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Stella’s expression spoke volumes. ‘A donkey?’
Winnie nodded. ‘It’s in the deeds. Seriously, I’m not even joking. The Fonz comes with the villa.’
‘Don’t tell me. He lives out the back with the rosemary bushes and the fig trees and the fairies at the bottom of the friggin’ garden.’
Frankie pulled her laptop from her bag, her wide, copper-flecked eyes flaring with wary anticipation.
‘I’ll see if I can book us some flights.’
Winnie stared at her old single bed, which at that moment was barely visible beneath summer clothes, swimsuits, bumper-size bottles of factor 30 and beach towels. How do you pack for a one-way trip to Greece? She wasn’t sure if she should pack for a week or throw her entire wardrobe in her suitcase, because she didn’t know if they were heading back to Skelidos for a week to try to wriggle out of the contract or for a lifetime to start a new chapter. Thanks to the lethally large cocktails, she also wasn’t sure whether Ajax was their fairy godfather or had played them like a crack hot conman. He’d kept them fuelled up on his secret recipe gin and lured them in with tales of his bucolic life on the island, and, their tongues loosened by the alcohol, they’d poured out their woes faster than three leaky jugs.
He hadn’t even directly suggested that they buy the villa, at least not at first. He’d talked around it, and let them think it was their idea. It was just damn good fortune that Nikolas happened to be the local property notary and had had the sales paperwork already drawn up in preparation for the planned sale which had just fallen through at the last moment. Convenience, or fate? Either way, he’d had them signing on the dotted line and arranging bank transfers with lightning speed, all buoyed up by Ajax and his constant supply of free drinks and his endless tales of how marvellous life on Skelidos was going to be for the three women. What an adventure they’d have! What a brave and smart move to leave grey old England behind for the idyll of sunny Greece! He’d sealed the deal with big fat tears as they signed, tears of joy tinged with sadness that his wonderful B&B was now in new hands and that he’d forever leave part of his heart there when he and Nikolas moved to Athens in a few days’ time. Nik had accepted a high-profile job over on the mainland, and much as they adored their one-long-honeymoon island life, the bright city lights were calling.
Ajax was in no doubt; fate had conspired to bring Winnie, Stella and Frankie to his island at that precise moment because this place was now their destiny, not his. At heart, Winnie was a believer in fate and superstition; the idea that she’d been guided to the island charmed her all the way to the bank. Frankie, of course, felt more guided by Marcia’s instruction to find adventure; she’d needed little in the way of persuasion to realise that this would certainly be that. Stella had been perhaps the most hesitant of the three, until Frankie and Winnie had decided that they’d find a way to buy it together even if Stella decided it wasn’t for her. The idea of missing out on a potential business opportunity and a life in the sun with her best friends had proved too tempting to pass up, and in the end she’d signed on the understanding that she could always pull out after a year if she wanted to. They each had their own reasons for signing, and for all of them there was an element of running away and an element of looking for a new place to call home.
A text alert vibrated her phone, making it rattle and jump around on the little pine bedside table. Winnie lunged for it before it slid off the edge, momentarily grateful for the distraction until she saw who had sent the message.
Did I really need to hear you’re leaving the country from Stella’s sister-in-law? What am I supposed to do, send the divorce papers by carrier pigeon? I’ve never even heard of the fucking place.
Winnie closed her eyes and took a few measured breaths so she didn’t text back the response hovering on the tip of her fingers.
Did I really need to hear you were screwing the girl from the canteen from your secretary? What was I supposed to do, make your favourite dinner more often and be more adventurous in the bedroom? You’ve no fucking right to question me.
God, it was tempting and Rory completely deserved her animosity. She didn’t write the message though, because she was slowly coming to realise that the person her anger hurt the most was herself. He’d probably check his phone, roll his eyes and delete the conversation before his precious receptionist realised he’d sent a text to his ex-wife. Winnie, on the other hand, would feel the after-effects of their exchange like a hangover without any of the fun first, miserable and heartsick until she could return the whole sorry situation to its box at the back of her head.
The internet works perfectly well in Skelidos. Please send all solicitors’ correspondence via email and I’ll make sure it gets back to England without delay.
Bloody man! He wouldn’t even have known she wasn’t around if Stella’s sister-in-law didn’t work for the same law firm. Oh, well. What did it matter anyway? As long as he didn’t intend on booking a romantic Greek holiday with his lover and wind up at Villa Valentina, then it’d probably be all right. Winnie sat down on the edge of the bed and let herself imagine him booking in unaware, and her inadvertently killing him with a really heavy frying pan then leaving him in the garden for The Fonz to feast on. Were donkeys even carnivores? She doubted it; it’d make seaside donkey rides an insurance nightmare. She’d just have to hire a boat and chuck him overboard with bricks in his pockets instead. Sufficiently bolstered by the fantasy, she pressed send on her polite response and chucked as much in her suitcase as was physically possible without breaking the zips. She wasn’t going to Skelidos for a week; she was going for as long as she could possibly stay.
A few miles away in a small café with insufficient air conditioning, Frankie drew a line down the middle of a blank page of an exercise book and wrote ‘for’ and ‘against’ at the top of the two columns. It wasn’t exactly a spreadsheet, but its practicality was a comfort nonetheless.
Under ‘against’, she noted her only real sticking point; or two points, technically. Joshua and Elliott. Her beloved, boisterous boys, the reasons she’d put the last half of her own life on hold. It was hard to imagine that she’d given birth to them at the same age as they were themselves now; they were still her babies and the thought of them as fathers right now was utterly incomprehensible. Please let them have at least another ten years of freedom first, she murmured. Please let them make a million mistakes that don’t matter rather than one huge one that changes their lives for ever.
Tapping her pen against her teeth, she considered what to write next. There really wasn’t much she could think of to add to the ‘against’ column, and in truth the boys didn’t really need her around at home any more. Josh was living away at a sports academy for the most promising youth footballers in the country, and Elliott had won a hard-fought-for apprenticeship with one of the luxury car brands he coveted and moved into a shared house forty miles away. Fierce pride bloomed bright in her chest at the thought of how well they were doing; if there was one thing she was certain of it was that her sacrifices had been worth it, and that she’d do the same all over again to ensure that her kids were set on the right path.
After a second, she wrote ‘Marcia’ in the ‘for’ column, followed by ‘find an adventure’. Then she added ‘sunshine’, ‘friendship’, ‘new start’, ‘excitement’ and ‘not lonely any more’ to the list in quick succession. Her hand hovered over to the ‘against’ column to add ‘money’, but in fact going thirds on the villa had still left her with a decent chunk in the bank, so it really wouldn’t be accurate to put it down as an against, exactly. That made seven for, and two against. Quite definitive, really, even though the thought of living in a different country from Josh and Elliott made her feel queasy. Perhaps if she framed it in her mind as an exploratory trip, then it would be less of a wrench. Three months or so, and if she missed the boys too much, she could always come home again. She closed her book, laid her pencil neatly on top and unscrewed the lid from her bottle of water.
If the spreadsheet said it was a good idea, then it had to be right.
In a dressing room in the department store in town, Stella stripped off and jiggled herself into the first of the many bikinis she’d picked out. For such tiny garments, they were a minefield to get right. She wanted uplift without her double Ds being under her chin, pants that gave the illusion of maximum leg length because she was five foot four on a good day, and for God’s sake some bum coverage rather than letting it all hang out. Not that it hung out very much; she sweated blood and tears in the gym most mornings to make sure of that.
Stella knew that self-confidence came from feeling good about yourself, and confidence was one of the most important factors in her job. Or else it had been up to now. As marketing and PR manager for Jones & Bow, she’d been the public face of the company, the brand ambassador. Her eyebrows were always immaculately threaded and her designer clothes a perfect fit around her curves; no workout in the world could minimise the fact that she’d inherited the Daniels family boobs. Her mother, her aunts and her grandmother all had the same small-waisted, full-breasted Jessica Rabbit figure and over the years she’d learned to work with it rather than against it. Sexy was no bad thing, in the boardroom or the bedroom.
Turning, she eyed her body critically in the mirror, and then rejected the polka-dot bikini as too kitsch and opted for the sleek red Victoria’s Secret instead.
Working her way through the collection of irritatingly tangled hangers she ended up in a muddle of straps and ties, then lost her cool and threw the whole lot in a heap on the floor and flopped down onto the padded stool. What was she doing? This whole scheme to move to Greece had come as a bolt out of the blue, and her stomach had flipped uncertainly even as she’d signed her name on the contracts. She didn’t do random things. She didn’t do whimsy. Oh, she could be impulsive, but in Stella’s world that meant buying a new leather couch or an unneeded pair of Jimmy Choos just because, not committing her entire life to an ailing business in a foreign country. She couldn’t even speak Greek! None of them could. God, it was going to be a disaster – what had they been thinking?
Prickles of panic broke out on her forehead at the thought of leaving behind everything she’d worked so hard for. So she’d lost her job; it wasn’t the end of the world or an excuse to have a total breakdown and do something as outrageous as flee the country. Another job would turn up soon enough. She was too good to be ignored, too well-known and respected in her field to be left on the career shelf, so why had she just hurled herself off it like Buzz Lightyear flinging himself from the edge of the table? He hadn’t been able to fly, not really. It was just a smoke-and-mirrors illusion.
Stella threw her clothes back on, thrust the knot of bikinis at the shop assistant and marched out of the shop. She didn’t need new bikinis. She had three perfectly good ones already, and it was highly likely that she wouldn’t be staying on Skelidos long enough to need more.
CHAPTER TWO (#ue42192f8-6a9b-5d8e-80f7-f8810caecec0)
Winnie checked her cross-body bag for the millionth time to make sure she had the keys to Villa Valentina zipped safely inside the side pocket.
‘We’ll have to get some more keys cut as soon as we can,’ she said, settling her bag into her lap on the hour-long ferry ride from Skiathos across to Skelidos. Now that they were almost back at the villa, her nerves had kicked in hard. Ajax had emailed to let them know that he and Nikolas had left for Athens a couple of days back and the place was locked up and waiting for them. They’d bought it fully furnished with several upcoming reservations already in the book, so for all intents and purposes they could just turn the key, open the windows and be up and running. It sounded quite easy, put like that, until a worrying thought hit her.
‘Oh, God! I hope someone has been feeding The Fonz since Ajax left!’ She looked from Frankie to Stella sitting on the opposite bench. ‘What if he’s starving, or dehydrated?’
Stella shook her head. ‘Donkeys are like camels, I should think. They retain water.’
Both Frankie and Winnie looked at her, taken aback. ‘Surely he’d need a hump for that?’ Frankie said, doubtful.
Stella shrugged and dropped her Aviators over her eyes; the donkey was the least of her worries. She’d had a job offer a couple of days ago from old business rivals of Jones & Bow; on the one hand it was reassuring to be head-hunted, but on the other they were offering a pitiful package and hadn’t even included a company car. She hated the loss of freedom being without wheels represented, and couldn’t help but feel that the derisory job offer had been designed more to put her in her place rather than to genuinely recruit her. It stung, and it rammed home the fact that she wasn’t as indispensable as she’d always allowed herself the indulgence of believing. She hadn’t replied yet. Her instinct had been to tell them where to shove their pitiful offer, but she was slowly coming around to the horrible realisation that she might not have the luxury of being so hasty. All in all she was thoroughly miserable, and much as the sunshine was welcome, she hated the feeling that she was running away. Stella Daniels didn’t run from anything or anyone. She’d take a week or so to recharge, and then decide what to do about the offer.
Frankie’s phone bleeped in her hand luggage, and she scrabbled for it in case there was anything wrong at home. The boys had both been unflatteringly thrilled at the idea of her moving to a Mediterranean island. She’d expected a wobbly lip or two, a ‘Please don’t go, Mum,’ but what she’d got from Josh was a ‘Go for it, Mum,’ and Elliott was already merrily planning his free holiday to Greece later in the summer. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad being apart from them after all; if they came to stay she’d get some proper time with them for a change. Family holidays had always had been British bucket-and-spade affairs when the twins were little, and in later years they hadn’t been at all enamoured of the idea of being stuck in a hotel with their olds. Maybe it would have been different if she and Gavin had been more in love; there might have been more laughter and good times. As it was they only really talked about things to do with the kids, and once they’d moved out they’d been left crunching toast in noisy silence at the breakfast table.
‘I’ve got a long-lost uncle in Nigeria who wants my bank details so he can wire me ten million pounds,’ she sighed, reading the phishing message on her phone.
‘Bugger. If only he’d texted you yesterday, you could have stayed at home and bought a mansion instead,’ Stella said.
Winnie fidgeted with excitement in her seat. ‘I’d still have come back here today, even if I’d won the lottery. Aren’t you dying to get in the villa and have a good nose around without Ajax and Nik?’
Frankie’s face relaxed into a smile as she tucked her phone away. ‘I’m heading straight for the bath in the Cleopatra Room before I do anything else. I splashed out on Jo Malone bubble bath especially for it.’
Winnie leaned her forehead against the warm window and looked out over the vast, still sea stretching out around them, and then up at the even bluer, cloudless sky overhead. It was the kind of sky that couldn’t help but fill you with optimism and hope; imagine a whole summer, or a whole lifetime, like this. With every extra mile she put between herself and Rory, Winnie sat a little taller and breathed a little easier. She dug in her bag again, pulled out her English/Greek dictionary and flicked through it.
‘What are you looking for?’ Stella asked.
After a pause, Winnie glanced up. ‘Evdaimonia,’ she said, faltering over her pronunciation as she closed the book and clutched it against her chest. ‘It means bliss.’
‘Remind me how to say bliss again?’ Stella huffed half an hour later, pushing her sunnies onto the top of her flat, frazzled hair as they all collapsed like a scuttle of red lobsters onto the shaded terrace of Villa Valentina.
Their taxi driver from the port had been in a tearing hurry and they’d assured him that they’d be fine moving their luggage from the roadside to the villa at the far end of the beach. It wasn’t all that far, but they hadn’t accounted for the fact that it was impossible to drag heavy-wheeled suitcases across deep, fine sand without feeling as if you’re hauling a dead horse up a hill. As a consequence, their return to the villa wasn’t at all the champagne-cork-popping experience Winnie had envisaged; it was more of a someone-get-me-some-water-before-I-die situation.
‘Evdasomething?’ she puffed, tipping her bag out on the top of her suitcase and plucking the keys out from amongst the clutter of sun cream, books, lip balm and hair bobbles.
‘Evian?’ Frankie croaked hopefully, taking off her sunhat and fanning herself with it. Her outfit had survived the journey surprisingly well; her long linen sundress had a certain safari chic to it and her trusty sunhat had done a decent job of keeping the worst of the heat away from her skin. She was one of those gamine girls who could carry off a pixie cut, all long limbs and pale freckled skin. Her mother always liked to claim they had French heritage, and every now and then when he’d had a few drinks Gavin had called her his Audrey Hepburn. It was one of the nicest things he’d ever said.
Winnie hauled herself up and then stretched out her hands to pull the others up.
‘Come on. Let’s all go in together for the first time.’
Stella brushed sand from the bum of her shorts. ‘I’m not carrying either of you over the threshold.’
‘Too right,’ Winnie snorted. ‘I tried that once with Rory and I think it jinxed us from the beginning.’
‘Gavin tried it too. I was seven months pregnant at the time and he put his back out for the first month of our marriage.’
‘You two are enough to put a girl off marriage for life.’ Stella took the keys from Winnie and studied the bewilderingly large collection. ‘Any idea which one it is?’
Winnie shook her head. ‘Not a clue.’ Studying the door, she added, ‘Probably something big and old.’
‘They’re all big and old,’ Stella muttered, sliding one after the other into the lock and giving it a hopeful jiggle. Finally, the last but one key slid into place more easily than the others, and it turned with a satisfying clunk. ‘Looks like we’re in, ladies,’ Stella said, turning the doorknob and pushing the door open.
Even though they knew what lay on the other side of the door, it felt completely different stepping inside Villa Valentina knowing it was their new home instead of their temporary reprieve from the daily grind. Frankie closed the door and they all stood in the centre of the high-ceilinged space, gazing around in silence.
‘Is it a bit eerie?’ Stella said, screwing her nose up at the stale air.
‘Don’t say that!’ Winnie said, frowning. ‘It’s just empty. It’s been waiting for us to arrive.’
‘Don’t go all hippy on us, Win,’ Frankie said, laying her hat down on the reception desk. ‘Let’s get some windows open and air the place through. It’s like a bloody oven in here.’
Frankie’s calm, practical approach got them all moving, flinging open windows and doors, then dragging their luggage inside. Winnie spotted an old radio behind reception and switched it on, instantly transported back to their first stay on the island by the familiar Radio Skelidos jingle. The mix of Greek and international pop music added life and movement to the place, wiping away the stillness that had spooked Stella.
‘I found the kitchen!’ Frankie called, and the others followed her voice down the hallway to the back of the building. Ajax had given them a brief guided tour, but it was a big old place and it was going to take some getting used to before any of them knew it like the back of their hands. Stella and Winnie found Frankie unscrewing a fresh two-litre bottle of water, and she’d magicked up three tall glasses and filled them with ice.
‘Ajax left the electricity turned on and a few things in the fridge for us,’ she said. ‘We have ice, we have water and we have wine. What more could a girl want?’
Winnie’s tummy rumbled. ‘Food?’
Frankie shook her head. ‘We need to go shopping.’
‘I don’t think I can face the walk,’ Stella grumbled, gulping down water. ‘The last one nearly killed me. Can I ride the donkey?’
‘Who do you think you are, the Virgin Mary?’ Frankie grinned, adding slices of lemon to their glasses as Winnie jumped off her stool and crossed to open the wooden shutters covering the windows.
‘We need to check on The Fonz,’ she said, craning her neck to look in the garden. ‘God, it’s a bit of a mess out there. I can’t see him.’ She rattled the back door and found it locked.
‘The key’s there,’ Stella nodded towards a hook on the wall and watched as Winnie grappled with the old lock and then threw the bolts. ‘Watch out for snakes in the long grass,’ she said at the last minute.
Winnie turned back, startled. ‘Really?’
Stella shrugged then shook her head. ‘Pulling your leg.’
Winnie rolled her eyes and stepped gingerly out onto the cracked, crazy-paved patio.
‘Donkey,’ she called, in an inviting, sing song voice. ‘Mr Fonz …’ She moved to check down the side of the building, and then ventured further across the parched grass. The garden looked to stretch back quite a way and be walled around the edge by a low, pale, rough stone wall. ‘I think we’ve got fruit trees out here,’ she called back. ‘But I can’t see any sign of a donkey.’
Perplexed, she picked her way along a path haphazardly tiled into the grass, making her way down the length of the garden to the wall at the bottom. Along the way she passed bright wildflowers that would be great on the tables out front and several different types of fruit tree, but no donkey in sight. God, what if he’d keeled over somewhere? She cautiously scanned the ground beneath the trees and bushes but to no avail. It was perplexing really, because there was no obvious exit for a donkey, and the waist-high wall seemed much too big for The Fonz to scale. Wandering back towards the villa, she made a makeshift apron from the bottom of her T-shirt, filled it with fruit plucked from the trees and pondered the missing animal.
‘Plums, I think,’ she said, giving up the search and unloading her haul onto the big, scrubbed kitchen table where the other girls were sitting. ‘And cherries.’
Frankie picked up one of the plump apple-green plums and sniffed it. ‘Greengages,’ she said, then bit it. ‘Oh my God!’ She rolled her eyes in bliss. ‘So sweet.’
The others helped themselves, and for a few moments they all sat around the table eating fruit from their garden and feeling the welcome rush of sugar in their veins.
‘I feel like Barbara from The Good Life,’ Stella said. ‘Have we got any chickens I can kill?’
Frankie loaded the rest of the fruit into a wide, shallow ceramic bowl on the table. ‘You wouldn’t be Barbara. You’d be the what’s her name, the neighbour. The posh one.’
Stella considered it for a second, and then laughed. ‘You’re right. Winnie can be Barbara and kill the chickens, you can be Nigella and roast it, and I’ll be the snooty one in the kaftan who drinks G&T.’
Frankie held her hand up and high-fived Stella silently.
‘I think I could get into gardening,’ Winnie said, warming to the role of Barbara. ‘And I have some cut-off dungarees. I can pull it off.’
‘Barbara wouldn’t lose her donkey though,’ Frankie said, shaking her head.
They all jumped as someone knocked on the back door.
‘Maybe it’s the donkey,’ Stella whispered, making them all laugh as Winnie crossed the kitchen and pulled the door wide.
It wasn’t the donkey. It was a man, and by the looks of his scowl, an unimpressed one. He looked dressed for farming in breeches, braces and a loose cheesecloth shirt, and if he wasn’t scowling he’d probably be quite attractive.
‘Kalimera,’ Winnie said, hesitantly trying out her rudimentary Greek.
He let forth a torrent of fast, unintelligible Greek. When he’d finished, she frowned and shook her head regretfully.
‘Err … signomi … my Greek is awful.’
He stared at her in irate silence.
‘Signomi …’
Winnie glanced over her shoulder for help from the others, but found them both wide-eyed and tongue-tied by the arrival of the stranger in their midst.
‘Help me out here?’ she muttered.
‘Feliz navidad?’ Stella tried from her seat at the table, and the stranger lifted his eyebrows and sighed heavily.
‘You just wished me Merry Christmas in Spanish. It’s early May, and this is Greece.’
‘You speak English,’ Winnie said, thinking that he might have made that clear right away rather than let her struggle for his own amusement.
‘Better than you speak Greek, evidently,’ he said. ‘I take it you’re the new owners?’
Frankie came to stand beside Winnie. ‘We are. I’m Frankie, and this is Winnie. And you are …?’ Winnie admired her friend’s polite, cool tone.
‘I’m the guy who rescued your bloody donkey. Poor darn thing would have died in this heat without any water.’ There was an unmissable hint of an Australian twang to his pronunciation. ‘He’s in my olive grove with Chachi when you can be arsed to fetch him.’
Oh, right. Winnie felt her fists ball until her fingernails dug into her palms. ‘Look, Mr … I don’t know your name because you didn’t bother to tell us … we only arrived half an hour ago and I’ve already been out to look for the donkey. It isn’t our fault that Ajax didn’t make proper arrangements for him.’
The guy looked bored. ‘Typical women. Blame someone else and it’ll all be all right.’
Winnie drew in a sharp breath. She’d had enough of men pissing her off back home, there was no way some stranger was going to rain on her parade on the first morning of their brand-new life.
‘Typical man, shooting your mouth off without knowing the facts.’ She stuck her chin out at him and crossed her arms across her chest as Stella came to stand on her other side.
