Page 47 of Hot Greek Summer

‘Too much?’ he asked.

‘It depends what you’ve dressed for,’ she said. ‘It’s too much for the beach and perfect for the boardroom.’

‘And for breakfast with an irritating English woman? Is it too much for that?’

‘You’ve dressed just for this?’

‘No.’

Thoroughly pissed off with him, she decided against breakfast. ‘Scintillating as this has been, I need to get on. If you enjoy your breakfast, perhaps you could go so far as to mention it to Frankie.’

She got up abruptly and stalked back inside, furious. When he leaned on the bell half an hour later, she ignored it.

‘Can we open it to sniff it?’ Winnie asked. They were all in the cellar for the mid-morning bottle-turning ritual. Their first batch of island gin had stood for four days so far, and had already turned that distinctive strawberry blush.

‘No!’ Frankie said, putting the bottles back on the shelf. ‘You’ll mess with the magic.’

Winnie laid her sketchbook on the bench. ‘I’ve been playing around with label ideas,’ she said, flicking through to the right page. ‘What do you think?’

Stella and Frankie came to stand either side of her.

‘This one for sure,’ Stella grinned, tapping her finger on the one Jesse had tinkered with. ‘She looks up to no good.’

Frankie nodded. ‘Agreed.’

Winnie had expected as much. ‘I’ll draw some up,’ she said, and then they all looked up, distracted by the bang of the cellar door. They were shut in.

‘What the …?’ Frankie took the stone steps at a fast jog. Rattling the brass knob, she turned back to look down at the others. ‘The handle on this side doesn’t work. It won’t open.’

‘Of course it will,’ Stella said, following her up and barging the door with her shoulder to no avail.

‘Oh no,’ Winnie whispered. ‘Oh no.’ She really wasn’t a fan of cellars, and only tolerated this one because it was well lit and they had a secret mission down here.

‘Don’t panic, Win,’ Stella said. ‘It’s only wedged. It’ll come loose.’

But it didn’t. All three of them tried it individually and then as a collective, but the damn thing wouldn’t budge an inch.

‘OK,’ Frankie said, cool and practical as ever. ‘The new guests don’t arrive until tomorrow, so that’s not a problem.’

‘And Angelo is out, presumably on business,’ Stella said, curling her lip at the recollection of their brief exchange earlier in the day.

‘Hero! She can live up to her name!’ Winnie said, suddenly animated.

‘When she comes to work tomorrow,’ Frankie said, grimacing. ‘Sorry, she had things to do today so I said she could take the day off.’

‘So there’s nobody to rescue us or hear us scream, and we’re going to die a hideous death down here and they’ll find our skeletons in twenty years’ time.’ Winnie sat down on the steps, dramatic.

‘Or alternatively I could call Corinna?’ Stella said, pulling her mobile from her shorts pocket and stabbing at it. ‘Bugger, no signal.’

‘Hold it up in the air?’ Winnie said.

‘You could call Corinna.’ Frankie nodded vigorously. ‘Or Panos? He’s closer.’

‘I don’t have his number in my phone,’ Stella said standing on the top step with her arm held above her head to dial Corinna. They could all hear it click through and start to ring, and then the dreaded sound of it going through to answerphone a few rings later.

‘Shit,’ Stella muttered, and then left a garbled message for Corinna, explaining the mess they were in and asking her to contact Panos and get him to come and let them out as soon as possible.

‘And now we wait,’ Frankie said, taking the step up from Winnie’s.

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