Chapter Seventeen
At eleven o’clock sharp on Saturday morning, Winnie, Stella and Frankie met in the cellar to make up their first full batch of gin.
‘Let’s do it ten at a time to keep things in order,’ Winnie said, lining up ten bottles of base spirit on the bench and unscrewing the caps.
Stella lifted the scales out on the surface and wiped them clean. ‘Cinema tonight then, Win?’
Winnie nodded. ‘ Dirty Dancing , would you believe.’
‘Very dirty, if Jesse has anything to do with it, I should think.’
Winnie rolled her eyes. ‘It’s on a public beach. I hardly think it’s going to be X-rated.’
Frankie tipped juniper berries into the scale. ‘Just remember what happened to Mr P in that car at that same cinema,’ she said. ‘Don’t put your hand on his knee, for God’s sake.’
‘Noted.’ Winnie screwed the cap on the jar of juniper berries and reached for the coriander seeds. ‘So how was your dinner with Gav?’
Frankie’s face relaxed into a smile. ‘It was fun, actually.’
Stella looked at her, interested. ‘Gav was fun ? Are you sure we’re talking about the same man?’
‘Don’t be unkind,’ Frankie admonished her softly. ‘He’s a good man, Stell. I know you two never hit it off, but he’s a gentle soul really.’
Stella frowned. ‘Gentle? Frank, you’ve got Seth “smokin’ hot” Manson out there making moony eyes at you over the croissants and you’re talking about gentle Gav? Gentle isn’t a good word when it comes to men. Try charismatic. Try alpha. Try sexy.’
Frankie looked up. ‘Yeah. Because that worked out well for you, didn’t it Stell?
’ She regretted her sharpness as soon as she saw it register in Stella’s surprised, hurt eyes.
Angelo had been the elephant in the room ever since he’d left the villa earlier in the week; Stella point-blank refused to even acknowledge he’d ever existed.
‘We probably shouldn’t have left reception unmanned,’ Stella said, banging the angelica root jar down on the bench. ‘I’ll go and watch it. You two can manage this between you I’m sure.’
‘Stell–’ Frankie said, reaching a hand out to her friend, but she shook it off and huffed out of the cellar.
‘Wax on, wax off.’
Winnie tossed the keys across the car to Jesse. ‘You know, you’re the first person to make that joke,’ she lied enthusiastically, opening the passenger door.
‘I’m not, am I,’ he muttered, sliding into the driver’s seat.
‘Nope.’
Winnie settled into the big leather seat, crossing her legs.
‘Did you mistake Dirty Dancing for a spaghetti western?’ he said, glancing at her cut-offs and cowboy boots.
She’d thought long and hard about what to wear.
A dress felt too formal and jeans would be way too warm.
The Lady Antebellum inspired lace top, cut-offs and slightly battered boots combo had won by being kind of dressed up and dressed down at the same time.
It was an outfit that she probably wouldn’t have been brave enough to wear back in England, but Skelidos had seeped deeper than her sun-kissed skin these days; she’d soaked in some of the island’s relaxed confidence, a barefoot, kick-back coolness that she was enjoying very much.
She’d left her hair in loose waves around her shoulders and clipped it back with a bohemian flower clip she’d found in the market in town, added a slick of lip gloss and mascara, and she was ready.
‘Did you mistake this for dinner with your mother?’ she quipped back lightly, casting a deliberately appraising glance over his own attempt at dressing for the occasion.
He’d gone for an ‘expensive man just stepped off his yacht for dinner at the marina’ ensemble of a short-sleeved white shirt that highlighted the depth of his suntan and canvas shorts with his sunnies tucked into his unbuttoned collar.
It was a respectable look on him, lending him a sophisticated, worldly air that she wasn’t used to.
He narrowed his eyes at her sarcasm as he rumbled the old engine into life.
She’d readily agreed when he’d asked to drive; manoeuvring the big old saloon was an artform in itself, but driving it on deep, powdery sand without getting stuck was something else again.
She was frankly glad to get out of the villa for the evening; Stella had stayed in her foul mood after her clash with Frankie in the cellar, leaving Frank to test her homemade pizza recipe on Gav and the boys from Tryx out on the terrace with Stella glowering down from her balcony.
‘Right then. Now we’ve customarily insulted each other, shall we get going?’ Jesse smiled genially as he pulled out of the gates and headed down the coast road.
She laughed. ‘And tell me, Jesse, are you likely to customarily attempt to broaden my sexual horizons later, too? Or am I safe, seeing as we’re in public?’
Jesse looked sharply towards Winnie, swerving the wide car dangerously close to the hedgerows on the narrow road, making her instinctively reach out and straighten the wheel.
‘Careful,’ she said, laughing at his scowl, and watched the countryside slide past, enjoying the warm evening breeze on her skin.
After a while, he huffed, ‘Just for the record, I’m not some damn cultish Svengali who’s been taking advantage of your delicate heart, OK?’
She studied his profile, trying to judge why he’d taken what she’d intended as a lighthearted comment so personally. ‘I never said you were anything of the sort. I was just kidding, Jesse. I took my own clothes off last time, remember?’
‘Like I could forget,’ he muttered, indicating left to follow the beach signs for Moonlight Bay.
Winnie wasn’t certain why the atmosphere between them had lurched towards fraught, but she was glad of the distraction of the crowd on the beach, or as close to a crowd as it got on a sleepy island like Skelidos.
Five or six rows of cars had lined themselves up haphazardly pointing towards a large screen that had been erected at one end of the bay, and a couple of teenagers in cut-offs and vests shoved the fee into the aprons tied around their middles and waved them on vaguely to join the pack.
Winnie waited until Jesse had picked his spot and turned off the engine. ‘I’m sorry if what I said annoyed you. I didn’t mean anything by it.’
He sighed and turned to look her way. ‘It didn’t. You didn’t annoy me, I annoyed myself. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.’
‘Shall we just forget it and start over?’
The beginnings of a smile tipped the corner of his mouth. ‘I like your boots.’
She cast her eyes down, laughing softly. ‘My mother calls them my Dallas boots.’ Looking up again, she met his gaze. ‘I like your shirt. It makes you look respectable.’
He curled his lip and looked down at his torso. ‘I was going for handsome and debonair, not bank manager.’
‘OK, let me try again. You look handsome and debonair tonight, Jesse, not at all like a bank manager. My bank manager back in England was barely five foot and bald with glasses, bad breath and Dalek cufflinks, so you really are nothing at all like him.’
‘Well, I’m glad we cleared that up,’ he said, shaking his head slightly, as if to say that, as always, their conversation had veered towards random.
‘I brought popcorn,’ she said. ‘And some pizza Frankie had just pulled out of the oven.’
He nodded his approval. ‘I brought wine for you. I even brought a glass,’ he said.
‘You’re a keeper,’ she said. ‘Until the end of the movie, at least.’
A fizz of excitement sizzled around the beach as dusk slid towards darkness and the huge screen up front blinked into life.
‘I love this movie so much,’ Winnie said, full of anticipation. ‘What’s your favourite bit?’
He looked at her as if she’d spoken a language he’d never heard before. ‘Ask me again when I’ve seen it.’
‘What?’ She stared at him. ‘You’re not telling me that you’ve never seen Dirty Dancing before. You’re not. I don’t believe you! Everyone in the entire world has seen this movie.’
Jesse shook his head. ‘Not me. Chick shit.’
‘ Chick shit? ’ She repeated his jock phrase, half laughing. ‘This movie is one of the seminal romance movies of modern times. “She carried a watermelon.” I mean, who says that?’
He looked nonplussed.
‘“Nobody puts Baby in the corner”?’
He shook his head. ‘Nope. I got nothing.’
‘Oh my God, you’re so lucky to see it for the first time somewhere like this,’ she breathed, lifting her hands up at their idyllic position beside the sea.
He looked like he was going to answer her, but she pre-empted him with a finger against her lips as the opening music struck up. ‘Ssh, it’s starting.’
Jesse watched Winnie as much as he watched the movie.
She was shiny-eyed and rapt, and as it unfolded he could almost get why it was so beloved.
Chemistry. For whatever reason, every now and then two people meet and the chemistry between them is off the scale, and if you can catch that on screen then you’re in for a box-office smash.
‘I carried a watermelon,’ Baby said, up on screen.
Winnie looked across at him. ‘See? She carried a watermelon. How perfect is that line?’
Jesse reached into the brown paper bag he’d bought with him. ‘I carried a box of olives.’
Winnie rolled her eyes but took an olive when he opened the box anyway.
‘It’s a lot smaller than a watermelon,’ she said, looking at it.
‘You wound me,’ he said, laying his hand on his chest as if he’d been shot.
‘You’ll live,’ she whispered, relaxing back into her seat with her wine glass in her hand.
Jesse ate pizza while he watched them gyrate up on screen.
‘Do you dance?’
He pretended he needed to think about his answer. ‘Never.’
She had that incredulous look on her face again. ‘Never, as in not once in your adult life?’
Sometimes it was easier to lie than have to elaborate, so he shook his head. ‘Not even once.’
‘You’re so dancing with me later in that case.’
‘I so am not.’ He really wanted a beer.