Page 25 of Hot Greek Summer

‘We all know you’re rubbish in the dark. I haven’t forgotten when we went into that haunted house at the Pleasure Beach in Blackpool.’

‘I thought I was very brave,’ Winnie sniffed, refilling her coffee from the cafetière and avoiding Stella’s laughing gaze because they all knew she’d screamed like a baby and almost got herself arrested for assaulting one of the zombie staff who jumped out on her.

‘Poor guy was only doing his job. You nearly broke his nose.’

‘God, yes. There was blood all down his shirt,’ Frankie laughed.

‘It was fake!’ Winnie protested.

‘Just stay up here in the daylight unless I shout,’ Stella said, turning the knob on the creaking cellar door beside the walk-in pantry. ‘Wish me luck. I’m going down.’

Stella reappeared in the kitchen half an hour later, considerably dustier than when she’d descended and carrying half a dozen bottles of island gin under her arms.

‘Look what I found,’ she said, as Frankie wandered back inside carrying a bowl of huge ripe tomatoes.

‘A whole load of island gin!’ Frankie raised her eyebrows in surprise.

Stella nodded, then stuck her head out of the kitchen and called Winnie’s name loudly down the hallway.

‘I’ve started cataloguing all of the linen,’ Winnie said as she came back into the kitchen carrying a pile of sheets and deposited them on the side. ‘There’s heaps of it in those huge cupboards on the first-floor landing.’ Her eyes moved to take in the bottles of gin that Stella had lined up on the kitchen table. ‘Where did that lot come from?’

‘That’s why I called you,’ Stella said. ‘You two have to see this.’ She led them across to the cellar, then turned back and looked at Winnie. ‘Don’t worry, you’re safe. There’s a light down there.’

They all trooped down the stone steps into the cool cellar. About the same size as the kitchen overhead, the bare earth-floored room was lit by a single bulb hanging from a wire in the centre of the ceiling.

‘I know where to come if I need to cool off,’ Frankie murmured, as they all stood and surveyed the long wooden bench loaded with glass jars and bottles. One side of the room had been lined with deep wooden shelves, and they were filled with row upon row of island gin.

‘One hundred and twenty-seven bottles of the stuff, to be exact,’ Stella said.

‘Wow.’ Winnie crossed to study them, admiring theirAlice in Wonderlandstyle handwritten labels all individually numbered in flowing black script. ‘Looks like the gin really is part of the villa’s history.’

Frankie was at the bench examining the jars and bottles.

‘Juniper berries,’ she said, pulling the lid off a big jar of tiny dried berries to sniff the contents.

‘And coriander seeds.’ She twisted another jar around to read the hand-inked label.

Stella joined her by the bench and steered her to the other end.

‘Look at this.’

Winnie joined them, and they all gazed down at the words etched into the surface of the wood.

‘It’s a recipe, I think?’ Frankie traced her finger over the inscriptions. It was difficult to make out in places, worn almost away by hands and time.

Stella reached down to the shelf beneath the bench. ‘I found this too.’

She laid an envelope down on the surface so they could all see that it bore each of their names.

Winnie. Stella. Frankie.

‘What does it say?’ Winnie asked, lifting her eyes to Stella’s.

‘I don’t know, I didn’t look. I thought we should read it together.’

For a minute they all stared at it in silence.

‘You do it, Frank,’ Stella said. Winnie swallowed and nodded, and Frankie sighed and picked it up.

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