Chapter Twenty-Three
Four mornings later, Winnie stepped out onto her balcony and found Frankie doing the same in the next room along, except that her clothes suggested she’d already been out on the beach for yoga practice, and the cup of coffee in her hands smelled appealing.
‘Morning,’ she said, blinking in the bright sunlight. ‘What time is it?’
‘A little before eight,’ Frankie said.
Winnie nodded. ‘No signs of life over there yet?’ She nodded towards Stella’s balcony at the end with a knowing lift of her brows. Stella and Angelo had barely surfaced from their love nest since their return to the villa.
‘Not yet,’ Frankie smiled. ‘I’ll be surprised if she makes it to the gallery with us this afternoon.’
‘I really hope she does,’ Winnie said. Corinna had hand delivered the stiff ivory and gilt preview invitations a couple of days ago, fizzing about a new exhibition opening there next week.
Much as they appreciated Corinna’s invitation and understood that she was trying to help them re-integrate, all three women were filled with a healthy dose of trepidation at the idea of mingling with the locals at all.
‘Do you think people are ever likely to forgive us?’ Frankie asked. ‘Because I’m not sure how much longer I can handle being the local pariahs.’
As far as the majority of people on the island knew, they were still guilty of ending the island’s run of good fortune by burning down that blessed arbutus bush.
Only Corinna, Panos and Hero were privy to the truth; the latter only because Panos had known about her stash of gin and taken her into his confidence.
‘Hopefully, in time,’ Winnie said. She knew exactly what Frankie meant; she felt the coolness from the islanders whenever she went shopping or across to Panos’s bar; people were never rude, exactly, but they kept their smiles for other people and their exclusion hurt.
‘At least we’re not likely to run out of gin now. That’s something, right?’
Frankie sipped her coffee and sighed, and on the balcony below, Seth Manson listened to their conversation and wanted to kill Mikey for the trouble he’d caused.
‘Does this dress look all right?’
Frankie turned to look at Winnie outside the gallery. ‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘Will you stop with the nerves, you’re making me nervous.’
‘I can’t help it.’ Winnie straightened her white linen dress over her thighs.
‘I told you we should have had a drink first,’ Stella said, resplendent beside her in killer high heels and a black silk dress painted with red peacocks. She looked sickeningly healthy, with the kind of self-satisfied glow usually reserved for honeymooners.
‘Because smelling of gin is always a good way to make people like you,’ Frankie said, laughing and pushing the door open.
‘On this island, anyway,’ Stella murmured as they stepped into the busy, thankfully air-conditioned room.
‘Ladies, you made it!’ Corinna made a bee-line for them and enveloped them in perfumed hugs.
They each appreciated her no-holds-barred greeting; she made no apology for the fact that they were her friends.
‘Smile, my darlings,’ she murmured. ‘Chins up and boobs out.’ She stilled a passing waitress and hooked three glasses of champagne for them, promising to come back and find them for a chat later as she melted back into the throng.
Winnie sipped her drink, and it was only then that her eyes settled to the exhibition, and to the name on the easel by the door welcoming them in.
Jesse Anderson.
Her heart contracted painfully. Predictably, he’d slipped straight back into avoidance mode after their night together – in fact she hadn’t seen him at all apart from those fleeting moments at the mayor’s funeral.
He seemed to have gone to ground; she’d even taken to spending a couple of hours a day in the room he’d given her in the hope that he’d come to her there.
Tentatively drawing up fresh jewellery designs based on the flora and fauna of the island, Winnie had discovered peace and solitude, all the time underscored by bittersweet, unrequited longing.
‘Shit. We can leave if you like,’ Frankie said, following Winnie’s gaze.
‘Don’t run away,’ Stella murmured on her other side.
Winnie looked from one to the other. ‘Are you two playing devil and angel?’
Her friends caught each other’s eyes and shrugged, and Winnie took a good glug of fizz and squared her shoulders.
‘Let’s just get this over with,’ she said, moving to the nearest wall to look at the preliminary sketches that accompanied a nearby sculpture.
‘Wow, he’s good.’ Stella stood admiring the charcoal drawings of a huge black and white cat. Jesse had managed to capture the lithe essence of motion in the animal’s movement, while in other images he’d encapsulated the level of relaxation only a lazy feline can hope to reach.
Winnie nodded, recognising the cat in the images as the same one who’d dozed on the armchair in her workroom the day before. ‘He is.’
The sculpture itself was equally vivid; more so. He’d chosen to show the cat sleeping in the branches of an olive tree, his chin flat along a branch, his limbs dripping casually down.
Glancing around the room, Winnie thought she caught sight of Jesse himself, but when he turned it was someone different altogether. Surely he’d come to his own exhibition?
‘Is that our donkey?’
Winnie followed Stella across to the life-size sculpture. It was, without doubt, The Fonz.
Laughing softly, she nodded. ‘Sure is.’
Corinna appeared fleetingly beside them again. ‘Recognise anything?’ she asked. ‘This is Jesse’s most personal exhibition to date. Most of the pieces relate to his life here on the island.’
Other pieces followed, every one as lifelike as the last and the little red sold stickers were appearing thick and fast, until at the back of the gallery the exhibition took an unexpected turn. A really, really personal one, for Winnie at least, because every last sketch was of her, nude.
He’d made sure that she wasn’t identifiable, thankfully, using her hair to obscure her features in any drawings that included her head. Winnie felt an odd mix of pride, fury and hurt. He should have asked her if she minded this. It was an imposition of the most personal sort.
‘Holy fuck,’ Stella said, a little too loudly, making Frankie elbow her in the ribs. ‘Act natural, Win.’
‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ Frankie whispered.
Winnie didn’t answer. She didn’t have to; her friends knew perfectly well that it was.
‘Oh, but Winnie, look at these. They’re so beautiful.’
Jesse had made two full-size sculptures of her, both of them loosely based on the seated position he’d asked her to assume the first time he drew her.
She was a mermaid on the rocks in the first, her head bowed, her long rope of hair swept over one shoulder, her legs encased by a fantasy scalloped tail. It was whimsical and entirely divine.
The second sculpture transformed her from mermaid to fairy, knees drawn up and ankles crossed, her head dipped forward to rest on her forearms. He’d given her filmy, gossamer wings, rendering her ethereal and enchanting, and he’d entitled the entire collection ‘Muse’.
Corinna stood oblivious to them a few steps away, deep in conversation with a woman Winnie didn’t recognise.
‘Stunning, aren’t they? A study of his late wife, I think.’ Winnie caught Corinna’s confidential tone. ‘He never speaks of her, but from photographs I saw when he first moved here these images bear a striking resemblance.’
Corinna’s words settled like soft falling snow over Winnie’s heart.
His late wife? Little things he’d said suddenly made sense now.
He’d been married, and something tragic had happened to take his wife away.
God, no wonder his attitude to love and marriage was so intense.Winnie’s heart broke a little for him, and for herself too.
Jesse was absolutely entitled to his past and his privacy, but the idea of being so similar in looks to the woman he’d loved held a sudden eerie ring of truth.
‘Sold already,’ Stella frowned, noticing the red stickers on the base of the two sculptures. ‘I don’t like the idea of you being displayed in someone else’s house, it’s not right.’
Winnie had seen and heard enough. ‘Can we just get out of here, please?’
They sat outside a café in the pretty town square eating freshly made gelato from bright pink tubs.
‘He should pay you to use your image,’ Stella said, licking chocolate ice-cream from the back of her small plastic spoon. ‘The donkey’s one thing, but everyone could see your nipples!’
‘People see more on the beach every day,’ Frankie said, trying to make less of it. ‘He should have asked your permission though.’
Winnie stirred her strawberry gelato listlessly, playing with it more than eating it. ‘Did you hear what Corinna said?’
Both of the others shook their heads.
‘She said that she thought they were based on his late wife.’
Frankie slid her tub of vanilla onto the table, barely eaten. ‘Jesse’s a widower?’
‘So it would seem,’ Winnie said. ‘Corinna said that the sculptures bear a striking resemblance to her.’
Both Stella and Frankie seemed unsure what to say to that. Winnie couldn’t blame them, she was having a difficult time processing it too. Her ice-cream had turned to slushy milk in the tub, and she stood up sharply and picked up the car keys. ‘Let’s go home.’
All was not as they’d left it when Stella eased the big old car back through the garden gates at Villa Valentina. They clambered out onto the uneven paving stones and found themselves met by a reception committee of Angelo, Gav and Seth, all wearing shorts and looking sweaty and filthy.
‘You look like three naughty boys who’ve been caught doing something that they shouldn’t,’ Stella said, standing on tiptoe to kiss Angelo square on the mouth.
He seemed to lose focus for a second, growling ‘I like your dress,’ and cupping her ass until she slapped his hand away. ‘What have you been up to?’