Page 45 of Hot Greek Summer

He drained his bottle and banged it down harder than necessary. ‘I need to get back.’

He turned and strode out, leaving Winnie confused as to what she’d done wrong.

Back at his place after a ten-minute march, Jesse banged straight through to the back of the house, grabbed the bottle of brandy from the kitchen cupboard and dragged the loft ladder down. Up there, he shoved things randomly aside until he reached the sturdy cardboard box he’d gone in search of. He’d put it up here years previously, tucked right at the back to make getting to it a trial, a self-checking mechanism to make sure he only opened it when he really needed to. He didn’t let himself stop or pause for thought, just ripped the packing tape from it in harsh strips as if he were tearing off the sticking plasters that had held his heart together for the last decade.

Opening the flaps, he slid down the wall and sat next to it, knees bent and the brandy bottle in his hands. It wasn’t too late; he still didn’t have to do this. Closing his eyes, he banged the back of his head slowly against the wall.Bang. A mouthful of harsh spirits.Bang.A head full of buried memories.Bang.Another blonde girl with dancing eyes and glitter in her fingertips.

He screwed the top back onto the brandy and lifted the protective tissue paper inside the box and pulled out his wedding album.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘Jesus. You bought the Karate Kid’s car.’

As instructed, Winnie had opened up Villa Valentina’s street-side wooden gates so that Stella and Frankie could pull the newly acquired car onto the patch of earth that counted as the B&B’s driveway.

Frankie covered her mouth to hold her laugh in at Stella’s offended face as they climbed out of the car.

‘I’ll have you know it’s a Ford Super Deluxe,’ Stella said, bending backwards to read the words off the back of the car.

Winnie nodded. ‘And I love it, but is it going to be, well, you know … reliable?’ she said, running her hand over the curve of the huge Tiffany-blue American convertible. It looked as if it ought to be parked up outside an ice-cream parlour in a 50s movie, and exuded the same shabby air of faded grandeur as the villa itself.

Frankie nodded. ‘Never given Mr P a day’s trouble in twenty-five years, his wife said.’

‘What happened to Mr P?’ Winnie had a bad feeling.

Frankie and Stella exchanged glances, and Winnie sighed.

‘He died in this car, didn’t he?’

‘Sort of,’ Frankie muttered at the same time as Stella shook her head.

‘Sort of?’

‘They were at the drive-in movie on the beach for their wedding anniversary,’ Frankie said.

‘There’s a drive-in on the island?’ Winnie interrupted, utterly beguiled.

‘Yes, but that isn’t the point,’ Frankie said. ‘The point is that they were watching a movie, and she went to lay her hand on his knee and he moved at the same time, and she mistakenly fondled his crotch for the first time in ten years and his heart gave out from the shock of it.’

‘She told you all this?’ Winnie said, wide-eyed.

‘Well, strictly speaking, Panos did,’ Stella said. ‘Mrs P is ninety-three and can’t speak a word of English. We thought it’d be cool to pick up our guests from the ferry in it, get their holiday started in style.’

Winnie regarded the cherry leather interior and huge ivory and chrome steering wheel. It really was rather fabulous, and given everything else that had been included in their purchase of the villa, it was actually a perfect match.

‘Lots of room in here for luggage.’ Winnie knocked her knuckles on the boot for emphasis. ‘I’m sold,’ she said. ‘Space for shopping bags.’

Privately she was just relieved not to have to rely on a lift to the supermarket from Jesse again.

‘Cool,’ Stella said. ‘Wax on …’ She made the infamous gesture with one hand.

‘Wax off,’ Frankie and Winnie both said, waxing off with their other hand, and then they all fell about laughing, because they’d just bought the car from the Karate Kid and it was entirely in keeping with their overseas oddball adventure.

‘Two more bookings for July,’ Stella said, grinning as she clicked through the reservations panel on the shiny new website they’d launched a few days ago. Lots of favours had been called in from Stella’s friends and old colleagues back in the UK, and as a result Villa Valentina now had a charming website that showed the B&B off at its enchanting best and a simple interface for them to take and track bookings. Coupled with Stella’s killer instinct for marketing and PR, the B&B was starting to pick up mentions on selected boutique websites across the Internet and the bookings were already coming in. It was thrilling and terrifying in equal measures.

‘We’re going to have to move into the owners’ apartment at the weekend,’ Winnie said, plunging their breakfast coffee. They were still using the guest rooms on the top floor, but the influx of guests meant that they’d need to decamp into the small two-bedroom owners’ accommodation on the ground floor behind the kitchen. It was nothing special, functional at best; a small lounge and bathroom with a galley kitchen and two plain, simple bedrooms.

‘We don’t really need it as living accommodation, do we? We spend all of our spare time outside or in here anyway.’ Frankie gestured around at the kitchen. ‘If we use the lounge in there as a third bedroom instead, it could work.’

---