Chapter Six #2
Frankie lifted one unsure shoulder. ‘Well, it doesn’t look especially complicated. I think a lot of it is making sure that we keep the botanical stocks replenished. We’d need to get a system going for picking, drying out, all that stuff. I don’t know much about it, to be honest.’
‘But between us … we’ve got this, right? If Ajax could do it, then surely we can?’
Stella looked from one to the other, then threw her hands in the air and laughed. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound. This adventure just got even weirder.’
Winnie met Frankie’s warily excited, shiny gaze. Unscrewing the lid from the nearest bottle of gin, she took a heady swig. ‘The secret gin fairies it is then,’ she said, her throat still burning from the spirit as she handed it along.
Frankie took a swig and then spluttered gently. ‘I quite like the idea of us as bad fairies. Can we have that on the label?’
Stella took her turn drinking from the bottle and then raised it towards her friends. ‘To the Secret Gin Fairies of Skelidos.’
‘I think I’ve got a headache,’ Frankie said as they all lay out on the terrace later that afternoon. They’d abandoned any pretence of work after discovering the distillery in the cellar and spent the day sunbathing, snacking and drinking the rest of the bottle of gin they’d opened.
‘You need another drink then. We need to make sure we list the number of the bottle we’ve drunk in the book,’ Stella said. ‘Your job, Win.’
‘Is it?’ Winnie said, sitting up to adjust her bandeau bikini top. ‘Okey-doke.’ She raised her glass, totally unfazed. It was amazing how much more brave yet relaxed she felt after a day playing hooky and a few heavy-handed G things between them were a tiny bit massively awkward.
She hadn’t found the right moment to mention what had happened to Stella or Frankie either; she’d wound up feeling as if she’d done something wrong or stupid, which was ridiculous given that she was a free agent and could kiss whoever the hell she wanted to.
It was a little bit to do with Rory, because she was still emotionally tied to him and those strings were going to have to fray and snap in their own time.
But it was as much to do with the fact that the three of them had come all this way for a fresh start, a clean new sheet of paper, which they could fill with only good things.
To rush headlong into the arms of the nearest man felt a bit weak, if that was the right word.
They were supposed to be adventurers, brave badass fairies, Thelma and Louise with a happier ending.
Although, to give Thelma her dues, she did get to boff Brad Pitt, so it wasn’t all doom and gloom.
‘Maybe he’s my Brad Pitt,’ Winnie said.
Both Frankie and Stella turned to stare at her and she realised that only the last bit of her train of thought had made it out of her mouth. ‘It’s too complicated to explain,’ she said, batting the air.
‘Your Brad Pitt?’ Stella said, ignoring her.
Winnie pulled her hat down over her eyes.
‘He kissed me.’
Frankie reached over and pulled Winnie’s hat back up again so they could see her face.
‘Jesse the grumpy neighbour kissed you?’
Winnie wondered why in God’s name she’d said it, and then in the same breath she was glad she had, because it had confused the hell out of her and these two women were her confidantes and her sisters. So she nodded, sitting up and crossing her legs, her drink cradled between her hands.
‘When? Where?’
‘The day he took me shopping.’
Stella frowned. ‘He kissed you a whole week ago and you’re only mentioning it now?’
‘I know,’ Winnie sighed. ‘It came out of the blue. Well, no, actually that’s not true. He told me he was going to do it first.’
Frankie leaned around Winnie to share a private ‘we need to keep an eye on this because she isn’t up to having her heart broken’ look with Stella.
Stella threw back a quick and equally protective ‘I’ll drown him in a bucket of island gin and pickle his genitals if she cries even one tear’ look, and then turned back to Winnie.
‘Come on then, spill. What happened?’
‘Well, we went shopping, obviously.’ Winnie picked at a piece of loose cotton on the sun lounger’s deeply padded ivory cushion.
‘And he was showing me bits of the island as we drove, and then he took me to see the highest point of the island because the view is amazing. There’s a bench and everything. ’
‘And you sat on the bench?’ Frankie said, encouraging the story along.
Winnie nodded. ‘I did. And he did. And I somehow told him that Rory is the only man I’ve ever kissed and he was like, oh my God, you’re practically a nun, I’m going to have to snog you right now to save you from a lifetime in a wimple.’
They all laughed.
‘He didn’t really say that, did he?’ Stella laughed.
Winnie rolled her eyes. ‘No. He called Rory Needledick and told me that pleasure is all about the external bodily organs, then stroked my arm to demonstrate.’
‘It sounds like a biology class,’ Frankie said.
‘It didn’t feel like one,’ Winnie said. ‘He wanted to show me that you can enjoy physical pleasure without involving your heart or your head.’
They fell silent. Stella was thinking that he was bang on the money, and Frankie was wondering how it would feel to be kissed by someone if it did involve your heart or your head.
She and Gav must have had a spark back in the early days, but they’d been little more than children themselves really and their relationship would probably never have made it beyond a few months if she hadn’t fallen pregnant.
Melancholy thoughts of what her life might have been like started to seep in, and she took a good glug of gin and pushed all of the negativity back across the sea in her head towards England.
She’d left it there in that soulless rented flat. It wasn’t allowed to follow her here.
‘And then he said he was going to kiss me.’
‘Wow. I mean, he’s grumpy but he’s hot , Win. Was it good?’ Stella swung her legs around to put her feet on the floor and face Winnie.
‘It was … it was …’ Words genuinely failed her.
‘What? Good? Hideous?’ Frankie said, impatient.
‘Oh no,’ Stella muttered. ‘He wasn’t terrible, was he? Did he slobber all over you like one of those dogs with ten chins?’
Winnie laughed softly, her cheeks warm from the sun, the cocktails and the memory of Jesse’s kiss.
‘No, he wasn’t awful, and he didn’t slobber. He was … God, it was shockingly good.’ And then she said, ‘Very different to Rory,’ and felt like a terrible person for comparing them.
Both Frankie and Stella sighed in half relief, half envy.
‘He was gentle, and then he wasn’t. It started out sort of subtle, but then it wasn’t subtle at all, it was like three minutes of dynamite sex with your clothes on!’ Her voice escalated, giddy with too much gin and the relief of finally sharing the story.
‘Shit,’ Stella said, with a low whistle.
‘Winnie!’ Frankie laughed. ‘No wonder you’ve been going round every day to visit the donkey.’
‘Have you two been shagging like goats under the olive groves?’ Stella said suddenly, raising her eyebrows.
‘Goats?’ Winnie said. ‘Do goats have lots of sex?’
‘I don’t bloody know! Are you?’
‘No. I’ve barely even seen him since. I think he’s avoiding me.’
They all slumped back onto their sunbeds with the cocktails on their bellies.
‘My advice?’ Stella said. ‘Have fun, but stick to those outside feels only.’
Frankie made sounds of approval. ‘Because your heart isn’t ready for any action.’
‘I guess that’s the beauty of him, then,’ Winnie said. ‘His heart belongs to the island, and his work, and his home, and cold beer. He neither needs nor wants a woman for anything other than carnal pleasures.’
‘If you don’t want him, can I have him?’ Stella sighed. ‘That sounds like my ideal man. If he were blonde I’d be shoving you off a cliff to get to him.’
Nordic men were Stella’s weakness; it had been a longstanding joke that she hung around in Ikea in eternal hope of bumping into Alexander Skarsgard. She’d have moved to the Arctic Circle long ago if there was a beach and it wasn’t freezing. Salopettes were so not her thing.
They lapsed into companionable silence, looking out over the glittering Med, each of them lost in thought.
Frankie imagined the twins strolling down the deserted beach in front of her, and idly wondered if there was someone out there who might save his dynamite kisses all for her one day.
The very idea came as a surprise; she’d had so little time for romance in her life for a long time, she’d almost written herself off.
Stella felt encouraged by the fact that at least one of them had already found a little heat, though she wouldn’t have put money on Winnie being first to break cover.
Her mind wandered back to her apartment back in England, the scene of many of her easy come, easy go romances, and she was surprised to find that, for now at least, she wasn’t missing the slick, sophisticated trappings of success.
Winnie closed her eyes and slid into a daydream, a daydream of capable male hands rubbing sun cream into her shoulders, of a man bending to kiss her neck. She twisted around to try to catch a glimpse of his face, and in doing so jolted herself awake and sloshed her cocktail all over her navel.
‘Balls.’
She jerked up, annoyed with herself.
Now she’d never get to see who’d been kissing her neck.