Chapter Twenty-One
‘Jesus, I’m so sorry.’
Seth stood in the cellar with them a little while later and surveyed the mess.
He and Jamie had been out on a hike into the hills that morning, leaving Mikey snoring like a donkey in bed.
They hadn’t expected him to even surface before they returned, and they hadn’t known that Gav had driven the women to the funeral, leaving Villa Valentina in the unreliable hands of Mikey Miller.
He’d probably gone to the kitchen in search of food, and while he was about it he’d evidently ambled down the cellar and realised he’d hit drinkers’ paradise.
‘It’s my fault,’ Stella said. ‘I don’t think I closed the cellar door after Panos came and collected the gin for the wake.’
‘It’s not your bloody fault at all,’ Frankie said, in a rare display of temper.
They’d been hanging on to the hope that by some miracle they’d be able to limp through the next couple of months on the gin and berries they had left, and that by further extraordinary good luck they’d strike a new source of berries in time for the island’s supply not to dry up altogether.
It was a whole lot of maybes and if onlys, but thanks to Mikey Miller’s solitary, spectacular piss-up, all of that had gone out of the window in the space of a few short hours.
He’d drunk at least one full bottle of gin, opened a second, and stumbled into the rest, sending bottles flying in all directions.
The floor was strewn with broken glass and scattered botanicals from the Bad Fairy bottles they’d made up themselves a few days earlier.
The only thing missing from the scene was Mikey Miller himself, who’d been blue-lighted across to Skiathos by water ambulance to have the contents of his stomach pumped and his cuts sewn up. He was lucky to be alive.
‘I don’t know what we’re going to do,’ Winnie whispered.
‘I do,’ Gav said. ‘Go back upstairs. I’ll clean this lot up.’
‘Gav, no,’ Frankie protested. ‘It’s all right, between us we can –’
‘Gav’s right,’ Seth interrupted. ‘You three go up and have a cup of tea, or a whisky, or whatever you need to make you feel better. We can do this between us.’ He nodded towards Gav, and they both looked as if they weren’t going to take no for an answer.
Because it would have seemed churlish to refuse, but also because it had been such a trying couple of days and they were worn out, Frankie, Stella and Winnie accepted the offer of help and filed quietly back upstairs to get out of their funeral clothes.
It crossed all of their minds that the curse of the arbutus bush might be more real than they’d given it credit for.
In the cellar, the two men swept, mopped, bagged and straightened, clearing up all traces of the disaster.
Every now and then, Gav threw a look at Seth’s back, wondering how the hell he was ever supposed to compete with a guy like that.
And every now and then, Seth studied Gav as he swept, wondering if he knew how lucky he was to have someone like Frankie. Gav swept a pile of glass into the dustpan, and Seth held an open bin-liner out for him to tip the shards into.
‘Do you know what colour Frankie’s eyes are?’ he asked suddenly.
Gav paused, the empty dustpan in his hand. ‘They’re brown,’ he said, eventually. ‘Coppery brown, like English pennies, and when the sun catches her face you can see shards of gold in them, like tiger stripes.’ He stopped short and huffed, embarrassed. ‘We can’t all be clever with words, can we?’
Seth laid the bag down. ‘It sounded pretty clever to me.’
Gav looked as if he might say something more, and then he bent to pick up a jar that had rolled beneath the bench.
‘Shit.’ He turned the empty jar over in his hands.
‘What is it?’ Seth asked, but the pained look on his face suggested that he already knew what Gav was about to say.
Gav turned the jar around so Seth could read the handwritten label.
Arbutus berries.
‘I’m going home.’
‘Stell, no,’ Winnie said, her head jerking up as she buttered the toast the next morning.
Frankie looked stricken. ‘You can’t give up just like that,’ she said. ‘I know it looks bleak now, but if we all stay and pull together …’ She trailed off at Stella’s set expression.
Finding out that not only had they lost all but seven of their own bottles of gin but all of their precious berries too had been the final straw for them all yesterday.
They’d sat outside and watched the sun sink below the horizon, wondering how their adventure had gone so quickly from sand-between-your-toes paradise to hell in a handcart.
‘I’m not a quitter,’ Stella said, offended by Frankie’s choice of words. ‘I just know when enough is enough. I had a job offer a while back from a rival marketing company back at home. It’s not great, but I’ve emailed them and accepted it. I’m booked on the morning ferry back to Skiathos.’
Winnie sat down hard on the nearest stool, utterly dejected. ‘I don’t want you to go.’
Stella swiped the back of her hand over her eyes, and Frankie crossed the kitchen and hugged her hard.
‘Please don’t go, Stell. We need you.’
‘No, you don’t.’ Stella pulled in a deep shuddery breath. ‘This place … this life, it isn’t for me. I thought it was, for a while, but I don’t belong here in the way you two do.’
‘You do,’ Winnie said, fierce despite her trembling lip. ‘You, me and Frank. We did this together.’
Stella shook her head, downcast but determined. ‘My bags are packed and my flights booked. This time tomorrow, I’ll be back in England.’
‘Is there nothing we can say to change your mind?’ Winnie held on to the handle of Stella’s suitcase, as if she imagined that not letting go would be enough to make her friend stay.
Stella already looked different. She’d dressed as if she meant business, in dark jeans and a white shirt, glamorous gold jewellery at her throat and wrists, her makeup dinner-date perfect.
It was all for show, of course; carefully chosen armour to deflect the fact that she was going home with her heart in her boots and her tail between her legs.
‘No,’ she said, swallowing the ball of tears in her throat. She gripped Winnie’s and Frankie’s hands tightly. ‘Make this easy on me, OK? Smile, say we’ll talk later, and then walk away without looking back.’
A tear escaped from the corner of Frankie’s eye.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, swiping it with her fingertips. She hugged Stella quickly, then pushed a brown paper parcel into her friend’s shaking hands as she stepped back. ‘I made you some food. For the trip.’
Winnie couldn’t bear it. Her heart ached with unshed tears, but she held them all in for Stella’s sake as she hugged her goodbye.
‘Text me when you get to the airport, let us know you’re safe,’ she whispered, clinging to her.
The ship’s horn sounded, and Winnie reluctantly stepped back.
‘That’s your cue to leave,’ Stella said, blowing them each a kiss.
For a moment none of them moved, and then Frankie and Winnie both straightened their shoulders, turned their backs and walked away from the port without looking back.
At the cargo end of the ferry, a battered red flatbed truck rolled onto the dock. The driver jumped out to check that his goods were still all intact, and then hopped back into the cab and set off across the island.
Villa Valentina was too quiet without Stella.
The place didn’t ring with the clatter of her heels or give off the exotic scent of her perfume, and both Winnie and Frank felt as if a wheel had fallen off their tricycle.
It wasn’t so much a workload issue; the arrival of the band had changed the shape of their summer anyway.
It was much, much more personal than that.
The fact that Stella had gone home to England without them meant that she’d be there without them.
They wouldn’t be there to turn to if she needed them, and she wasn’t going to have the security of a familiar job or home to ease herself back into her chilly old life.
They were as worried about her being in England alone as they were about being in Skelidos without her.
‘We can’t even drink gin,’ Winnie said sadly, trailing behind Frankie into the kitchen, checking her phone in case Stella had texted to say she’d changed her mind and jumped off the boat at the last minute.
She dumped the phone on the side when she saw the stubbornly plain screen.
The tiny supply of gin they had left was too precious to touch.
‘I don’t fancy a drink anyway,’ Frankie said, tying her apron around her middle. ‘It’s not the same without Stell.’
‘What are you making?’
Frankie reached the flour down out of the cupboard. ‘Cheese and rosemary scones.’
‘Stella’s favourites,’ Winnie sighed.
Frankie sniffed and glanced at the clock. ‘She should be at the airport now.’
It had been three hours since they’d deposited Stella at the port, and in four more she was due to catch her flight home.
‘Shall I text her?’
Frankie shook her head. ‘Let her be. It’s hard enough for her already.’
Winnie knew Frankie was right, but it didn’t make it any easier. ‘So,’ she said, to distract herself. ‘What’s going on with you and Gav?’
Frankie stripped the leaves from a sprig of rosemary without looking up.
‘Nothing really. We’re just getting to know each other again, I think.
’ Her hands stilled as she looked up. ‘It’s so weird, Win.
We lived together for so long, day in, day out, and yet we didn’t even see each other, not really. What a waste, eh?’
‘Maybe not,’ Winnie said. ‘At least you have the boys to show for it. It can’t have ever been a waste, really, when you stayed together to give them the best chance.’
Frankie’s expression softened at the mention of her beloved boys.
They checked in with their mum most days, ribbing her about her crush on Seth Manson.
What she didn’t know is that they also checked in with their dad too, giving him daily pep-talks about not being intimidated by some yesteryear boy-band member and to stick to his workouts like they’d instructed him.
It didn’t matter how old the boys got, they still held on to the fantasy of their parents reuniting.
‘True,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t think there were any feelings left between us. You know, husband and wife feelings.’
Winnie tipped her head on one side.
‘And what about now? Do you still think that?’
Frankie opened her mouth to answer, and then closed it again when someone tapped the kitchen door.
‘Hero,’ she said when she pulled the door open, dusting her hands down on her apron.
Winnie crossed to stand beside Frankie, and they looked out at not only Hero but three strapping men in vests behind her.
‘My yioi,’ Hero said falteringly, and the men all smiled obligingly when she gestured towards them.
‘What do you think she means?’ Frankie said out of the corner of her mouth.
‘No clue. I hope they’re not suitors,’ Winnie whispered.
Hero’s lips twisted as she considered how to convey her message, then she turned to the side, mimed a huge belly and then rocked an imaginary baby in her arms.
‘They’re her sons!’ Winnie said, giving Hero the double thumbs-up to show they understood.
‘Three brides for three brothers?’ Frankie wondered quietly. ‘Someone should break it to her that Stella has already left.’
Hero, however, just seemed glad to have made herself understood. She said something to her sons, and then sent them out of the garden and back out towards the lane.
For a moment, confusion reigned. Hero didn’t try to elaborate any further, just shot them an anticipatory smile and nodded, probably because she had a clue what was going on.
‘At least she’s talking to us again,’ Frankie said. Hero had been at the funeral yesterday, but whenever any of the three women had tried to catch her attention she’d quickly averted her eyes.
‘What’s that noise?’ Winnie said, stepping outside to check out what the rumbling, jangling noise was, just as the first of Hero’s sons rounded the corner of the villa pushing a wheelbarrow.
Frankie stepped out too, and they stood in silence as one by one, the three brothers lined up in front of them, each of them with a loaded wheelbarrow.
Frankie’s hand moved to cover her mouth at the same time as Winnie said, ‘Oh my bloody God!’ because the wheelbarrows were all stuffed to brimming with unopened bottles of Skelidos gin. They stared from the barrows to the brothers and finally to their tiny mum, hardly daring to hope.
Hero touched her fingers to her chest, and then threw her hands out towards them.
‘You,’ she said. ‘You.’
‘Oh God,’ Frankie said quietly, as Hero turned and picked up two bottles and gave them one each, then waved her arm over the barrows to indicate that they were all for them.
The brothers began to unload them in ceremonial silence, until there were over a hundred bottles of gin lined up like little soldiers all along the back wall.
‘Thank you.’ Winnie clutched Hero’s hands in hers. ‘Efcharisto, Hero.’
Hero nodded, clearly delighted to be able to bestow such a kindness on them. She held up her hand and then paused, obviously gearing up to say something else.
‘Sorry.’
She looked at one of her sons for approval, and he nodded to let her know that she’d said the word correctly.
It was one tiny word, but said with such practice and faltering generosity that both Frankie and Winnie were moved to hug her, thanking her in both English and terrible Greek.
They wanted to ask her why, and how, but they knew that there was little point because she wouldn’t understand the question and they wouldn’t understand the answer.
For now, it was enough to know that they weren’t going to have to face the rest of the islanders and declare the gin distillery bankrupt of stock.
Hero and her sons took their leave with deep bows, leaving Frankie and Winnie sitting on the bench staring at their unexpected gin windfall.
‘Well, at least we know she isn’t a raging alcoholic,’ Winnie said.
Frankie nodded. ‘I wonder why she was paid with gin if she didn’t drink it?’
It was a question that had to hang in the ether, because outside on the road someone pulled a truck up to the back gate and then leant on the horn to get their attention.