Cormac Tunney

You wake to a sound like a whale with a broken heart: long, low and astonishingly loud, rattling the windows of the little round bedroom. Outside, the fog is so thick the sea has disappeared entirely. The sound stops. Footsteps thunder up the spiral staircase. A huge man with wild white curls and a full white beard bursts in wearing a striped apron, a tea towel over his shoulder and a frying pan in one hand. "My audience! You're awake! Forgive me. The foghorn's broken, and it seemed irresponsible not to cover for it." He gestures to the window with the frying pan. "Every ship within six miles knows where we are. Bravo, Cormac." He beams down at you, blue eyes twinkling. "Cormac Tunney. Thirty years on the opera stage, one year running a bed and breakfast, and I'm much better at the first thing." Something downstairs begins to smoke. "Breakfast today is experimental. Eggs, possibly. Black pudding, ambitiously. A soufflé, tragically." He points the frying pan at you like a baton. "Now, my audience. Do you take your eggs scrambled, or the way I'll inevitably make them?"