The Bed and Breakfast on the Beach: A gorgeous feel-good read from the bestselling author of One Day in December

‘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 I have some cut-off dungarees. I can pull it off.’

‘Barbara wouldn’t lose her donkey though,’ Frankie said, shaking her head.

They all jumped as someone knocked on the back door.

‘Maybe it’s the donkey,’ Stella whispered, making them all laugh as Winnie crossed the kitchen and pulled the door wide.

It wasn’t the donkey. It was a man, and by the looks of his scowl, an unimpressed one. He looked dressed for farming in breeches, braces and a loose cheesecloth shirt, and if he wasn’t scowling he’d probably be quite attractive.

‘Kalimera,’ Winnie said, hesitantly trying out her rudimentary Greek.

He let forth a torrent of fast, unintelligible Greek. When he’d finished, she frowned and shook her head regretfully.

‘Err … signomi … my Greek is awful.’

He stared at her in irate silence.

‘Signomi …’

Winnie glanced over her shoulder for help from the others, but found them both wide-eyed and tongue-tied by the arrival of the stranger in their midst.

‘Help me out here?’ she muttered.

‘Feliz navidad?’ Stella tried from her seat at the table, and the stranger lifted his eyebrows and sighed heavily.

‘You just wished me Merry Christmas in Spanish. It’s early May, and this is Greece.’

‘You speak English,’ Winnie said, thinking that he might have made that clear right away rather than let her struggle for his own amusement.

‘Better than you speak Greek, evidently,’ he said. ‘I take it you’re the new owners?’

Frankie came to stand beside Winnie. ‘We are. I’m Frankie, and this is Winnie. And you are …?’ Winnie admired her friend’s polite, cool tone.

‘I’m the guy who rescued your bloody donkey. Poor darn thing would have died in this heat without any water.’ There was an unmissable hint of an Australian twang to his pronunciation. ‘He’s in my olive grove with Chachi when you can be arsed to fetch him.’

Oh, right. Winnie felt her fists ball until her fingernails dug into her palms. ‘Look, Mr … I don’t know your name because you didn’t bother to tell us … we only arrived half an hour ago and I’ve already been out to look for the donkey. It isn’t our fault that Ajax didn’t make proper arrangements for him.’

The guy looked bored. ‘Typical women. Blame someone else and it’ll all be all right.’

Winnie drew in a sharp breath. She’d had enough of men pissing her off back home, there was no way some stranger was going to rain on her parade on the first morning of their brand-new life.

‘Typical man, shooting your mouth off without knowing the facts.’ She stuck her chin out at him and crossed her arms across her chest as Stella came to stand on her other side.