Page 6 of Hot Greek Summer

A text alert vibrated her phone, making it rattle and jump around on the little pine bedside table. Winnie lunged for it before it slid off the edge, momentarily grateful for the distraction until she saw who had sent the message.

Did I really need to hear you’re leaving the country from Stella’s sister-in-law? What am I supposed to do, send the divorce papers by carrier pigeon? I’ve never even heard of the fucking place.

Winnie closed her eyes and took a few measured breaths so she didn’t text back the response hovering on the tip of her fingers.

Did I really need to hear you were screwing the girl from the canteen from your secretary? What was I supposed to do, make your favourite dinner more often and be more adventurous in the bedroom? You’ve no fucking right to question me.

God, it was tempting and Rory completely deserved her animosity. She didn’t write the message though, because she was slowly coming to realise that the person her anger hurt the most was herself. He’d probably check his phone, roll his eyes and delete the conversation before his precious receptionist realised he’d sent a text to his ex-wife. Winnie, on the other hand, would feel the after-effects of their exchange like a hangover without any of the fun first, miserable and heartsick until she could return the whole sorry situation to its box at the back of her head.

The internet works perfectly well in Skelidos. Please send all solicitors’ correspondence via email and I’ll make sure it gets back to England without delay.

Bloody man! He wouldn’t even have known she wasn’t around if Stella’s sister-in-law didn’t work for the same law firm. Oh, well. What did it matter anyway? As long as he didn’t intend on booking a romantic Greek holiday with his lover and wind up at Villa Valentina, then it’d probably be all right. Winnie sat down on the edge of the bed and let herself imagine him booking in unaware, and her inadvertently killing him with a really heavy frying pan then leaving him in the garden for The Fonz to feast on. Were donkeys even carnivores? She doubted it; it’d make seaside donkey rides an insurance nightmare. She’d just have to hire a boat and chuck him overboard with bricks in his pockets instead. Sufficiently bolstered by the fantasy, she pressedsendon her polite response and chucked as much in her suitcase as was physically possible without breaking the zips. She wasn’t going to Skelidos for a week; she was going for as long as she could possibly stay.

A few miles away in a small café with insufficient air conditioning, Frankie drew a line down the middle of a blank page of an exercise book and wrote ‘for’ and ‘against’ at the top of the two columns. It wasn’t exactly a spreadsheet, but its practicality was a comfort nonetheless.

Under ‘against’, she noted her only real sticking point; or two points, technically. Joshua and Elliott. Her beloved, boisterous boys, the reasons she’d put the last half of her own life on hold. It was hard to imagine that she’d given birth to them at the same age as they were themselves now; they were still her babies and the thought of them as fathers right now was utterly incomprehensible. Please let them have at least another ten years of freedom first, she murmured. Please let them make a million mistakes that don’t matter rather than one huge one that changes their lives for ever.

Tapping her pen against her teeth, she considered what to write next. There really wasn’t much she could think of to add to the ‘against’ column, and in truth the boys didn’t really need her around at home any more. Josh was living away at a sports academy for the most promising youth footballers in the country, and Elliott had won a hard-fought-for apprenticeship with one of the luxury car brands he coveted and moved into a shared house forty miles away. Fierce pride bloomed bright in her chest at the thought of how well they were doing; if there was one thing she was certain of it was that her sacrifices had been worth it, and that she’d do the same all over again to ensure that her kids were set on the right path.

After a second, she wrote ‘Marcia’ in the ‘for’ column, followed by ‘find an adventure’. Then she added ‘sunshine’, ‘friendship’, ‘new start’, ‘excitement’ and ‘not lonely any more’ to the list in quick succession. Her hand hovered over to the ‘against’ column to add ‘money’, but in fact going thirds on the villa had still left her with a decent chunk in the bank, so it really wouldn’t be accurate to put it down as an against, exactly. That made seven for, and two against. Quite definitive, really, even though the thought of living in a different country from Josh and Elliott made her feel queasy. Perhaps if she framed it in her mind as an exploratory trip, then it would be less of a wrench. Three months or so, and if she missed the boys too much, she could always come home again. She closed her book, laid her pencil neatly on top and unscrewed the lid from her bottle of water.

If the spreadsheet said it was a good idea, then it had to be right.

In a dressing room in the department store in town, Stella stripped off and jiggled herself into the first of the many bikinis she’d picked out. For such tiny garments, they were a minefield to get right. She wanted uplift without her double Ds being under her chin, pants that gave the illusion of maximum leg length because she was five foot four on a good day, and for God’s sake some bum coverage rather than letting it all hang out. Not that it hung out very much; she sweated blood and tears in the gym most mornings to make sure of that.

Stella knew that self-confidence came from feeling good about yourself, and confidence was one of the most important factors in her job. Or else it had been up to now. As marketing and PR manager for Jones & Bow, she’d been the public face of the company, the brand ambassador. Her eyebrows were always immaculately threaded and her designer clothes a perfect fit around her curves; no workout in the world could minimise the fact that she’d inherited the Daniels family boobs. Her mother, her aunts and her grandmother all had the same small-waisted, full-breasted Jessica Rabbit figure and over the years she’d learned to work with it rather than against it. Sexy was no bad thing, in the boardroom or the bedroom.

Turning, she eyed her body critically in the mirror, and then rejected the polka-dot bikini as too kitsch and opted for the sleek red Victoria’s Secret instead.

Working her way through the collection of irritatingly tangled hangers she ended up in a muddle of straps and ties, then lost her cool and threw the whole lot in a heap on the floor and flopped down onto the padded stool. What was she doing? This whole scheme to move to Greece had come as a bolt out of the blue, and her stomach had flipped uncertainly even as she’d signed her name on the contracts. She didn’t do random things. She didn’t do whimsy. Oh, she could be impulsive, but in Stella’s world that meant buying a new leather couch or an unneeded pair of Jimmy Choos just because, not committing her entire life to an ailing business in a foreign country. She couldn’t even speak Greek! None of them could. God, it was going to be a disaster – what had they been thinking?

Prickles of panic broke out on her forehead at the thought of leaving behind everything she’d worked so hard for. So she’d lost her job; it wasn’t the end of the world or an excuse to have a total breakdown and do something as outrageous as flee the country. Another job would turn up soon enough. She was too good to be ignored, too well-known and respected in her field to be left on the career shelf, so why had she just hurled herself off it like Buzz Lightyear flinging himself from the edge of the table? He hadn’t been able to fly, not really. It was just a smoke-and-mirrors illusion.

Stella threw her clothes back on, thrust the knot of bikinis at the shop assistant and marched out of the shop. She didn’t need new bikinis. She had three perfectly good ones already, and it was highly likely that she wouldn’t be staying on Skelidos long enough to need more.

CHAPTER TWO

Winnie checked her cross-body bag for the millionth time to make sure she had the keys to Villa Valentina zipped safely inside the side pocket.

‘We’ll have to get some more keys cut as soon as we can,’ she said, settling her bag into her lap on the hour-long ferry ride from Skiathos across to Skelidos. Now that they were almost back at the villa, her nerves had kicked in hard. Ajax had emailed to let them know that he and Nikolas had left for Athens a couple of days back and the place was locked up and waiting for them. They’d bought it fully furnished with several upcoming reservations already in the book, so for all intents and purposes they could just turn the key, open the windows and be up and running. It sounded quite easy, put like that, until a worrying thought hit her.

‘Oh, God! I hope someone has been feeding The Fonz since Ajax left!’ She looked from Frankie to Stella sitting on the opposite bench. ‘What if he’s starving, or dehydrated?’

Stella shook her head. ‘Donkeys are like camels, I should think. They retain water.’

Both Frankie and Winnie looked at her, taken aback. ‘Surely he’d need a hump for that?’ Frankie said, doubtful.

Stella shrugged and dropped her Aviators over her eyes; the donkey was the least of her worries. She’d had a job offer a couple of days ago from old business rivals of Jones & Bow; on the one hand it was reassuring to be head-hunted, but on the other they were offering a pitiful package and hadn’t even included a company car. She hated the loss of freedom being without wheels represented, and couldn’t help but feel that the derisory job offer had been designed more to put her in her place rather than to genuinely recruit her. It stung, and it rammed home the fact that she wasn’t as indispensable as she’d always allowed herself the indulgence of believing. She hadn’t replied yet. Her instinct had been to tell them where to shove their pitiful offer, but she was slowly coming around to the horrible realisation that she might not have the luxury of being so hasty. All in all she was thoroughly miserable, and much as the sunshine was welcome, she hated the feeling that she was running away. Stella Daniels didn’t run from anything or anyone. She’d take a week or so to recharge, and then decide what to do about the offer.

Frankie’s phone bleeped in her hand luggage, and she scrabbled for it in case there was anything wrong at home. The boys had both been unflatteringly thrilled at the idea of her moving to a Mediterranean island. She’d expected a wobbly lip or two, a ‘Please don’t go, Mum,’ but what she’d got from Josh was a ‘Go for it, Mum,’ and Elliott was already merrily planning his free holiday to Greece later in the summer. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad being apart from them after all; if they came to stay she’d get some proper time with them for a change. Family holidays had always had been British bucket-and-spade affairs when the twins were little, and in later years they hadn’t been at all enamoured of the idea of being stuck in a hotel with their olds. Maybe it would have been different if she and Gavin had been more in love; there might have been more laughter and good times. As it was they only really talked about things to do with the kids, and once they’d moved out they’d been left crunching toast in noisy silence at the breakfast table.

‘I’ve got a long-lost uncle in Nigeria who wants my bank details so he can wire me ten million pounds,’ she sighed, reading the phishing message on her phone.

‘Bugger. If only he’d texted you yesterday, you could have stayed at home and bought a mansion instead,’ Stella said.

Winnie fidgeted with excitement in her seat. ‘I’d still have come back here today, even if I’d won the lottery. Aren’t you dying to get in the villa and have a good nose around without Ajax and Nik?’

Frankie’s face relaxed into a smile as she tucked her phone away. ‘I’m heading straight for the bath in the Cleopatra Room before I do anything else. I splashed out on Jo Malone bubble bath especially for it.’

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