Page 62 of Hot Greek Summer

Frankie crouched beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, trying to convey the question with her eyes and hand gestures. ‘Are you OK?’

Hero looked up at them all one by one, and then back at the burnt-out garden, and beat her hands on the floor, starting up the racket again.

‘Sshh,’ Stella said, touching Hero’s shoulder and then pointing at the upstairs bedrooms and making a sleeping gesture with both of her hands pressed together under her ear as a pillow.

Hero seemed to take note. It was as if someone had pressed her mute button; she continued to beat her fists and then raise her head and wail, but silently. If anything, it was odder.

‘What do you think she’s doing?’ Winnie whispered.

‘Praying?’ Stella suggested.

‘Oh jeez, I know what it is,’ Frankie said. ‘It’s the burning bush.’

‘Shit. Yes.’ Stella gazed at the twiggy black bush. ‘I might join her.’

‘She can’t tell anyone else,’ Winnie said. ‘We need to tell her to keep her mouth shut.’

‘Yeah, because that’s going to work,’ Stella said. ‘We can barely string a sentence together between us.’

Someone behind them coughed, and they turned to find Angelo listening to them from the doorway.

‘What’s so special about the bush?’ he asked, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was wearing Stella’s pink and white candy-striped robe. Given his mostly austere appearance, it was comical enough to make Winnie look at the floor to hide her laughter.

‘It was the only one on the island. People thought it brought good luck and prosperity.’

He tutted. ‘You girls are going to be unpopular then.’ He looked at Hero. ‘You think this is bad? You wait until there’s a queue right across the beach to come and view it. We love a good tragedy.’

‘You have to help us,’ Stella said, crossing to tug him outside by the hand. ‘Please, tell Hero it has to be a secret?’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Er, because I asked you to?’ Stella said, her hackles up. It was all very well letting him be domineering and kinkily alpha in the bedroom, but she was no shrinking violet. She was a woman who got what she wanted.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Why can’t you just plant a new tree? It’ll regrow again in a few years.’

‘Years?’ Winnie yelped. ‘We need the berries in three months!’

Angelo frowned at the same time as Stella tried to surreptitiously draw her finger across her neck to shut Winnie up.

Frankie leaped into the breach. ‘For desserts,’ she said. ‘Cake.’

Angelo looked from one to the other, clearly not convinced. Then he shrugged, and with a sigh, he crossed the grass barefoot to relay their message to Hero.

Frankie, Winnie and Stella stood by the back door in the already warm early sunshine.

‘He looks hot in my robe,’ Stella said, looking at his long, tanned legs. The robe was knee-length on her, and barely mid-thigh-length on her much taller lover.

‘How doesn’t he know about the gin?’ Winnie asked. ‘You had sex in the bloody cellar, for God’s sake!’

‘He wasn’t looking at the walls, trust me,’ Stella muttered archly. ‘I just said we let Panos use the cellar for storage because he’s short on space at the bar.’

‘And he believed you?’ Frankie checked.

Stella nodded. ‘Of course.’ She’d asked casually leading questions over the days since to make sure her story hadn’t planted any seeds of interest in his head, and so far he didn’t seem remotely interested in the contents of the cellar. The Skelidos gin distillery had gone under the radar of the rest of the world for countless decades. She didn’t want to be responsible for exposing it because she hadn’t been able to resist jumping the bones of a hot-shot businessman from the mainland.

It appeared that Angelo had managed to convey their requests to Hero, because she stopped wailing and drew herself up to her full diminutive height and smoothed her dress and apron. Turning her big, baleful eyes on them as she edged past, she pulled an imaginary zip across her lips for slow, dramatic effect.

‘I think she got the message,’ Stella said.

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