Chapter Fourteen #2
Winnie clasped her hand over her heart. ‘I can’t bear that you didn’t get to snog your hero. One way or another, you have to do it tomorrow.’
Frankie laughed. ‘Maybe I’ll have a gin after we’ve tested out our batch and see where the Dutch courage gets me.’
They fell silent, and then Stella shot up onto her feet.
‘Shit! That sodding berry bush was on that side of the garden!’
It was burnt to a crisp.
‘Oh no,’ Winnie whispered, her hand over her mouth. ‘Ajax said it was sacred to the islanders.’
‘We’ll just have to grow another one,’ Stella said.
‘It was the only one on the island.’ Frankie huffed and shook her head. ‘Crap, this is really bad. They’re all going to blame us. It was supposed to be a symbol of good luck.’
‘How good is our current supply of berries in the cellar?’ Stella asked, quick-thinking as ever.
Frankie’s brow furrowed in thought. ‘Not great, I don’t think. We were supposed to harvest the berries in September, it only fruits once a year.’
‘Great.’
‘We could try using an alternative?’ Winnie said. ‘Strawberries are similar? Or blackberries?’
The others didn’t look convinced.
‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to it,’ Stella said. ‘For now, let’s try to keep it under our hats that the bush was a casualty of the fire while we work out what we can do.’
Trooping wearily inside, they locked the doors and headed up to bed.
‘Christ, what’s that noise?’
Frankie was first through the kitchen door the next morning, throwing the bolt as Winnie and Stella schlepped behind her, not much after six o’clock. The noise sounded like a strangled cat, and was definitely coming from the garden.
‘Oh God, what if something was in the fire and we didn’t notice it in the dark?’ Stella said, cringing.
‘Or some one ,’ Winnie said, hardly daring to look.
‘Oh crap,’ Frankie said, peering around the back door cautiously and then clicking it closed again before she was spotted.
‘Good news or bad news?’ she said.
‘Good?’ Winnie said, at the same time as Stella said, ‘Bad?’
‘Well, the good news is nothing died or got injured, as far as I can see.’
‘But …?’
Frankie opened the door again, wider this time so that they could all see out into the garden.
‘Hero?’ Winnie said. ‘Hero, what’s wrong?’
Their elderly cleaner was on her knees on the grass, wailing at the burnt-out scene before her.
Frankie crouched beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, trying to convey the question with her eyes and hand gestures. ‘Are you OK?’
Hero looked up at them all one by one, and then back at the burnt-out garden, and beat her hands on the floor, starting up the racket again.
‘Sshh,’ Stella said, touching Hero’s shoulder and then pointing at the upstairs bedrooms and making a sleeping gesture with both of her hands pressed together under her ear as a pillow.
Hero seemed to take note. It was as if someone had pressed her mute button; she continued to beat her fists and then raise her head and wail, but silently. If anything, it was odder.
‘What do you think she’s doing?’ Winnie whispered.
‘Praying?’ Stella suggested.
‘Oh jeez, I know what it is,’ Frankie said. ‘It’s the burning bush.’
‘Shit. Yes.’ Stella gazed at the twiggy black bush. ‘I might join her.’
‘She can’t tell anyone else,’ Winnie said. ‘We need to tell her to keep her mouth shut.’
‘Yeah, because that’s going to work,’ Stella said. ‘We can barely string a sentence together between us.’
Someone behind them coughed, and they turned to find Angelo listening to them from the doorway.
‘What’s so special about the bush?’ he asked, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was wearing Stella’s pink and white candy-striped robe. Given his mostly austere appearance, it was comical enough to make Winnie look at the floor to hide her laughter.
‘It was the only one on the island. People thought it brought good luck and prosperity.’
He tutted. ‘You girls are going to be unpopular then.’ He looked at Hero. ‘You think this is bad? You wait until there’s a queue right across the beach to come and view it. We love a good tragedy.’
‘You have to help us,’ Stella said, crossing to tug him outside by the hand. ‘Please, tell Hero it has to be a secret?’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Er, because I asked you to?’ Stella said, her hackles up. It was all very well letting him be domineering and kinkily alpha in the bedroom, but she was no shrinking violet. She was a woman who got what she wanted.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Why can’t you just plant a new tree? It’ll regrow again in a few years.’
‘Years?’ Winnie yelped. ‘We need the berries in three months!’
Angelo frowned at the same time as Stella tried to surreptitiously draw her finger across her neck to shut Winnie up.
Frankie leaped into the breach. ‘For desserts,’ she said. ‘Cake.’
Angelo looked from one to the other, clearly not convinced. Then he shrugged, and with a sigh, he crossed the grass barefoot to relay their message to Hero.
Frankie, Winnie and Stella stood by the back door in the already warm early sunshine.
‘He looks hot in my robe,’ Stella said, looking at his long, tanned legs. The robe was knee-length on her, and barely mid-thigh-length on her much taller lover.
‘How doesn’t he know about the gin?’ Winnie asked. ‘You had sex in the bloody cellar, for God’s sake!’
‘He wasn’t looking at the walls, trust me,’ Stella muttered archly. ‘I just said we let Panos use the cellar for storage because he’s short on space at the bar.’
‘And he believed you?’ Frankie checked.
Stella nodded. ‘Of course.’ She’d asked casually leading questions over the days since to make sure her story hadn’t planted any seeds of interest in his head, and so far he didn’t seem remotely interested in the contents of the cellar.
The Skelidos gin distillery had gone under the radar of the rest of the world for countless decades.
She didn’t want to be responsible for exposing it because she hadn’t been able to resist jumping the bones of a hot-shot businessman from the mainland.
It appeared that Angelo had managed to convey their requests to Hero, because she stopped wailing and drew herself up to her full diminutive height and smoothed her dress and apron.
Turning her big, baleful eyes on them as she edged past, she pulled an imaginary zip across her lips for slow, dramatic effect.
‘I think she got the message,’ Stella said.
‘She did,’ Angelo said. ‘And now I have a message for you too.’ He leaned in and murmured something quietly in her ear, making her eyes open wide.
‘Can you ladies do without me for half an hour?’ she grinned. The question was academic. Angelo picked her up and threw her over his good shoulder as he stalked from the kitchen, making her screech and slap him on the ass as he left the room.
Out on the deserted beach an hour later, Frankie unrolled her yoga mat and moved through a series of deliberate stretches, clearing her head of everything but the pattern of her breathing, concentrating on getting her poses right in the hope that they’d grant her some serenity.
For Marcia, she’d truly tried to cast herself in the role of brave adventurer since they’d left the familiarity of home shores.
She wanted to honour her friend’s memory in the best way possible, and that meant chucking away her spreadsheet mentality and stepping outside her comfort zone.
Sensing movement behind her, she sent a small smile to Angelo, who’d clearly concluded his business with Stella and thrown on shorts and a T-shirt for their morning session.
‘The range of movement in your joint seems to be increasing,’ she observed, as he turned with her to look out over his injured shoulder.
He nodded briefly, not engaging in conversation. Frankie was glad of his quiet company; yoga practice for her was all about peace and harmony, not chatting and competing.
Kneeling on all fours, she walked her hands back to assume the downward dog position, and looking between her legs she spotted a third person laying down a towel to join them.
Seth. He raised a casual hand when he caught her eye, and Frankie smiled back, small and tight.
So much for inner peace and harmony, she thought.
How the hell am I supposed to do sun salutations with one of the hottest men on the planet behind me looking at my ass?
Does it look huge in these sweatpants? All these thoughts and more whizzed through her suddenly active brain, so much so that she almost felt as if it was pointless to continue.
She might have allowed herself to stop, but then she spotted Hero scuttling out of the villa, her shy eyes full of trepidation as she stood at the back of the others and tried to assume the same pose as Frankie.
These people need me. The thought struck her unexpectedly. Angelo was healing, Seth was trying to escape the stresses of his outlandish life, and Hero … well, she’d had a traumatic morning and a calming bit of yoga might be just the thing.
‘You’ve got this, Frank,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve got this.’
And she had. Hadn’t she spent the last eighteen years of her life being an active role model for the boys? Hadn’t she spent hundreds of hours on the yoga mat at the local community centre back home, ring-fencing those precious sessions as necessary for her sanity? She’d got this.
Breathing with purpose, she started to move.
A little after lunch, all three of them stood behind the reception desk with the fan on full speed.
‘That’s it then, I think,’ Stella said, crossing the final reservation off the booking sheet. ‘All clear for the next two months to accommodate Seth’s request for the whole place.’
They’d contacted the handful of holidaymakers who’d already made reservations and explained that unforeseen circumstances meant that they’d have to cancel their bookings, offering them a generous discount on a return visit and hints for other available accommodation over on Skiathos and Skopelos.
‘I didn’t enjoy that at all,’ Winnie said. As it had turned out the people had been generally understanding and appreciative of a personal call rather than an email, but all the same she’d felt shabby for letting them down.
‘Maybe we can think of something we can offer them, or send them some island gin as a gift?’ Frankie suggested.
‘Oh, I like that idea,’ Winnie said, and then her face fell. ‘The gin doesn’t leave the island. Ajax’s letter, remember?’
‘Did somebody say gin?’
Mikey Miller strolled in from the terrace, fresh as a daisy aside from his bloodshot eyes.
‘Mr Miller,’ Stella said, cordial given the circumstances. ‘You almost burnt our bed and breakfast down last night.’
He looked contrite, as well he might. ‘My bad.’ He tried out hangdog eyes and got nowhere. ‘God, you’re a tough crowd.’
He was lucky that Seth and Jamie followed him inside at that moment, because it was highly likely that Stella might have launched herself across reception at him.
‘Well?’ Seth said, staring at his friend.
Mikey looked at the ceiling.
‘Have you done it yet?’ Jamie Harte looked equally pissed off with his bandmate. Jamie was known to be the least fame-hungry of the three, a surfer who’d got lucky because he played guitar, could hold a note, and had been in the right place at the right time.
Mikey shuffled his feet and took off his baseball cap, revealing his razor-sharp haircut as he shuffled from foot to foot.
‘I’m sorry for causing the fire,’ he said, apologising in the manner of a schoolboy dragged back into a sweetshop to apologise for stealing gobstoppers. ‘It was an accident and I promise it won’t happen again.’
‘Won’t happen again?’ Stella said, her voice rising an octave. ‘Too right it won’t. For the record I was against you staying on for the summer. You’re lucky that these guys are kinder than I am.’
Seth brightened. ‘We’re good for it then?’ He leaned across the desk and planted a smacker on Frankie’s cheek. ‘You’re an angel.’
Frankie blushed, and then she froze, because someone new had just walked uncertainly into reception.
Gavin.