Chapter Four #2
Panos’s mother fired back something equally breakneck fast, speaking with her hands as much as her voice. Panos paused for a moment while he decided how to translate what she’d said.
‘She say that it’s always been brewed at the villa ever since she was a child. If you live in the villa now, you have to do it. It’s the law.’
‘The law?’ Winnie said, alarmed. ‘Are you sure?’
Panos’s mother nodded vigorously, speaking again, and they all waited for Panos to translate.
‘Island law,’ Panos shrugged. ‘The plants only grow in the garden at the villa. You make it, I sell it.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t have a clue,’ Stella said, deciding that she much preferred drinking the gin to making it.
‘Is there even a recipe to follow?’ Frankie asked, unsure if they were being wound up, some kind of odd welcome-to-the-island ritual, sort of similar to how she’d been sent to buy a bubble for a spirit level when she was a fifteen-year-old Saturday girl at the jewellers in the local shopping precinct.
Panos asked his mother Frankie’s question, but it was clear from her facial expressions and shrugging shoulders that they weren’t going to get a clean-cut answer.
Winnie sipped her drink and closed her eyes. God, it was good stuff. ‘It isn’t right that the world should run out of this,’ she said. ‘It’s possibly the best drink ever.’
It was difficult to say what it was about the gin that made it so delicious. It was rhubarb-pink in colour but not in flavour, and aromatic from the stem of rosemary Panos had pushed through the ice cubes exactly as Ajax had.
‘We could try to find out from Ajax?’ she offered, although she wasn’t entirely certain that they even had his details.
‘You must, you must,’ Panos urged, opening a wall cupboard behind the bar. ‘This is all I have left and I’ve never run out yet.’
There looked to be a dozen or more bottles in Panos’s stash, all bearing a handwritten and illustrated label. They looked like magic potions.
‘Well, we’ll look into it,’ Stella said. ‘Maybe we should have another taste just so to be clear.’
Panos looked at her through narrowed eyes, and then started to laugh. ‘You will be the troublesome one. I see these things.’
Frankie and Winnie nodded as Panos obligingly topped up their glasses.
‘So you’re … sisters?’ He gestured between them.
‘No,’ Winnie said. ‘We’re great friends.’
‘And you will all stay here? You won’t just come for a few weeks and then run back home?’
Winnie nodded, Frankie smiled diplomatically and Stella sighed into her glass without comment.
Panos didn’t miss any of their reactions. ‘You will stay. Skelidos does that to people.’
‘Like Jesse?’ Winnie said suddenly, faltering when Panos’s eyebrows lifted. ‘We met him already. He … he looked after our donkey for a while.’
‘Jesse came for a summer too.’ Panos poured himself a beer. ‘But for him it was different. He was …’ Breaking off, Panos’s face relaxed into a wide smile as a woman came into the bar with a clatter of high heels and a cloud of dark curls bouncing on her shoulders.
‘So this is the new blood everyone is telling me about!’
‘Corinna,’ Panos said warmly. ‘Word travels fast as usual, I see.’
Winnie thought she detected the hint of an American accent behind the woman’s tone.
Older than they were, forties at a guess, Corinna was one of the most naturally glamorous women Winnie had ever met.
She could pass as Sophia Loren’s daughter, all dark eyes, lush lips and legs that went all the way up to her backside.
It would have been easy to be intimidated were it not for her warm smile and the way she made a beeline to gather each of them in turn into an excitable, expensively perfumed hug.
‘Tell me, what are three gorgeous young women like you girls doing on a sleepy island like this? Are you criminals hiding from the mob?’ Her eyes glittered with humour. ‘Please say you are!’
As she spoke Panos poured her a drink and slid it over the bar to her.
‘Nothing quite that glamorous, I’m afraid,’ Frankie said. ‘It was just a good time for a change for all of us, for different reasons.’
Good-natured curiosity filled Corinna’s eyes. ‘Would it be too rude to ask what they were?’ she asked, and Panos immediately jumped in.
‘Absolutely, yes, it would indeed be very rude,’ he chided, shaking his head at them to let them off the hook.
‘I left my husband because we didn’t love each other any more,’ Frankie said suddenly, then took a huge gulp of her drink. ‘I’ve come here for an adventure.’
Some people might have felt uncomfortable at such a candid revelation from a stranger, but not Corinna. She clapped her hands, her gold bracelets jangling on her wrists. ‘Bravo for you, my darling! A marriage without love is a dead dodo!’
Stella nodded, a little morose. ‘And I got fired from my job. I came here because I don’t know what else to do.’
‘Ah, now that is interesting,’ Corinna said, looking intently at Stella. ‘Because you look to me like a woman who always knows what she should do. I think you’re here because you know that this is exactly where you need to be.’
In front of Winnie’s eyes, Stella’s shoulders straightened a little, as if Corinna had applied soothing balm to her injured pride. Winnie decided that she really quite liked Corinna. Emboldened, she threw her hat into the ring.
‘My husband was having an affair with the girl in the work canteen, even though we were trying for a baby and he claimed to be perfectly happy.’
The words left her in a rush, because they stung less if she said them quickly.
Left to linger in her mouth they grew thorns and cut into her, leaving her raw and sore for days.
Hence the fact that she hadn’t told anyone new her sorry story – not until now, anyhow.
Surprisingly though, this time she found herself unscathed, and on closer reflection she might even feel slightly liberated from the long shadow Rory’s infidelity had cast over her.
Behind her, Panos clicked his tongue in disgust and poured an extra shot of gin into her glass.
‘Now, that is an unfortunate situation.’ Corinna shook her head. ‘But my darling, how much worse would it have been if you’d had a child before you realised that he was a feckless fool?’
Winnie nodded, downhearted. She’d thought the same herself, although she sometimes wondered if she’d pressured him too much about getting pregnant and that had been the reason for his affair. But what would that say about him if so? If the effort of supporting her was too much hard work to bother?
‘Pah. I expect he was a man with a little …’ Corinna crooked her little finger and winked, making them all laugh despite the gravity of Winnie’s marital woes.
‘And so now you’re all three footloose, fancy-free and ready for adventure.
How delicious!’ Corinna rubbed her hands together and then turned to Panos, sparkly-eyed with mischief.
‘Panos here is one of our most eligible bachelors,’ she said.
‘He has the best bar on the island, and who wouldn’t fall in love with that face? ’
Right now, that face had turned puce with embarrassment.
‘Corinna,’ he muttered, slamming clean glasses away onto the shelf above his head.
‘And there I was thinking I was the most eligible bachelor on the island,’ someone else said, and they all turned to see Jesse had strolled into the bar.
Dressed in faded, frayed denim shorts and a lived-in T-shirt, he looked every inch the relaxed holidaymaker rather than the fiery, ill-tempered farmer who’d banged on their door earlier.
If possible, Corinna lit up even more, shimmying her way through the tables to pull Jesse into a hug.
If there was one thing this woman did freely, it was hug, Winnie thought.
Jesse seemed to take it well, and Frankie and Stella couldn’t have looked more surprised if Santa Claus had walked in and ordered a beer.
They’d only met Jesse the grouch, and this was a completely different man.
‘Ladies,’ Corinna said, linking arms with Jesse to lead him across to them. ‘This is Jesse Anderson, Skelidos’s secret celebrity!’
Jesse rolled his eyes. ‘Hardly.’
‘Celebrity?’ Stella asked.
Corinna nodded, drawing Panos into the conversation. ‘Sculptor to the stars, am I not right, Panos?’ Placing her perfectly manicured hands on Stella and Frankie’s knees, she elaborated on several of Jesse’s better-known clients and what he’d been asked to make for them.
‘How long had you been there?’ Winnie asked quietly as Jesse came to stand beside her stool.
‘Long enough to hear that you left your husband because he had a needledick.’ Jesse took off his sunglasses and hooked them into the neck of his T-shirt.
Any attempt Winnie might have made to correct Jesse’s interpretation of her marital discord was cut short by Corinna.
‘Jesse, wasn’t it Jennifer Aniston you sculpted in the nude?’
‘You know perfectly well that it wasn’t,’ Jesse said, nodding when Panos offered him a beer. ‘And you also know perfectly well that most of my work is private, and usually of very little interest to anyone but the person who has commissioned it.’
Corinna pouted prettily, as if he’d spoiled her game.
‘He’s always been secretive,’ she sighed. ‘Although I’m sure I spotted a bust of Barack Obama in his workshop once.’
Jesse just shook his head, and Winnie found herself wondering how close he was with Corinna to have allowed her access to his studio.
‘Winnie’s an artist,’ Stella said out of the blue, making Winnie’s cheeks burn as everyone turned to look her way.
‘I’m not, not really …’ She pulled her drink towards her and took a good glug, then struggled not to splutter because the extra gin Panos had added had made it strong enough to strip paint.
‘She makes the most beautiful jewellery,’ Frankie said, holding her wrist out to show off the bracelet Winnie had given her for her birthday a couple of years ago.
Strands of twisted silver and gold wound around pale-green tourmalines and milky-blue moonstones: it was one of Frankie’s most prized possessions.
‘Oh, my goodness!’ Corinna pounced and held Frankie’s hand to examine the bracelet. ‘You made this?’
Winnie nodded, still feeling foolish because Jesse was clearly an internationally established artist and she’d worked from her garden shed.
‘It was more of a hobby, really,’ she murmured, although she’d burned with indignation whenever Rory had referred to it as such when they were married.
He’d never taken her as seriously as she’d wished, even though her order book had been consistently full and she’d started to make a name for herself.
‘Come on, Win,’ Stella said. ‘Don’t do yourself down, it wasn’t a hobby. You’re bloody good at it.’
Winnie was aware of Jesse watching her reactions closely.
‘I haven’t done it for a while,’ she said eventually.
‘But you will do it again now you’re here, yes?’ Corinna said. ‘Because I’d love to see more of what you can do. This kind of line would be perfect for the gallery shop.’
Winnie frowned, not quite following.
‘Corinna owns the gallery in Skelidos town,’ Panos offered by way of explanation.
‘There’s a town?’ Stella looked hopeful. ‘Is there a supermarket there?’
‘Two,’ Jesse said. ‘I need to go into town for a couple of hours tomorrow. I can run one of you in if you like.’
‘Winnie,’ Frankie and Stella said at the same time.
They both shrugged when she shot them daggers.
‘I’m menu planning in the morning,’ Frankie said. She was the stand-out cook of the three of them and was dying to put her stamp on the menu revamp at the B&B. She was itching to test out new recipes and make the most of local produce to really ring the changes.
‘And I’m ready to make a start on the media package,’ Stella said, sliding into business talk because it came as second nature to her.
They’d all readily agreed that she was perfectly placed to give the B&B’s tired and very basic website a much-needed makeover.
She knew all the right people to take their social media profile from non-existent to boutique, to really try to get their name out there.
If there was one thing that Stella understood it was marketing and PR, and she was planning to use all of those hard-earned skills that no one else back home seemed to value any more to put their new business on the discerning holidaymaker’s map.
Winnie, it had been agreed, was to be their front of house, the face of Villa Valentina, the warm welcome and the winning smile that would have people booking up season on season. But front of house needed guests, so for now, at least, she had some time on her hands.
Time to go into town with Jesse, or so it seemed.