Chapter Fifteen
‘Oh my God,’ Frankie mouthed, subconsciously touching her face where Seth had kissed it.
‘Oh shit me, Frank,’ Stella whispered, and Winnie made the kind of sound you might when you stub your toe but are in public so can’t swear like a sailor.
Their startled reactions to the newcomer weren’t lost on Seth and the others, who all turned to review the new arrival with interest.
‘Gav,’ Frankie said, floundering as she walked around the desk to meet him halfway across the room.
‘What …?’ She ran out of words, because his presence here was so utterly out of place.
‘Oh God! Is it one of the boys? What’s happened?
’ She went from calm to instant heart-attack level in a blink, clutching his forearm like a vice.
‘They’re fine, the boys are fine,’ he said, looking like a fish out of water, uncomfortable and wishing he were back in the safety of his bowl.
Frankie slowly released his arm and placed her hand over her beating heart while she calmed down. ‘Thank God for that, you gave me the fright of my life.’
‘I should probably have called,’ he said, looking down. ‘I just …’ It was his turn to be lost for words to explain what the hell was going on. ‘You look …’ He stopped again, and scrubbed a hand over his dark hair. ‘Different.’
Winnie grimaced. It was hideous to watch, so God only knew how Frankie was taking it. Stepping forward, she gave Gav a brief hug and said hello, then turned to Frankie with a ‘what can we do?’ face.
‘Why don’t you guys go down to the kitchen?’ she suggested, plumping for the only place she could think of that wasn’t a public space or Frankie’s bedroom.
Frankie looked at her, glazed, and then seemed to see the sense in it and nodded.
‘Come through,’ she said, leading Gavin away from the others. He walked past the band, then backtracked and stopped, staring at Seth.
‘Don’t I know you, mate?’ he asked, studying his face.
Seth shook his head, glancing quickly at Frankie. ‘I don’t think we’ve met, no.’ He smiled vaguely.
Gav took another look, and then shook his head. ‘It’ll come to me,’ he muttered, following Frankie down the hallway towards the kitchen.
‘Her husband, I take it?’ Seth asked thoughtfully, watching them leave.
Winnie nodded, troubled. ‘Ex.’
Gavin’s arrival was a bolt out of the blue, and for Winnie an unwelcome reminder that however much they thought they’d left their old lives behind, their old lives could turn up unexpectedly on their doorstep.
Frank had taken it quite well, to be honest. If Rory arrived on Skelidos, there was every chance he’d go home in a box.
‘Hm.’
‘Sorry?’ She tuned back in and realised that she’d missed whatever Seth had just said.
He shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter.’ Turning to give his band members the nod to follow him, he headed back upstairs to their rooms.
Down in the cellar a couple of hours later, Stella and Winnie sat Frankie down on the stool and huddled around her.
They’d put Gavin in one of the owner’s accommodation bedrooms, because now the band had booked the place out they were officially full for the summer.
The block booking suited them because it meant that they could stay in their rooms on the top floor, and thankfully it now also meant that Frankie could truthfully tell her ex-husband that he couldn’t possibly stay on.
This was the first chance the three of them had had to talk privately since Gav’s arrival.
‘It comes to something when we have to meet underground to speak freely,’ Stella said, looking at Frankie. ‘What’s going on, Frank?’
Frankie puffed her fringe, shaking her head with an expression that clearly said, ‘I don’t have a bloody clue.’
‘I can’t believe he’s here,’ she said, baffled. ‘I could count all the random things Gav’s ever done on one hand, and then this? It’s just so unlike him.’
‘What has he said?’ Winnie asked, perplexed.
‘Not enough,’ Frankie said, twisting her hands in her lap. ‘He wanted to see where I was living. Fancied some sunshine. Thought we should stay in touch because of the boys. That sort of thing.’
‘Has he not heard of the Internet?’ Stella said.
‘I know,’ Frankie murmured. ‘I don’t know what to think.’
‘Well, I’ll tell you what I think.’ Stella pulled a bottle of their first attempt at distilling gin out from the shelves and put it down on the workbench.
‘I think he’s seen where you live now, and you should shake his hand and send him packing to find his sunshine somewhere else.
You almost snogged Seth Manson last night, remember? ’
‘As if I could forget,’ Frankie sighed, touching her fingers against her cheek again. ‘I could do that. I could ask him to leave, and I’m sure he’d go, but I’d feel crap about it. We’re still trying to be friends, you know? And we have to stay that way because of the boys.’
Winnie nodded. ‘Friends is good.’ Friends was something she was never likely to achieve with Rory; it was difficult to think amicable thoughts about him when she was still in the planning-the-perfect-murder stage of healing after his infidelity.
Would that ever end? she sometimes wondered.
Would she ever reach the fabled acceptance stage?
She couldn’t imagine it yet. The woman he’d copped off with should think herself lucky too, because she didn’t escape Winnie’s fantasy cull unscathed.
Maybe the car they were shagging in rolled right off the edge of a really high, jagged cliff.
Or maybe the ceiling fell in on the seedy pay-by-the-hour motel where they’d rented a room.
There had been any number of scenarios, all with the same satisfying outcome.
‘I said he could stay for a few days,’ Frankie said, looking pained. ‘What else was I supposed to do?’
‘Bit of a shocker, though, wasn’t it?’ Winnie read through the distillation instructions and then pulled a funnelled sieve contraption from the shelf beneath the bench. ‘I think we need this.’
‘What will you do about Seth?’ Stella asked.
‘Come on.’ Frankie’s smile was wistful. ‘That was never going to be anything. We all know that. He’s Seth Manson, and I’m me.’
Stella’s brows snapped together. ‘Don’t do that.’
‘It’s true, Stell. He’s from a different world. In fact he’s so different he’s practically another species.’
‘Everyone’s farts are just the same,’ Stella pointed out. ‘He’s just a man.’
‘Well, Gav’s here now and he’s not going anywhere for a few days,’ Winnie said, ever the diplomat.
‘Maybe just let the dust settle and see how things go. I don’t think there’s any handy guidance in women’s magazines on what to do if your ex-husband and your favourite rock star are vying for your attention. ’
‘Oh, it’s not like that with Gav,’ Frankie said. ‘That was over years back. You know that.’
Winnie nodded. ‘I did. I do. But Frank … he’s tracked you down on a desert island even though he probably knew that you might not be that thrilled to see him, and if my eyes don’t deceive me, I’d say he’s been working out.’
It was true. Gavin was a man who’d always enjoyed his food and his beer and he had the dad bod to prove it. Or rather he had , but there’d been decidedly less of him when he’d walked into reception that afternoon.
‘I didn’t notice,’ Frankie said.
Winnie found that hard to believe, but didn’t say as much. If Frankie wanted to indulge in a spot of selective blindness where her ex-husband was concerned, who was she to judge?
‘Right,’ she said, looking at Ajax’s instructions for this step of the process. ‘We have to double filter each bottle through this sieve, once into a bowl and then back into the bottle, and that’s it.’
Frankie took a glass mixing bowl from the shelf. ‘Hang on while I go upstairs and make sure this is clean.’
They watched her jog up the stairs, and then looked at each other.
‘What do you think?’ Winnie said.
Stella curled her lip. ‘I think she’s in trouble. She might think that Gav’s visit is a friendship olive branch, but I’m not buying it. He wants something. He has to.’
Winnie knew Gavin quite well, well enough to not think quite as badly of him as Stella did.
‘I think he’s missed her.’
‘He had her under his nose for seventeen years and I bet he still couldn’t tell you the colour of her eyes without double-checking.’
Winnie felt almost sorry for him. He wasn’t a rock star or a Greek alpha male, or even an Australian sculptor with take-me-to-bed eyes. He was going to find it tough to measure up around here.
‘Here we go,’ Frankie said, returning with the spotlessly clean bowl. ‘Let’s crack out our first ever bottle of Bad Fairy Gin.’
‘You do it, Win.’ Stella pushed the bottle across the bench towards Winnie, uncharacte?ristically nervous as she lined the funnel up over the bowl Frankie was holding steady on the bench.
Winnie picked the bottle up, turned it a few times for luck, and then twisted the top.
‘Sniff it,’ Frankie said, almost breathless with anticipation.
Winnie put the bottle under her nose and inhaled once, then went back in again for a second longer sniff.
‘Smells OK?’ she ventured, not brave enough to call it.
‘Gawd, come on, strain it, will you,’ Stella said. ‘I’m dying here.’
Winnie tipped the bottle slowly, and they all watched the peachy pink spirit slosh into the funnel along with the botanicals.
Lifting the sieve, they all stared down into the now perfectly strained gin in the basin.
‘Three straws?’ Stella laughed.
‘Let’s put it back in the bottle and see if it looks like the normal ones.’ Frankie placed the funnel into the neck of the bottle and balanced it carefully as Winnie tipped the contents of the bowl through it.
‘Oh my God,’ Stella laughed, giddy. ‘Will you look at that!’
Winnie screwed the cap back on and they all stood back to admire their handiwork.
‘We made gin,’ Winnie said.
Frankie nodded. ‘You know what we need to do now?’
‘Taste it?’ Stella said, crossing the fingers on both of her hands and screwing her eyes up tight like a kid.