Page 43 of Hot Greek Summer

‘A pinch of pine needles?’ Stella said. ‘Really? It’ll end up tasting like toilet bleach at this rate.’

‘Really,’ Frankie said, showing Stella the small hand-marked tub. ‘Here. You can be in charge of that bit.’

Winnie counted out the peppercorns as Stella added a sprinkle of needles, and Frankie followed along with three curly strips of dried lemon peel.

‘Is there anything else?’ Stella asked.

Winnie ran her finger down the list. ‘“And now for the final and most secret ingredient of all,”’ she read. ‘“Eleven arbutus berries*. Count carefully, as they give the gin both its colour and its sweetness.” Why has he put a star next to that, I wonder?’ She turned the page over and found her answer. ‘Ah, here we go. “The English name for the arbutus is the strawberry tree, because the fruits are similarly red and sweet. However, it is much rarer and more prized, because it’s thought to possess magical qualities for good luck, love and respect. Many believe that the presence of the arbutus berry in the island gin is responsible for the island’s tranquillity and continued good fortune – perhaps because everyone drinks so much of it! The bush at the villa is the only source of arbutus on Skelidos, so be sure to tend it carefully and harvest it when the berries are fat in autumn.”’

Winnie read the last line of Ajax’s recipe with increasing trepidation, and when she raised her eyes it was clear that Stella and Frankie shared her anxiety.

‘The only bush on the entire island?’ Frankie squeaked high enough to sound as if she’d taken a shot of helium.

‘Fuck,’ Stella said, sitting down hard on an upturned crate. ‘Just when we thought we’d got it sussed, he goes and drops that bombshell in at the end. So we’re running a bed and breakfast, a donkey sanctuary, operating a secret and no doubt illegal gin distillery, employing staff we didn’t know we had, and now we have to tend a bloody sacred bush in the garden as well!’ She ticked them off on her fingers. ‘What’s next? An orphanage in the attic?’

Put like that, it did seem like rather a lot of hidden extras had been included in the sale of Villa Valentina.

‘A moody injured Greek whose own sister doesn’t like him enough to put him up?’ Winnie said, catching Stella’s eye.

‘And more new guests arriving at the end of the week,’ Frankie added. ‘I just hope they’re the kind that eat breakfast this time.’

They lapsed into silence, all looking at the five bottles of freshly spiked gin on the bench. Winnie glanced at Ajax’s letter for a final time.

‘“Replace the bottle tops, screwing them tightly, turn each bottle three times and then store upright in the cellar. Turn daily for five days, strain, and then rebottle and label, remembering to add the date and serial number.”’

She turned the letter again. ‘That’s it.’

One by one they screwed the tops back on the bottles.

‘We should all turn each bottle once to celebrate our first batch,’ Frankie said.

Winnie nodded. ‘A gin ritual?’

‘Only if we can go upstairs and finish the ritual with a big G&T,’ Stella said.

They took their time turning each bottle, counting aloud as if casting a spell.

‘They’re already changing colour,’ Frankie whispered.

‘I think we might have just performed actual magic,’ Winnie said.

Stella lined the bottles up on an empty shelf in the racks by the wall. ‘Come on. Let’s go upstairs. We better go and check if that bloody bush needs some water.’

‘I’ve come to hang the sign.’

Winnie looked up from the sketchbook open in front of her on the reception desk when Jesse tapped on the open front door, a battered toolbox in his hand.

‘Oh, right,’ she said, trying not to flush. She hadn’t seen him since their picnic; her daily visits to The Fonz had suffered for her wine-induced bold nakedness. ‘Thanks for remembering.’

Stella and Frankie had headed over to the other side of the island with Panos to look at a car he knew was for sale, leaving Winnie alone for the afternoon manning reception. She’d waited until they’d gone to lay out her sketchbook and pencils, opening the book with nervous fingers as she deliberately skimmed past the drawings already in there. Or designs, to describe them more accurately. Bracelets, necklaces, jewelled slides and tiaras, pretty things that seemed so tied up with her old life that she couldn’t bring herself to look at them here in her new one. She hadn’t wanted the job of label designer at all, but neither Stella nor Frankie were artistically inclined and they’d firmly declared it within her remit. She knew what they were doing, of course; their attempts to reignite her creativity were not exactly subtle. Art of one form or another had defined Winnie’s life since they’d been children, and they clearly thought that she’d closed herself off from it as a result of her divorce. She hadn’t; she just wasn’t inclined that way any more, and she didn’t see why it needed to concern anyone else if it wasn’t worrying her. Except now that she had the pencils in her hand and the blank page in front of her, she’d stalled like a frightened pony faced with an oncoming tractor in a country lane.

‘What are you up to?’ Jesse nodded towards her sketchbook.

She lifted one shoulder as she closed the book. ‘Not a lot. Doodling.’

He nodded, twisting his mouth to the side. ‘Can I see?’

‘There’s nothing to see, I hadn’t started,’ she said. ‘We need to design our own custodian label for the gin. A rite of passage for whoever owns this place, apparently.’

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