Chapter Eleven #2
Winnie laid her sketchbook on the bench. ‘I’ve been playing around with label ideas,’ she said, flicking through to the right page. ‘What do you think?’
Stella and Frankie came to stand either side of her.
‘This one for sure,’ Stella grinned, tapping her finger on the one Jesse had tinkered with. ‘She looks up to no good.’
Frankie nodded. ‘Agreed.’
Winnie had expected as much. ‘I’ll draw some up,’ she said, and then they all looked up, distracted by the bang of the cellar door. They were shut in.
‘What the …?’ Frankie took the stone steps at a fast jog. Rattling the brass knob, she turned back to look down at the others. ‘The handle on this side doesn’t work. It won’t open.’
‘Of course it will,’ Stella said, following her up and barging the door with her shoulder to no avail.
‘Oh no,’ Winnie whispered. ‘Oh no.’ She really wasn’t a fan of cellars, and only tolerated this one because it was well lit and they had a secret mission down here.
‘Don’t panic, Win,’ Stella said. ‘It’s only wedged. It’ll come loose.’
But it didn’t. All three of them tried it individually and then as a collective, but the damn thing wouldn’t budge an inch.
‘OK,’ Frankie said, cool and practical as ever. ‘The new guests don’t arrive until tomorrow, so that’s not a problem.’
‘And Angelo is out, presumably on business,’ Stella said, curling her lip at the recollection of their brief exchange earlier in the day.
‘Hero! She can live up to her name!’ Winnie said, suddenly animated.
‘When she comes to work tomorrow,’ Frankie said, grimacing. ‘Sorry, she had things to do today so I said she could take the day off.’
‘So there’s nobody to rescue us or hear us scream, and we’re going to die a hideous death down here and they’ll find our skeletons in twenty years’ time.’ Winnie sat down on the steps, dramatic.
‘Or alternatively I could call Corinna?’ Stella said, pulling her mobile from her shorts pocket and stabbing at it. ‘Bugger, no signal.’
‘Hold it up in the air?’ Winnie said.
‘You could call Corinna.’ Frankie nodded vigorously. ‘Or Panos? He’s closer.’
‘I don’t have his number in my phone,’ Stella said standing on the top step with her arm held above her head to dial Corinna. They could all hear it click through and start to ring, and then the dreaded sound of it going through to answerphone a few rings later.
‘Shit,’ Stella muttered, and then left a garbled message for Corinna, explaining the mess they were in and asking her to contact Panos and get him to come and let them out as soon as possible.
‘And now we wait,’ Frankie said, taking the step up from Winnie’s.
‘Won’t be long,’ Stella said, sitting down by the door. ‘I wish I hadn’t been so hasty about refusing breakfast with Mr Big-shot now though. I’m sodding starving. There’s only one thing for it.’
‘Are you going to turn cannibal and eat us?’ Winnie said.
Stella rolled her eyes. ‘Ask me again if we’re still down here in the morning. For now though?’ She skipped down the steps and pulled a bottle from the shelf. ‘There’s gin.’
They hadn’t intended to drink very much of it. The first swig had been for fortification, the second for courage, and the third for good luck. By the fourth pass, they’d been locked in for over an hour and a half and given up checking Stella’s phone in favour of talking.
‘And then he asked me to take my dress off so he could draw me naked,’ Winnie finished, having been probed by the others on how her picnic with Jesse had really gone.
She’d glossed over it every time they’d asked up to now, still turning what had happened over in her head to try to make sense of it.
A few gins and a lock-in later, and unloading onto Frankie and Stella seemed like the best idea in the world.
‘You’re shitting me!’ Stella banged her fist down on the bench and then pointed at Winnie. ‘You better be about to tell me that you stripped off, girly, or I’m sticking a stamp on your head and posting you back to England.’
Frankie laughed into her gin. ‘Course she didn’t.’ When Winnie didn’t answer, she looked at her curiously. ‘Did you?’
Winnie twisted her gold feather pendant. ‘I wasn’t going to, but then a little voice in my head told me to be brave.’
‘It was me,’ Stella smirked, gesturing between herself and Winnie. ‘You could hear me. Thank God for you that you’ve got me in there. To be honest, you’d be rubbish on your own.’ She tapped Winnie on the head with her fingertip, nodding sagely.
Frankie placed the bottle down. ‘You did it? You actually took your dress off?’
‘Everything off.’
‘Holy shit, Win.’ Stella high-fived her.
‘I don’t know what came over me,’ Winnie said. ‘One minute I was shocked, the next I was starkers.’
‘And then he drew you?’
Winnie nodded. ‘He asked me to sit on a boulder in his garden, and then he sat under an olive tree and drew me.’
‘Bloody hell.’ Stella sighed. ‘And then what? Don’t tell us that nothing happened, because that is scientifically impossible.’
Frankie cupped her chin in her hands. ‘I think I want someone to draw me naked. Gavin was useless with a pencil.’
‘No lead in it?’ Winnie bumped shoulders with her friend.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ Frankie sighed. ‘We didn’t sleep in the same bed for the last five years of our marriage.’
‘Jesus, Frank,’ Stella said. ‘You’ve been celibate for more than five years?’
‘I know.’ Frankie shrugged. ‘We just got out of the habit, plus he was working nights for a while … It was just, I don’t know, easier.’
‘We need to find you a hot Greek lover,’ Winnie said.
Frankie shook her head. ‘I’ll just live through you for a while.’
‘Nothing doing,’ Winnie said, throwing her hands up at their incredulous faces. ‘Honestly, I promise. He drew me, we chatted and then I put my dress back on and he walked me home.’
‘Fucking hell,’ Stella muttered. ‘Is he gay?’
Winnie laughed. ‘Stereotypical, much?’
‘Well,’ Stella said, sourly, ‘he’s as bad as Don Draper. He had me sit with him for breakfast this morning just so he could toss a few insults my way.’
‘He joined me for yoga on the beach this morning,’ Frankie said.
‘Did he really?’ Winnie said, surprised. He was the least likely person on the island she’d have expected to practise yoga.
Frankie nodded. ‘He’s a beginner, but thought it might help his shoulder.’
‘Well, he could certainly do with the inner peace.’ Stella sniffed. ‘Might make him a bit more pleasant.’
‘Actually, he was very complimentary about my croissants this morning when I collected his tray.’
‘So he should be. You’re the best cook on the island.’
Frankie laughed softly. ‘And you’re drunk. You don’t know any other cooks on the island.’
‘Not drunk,’ Stella sighed, laying her cheek on the bench. ‘Just tired.’
Winnie patted her hair. ‘Have a little snooze, Stell. We’re probably going to be down here for the next hundred years, you might as well.’
As it turned out, Winnie had overestimated. Forty minutes later someone wrenched the door open from the other side and came down the steps to find three snoozing English women, a half-empty bottle of gin and a secret distillery.