Page 81 of Hot Greek Summer

Stella lifted an eyebrow. ‘Just checking.’

‘What are you, my mother?’

‘No, but I will tell your mother unless you give me the lowdown. I heard him chucking bricks last night. If he’d have gone the whole hog and serenaded you he’d have felt my shoe bounce off his head.’

‘You old romantic,’ Winnie teased.

Stella looked at her pointedly. ‘Romance is dead to me.’

She didn’t say it anywhere near lightheartedly enough for Winnie to say anything flippant in reply. ‘He stayed with me last night,’ she whispered instead as they made their way down onto the first landing.

‘About bloody time,’ Stella huffed, then stopped speaking because Frankie ran up the stairs from the ground floor to meet them.

‘I can’t work out what the hell is going on here,’ she said, her face a mask of controlled panic. ‘We need someone who can translate for us quickly.’

‘Panos?’ Winnie said as they reached the ground floor and hurried quickly down the hallway to the kitchen.

‘Tried him, no answer.’

Gav looked up when they came in, already in the kitchen filling any glass he could find with bottled water.

‘One of them fainted,’ he said, looking terrified. ‘I thought water might keep them hydrated, at least.’

‘Good thinking,’ Frankie said, shooting him a smile. Winnie didn’t miss the high spots of colour that appeared in his cheeks as he started moving the glasses onto trays.

She crossed to the kitchen window and peered through the Greek lace that they’d not yet bothered to take down.

‘Holy shit,’ she mumbled. The garden was fuller than if they’d thrown an open invite garden party with free drinks, except everyone was in black and absolutely no one was in a jolly mood. Some of them were kneeling, some were sobbing and others clutched each other. ‘Has anyone said anything at all?’

‘Not that we can make sense of,’ Frankie said. ‘I hate to say it but I think it might be about the arbutus bush again.’

Gav looked at them all, perplexed. ‘This is all over a garden bush?’

‘It’s not just any old bush.’ Winnie stepped away from the window. ‘It’s sacred to the islanders.’

Gav’s face cleared. ‘Ah, that one.’

Stella looked at him sharply. ‘What do you mean,that one? Who told you about it?’

‘Panos mentioned something. I couldn’t catch what he meant, but now I see.’ He picked up the tray of glasses. ‘He said you’d set fire to the berries, and that without it the gin would dry up, I think?’

The women exchanged glances. ‘Was anyone else there when he told you this?’

Gav shook his head. ‘Quiet day. Only me and Angelo in the place.’

Stella looked decidedly grim. ‘I’m going to go and try Panos again.’

Handing water around, Winnie tried and failed to find someone who could speak English, because she didn’t have a prayer of understanding the issue in Greek. They’d all been working on the language in their own ways; Winnie knew basic greetings and informational stuff, Stella knew most of the drinks at the bar and some financial terms, and Frankie could haltingly hold her own in the supermarket. In no way, shape or form did that equip any of the women for the fast-flowing flood of Greek language washing over them all around the garden.

Spotting a familiar face at last, she caught hold of Hero’s elbow.

‘Winnie,’ the old woman cried, throwing her hands upand then hugging her. Winnie patted her back awkwardly, and then stepped away and tried to look deliberately confused in the hope that Hero would help her to understand.

‘What’s going on?’ she said slowly, even though she knew Hero’s English was as non-existent as her own Greek. ‘Why is everyone here like this?’

Hero threw her hands out towards the twiggy, dead arbutus bush, and then said something else as she looked towards the heavens and crossed herself, and finally she drew a slow finger across her neck and whispered ‘Nekros.’ Closing her eyes, she let her head fall to one side.

‘God,’ Winnie muttered. ‘Nekros? Someone has hurt their neck?’

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