a dead horse up a hill. As a consequence, their return to the villa wasn’t at all the champagne-cork-popping experience Winnie had envisaged; it was more of a someone-get-me-some-water-before-I-die situation.
‘Evdasomething?’ she puffed, tipping her bag out on the top of her suitcase and plucking the keys out from amongst the clutter of sun cream, books, lip balm and hair bobbles.
‘Evian?’ Frankie croaked hopefully, taking off her sunhat and fanning herself with it. Her outfit had survived the journey surprisingly well; her long linen sundress had a certain safari chic to it and her trusty sunhat had done a decent job of keeping the worst of the heat away from her skin. She was one of those gamine girls who could carry off a pixie cut, all long limbs and pale freckled skin. Her mother always liked to claim they had French heritage, and every now and then when he’d had a few drinks Gavin had called her his Audrey Hepburn. It was one of the nicest things he’d ever said.
Winnie hauled herself up and then stretched out her hands to pull the others up.
‘Come on. Let’s all go in together for the first time.’
Stella brushed sand from the bum of her shorts. ‘I’m not carrying either of you over the threshold.’
‘Too right,’ Winnie snorted. ‘I tried that once with Rory and I think it jinxed us from the beginning.’
‘Gavin tried it too. I was seven months pregnant at the time and he put his back out for the first month of our marriage.’
‘You two are enough to put a girl off marriage for life.’ Stella took the keys from Winnie and studied the bewilderingly large collection. ‘Any idea which one it is?’
Winnie shook her head. ‘Not a clue.’ Studying the door, she added, ‘Probably something big and old.’
‘They’re all big and old,’ Stella muttered, sliding one after the other into the lock and giving it a hopeful jiggle. Finally, the last but one key slid into place more easily than the others, and it turned with a satisfying clunk. ‘Looks like we’re in, ladies,’ Stella said, turning the doorknob and pushing the door open.
Even though they knew what lay on the other side of the door, it felt completely different stepping inside Villa Valentina knowing it was their new home instead of their temporary reprieve from the daily grind. Frankie closed the door and they all stood in the centre of the high-ceilinged space, gazing around in silence.
‘Is it a bit eerie?’ Stella said, screwing her nose up at the stale air.
‘Don’t say that!’ Winnie said, frowning. ‘It’s just empty. It’s been waiting for us to arrive.’
‘Don’t go all hippy on us, Win,’ Frankie said, laying her hat down on the reception desk. ‘Let’s get some windows open and air the place through. It’s like a bloody oven in here.’
Frankie’s calm, practical approach got them all moving, flinging open windows and doors, then dragging their luggage inside. Winnie spotted an old radio behind reception and switched it on, instantly transported back to their first stay on the island by the familiar Radio Skelidos jingle. The mix of Greek and international pop music added life and movement to the place, wiping away the stillness that had spooked Stella.
‘I found the kitchen!’ Frankie called, and the others followed her voice down the hallway to the back of the building. Ajax had given them a brief guided tour, but it was a big old place and it was going to take some getting used to before any of them knew it like the back of their hands. Stella and Winnie found Frankie unscrewing a fresh two-litre bottle of water, and she’d magicked up three tall glasses and filled them with ice.
‘Ajax left the electricity turned on and a few things in the fridge for us,’ she said. ‘We have ice, we have water and we have wine. What more could a girl want?’
Winnie’s tummy rumbled. ‘Food?’
Frankie shook her head. ‘We need to go shopping.’
‘I don’t think I can face the walk,’ Stella grumbled, gulping down water. ‘The last one nearly killed me. Can I ride the donkey?’
‘Who do you think you are, the Virgin Mary?’ Frankie grinned, adding slices of lemon to their glasses as Winnie jumped off her stool and crossed to open the wooden shutters covering the windows.
‘We need to check on The Fonz,’ she said, craning her neck to look in the garden. ‘God, it’s a bit of a mess out there. I can’t see him.’ She rattled the back door and found it locked.
‘The key’s there,’ Stella nodded towards a hook on the wall and watched as Winnie grappled with the old lock and then threw the bolts. ‘Watch out for snakes in the long grass,’ she said at the last minute.
Winnie turned back, startled. ‘Really?’
Stella shrugged then shook her head. ‘Pulling your leg.’
Winnie rolled her eyes and stepped gingerly out onto the cracked, crazy-paved patio.
‘Donkey,’ she called, in an inviting, sing song voice. ‘Mr Fonz …’ She moved to check down the side of the building, and then ventured further across the parched grass. The garden looked to stretch back quite a way and be walled around the edge by a low, pale, rough stone wall. ‘I think we’ve got fruit trees out here,’ she called back. ‘But I can’t see any sign of a donkey.’
Perplexed, she picked her way along a path haphazardly tiled into the grass, making her way down the length of the garden to the wall at the bottom. Along the way she passed bright wildflowers that would be great on the tables out front and several different types of fruit tree, but no donkey in sight. God, what if he’d keeled over somewhere? She cautiously scanned the ground beneath the trees and bushes but to no avail. It was perplexing really, because there was no obvious exit for a donkey, and the waist-high wall seemed much too big for The Fonz to scale. Wandering back towards the villa, she made a makeshift apron from the bottom of her T-shirt, filled it with fruit plucked from the trees and pondered the missing animal.
‘Plums, I think,’ she said, giving up the search and unloading her haul onto the big, scrubbed kitchen table where the other girls were sitting. ‘And cherries.’
Frankie picked up one of the plump apple-green plums and sniffed it. ‘Greengages,’ she said, then bit it. ‘Oh my God!’ She rolled her eyes in bliss. ‘So sweet.’
The others helped themselves, and for a few moments they all sat around the table eating fruit from their garden and feeling the welcome rush of sugar in their veins.
‘I feel like Barbara from The Good Life,’ Stella said. ‘Have we got any chickens I can kill?’
Frankie loaded the rest of the fruit into a wide, shallow ceramic bowl on the table. ‘You wouldn’t be Barbara. You’d be the what’s her name, the neighbour. The posh one.’
Stella considered it for a second, and then laughed. ‘You’re right. Winnie can be Barbara and kill the chickens, you can be Nigella and roast it, and I’ll be the snooty one in the kaftan who drinks G&T.’
Frankie held her hand up and high-fived Stella silently.
‘I think I could get into gardening,’ Winnie said, warming to the role of Barbara. ‘And
