thought to slather on extra sun cream; she could almost feel her skin frying. She was one of those people with a pale and interesting complexion; achieving anything close to a sun-kissed glow required diligent application of factor 30 and short, careful interludes of exposure to the sun. Anything more intensive was likely to turn her into a walking, talking beetroot, and that really wasn’t the look she wanted to achieve before sundown on day one. Nothing marks you out as a tourist quite like a classic dose of sunburn, does it?
Lifting her sunglasses, she paused beneath the shade of an olive tree and looked first one way and then the other. Back home, her house had been a semi-detached in a suburban cul-de-sac, and her closest neighbour had probably been sitting three feet away on the other side of the party wall. Out here her nearest neighbour wasn’t even in sight, which, given the fact that he was so rude, was probably just as well.
Movement flickered in her peripheral vision, and she squinted between the trees. Bingo. Not just one donkey. Two.
‘At bloody last,’ Winnie muttered, shaking her leg to flick the irritating grit out of her flip-flop. A low stone wall ran around the perimeter of his olive grove, so she swung herself over it and started picking her way through the gnarled trees towards The Fonz. As she drew nearer, neither of the animals took the remotest bit of notice of her.
‘Hello, Fonzy,’ she said, in the quiet, polite manner with which she might greet an elderly relative. Nothing. Not so much as the flicker of an ear from either of them.
‘Chachi?’ she said, more uncertain this time as she moved within a few feet of the donkeys. One of them was pure white and considerably bigger than the other, and he lifted his head and gazed briefly in her direction before returning peacefully to grazing.
‘OK,’ she said under her breath, walking closer to the smaller, grey donkey. ‘If he’s Chachi, then I guess that must make you The Fonz.’ She reached out a tentative hand and stroked him between the ears. ‘I’m Winnie, your new owner, and I’ve come to take you home.’
He really did seem very indifferent to her. As a non-rider, she’d vaguely imagined that he’d have a saddle on, or a harness at least, something that she’d be able to lead him by, but he didn’t. He was, for all intents and purposes, naked.
‘How are we going to do this then?’ she asked, walking around him slowly. Running an experimental hand over his flank, she tried giving him a little two-handed push from behind but he didn’t even seem to register it. She tried a second time, this time with a little more effort, and he swished his tail as if a fly might have landed on his backside.
‘Bloody hell, Fonzy,’ she grumbled. ‘You need to go on a diet, buddy. You weigh a bloody ton.’
‘Why are you fondling my donkey?’
Winnie didn’t need to turn around to know who was behind her.
She was quite glad that it wasn’t The Fonz after all. ‘Might have known this one was yours,’ she said to the neighbour. ‘He seems as stubborn and unwelcoming as his owner.’ She moved across to stand behind the larger, white donkey. He really was big, practically a pony, really.
Winnie wiped her sweaty palms on the back of her denim skirt and patted the white donkey on the rump in a way she hoped was friendly enough before attempting the two-handed push on him too. It was hopeless. After a couple of increasingly effortful attempts, she swung around with her hands balled on her hips, first dashing away several beads of sweat running from her hairline into her eyes.
‘Would it kill you to help me out here?’
He looked at her levelly with his arms folded across his chest. ‘You look like a prawn that’s been chucked on the barbie.’
Winnie shook her head and huffed. ‘Could you be any more stereotypically Australian?’
‘I could call you Sheila. Could you be any more passive-aggressively English?’
Yanking her sunglasses off, she stared at him. ‘Trust me, Mr … Mr I don’t know your name because you couldn’t be bothered to introduce yourself, there’s nothing passive about my aggression right now; I’m just about ready to beat you to a pulp with my bare hands.’
He didn’t look even the smallest bit threatened. ‘I’m not surprised the donkey doesn’t want to go with you. You give off a negative vibe. You clearly have anger-management issues.’
‘Anger-management issues?’ she half yelled. ‘I didn’t until I met you, you condescending asshat!’
‘In some countries this passes as foreplay,’ he said, and for the first time Winnie caught the faintest trace of humour behind his tone. ‘My name’s Jesse, seeing as you asked so nicely. Although I quite like “condescending asshat”, so you can stick with that if you prefer. I’m easy.’
‘Jesse as in the outlaw,’ she muttered. ‘Or donkey rustler.’
‘He was also a bank robbber, a gang leader and a murderer.’ He said it tonelessly, leaving Winnie to draw her own conclusions as to whether she was supposed to feel menaced. She didn’t.
‘Nice namesake.’
‘I was named after my father, seeing as you mention it. Wonderful guy, and surprisingly, he’s never robbed a bank in his life.’
Great. Now she felt shitty for insulting his dad. How did that happen?
‘So, Jesse,’ she said, thinking actually he looked like a Jesse, now she’d said it aloud. Jesse suggested bad boys and motorbikes and leather jackets, scowls, cigarettes and bad manners. Not that she’d seen him smoke, but she wouldn’t be surprised if he pulled a box out and lit up. ‘Would you mind telling me how to make my donkey move, please?’
He scrubbed a hand over the dark stubble along his jaw and gave a non-committal ‘huh’. ‘Now there’s a question.’
Here we go again. ‘And does it have an answer?’ she asked, sweet as apple pie.
Jesse shrugged. ‘Not an obvious one, no.’
Winnie could feel the threads of her temper unravelling. ‘So give me the complicated one. It would appear that I have time to listen.’
‘Would you like a drink?’
Whoa. That volte-face was so violent it’d be a miracle if he didn’t give himself whiplash. In truth, Winnie was gasping for a drink; she hadn’t thought to bring any water with her as she’d expected her neighbour to be closer than he was, and the sun overhead was making her feel every inch the barbecued prawn he’d likened her to. Nonetheless, she still considered saying no, because there was every chance he was being sarcastic.
‘I don’t suppose it’d go amiss,’ she said, feigning indifference.
His full mouth turned down as he shrugged. ‘It was just a neighbourly offer. Don’t force yourself.’
Winnie sighed and gave in. ‘Some water would be very nice if you wouldn’t mind.’
He inclined his head, then turned away and started to stride through the trees. ‘This way.’
Was it OK to follow a stranger into his house in a foreign land? It’d seem terribly rude if she didn’t now she’d accepted.
