Between them, Frankie wandered out onto her balcony, cool as a cucumber in a black linen shift and big Jackie O sunglasses perched on top of her bleached pixie cut.
‘Bath’s running,’ she said. ‘It might take a while, it’s practically a swimming pool.’
A peaceful, easy feeling washed over Winnie’s shoulders, warmer even than the Greek summer sunshine. Frankie would be a while yet, and Stella looked set for some serious sun-worshipping.
‘I might just test my bed out for five minutes,’ she said, lifting her hand to wave to her friends. Frankie did a tiny, crazy, happy dance out of pure contentment, and Stella lifted her hand above the balcony balustrade with an indistinct moan of happiness. Wandering back inside, Winnie momentarily paused to wonder how you might climb up onto a mattress higher than your belly button, then taking a bit of a running jump, she threw herself face-down on the bed and spontaneously laughed for the first time in months.
Ajax placed a tray of three tall, fine-stemmed fishbowl glasses on the beach-bar table in front of them an hour or so later.
‘You’ve built our expectations sky-high now, you know that, right?’ Frankie said, lifting her eyebrows at him. ‘If these cocktails don’t make us feel a million dollars we’re going to want our money back.’
‘Your first drink is always on the house anyways,’ Ajax said grandly. ‘Villa Valentina house secret mix, guaranteed to make you happy.’
‘Free drinks always make me happy,’ Stella sighed. ‘People used to give me free drinks all over town. Stella! Come in, have a glass of champagne! And another!’
‘Ah, get over yourself, superstar. This one’s still free and looks amazing.’ Frankie reached for one of the glasses and handed it to Stella.
‘What is it?’ Winnie lifted her sunnies and squinted up at Ajax hovering close by for their verdict.
He shrugged. ‘Gin and tonic.’
It wasn’t like any gin and tonic Winnie had ever seen before. Peering into the glass as she slid it towards her, she could see rich shades of honeyed nectarine red sparkling with ice and slices of rose-pink grapefruit.
‘Is this rosemary?’ Frankie asked, plucking a herb from her glass and sniffing it.
Ajax preened. ‘I grow it myself in the garden at the back of the villa.’
Frankie dunked it back into her cocktail, using it to swirl the ice cubes. All three women looked up as the guy they’d spotted earlier with Ajax wandered over and placed a platter of glistening halved figs scattered with walnuts down on their table.
‘Oh. My. God.’ Winnie groaned. ‘How good does that look? They’re the fattest figs I’ve ever seen in my life.’
‘Best in the world. I grow them myself in the garden behind the villa.’
‘I’m sensing a theme,’ Stella murmured, then took a sip of her drink and gasped. ‘Bloody hell! That’s amazing. You have to tell me how to make this before I leave.’
Ajax ignored the request, choosing instead to make introductions.
‘Ladies, this is my husband, Nikolas.’
Nikolas stuck out his hand. ‘Nik, please.’
‘Well, thank you, Nik, for this. It looks wonderful,’ Winnie said, nodding towards the plate. ‘I’m Winnie.’
The others jumped up in turn and shook his hand, and he just nodded politely and excused himself.
‘He likes actions, not words,’ Ajax sighed, watching his lover wistfully until he’d disappeared back into the villa.
‘My kind of man,’ Stella laughed, making Ajax scowl theatrically.
‘What is it that you English like to say?’ he said. ‘Not on your nelly.’
He winked and blew them a kiss before threading his way through the tables in the direction of his husband.
‘Happy couples make me want to vom right now,’ Winnie said, taking a good gulp of her drink and then almost choking on the rosemary stem.
Stella grabbed for the glass. ‘Christ, Winnie, it’s too good to splutter all over the floor!’
Frankie lifted her drink so that the sunlight shone through the liquid, bouncing pink crystal shimmers all around them.
‘Everything about this place is special,’ she said. ‘The villa, Ajax, the cocktails, that view … it’s all blissful.’
Winnie had recovered sufficiently to raise her glass and toast the others.
‘To forty-eight hours of secret recipe cocktails and uninterrupted bliss.’
Stella clinked her glass against Winnie’s. ‘I’ll drink to that. And to friendship.’
Frankie nodded solemnly and touched her glass to the others. ‘To us.’
Ajax watched the three women carefully from an upstairs window of the villa, observing the way they laughed together, how they toasted each other, that they were relaxed in each other’s company.
Maybe.
With enough of his secret cocktails and a fractured kaleidoscope of sun-gilded images laid out to seduce them, just maybe.
‘How the shagging hell did this happen?’
Stella looked from Winnie to Frankie clustered around the breakfast bar in her screamingly cool loft apartment. They’d barely sobered up from landing back in England a few hours ago, and reality was sinking in fast. It wasn’t just their hearts that had come home lighter from Skelidos. Their bank accounts were significantly lighter too.
Winnie’s half of the profits from the sale of her beloved house, the one she’d imagined her babies would grow up in.
Stella’s handsome redundancy from Jones & Bow, a chunk of which she’d already earmarked for a world cruise.
Frankie’s nest egg, bequeathed to her by Marcia, the childless elderly neighbour she’d cared for over the last dozen years.
‘Marcia told me that she wanted me to have an adventure,’ Frankie whispered. ‘The very last time we spoke. I didn’t realise that she was leaving the house to me until the solicitor called me in, after she’d … after she’d gone.’
Her neighbour had been more of a surrogate mum, and she’d been aware of Frankie’s deep-seated unhappiness with Gavin for many years. Her gift had been the catalyst for Frankie to finally find the courage to end the marriage her parents had pressured her into as a frightened, pregnant seventeen-year-old. She and Gavin had rubbed along as best they could and the twins had grown up happy and strong as a result, but they were seventeen themselves now and they didn’t need her to wipe their noses or hold their hands when they crossed the road any more. They’d been the reason she’d stayed, and their leaving home had been the reason she’d finally left, too; the reality of living all alone with Gavin had been too much to bear. The boys had filled the silence and the space with noise and clutter: hockey sticks in the hall, muddy football boots in the porch, music too loud in their rooms. Who knew the silence they left behind would be even more deafening? Marcia’s money had allowed Frankie to rent a tiny place all of her own while she considered her next move, somewhere to lie low and lick her wounds, somewhere to spin the globe with her eyes closed and choose an adventure grand enough to warrant Marcia’s approval.
‘Looks like adventure got tired of waiting and came looking for you,’ Winnie said quietly.
All three of them stared at