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"Skip"/"Skippy" is slang for Anglo-Australians, used mostly by Australians of Mediterranean background.

Greek Orthodox Christianity uses the Julian calendar for calculating Easter dates, which means it often falls later than the Western dates.

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Even with the Redmond Barry deadline behind us, the next few weeks were hectic at work. The market had picked up again after the Christmas lull and my real estate agents were busy: breaking mice, running out the printer ink, spilling coffee into keyboards, all the little annoyances that kept me gainfully employed. I suppose they sold a few houses along the way. I ran around fixing it all and I did it with a smile on my face and a spring in my step, because I was smitten.

Every night after work Phoebe would call me, once she'd finished the evening's cello practice. We'd talk to one another as new-found lovers do, puppy-like, eager to keep chatting just for the sound of one another's voices: music, or memories of school plays, or favourite books, it didn't really matter as long as we had an excuse to stay on the phone. And there was plenty to talk about; the difference in our ages and upbringing was enough that we each had a different piece of the world to describe, and yet we were close enough to understand one another.

She'd barely made it back to Sydney before we started planning when we might see one another again. She wasn't going to be able to make it back to Melbourne for a while; the lessons she gave were barely paying the bills, and she'd already raided her electric-cello fund to pay for her February trip.

"Besides, love, I need to get stuck into practice for a while. I ought to be getting a good five or six hours a day between now and June, and I have to keep my mind on it. No good letting the mind wander while the body plays on autopilot. And as fond as I am of you, you can be very distracting."

"I'll take that as a compliment. Hmm... if you're very good for the next month and do your five hours a day, do you think you could take the Labour Day weekend off? I could fly up and take you somewhere nice? But only if you've been good."

"It's a date."

And so it was that the Saturday afternoon before Labour Day found us in the Hunter Valley, in the shop at one of the local wineries. It turned out that Phoebe knew a great deal about wines; me, with my eyes closed, I can reliably tell the difference between a red and a white.

Perhaps that's for the best. Somebody had to drive, after all, and it's not like I was really missing out. Where there's wine, there's inevitably good food. So while Phoebe did the tasting and picked out a Verdelho and a Shiraz, I foraged for cheeses, quince paste, olives, and other delicious goodies to make up a picnic for Sunday.

Although I could happily have spent all afternoon browsing their wares, we didn't want to dawdle. I'd picked a bad weekend to visit; there were storms forecast, and as we carried the shopping outside, rain was already starting to speckle the windscreen of our little rented hatchback.

As I started to reverse out of the car park, Phoebe remarked: "That's the problem with having a rich dad."

"Oh?"

"Expensive tastes in wine. Most of the other stuff I can live without, but places like this really test my resolve about not taking his money."

"Heh. Of course, when you think about it, he's still paying for this weekend."

"How ? oh, your wages? That's different, you've earned it, you can spend it how you like. I'm okay with it when it comes through you."

"Like the reindeer and the mushrooms."

"What?"

"Oh, in Siberia or somewhere. There's a hallucinogenic mushroom, only it's deadly poisonous to humans. Reindeer eat the mushroom, and when it passes through their kidneys, it filters out the poison but it's still got the hallucinogens. So the local shamans..." I trailed off, unsure whether I really wanted to finish that explanation.

After a short silence, she replied: "'Vonne... you're weird, you know that? I think it's part of why I love you."

I shifted up to fourth and put my hand on her knee. "Love you too, babe. Now, where am I turning?"

She unfolded the map; we'd gone over it that morning and marked the places that looked interesting. "Right in about five k's, if you want to do the cider place."

"I do, just not sure about the time. We've still got a way to go, and I don't want to be too late at the B on the website it'd looked rather pretty and not too expensive, and it was only after booking that I'd checked the address and realised it was a good forty kilometres out of our way.

"Oh? You have plans for the evening?"

My hand slid up her thigh. "I certainly do. Dinner first and then... oh, blast, can you get that?" My phone had started to ring.

She picked it up and answered it: "Hello, Yvonne's phone, Phoebe speaking... yes, yes, we are. Hang on a moment." To me: "It's Keith from... 'Chambers'?"

"Yeah, that's the B