Chapter Sixteen
‘I weighed out the remaining arbutus berries in the cellar. We’ve got enough to make about one hundred and fifty bottles, so a three-month supply going on Ajax’s figures,’ Frankie said, kneading a ball of dough on the kitchen table a couple of mornings later.
‘Add that to the bottles already down there, and I reckon we’re likely to run out of gin just in time for Christmas. ’
Winnie loaded the sink with breakfast plates from the guests and started to run the hot water.
‘Well, that’s going to make us about as popular as the Devil at midnight mass,’ she sighed.
So far, their attempts to source a new arbutus bush on the Internet had come up with a big fat zero, and trying to buy pre-dried berries seemed to be like searching for hens’ teeth.
Frankie was in the process of drying out a batch of strawberries to test them as an alternative, but none of them were holding out much hope.
‘Umm, Frank?’ Stella said, looking up from her laptop to watch her friend sprinkle the dough with cinnamon and fresh lemon rind. ‘You do know that you’ve baked enough stuff over the last couple of days to feed a small army, right?’
Frankie paused, her hands covered in flour. ‘Just say what you really mean, Stell. You think I’m hiding in the kitchen.’
‘I think you’re hiding away from Gavin and Seth in the kitchen,’ Stella said.
Frankie looked at Winnie. ‘Am I?’
Winnie shrugged, unwilling to commit. ‘Maybe a bit? Not that I’d blame you.
’ She dried her hands and picked up a fresh-from-the-oven cheese and rosemary scone.
‘Not that I’m – we’re – complaining. We’re just a bit worried about you, that’s all.
’ She broke the end off the crumbly scone and sat down.
‘Do you want me to send Gavin away for you? I can be tactful if you need me to.’
‘Meaning I can’t?’ Stella said archly.
‘Er, yes?’ Winnie laughed, catching Stella’s eye with a wink. ‘You’re brilliant at just about everything you do, Stell, but tact has never been your strong point.’
‘No,’ Frankie sighed, rolling the dough up like a Swiss roll and then slicing it through into fat swirls. ‘He can stay a while longer. I’m still not even sure why he’s really here yet.’
‘Free holiday? Because he wants to get back into your knickers?’ Stella reeled off, idly Googling Angelo.
‘Don’t be mean, Stell,’ Frankie chided. ‘He’s the father of my kids.’
‘Holy shit,’ Stella whispered, completely distracted as she leant in to get a closer look at her screen. ‘Oh man.’
Winnie frowned at the disconsolate tone of Stella’s voice. ‘What is it?’
‘I should have known better.’ Stella turned her laptop around. Pictures of Angelo with various women and accompanying headlines, all of them salacious.
‘Playboy Greek spirits tycoon in danger of drinking all the profits?’ Winnie murmured, scrolling down to scan the trashy piece. She screwed her nose up, her opinion of their charismatic Greek guest dimming with every new sentence.
‘Bar-room brawl … sex addict … wines and spirits tycoon …’
‘Oh,’ Frankie said softly, crossing the kitchen to look over Winnie’s shoulder.
Stella slammed the lid shut on the laptop and laughed bitterly.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ she said, convincing no one.
Winnie felt wretched. She’d never seen Stella lose her head over a man before, but something about Angelo had slid past all of her usual checkpoints, and Winnie had a sneaking suspicion that he’d unearthed Stella’s unused heart and written his name across it.
‘He broke his shoulder in a bar-room fight over a woman?’ Frankie said, pissed off.
She’d wasted countless hours looking up the best recipes for convalescence, and encouraged him each morning in their dawn yoga sessions.
She might just throw in a few more taxing moves tomorrow and a couple of extra chilies in his favourite feta and chili morning rolls too.
‘Wait,’ she said, as a thought suddenly struck her. ‘He’s a wine and spirits tycoon?’
All three of them looked towards the cellar door, thinking of the tiny, secret distillery that lay beyond.
‘I had sex with him down there,’ Stella said. ‘What if he did notice after all?’
‘What difference would it make?’ Winnie said, trying to think it through practically. ‘It’s not like he’s going to get us closed down or anything, is he?’
The other two looked at her, perturbed by the revelations too.
‘Shouldn’t think so,’ Frankie said, shrugging. ‘We’re a tiny two-bit island that hardly anyone knows about. Why would he go to that kind of trouble?’
‘Let’s not worry about the gin,’ Winnie said, rubbing Stella’s shoulder. ‘I couldn’t care less what he does for a living. All I care about is the fact that you’ve gone and fallen in love with him and he might be a dog.’
Stella turned to look at her as if she’d lost her marbles. ‘I’m not in love with him,’ she said, as if it was the most ridiculous suggestion in the world.
‘No?’ Frankie said, sliding a warm scone towards Stella, because she was a firm believer in the healing power of good food and they were Stella’s favourite. ‘You’re sure? Only I’ve never seen you like this with anyone before.’
Stella looked down at the scone for a long, silent moment. ‘Stupid holiday romance,’ she said. A big fat tear dripped from her face onto the shiny golden top of the scone, and she shoved her stool back, upended her plate into the bin, and marched out of the kitchen.
‘It’s a pleasure doing business with you.
’ Seth grinned his trademark heartbreaker smile as he shook hands with each of the three women in turn later that afternoon.
They’d just agreed the deal for the exclusive hire of the villa for the remaining weeks of the summer season to Tryx for a sum of money that they wouldn’t have dreamt of asking, leaving their books in a healthy state and the future rosy for Villa Valentina.
‘Don’t worry about the other guest currently staying here,’ Stella said, referring to Angelo. ‘He’ll be leaving in the morning.’
‘Angelo?’ Seth said. ‘Oh, he’s cool to stay. I don’t think he even knows who we are, and if he did, he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to rat us out to the press.’
The fact that Angelo was leaving in the morning was news to Frankie and Winnie. They’d heard heated voices coming from upstairs after Stella had left the kitchen, but they hadn’t had a chance to catch up on any developments as yet.
‘Not a chance I’m willing to take,’ Stella said smoothly. ‘You’ve asked us for privacy, and God knows you’re paying for it, so that’s exactly what you’re going to get.’
Her no-nonsense tone brooked no argument. They all smiled blandly as Seth left them to it in reception, and when they were alone Stella slammed the diary shut with unnecessary force.
‘Yes. He’s leaving, before you ask.’
‘The villa, or the island?’
Stella hesitated. ‘I don’t know, and I don’t care. I shouldn’t think Corinna will be best pleased if he decamps over there.’
Winnie hated seeing Stella so obviously unhappy. ‘Did he have anything helpful to say?’
‘I didn’t care to listen to him.’
Stella was used to being in control of the amount of romance she allowed into her life, but this time she’d well and truly handed over the reins to Angelo.
It wasn’t so much that he’d lied, because he hadn’t, except perhaps by omission.
It wasn’t even that he’d made false promises, because they were both grown-ups who’d been around the block a few times.
It was much more personal than that. He’d found his way into Stella’s soft, vulnerable places, uncharted because no one had ever visited them before.
He’d watered the vivid blooms of hope in her chest, chased through the butterfly glasshouse in her gut, and meandered hand in hand with her down the starlit back alleys inside her head.
In short, he’d blindsided her, and now, because she felt a fool, she’d come out all guns blazing and given him his marching orders.
‘Did he ask you about the amount of gin in the cellar?’ Frankie checked quietly.
Stella shook her head. ‘He was too busy denying the personal stuff to get around to that.’
‘And you didn’t tell him about the arbutus bush?’ Winnie said.
‘Of course I bloody didn’t,’ Stella said. Ajax’s warning to keep the gin’s secrets were etched indelibly in all of their heads.
Up until now, their time on the island had been mostly sunshine, new beginnings and excitement; Gavin’s arrival and the discovery of the kind of man Angelo really was had interrupted their idyll like a stubborn stone stuck in the tyre of a bicycle when you’re freewheeling down a hill on a summer’s day.
A constant, ticking undercurrent of threat.
‘Where is he now?’ Frankie asked.
Stella shrugged miserably. ‘No clue.’
Over at Panos’s bar, a card game and a few beers had led Gavin and Angelo to strike up conversation, and in doing so they unwittingly traded information.
Gavin learned that he definitely did know that guy’s face from back at Villa Valentina, because he’d been plastered all over magazines and TV back home for the last few years. Seth Manson.
Angelo learned that Stella had been made redundant from her job as a ball-breaking businesswoman, and that Gavin had always felt slightly intimidated by her and got the impression that she was a bit of a man-eater.
It was quiet in the bar that afternoon, and Panos pulled up a chair with a round of beers on the house.
Because Angelo was Corinna’s brother and Gavin was clearly related to the Englishwomen and would be in their circle of confidence, he felt easy about speaking freely of the fire.
He disclosed his private fear that they wouldn’t be able to replace that blessed arbutus bush in time to stop the island from running out of gin, and he shook his slightly balding head and shrugged, because the thought of Skelidos without its gin was too bleak a notion to contemplate.