the kind of hotel that hosts the wedding properly. We will not be the kind of hotel that lets a man come back to the place he proposed to its proprietor's daughter and feel he has done so unnoticed. He will be noticed. She will be noticed. The weekend will be noticed. Are we agreed.'

Margaux said, 'We are.'

Her mother said, 'Good.'

Then her mother went into the back kitchen to put the kettle on, and Margaux sat alone on the high stool at the bookings desk of the Strathaird Hotel, and she opened the green leather-bound ledger to the February page, and she lifted the small black fountain pen that lived in the leather pen-loop along the spine of the ledger, and she wrote down, in ink, on the line for Saturday the eighth, in the careful round handwriting she had been writing in this ledger since she was seven years old:

Hollis–Reilly wedding. 46 pax. 4 nights exclusive. Off-season rate. Long bar for dinner. No marquee.

She underlined the booking.

She wrote, underneath it, in smaller letters, the bride's name, by itself, on a single line:

Imogen Reilly.

She read the name back to herself.

She read it a second time.

It was a perfectly ordinary name. It was a pleasant name. It was the name of a woman she had never, in any context, met, and would not, until the Friday of the eighth of February, three months and one day from this morning, lay eyes on.

Margaux MacRae, who had not, since the morning of the fourteenth of June 2018, spoken Edwin Hollis's name out loud — Margaux MacRae sat on the high stool at the bookings desk of the Strathaird Hotel, on a wet November Tuesday with the loch the colour of a slate that had been left in the rain, and she said, out loud, into the empty bookings room, in the voice her mother had taught her to use for the names of women whose business was not, and would not be, hers,

'Imogen Reilly.'

The room did not, of course, answer.

Outside the wide unwashable window, on the dark loch, the small fishing boat that lived at the end of the pier in winter rocked, very gently, twice, and was still.

—

That evening, after the kitchen had been swept and the long bar had been wiped down for the third time that day by a sixteen-year-old called Kirsty who was working her first winter at the Strathaird, Margaux went, alone, in her wax jacket and her grandmother's silk scarf, down the back path that led from the side door of the hotel to the wooden bench at the end of the pier.

She had not been to the wooden bench at the end of the pier in two years.

She had stopped going to the wooden bench at the end of the pier in 2022, after the second time she had cried on it without crying about anything in particular, because that was not the kind of woman Margaux had wished, going forward, to be.

She went tonight.

She sat down on the wooden bench at the end of the pier in the wet November dark, and she put her hands into the pockets of her wax jacket, and she watched the small fishing boat, with the small yellow oil lamp on it that her father had hung from its prow in 2003 and that the village fisherman who had inherited the boat from her father had never, in twenty years, taken down — she watched the small fishing boat rock, gently, twice, and be still, and rock, gently, twice, and be still.

She said, after a long while, out loud, to the boat, in a voice she had not used in nine winters and three summers,

'Edwin Hollis. What do you think you're doing.'

The small fishing boat rocked.

It rocked, gently, twice.

It was still.

And on the wooden bench at the end of the pier of the Strathaird Hotel, on a wet November Tuesday in the off-season of the only good hotel on Skye, Margaux MacRae — who had been raised on the bookings desk of the Strathaird Hotel, and had broken off her engagement to a boy in Edinburgh four years and three months after he had given her his grandmother's ring on a bench at the back of King's, and had, in the nine winters since, become the kind of woman who did not cry on benches — Margaux MacRae, very quietly, did not cry.

She sat with her hands in her pockets, and she watched the boat.

She said, after a while, to the boat, in a voice that surprised her by being slightly amused,

'Fine. Bring her then. We'll see.'

Then she got up, and she walked back along the wet path to the side door of the only good hotel on Skye, and she went inside, and she shut the door behind her, and she went to bed.

The wedding was three months and one day away.

She had, on the ledger, written Hollis–Reilly in ink.

She would not, however many times the woman in Surrey would shortly call her over the next ninety-one days to confirm the details — and the woman in Surrey would call her, Margaux's own count would later have it, exactly forty-seven times — she would not, on the wooden bench at the end of the pier or anywhere else, take it back.