Page 28 of Hot Greek Summer

‘The day he took me shopping.’

Stella frowned. ‘He kissed you a whole week ago and you’re only mentioning it now?’

‘I know,’ Winnie sighed. ‘It came out of the blue. Well, no, actually that’s not true. He told me he was going to do it first.’

Frankie leaned around Winnie to share a private ‘we need to keep an eye on this because she isn’t up to having her heart broken’ look with Stella.

Stella threw back a quick and equally protective ‘I’ll drown him in a bucket of island gin and pickle his genitals if she cries even one tear’ look, and then turned back to Winnie.

‘Come on then, spill. What happened?’

‘Well, we went shopping, obviously.’ Winnie picked at a piece of loose cotton on the sun lounger’s deeply padded ivory cushion. ‘And he was showing me bits of the island as we drove, and then he took me to see the highest point of the island because the view is amazing. There’s a bench and everything.’

‘And you sat on the bench?’ Frankie said, encouraging the story along.

Winnie nodded. ‘I did. And he did. And I somehow told him that Rory is the only man I’ve ever kissed and he was like, oh my God, you’re practically a nun, I’m going to have to snog you right now to save you from a lifetime in a wimple.’

They all laughed.

‘He didn’t really say that, did he?’ Stella laughed.

Winnie rolled her eyes. ‘No. He called Rory Needledick and told me that pleasure is all about the external bodily organs, then stroked my arm to demonstrate.’

‘It sounds like a biology class,’ Frankie said.

‘It didn’t feel like one,’ Winnie said. ‘He wanted to show me that you can enjoy physical pleasure without involving your heart or your head.’

They fell silent. Stella was thinking that he was bang on the money, and Frankie was wondering how it would feel to be kissed by someone if itdidinvolve your heart or your head. She and Gav must have had a spark back in the early days, but they’d been little more than children themselves really and their relationship would probably never have made it beyond a few months if she hadn’t fallen pregnant. Melancholy thoughts of what her life might have been like started to seep in, and she took a good glug of gin and pushed all of the negativity back across the sea in her head towards England. She’d left it there in that soulless rented flat. It wasn’t allowed to follow her here.

‘And then he said he was going to kiss me.’

‘Wow. I mean, he’s grumpy but he’shot, Win. Was it good?’ Stella swung her legs around to put her feet on the floor and face Winnie.

‘It was … it was …’ Words genuinely failed her.

‘What? Good? Hideous?’ Frankie said, impatient.

‘Oh no,’ Stella muttered. ‘He wasn’t terrible, was he? Did he slobber all over you like one of those dogs with ten chins?’

Winnie laughed softly, her cheeks warm from the sun, the cocktails and the memory of Jesse’s kiss.

‘No, he wasn’t awful, and he didn’t slobber. He was … God, it was shockingly good.’ And then she said, ‘Very different to Rory,’ and felt like a terrible person for comparing them.

Both Frankie and Stella sighed in half relief, half envy.

‘He was gentle, and then he wasn’t. It started out sort of subtle, but then it wasn’t subtle at all, it was like three minutes of dynamite sex with your clothes on!’ Her voice escalated, giddy with too much gin and the relief of finally sharing the story.

‘Shit,’ Stella said, with a low whistle.

‘Winnie!’ Frankie laughed. ‘No wonder you’ve been going round every day to visit the donkey.’

‘Have you two been shagging like goats under the olive groves?’ Stella said suddenly, raising her eyebrows.

‘Goats?’ Winnie said. ‘Do goats have lots of sex?’

‘I don’t bloody know! Are you?’

‘No. I’ve barely even seen him since. I think he’s avoiding me.’

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