and who knew the score. The score, in Jesse’s case, was open access to his body and absolutely no entry into his heart or his head. Over the years he’d grown to enjoy being so sexually upfront; it was pretty liberating, freeing really. He couldn’t actually see why people bothered bending themselves over backwards to be something they weren’t in order to accommodate someone else’s needs. It wasn’t healthy.
‘Am I too early?’
Winnie leaned in through the half-open stable door, cutting off his train of thought. Pink skinny-rib T-shirt. White denim mini. Canvas sneakers. Her face looked free of makeup and she’d tied her hair back in a ponytail; Jesus, if she told him she was eighteen he’d believe her, which pretty much made him a dirty old man at thirty-nine. Brilliant. Another negative emotion to attach to her; she really was pushing all of his buttons without even trying.
Shoving his sunglasses on and sweeping his keys up out of the bowl on the dining table, he shook his head.
‘Nope. Right on time. Let’s go.’
Jesse’s dusty black VW Golf was nothing like Rory’s beloved sports car back home, and Winnie decided she much preferred its simple unpretentiousness. The air-con was icebox cool, and that was a much more valuable prize out here than hand-stitched leather bucket seats or tinted glass. The low-slung red Alfa would have been an entirely unsuitable car for a baby; Winnie sometimes wondered if the idea of losing it had been one of the contributory factors to Rory’s infidelity.
‘I have a couple of errands to run, so I’ll drop you at Carrefour and come back in an hour or so,’ Jesse said, turning left out of the lane onto the main road.
Winnie nodded, taking in the scenery as it whipped past her window. Olive groves, mellow fields and always the still, glittering Mediterranean in view too.
‘This is the island’s only main road,’ Jesse said. ‘It follows the coast all the way around, and the lanes that lead off it all run in towards Skelidos town at the centre. It’s a blessedly simple layout, unlike the crazy one-way systems you’re no doubt used to back home.’
‘Sounds straightforward,’ Winnie murmured.
‘You’ll find that much about Skelidos is like that. Uncomplicated.’ Jesse indicated to turn off the main road, leaving the sparkling sea behind them. ‘It’s one of the big things that I love about the place.’
‘Can I ask how you came to live here?’ she asked, curious and unguarded.
He flicked his dark eyes towards her over his sunglasses. ‘You can ask, but I’ll lie about the answer.’
Winnie held his gaze for a second before he looked back towards the quiet lane, and she saw there that although his answer had been delivered in an off-the-cuff tone, he wasn’t joking. God, he was a prickly fish.
‘Just don’t answer at all then,’ she said. ‘Lies are one thing I’ve had more than my fill of.’
This time when he glanced her way he didn’t look flippant. ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’
They lapsed into silence for the rest of the ride, Jesse concentrating on the bumpy, dusty lane and Winnie taking the chance to see the more agricultural heart of the island away from the coast.
‘Is it mostly olive farms on the island?’
Jesse nodded. ‘Olives. Cattle for dairy produce, and vegetables in season of course. I wasn’t exaggerating about the simple pace of life here. Farmland has stayed in the same families for generations and property rarely comes up for sale. You guys are about the only new people here in as long as I can recall.’
‘Wow,’ she said, taken aback. No wonder Corinna had been so eager to get a look at them. Life in England had been so entirely different; neighbours came and went and people did any number of things to make their living. Here there was an actual community, a sense of family and of history. Even in the short time she’d spent on Skelidos so far, Winnie was already starting to feel that it suited her bones more than the complicated, fractured society back home in the UK.
Home. It was a word that didn’t seem to apply to anywhere for Winnie right now. Her parents’ house would always be her childhood home, but living there again for even a short time had proved glaringly that it was no longer her home these days. Her home had been the house she’d bought with her husband and built into their love nest, but also the place where she’d discovered his infidelity, and so it was no longer somewhere that she held any keys or affection for.
It was too soon to confidently refer to Skelidos as home either though. She hoped that one day it would be in her blood and her heart, but at the moment it felt more like they were visiting the island than emigrating to it. Perhaps it was because the others, Stella in particular, seemed to view this as an experiment, a short-term stopgap to get them all out of crisis points at home. They’d all been in need of something and Villa Valentina had practically fallen into their laps.
They hadn’t realised at the time how rare it was for property to become available on the island; they certainly hadn’t counted on being the only newcomers in the last decade.
‘Is tourism fairly new here?’ Winnie asked.
Jesse nodded. ‘Very much so. None of the tour operators come here, thankfully. We’re happy to leave the crowds over on Skiathos, and on Skopelos too now thanks to Mamma Mia!’
‘They filmed it there?’
‘Sure did, and their tourism shot off the scale as a result. I’m just glad they didn’t glance our way instead.’
Winnie had seen the movie several times over. Her mother had even mentioned it when she’d broken the news about the B&B, in order to fret that life wasn’t like the movies and they were asking for trouble buying a slice of some unknown island. Winnie’s parents valued routine and order; the concept of their daughter upping sticks across the globe to somewhere they’d never even heard of had filled them with unease.
Skelidos did share some of its bigger sisters’ beautiful traits, though. Lush green pine-forest-clad hills surrounded by sleepy agricultural lands, all fringed with pale, sugar-soft sands sliding seamlessly into the gleaming turquoise sea. Given the ever-present overhead sun, it was a surprisingly verdant place, with creamy wildflowers awash through the hedgerows and the familiar, abundant ramble of bright cerise bougainvillea in evidence everywhere. For a small island, it certainly packed a visual punch; it was picture-postcard Greece without the crowds or the neon bars, an off-the-beaten-track paradise that few people seemed to have discovered as yet.
‘This is you,’ Jesse said, turning into the car park of a more sizeable Carrefour than Winnie had expected. ‘What?’ He slid his glasses off and turned to look at her when she didn’t move.
‘Nothing,’ Winnie said. ‘It’s just bigger than I thought.’
‘Just because we’re quiet it doesn’t mean we’re uncivilised. You’re perfectly safe,’ he said. ‘We like our exorbitantly priced English teabags and imported bacon just as much as the bigger islands.’
Winnie rolled her eyes. ‘You think we won’t cut it here, don’t you?’
‘It’s not for everyone,’ he said. ‘You might find it too quiet.’
‘Maybe. I don’t think so though, somehow. And anyway,
