Frankie stood staring into the empty fridge.
‘I think there’s some shops on the other side of the beach,’ Winnie said. They’d barely ventured further than the beach on their last flying visit to Skelidos, but from what she could remember the few shops and restaurants strung out on the far side of the sand counted as the centre of the small resort. The island in general was very low-key; it wasn’t on the hen-party radar or likely to appeal to the thrill-seeking crowd. It was left field of the beaten track, and Winnie for one was perfectly happy for it to stay that way.
‘That means that whatever we buy needs to be lugged all the way back across the beach,’ Stella groaned. ‘We’re going to have bigger muscles than Olympic shot-putters after a summer here.’
‘You know what we need?’ Frankie closed the fridge and picked up her purse. ‘A donkey.’
Winnie considered it. ‘God, yes! How charming would it be for our guests if The Fonz brings their luggage across the beach for them! Not to mention that we can use him to carry our shopping.’
‘Can’t we just get a car?’ Stella frowned.
‘Well, we could,’ Frankie said. ‘But where’s the fun in that?’
‘I’m worried people might mistake me for the Virgin Mary if I start riding a donkey around town.’ Stella made the sign of the cross on her chest. ‘They might all fall on their knees and worship me.’
‘I reckon you’re safe.’ Winnie eyed Stella’s legs. ‘I don’t think Mary wore hotpants.’
‘I’ll have you know that these hotpants were bloody expensive. They deserve a little bit more reverence, thank you very much.’ She flicked Winnie a sly look. ‘You can borrow them when you go back to woo the donkey, if you like.’
Choosing to rise above Stella’s obvious grin, Winnie looked around the big, airy kitchen, taking in the facilities.
‘We need food. Milk, sugar and coffee. And water, lots of water.’
‘Eggs. Breakfast pastries,’ Frankie added to the list. ‘And jam.’
‘And a big strapping man to carry it all back for us,’ Stella said, picking up the keys. ‘Come on, ladies. Let’s go and introduce ourselves to the locals.’
‘Two shops, a bar and one restaurant,’ Frankie said. They sat in a line on the low stone wall separating the sand from the beach. ‘It’s not going to rival Kavos any time soon, is it?’
‘Thank God,’ Winnie said, although privately even she had to admit that the resort was several steps beyond quiet.
‘I’m not surprised Ajax needed out,’ Stella said. ‘The bright lights of Athens must have been like beacons out there, attracting all the tourists.’
‘So. This store?’ Winnie looked up at the cherry-red canopies over the tiny local shop. ‘Or that one?’ She nodded a little way along the road to a similarly small place with yellow and white awnings. Each of them seemed to be a catch-all shop; convenience food, beach lilos and cheap sunglasses on stands outside, fridges full of cold drinks. Great for a day on the beach, not so fabulous to stock up your fridge.
‘We really need to find a supermarket,’ Stella said. ‘What I wouldn’t give for my car.’
They all looked up as a guy wondered out of the solitary bar and raised his hand in greeting.
‘Ladies, welcome to Skelidos!’ he said. ‘Gin and tonic?’
‘You’re so speaking our language,’ Stella laughed, jumping to her feet.
‘I’m Stella –’ she stuck her hand out as the guy drew nearer ‘– and this is Frankie, and Winnie. We just bought the B&B over on the other side of the beach. The pink one?’
‘The only one in the town,’ he said, his grin a slash of white teeth against his deeply tanned skin. ‘I’m Panos. We wondered when you’d come.’
‘Well, we’re here now,’ Frankie said and smiled.
He looked from one to the other of them. ‘Come in, come in. I’ll gather people up to come say hi to our newest locals.’
‘Now there’s that Greek charm and neighbourly hospitality we’d hoped for,’ Stella said, laughing and linking her arms through Frankie and Winnie’s as they followed Panos between the Coca-Cola sunbrellas shading the empty tables outside his bar.
‘Island gin?’ he asked, holding up a bottle of nectarine blush liquid as they each took a stool at the pine-topped bar.
They watched as he made theatre of pouring them each a long drink over ice, the tonic fizzing over the ice cubes to create the same rose-pink G&T cocktail they’d drunk so many of with Ajax a few weeks back.
‘Gin’s clear where I come from,’ Stella said, holding her drink up curiously.
Panos nodded. ‘Ah, but this one is special. Ajax used to make it for us.’
‘He did?’
‘He didn’t tell you?’ Panos frowned as they all looked nonplussed. ‘This is very bad.’ Turning to look over his shoulder, he called out for his mama.
They watched in silence as a small, slight woman dressed in black appeared. Panos let forth a stream of fast Greek smattered with their names, gesticulating across towards Villa Valentina in the distance.
Panos’s mother fired back something equally breakneck fast, speaking with her hands as much as her voice. Panos paused for a moment while he decided how to translate what she’d said.
‘She say that it’s always been brewed at the villa ever since she was a child. If you live in the villa now, you have to do it. It’s the law.’
‘The law?’ Winnie said, alarmed. ‘Are you sure?’
Panos’s mother nodded vigorously, speaking again, and they all waited for Panos to translate.
‘Island law,’ Panos shrugged. ‘The plants only grow in the garden at the villa. You make it, I sell it.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t have a clue,’ Stella said, deciding that she much preferred drinking the gin to making it.
‘Is there even a recipe to follow?’ Frankie asked, unsure if they were being wound up, some kind of odd welcome-to-the-island ritual, sort of similar to how she’d been sent to buy a bubble for a spirit level when she was a fifteen-year-old Saturday girl at the jewellers in the local shopping precinct.
Panos asked his mother Frankie’s question, but it was clear from her facial expressions and shrugging shoulders that they weren’t going to get a clean-cut answer.
Winnie sipped her drink and closed her eyes. God, it was good stuff. ‘It isn’t right that the world should run out of this,’ she said. ‘It’s possibly the best drink ever.’
It was difficult to say what it was about the gin that made it so delicious. It was rhubarb-pink in colour but not in flavour, and aromatic from the stem of rosemary Panos had pushed through the ice cubes exactly as Ajax had.
‘We could try to find out from Ajax?’ she offered, although she wasn’t entirely certain that they even had his details.
‘You must, you must,’ Panos urged, opening a wall cupboard behind the bar. ‘This is all I have left and I’ve never run out yet.’
There looked to be a dozen or more bottles in Panos’s stash, all bearing a handwritten and illustrated label. They looked like magic potions.
‘Well, we’ll look into it,’ Stella said. ‘Maybe we should have another taste just so to be clear.’
Panos looked at her through narrowed eyes, and then started to laugh. ‘You will be the troublesome one. I see these things.’
Frankie