Chapter Ten
‘Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble,’ Stella said, rubbing her hands together. ‘So what do we do first, Frank?’
It was their third Monday on the island, and they’d gathered in the cellar for their first ever gin distilling session, hair tied back and aprons on.
They’d decided that they’d be best all learning the process together, as much for hand holding and mutual blame purposes as anything else.
Frankie stood with her hands on her hips, her eyes scanning the assortment of jars and bottles amassed on the bench.
‘I vote we make just five bottles for our first run,’ she said. ‘It only needs to stand for a week, so we’ll know pretty soon if we’ve ballsed it up and we won’t lose too much stock.’
Stella fished out five bottles of spirit from a box on the floor and lined them up on the bench.
‘So far, so good.’
Winnie pulled Ajax’s letter from her apron pocket and laid his handwritten botanicals recipe out, weighing down the corners of the paper with jars or bottles.
‘We’re going to need scales,’ she said. ‘This is all in weights per bottle. Oh, hang on. He says the scales are in the bench drawer.’
Frankie opened the long drawer, and sure enough, she found an electric scale.
‘Rightio,’ Winnie said. ‘“To each bottle, add the following ingredients. Twenty-two grams of dried juniper berries.”’
‘Shall I unscrew all five and we can do one ingredient at a time?’ Stella said, and when the others nodded she went along the line and cracked them all open.
Frankie carefully weighed out twenty-two grams of the tiny, hard berries into the scale.
‘How do I get them in the bottle without dropping any?’ she said, frowning.
Winnie looked back at the letter. ‘There should be a funnel in the drawer too?’
Frankie opened the drawer for a second time, nodded and withdrew a small plastic funnel. Slotting it into the top of the first bottle, she slowly tipped the berries into it. They all watched the inky black dots sink with almost ceremonial grace to the bottom of the bottle.
‘That’s it then. No going back now, we’re gin alchemists,’ Winnie said.
Frankie measured out berries for the next bottle, and they worked their way along in a production line.
‘What’s next on the list, Win?’ Frankie puffed her fringe from her eyes, looking slightly less terrified now the first ingredient had gone in.
‘“Nine grams of coriander seeds.”’
Duly weighed, the small brown husks sank to join the juniper.
‘This is sort of like magic, isn’t it?’ Winnie said.
Frankie glanced around the shady cellar. ‘Potions class at Hogwarts?’
‘I’d quite like a stern teacher to glower at me like that,’ Stella said. ‘All brooding and sexy.’
Winnie couldn’t imagine a man in the land who could intimidate Stella with a brooding glower. ‘“Two grams of angelica root,”’ she said, nudging the jar towards Frankie to weigh out.
‘It looks like something someone swept up from behind the fridge,’ Stella said, frowning as she watched Frankie weigh out the dried shreds of root and add them to the bottles.
‘“Ten cracked pink peppercorns and a pinch of pine needles.”’
‘A pinch of pine needles?’ Stella said. ‘Really? It’ll end up tasting like toilet bleach at this rate.’
‘Really,’ Frankie said, showing Stella the small hand-marked tub. ‘Here. You can be in charge of that bit.’
Winnie counted out the peppercorns as Stella added a sprinkle of needles, and Frankie followed along with three curly strips of dried lemon peel.
‘Is there anything else?’ Stella asked.
Winnie ran her finger down the list. ‘“And now for the final and most secret ingredient of all,”’ she read.
‘“Eleven arbutus berries*. Count carefully, as they give the gin both its colour and its sweetness.” Why has he put a star next to that, I wonder?’ She turned the page over and found her answer.
‘Ah, here we go. “The English name for the arbutus is the strawberry tree, because the fruits are similarly red and sweet. However, it is much rarer and more prized, because it’s thought to possess magical qualities for good luck, love and respect. Many believe that the presence of the arbutus berry in the island gin is responsible for the island’s tranquillity and continued good fortune – perhaps because everyone drinks so much of it!
The bush at the villa is the only source of arbutus on Skelidos, so be sure to tend it carefully and harvest it when the berries are fat in autumn. ”’
Winnie read the last line of Ajax’s recipe with increasing trepidation, and when she raised her eyes it was clear that Stella and Frankie shared her anxiety.
‘The only bush on the entire island?’ Frankie squeaked high enough to sound as if she’d taken a shot of helium.
‘Fuck,’ Stella said, sitting down hard on an upturned crate.
‘Just when we thought we’d got it sussed, he goes and drops that bombshell in at the end.
So we’re running a bed and breakfast, a donkey sanctuary, operating a secret and no doubt illegal gin distillery, employing staff we didn’t know we had, and now we have to tend a bloody sacred bush in the garden as well!
’ She ticked them off on her fingers. ‘What’s next? An orphanage in the attic?’
Put like that, it did seem like rather a lot of hidden extras had been included in the sale of Villa Valentina.
‘A moody injured Greek whose own sister doesn’t like him enough to put him up?’ Winnie said, catching Stella’s eye.
‘And more new guests arriving at the end of the week,’ Frankie added. ‘I just hope they’re the kind that eat breakfast this time.’
They lapsed into silence, all looking at the five bottles of freshly spiked gin on the bench. Winnie glanced at Ajax’s letter for a final time.
‘“Replace the bottle tops, screwing them tightly, turn each bottle three times and then store upright in the cellar. Turn daily for five days, strain, and then rebottle and label, remembering to add the date and serial number.”’
She turned the letter again. ‘That’s it.’
One by one they screwed the tops back on the bottles.
‘We should all turn each bottle once to celebrate our first batch,’ Frankie said.
Winnie nodded. ‘A gin ritual?’
‘Only if we can go upstairs and finish the ritual with a big G her daily visits to The Fonz had suffered for her wine-induced bold nakedness. ‘Thanks for remembering.’
Stella and Frankie had headed over to the other side of the island with Panos to look at a car he knew was for sale, leaving Winnie alone for the afternoon manning reception.
She’d waited until they’d gone to lay out her sketchbook and pencils, opening the book with nervous fingers as she deliberately skimmed past the drawings already in there.
Or designs, to describe them more accurately.
Bracelets, necklaces, jewelled slides and tiaras, pretty things that seemed so tied up with her old life that she couldn’t bring herself to look at them here in her new one.
She hadn’t wanted the job of label designer at all, but neither Stella nor Frankie were artistically inclined and they’d firmly declared it within her remit.
She knew what they were doing, of course; their attempts to reignite her creativity were not exactly subtle.
Art of one form or another had defined Winnie’s life since they’d been children, and they clearly thought that she’d closed herself off from it as a result of her divorce.
She hadn’t; she just wasn’t inclined that way any more, and she didn’t see why it needed to concern anyone else if it wasn’t worrying her.
Except now that she had the pencils in her hand and the blank page in front of her, she’d stalled like a frightened pony faced with an oncoming tractor in a country lane.
‘What are you up to?’ Jesse nodded towards her sketchbook.
She lifted one shoulder as she closed the book. ‘Not a lot. Doodling.’
He nodded, twisting his mouth to the side. ‘Can I see?’
‘There’s nothing to see, I hadn’t started,’ she said. ‘We need to design our own custodian label for the gin. A rite of passage for whoever owns this place, apparently.’
‘Ah, I remember when it changed to Ajax,’ he said. ‘It’s true then, the story about the villa and the gin being entwined?’
‘So the story goes.’ Winnie wasn’t sure how much the islanders were allowed to know about their beloved tipple. ‘Would you like a beer while you work? The sign is still propped where you left it against the wall outside.’
‘Is that your subtle-as-a-brick way of telling me to shut up and get on with the job?’
She held her hands up and smiled. ‘You caught me.’
Jesse tugged his forelock. ‘I’ll get on then.’
‘Help yourself to a beer from the fridge under the bar outside,’ she said, staying firmly in her spot rather than following him out.
Her eyes followed him anyway though, taking in the generous width of his shoulders beneath his T-shirt and the deeply bronzed colour of his shins below his shorts.
He looked as if he belonged here, and it was clear from the warm way the locals spoke of him that he was accepted as one of them.
She wouldn’t have had him down as a whistler. She listened to him as he unpacked his tools, whistling almost tunefully.
‘Same place as the old sign?’ he called, sticking his head around the door frame.
Winnie nodded, leaving him to it. She couldn’t see him, but she could hear him whistling and the sound of his hammer banging, and found herself with a choice of going outside or reaching for her sketchbook again.
The sketchbook turned out to be the least nerve-inducing of the two, which said much about her feelings towards Jesse.
She flipped her book open to the first clean page, picked up her pencil and touched it against the paper.
‘All done,’ said Jesse as he wandered back into reception a little later. ‘Looks pretty good. Want to come and see?’
Winnie nodded, following him outside to stand back and take a look.
‘I love it,’ she said, genuinely thrilled. Jesse’s sign was in perfect keeping with the place; slightly unconventional and unique. He’d picked out the letters in white against the mellow wood, simple and effective in the sunlight.
‘Good. I reckon I’ve earned that beer now then,’ he said, snagging one from the fridge. ‘You gonna join me, or keep on avoiding me? Because that’s gonna be pretty tough to keep up on an island like this one.’
He was right, of course, and Winnie was about to answer him when her mobile buzzed loudly on the reception desk and saved her the trouble.
‘I should get that,’ she said, practically running back inside.
Jesse ambled in a minute or two later as she hung up on Stella.
‘Saved by the bell?’ he said, handing her a beer.
‘Not exactly,’ she said. ‘It was Stella to say they’ve just bought a car.’
‘Something to drink to then,’ he said, touching his bottle neck against hers before taking a long slug.
Winnie hadn’t thought to close her sketchbook, and his eyes fell on the label sketches she’d made while he hung the sign.
She’d had a strong idea of what might work and tried out several variations on the bad fairy theme, looking for a vintage parchment feel, something tongue in cheek and distinctly English.
‘Wow,’ he said, twisting his head to look. ‘I love this one.’ He touched the one that Winnie preferred. ‘That’s one sexy fairy.’ He reached for her pencil. ‘Except … may I?’
It was only pencil. She could always put it back again. ‘Sure.’
Jesse paused, studying her drawing before changing it subtly with a few deft strokes of the pencil. There was no denying it; it was better. The fairy had a little more of a glint in her eye, her hip a touch more curved, her brow raised as if she knew something no one else did.
‘You can always change it back,’ he said casually, laying the pencil down.
‘Hey, you’re the artist,’ she said. ‘I like her better.’
‘Don’t do that,’ he said softly. ‘You’re an artist in your own right, Winnie. It was a couple of tweaks, that’s all.’
‘I’m not mad at you,’ she said, putting her bottle down.
He ran his hand through his hair, agitated. ‘I shouldn’t have touched it. It was perfect as it was.’
‘Jesse, I’m not mad,’ she said again, more insistent.
He drained his bottle and banged it down harder than necessary. ‘I need to get back.’
He turned and strode out, leaving Winnie confused as to what she’d done wrong.
Back at his place after a ten-minute march, Jesse banged straight through to the back of the house, grabbed the bottle of brandy from the kitchen cupboard and dragged the loft ladder down.
Up there, he shoved things randomly aside until he reached the sturdy cardboard box he’d gone in search of.
He’d put it up here years previously, tucked right at the back to make getting to it a trial, a self-checking mechanism to make sure he only opened it when he really needed to.
He didn’t let himself stop or pause for thought, just ripped the packing tape from it in harsh strips as if he were tearing off the sticking plasters that had held his heart together for the last decade.
Opening the flaps, he slid down the wall and sat next to it, knees bent and the brandy bottle in his hands.
It wasn’t too late; he still didn’t have to do this.
Closing his eyes, he banged the back of his head slowly against the wall.
Bang . A mouthful of harsh spirits. Bang.
A head full of buried memories. Bang. Another blonde girl with dancing eyes and glitter in her fingertips.
He screwed the top back onto the brandy and lifted the protective tissue paper inside the box and pulled out his wedding album.