Dolly And The Cookie Bird - Dorothy Dunnett - Johnson Johnson 03 by Unknown

stretching her long, bare, brown legs. “Then if we’re strangers, you can’t very well stay here, darling,” she said. “Think how people would talk.” And slamming the car door, she sauntered in through the wrought-iron porch.
    For dramatic exits, you’d go a long way to match it. Unfortunately, one has to be practical. Derek helped me unload the groceries at the back door, not forgetting the ham with the olives in it and the tomatoes. I transferred the Fantas from a paper bag to a holdall and shoved them back in the boot. Then I drove him back to the Hotel Mediterránea, which is the only new show hotel actually inside Ibiza, and saw him booked into a room. I followed him up because my tummy was churning, and I wanted to use his marble-tiled bathroom: there wasn’t any hot water, and the soap wouldn’t stay on the basin, but everything else worked. When I came out he was sitting on the windowsill of his room, looking down on the morning collection of hippies, and the boy had just put two large whiskies on the table. “Come and sit for a minute. I expect you can do with one,” Derek said.
    I thought of all those bloody Fantas and stared at him. I had been deceived. “Oh, for God’s sake, sit down,” Derek said. “I’m not a Boy Scout. But I didn’t murder Father either. That’s what all that was in aid of, wasn’t it?”
    I nodded.
    “And why you came to Ibiza?”
    I nodded again. Neat Whyte & Mackay at nine o’clock in the morning is not my usual form, but I started in on it. Circumstances were exceptional.
    “Then you’re a silly ass making that girl your confidante,” said Derek scathingly. “She’ll run your life for you. They have to be boss, that kind, or nothing. You may think you’re bosom companions, but I bet you’re worth a giggle a minute to her own private circle already.”
    “Honestly, Derek,” I said. Whiskey or no, it was the same old dishwater Derek, all right. “I’m
in
her private circle. We’re friends. She was trying to help. For goodness’ sake: she saw you in Alt Vila the night before Daddy died. And Coco Fairley says he was up to something shady. We thought it would be just you to go all cubs’ honor over the Pater. And you didn’t know Daddy like I did. He was an awful old softie inside.”
    “You drank that far too quickly,” said Derek. He frowned.
    “I always cry when I’m bullied,” I said, and stood up. The floor waved a bit, reminding me all of a sudden of Johnson. “Cessation,” I said. It sounded all right, so I sat down.
    “What?” said Derek. He fished out a large, immaculate handkerchief and chucked it over, looking both peevish and preoccupied. He said, “Now listen to me. I know you think you’re the swingiest chick this side of Chelsea, but you’re going to drive back to the house for your luggage, and then you’re going to take the next plane with me back to Holland. I’m not having you turn into another drunken, layabout tramp like your father.”
    That time I shot to my feet, and I didn’t care whether I could say cessation or not. “Like hell I will! Talk about Janey bossing my life! She’s got a damned sight more horse sense than you have; and what’s more, she doesn’t sit on her fat bottom handing out bloody naïve advice. In any case, who asked you to stick your bloody nose in?”
    “You did,” snapped Derek. “At a time when every minute away from my firm happens to matter. But then, I’m not normal. I haven’t had a lover a week since I was fourteen. I don’t smoke pot. I don’t take LSD. I don’t consider the rest of the world my inferiors and that it owes me my own brand of superior fun. I don’t get so sick of my self-centered life that I’d make monkeys out of decent, hard-working people, for five minutes’ fun.”
    Poor, bloody Derek. I sat down very, very quietly, not feeling angry at all and said nothing for quite a long time, until I realized that I ought to continue the argument. “And who do
you
live