Page 59 of Hot Greek Summer

‘She was outside when I came home. On the loungers by the beach!’

Winnie caught up with Stella at the bottom of the stairs, still barefoot.

‘Back garden.’ Stella gripped her arm tight for a second and then belted off down the hallway towards the kitchen. ‘Angelo’s already outside.’

Winnie followed, shoving her feet into her Birkis by the back door, terrified by the bright orange glow on the far side of the garden.

‘Buckets!’ Stella shouted, panicked. ‘We need buckets or something! Anything!’

Behind her, Winnie heard footsteps, and seconds later Frankie and Seth appeared around the side of the building, all of them frantically searching for buckets or anything that might help.

‘Call Panos!’ Angelo yelled, running back with the only bucket to refill it at the garden tap. ‘Hosepipes, we need a lot more water now! The whole damn garden will catch at this rate.’

‘I’m here, I’m here,’ someone panted, and they turned to see Panos dressed only in Y-fronts and a vest, unravelling a tangled hosepipe and handing the tap end to Angelo. ‘I saw the flames from my bedroom window.’

‘Thank God,’ Winnie said, hugging him fast and hard. ‘Thank you for coming so quickly.’

‘Mikey!’ Seth shouted suddenly, taking off across the garden towards the flames. Angelo ran behind dragging the hose, with all three of the women unravelling it behind him frantically as he went. Winnie’s eye’s tracked Seth to the body on the grass.

Oh my God, there was a body on the grass.

Seth dropped to his knees beside Mikey at the same moment as Angelo inadvertently doused him with a blast of cold water, waking him from his gin slumber with a violent jerk into sitting position.

‘What the …?’ he mumbled, scrubbing his hands over his face as he stared at the flames not far from where he’d passed out. ‘I’m soaking wet.’ He frowned, peeling his damp T-shirt away from his ribs as he squinted around and joined the dots. ‘Oh fuck.’

Seth dragged him up onto his feet and deposited him unceremoniously over by the villa. Winnie heard him mutter, ‘Stupid drunken bastard,’ as he propped him against the wall before running back across to see if he could help. Thankfully, the now plentiful water supply seemed to be doing the trick; Angelo had things mostly under control already, the worst of the flames dying out.

Panos put his arm around Winnie’s shoulders. ‘Not so bad,’ he said, soothingly. ‘Could have been much worse.’

Winnie nodded grimly. It could. The whole place could have gone up with them all inside it. Jesus, with the amount of alcohol in the cellar it would have been a fireball in minutes. Angelo gave the whole area an extra drenching just to be certain, and then gave Seth the nod to shut off the water.

‘It’s out,’ he said, stepping backwards to survey the burnt black bushes and shrubs. ‘But you’ve lost pretty much everything on this side of the garden.’ He waved his hand along the sodden swathe of land and then unwittingly wiped it over his face, daubing himself with smoky charcoal streaks.

‘Thank God you were here,’ Stella said, wrapping her arm around his middle. ‘Our hero.’

He dropped a kiss on the top of her head and murmured something in Greek that had Panos lifting his eyebrows.

‘Well, I think we could all do with a drink,’ Winnie said wearily. ‘Come in?’

Panos looked down at his underwear. ‘I think I should say no.’

‘You’re sure?’ Frankie planted a kiss on his cheek. ‘You’re our hero too, dashing across the beach to help. We owe you, Panos.’

He shrugged and nodded brusquely, then threw his hosepipe over his shoulder as he walked away. ‘It’s the Skelidos way. We look out for our neighbours.’

Winnie wrapped her arms around her midriff, reminded of the fact that Jesse had said something very similar not very long ago.

‘Did I miss something?’

Jamie Harte wandered out of the kitchen door, obviously having just woken up. He looked at his bandmate slumped on his backside by the wall, and then over towards Seth.

‘Take him up and chuck him in his bed, would you? I might knock his fucking head off his shoulders otherwise,’ Seth said.

Jamie sighed heavily, sniffing the acrid air and surveying the soaked, burnt-out half of the garden. ‘Mikey?’

Seth nodded. There was an inevitability about the look that passed between them, and Winnie wondered how they’d managed to keep the fact that Mikey Miller was a functioning alcoholic out of the press for so long. It was almost ironic that they’d booked themselves into a secret gin distillery, presumably in the hope of lying low while Mikey cleaned his act up.

They all sat out on the front terrace for an hour or so, too hyped to sleep any time soon after the fire.

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