Page 42 of Hot Greek Summer

‘Right.’ Stella marched down the hallway and found him leaning with his elbow on the buzzer. ‘Can I help you with something?’ She rearranged her mouth into a cabin-crew-worthy smile whilst shooting nine-inch nails at him with her eyes.

‘I wasn’t sure where to leave the newspaper.’

‘On the coffee table would be perfectly fine, thank you.’

He placed the newspaper down, and they stared each other down for a few long, hard seconds before he turned on his heel and left the building.

CHAPTER TEN

‘Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble,’ Stella said, rubbing her hands together. ‘So what do we do first, Frank?’

It was their third Monday on the island, and they’d gathered in the cellar for their first ever gin distilling session, hair tied back and aprons on. They’d decided that they’d be best all learning the process together, as much for hand holding and mutual blame purposes as anything else. Frankie stood with her hands on her hips, her eyes scanning the assortment of jars and bottles amassed on the bench.

‘I vote we make just five bottles for our first run,’ she said. ‘It only needs to stand for a week, so we’ll know pretty soon if we’ve ballsed it up and we won’t lose too much stock.’

Stella fished out five bottles of spirit from a box on the floor and lined them up on the bench.

‘So far, so good.’

Winnie pulled Ajax’s letter from her apron pocket and laid his handwritten botanicals recipe out, weighing down the corners of the paper with jars or bottles.

‘We’re going to need scales,’ she said. ‘This is all in weights per bottle. Oh, hang on. He says the scales are in the bench drawer.’

Frankie opened the long drawer, and sure enough, she found an electric scale.

‘Rightio,’ Winnie said. ‘“To each bottle, add the following ingredients. Twenty-two grams of dried juniper berries.”’

‘Shall I unscrew all five and we can do one ingredient at a time?’ Stella said, and when the others nodded she went along the line and cracked them all open.

Frankie carefully weighed out twenty-two grams of the tiny, hard berries into the scale.

‘How do I get them in the bottle without dropping any?’ she said, frowning.

Winnie looked back at the letter. ‘There should be a funnel in the drawer too?’

Frankie opened the drawer for a second time, nodded and withdrew a small plastic funnel. Slotting it into the top of the first bottle, she slowly tipped the berries into it. They all watched the inky black dots sink with almost ceremonial grace to the bottom of the bottle.

‘That’s it then. No going back now, we’re gin alchemists,’ Winnie said.

Frankie measured out berries for the next bottle, and they worked their way along in a production line.

‘What’s next on the list, Win?’ Frankie puffed her fringe from her eyes, looking slightly less terrified now the first ingredient had gone in.

‘“Nine grams of coriander seeds.”’

Duly weighed, the small brown husks sank to join the juniper.

‘This is sort of like magic, isn’t it?’ Winnie said.

Frankie glanced around the shady cellar. ‘Potions class at Hogwarts?’

‘I’d quite like a stern teacher to glower at me like that,’ Stella said. ‘All brooding and sexy.’

Winnie couldn’t imagine a man in the land who could intimidate Stella with a brooding glower. ‘“Two grams of angelica root,”’ she said, nudging the jar towards Frankie to weigh out.

‘It looks like something someone swept up from behind the fridge,’ Stella said, frowning as she watched Frankie weigh out the dried shreds of root and add them to the bottles.

‘“Ten cracked pink peppercorns and a pinch of pine needles.”’

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