Ibiza Surprise Read Free

Flo’s culottes fixed and looked at the mess in the room. Every drawer in the place had been hauled out, and even the bedding unscrambled, or at least Flo said it wasn’t like that when she last saw it. She’d lost the charm bracelet she got from her last boyfriend but one, and was livid. According to her, the doorbell had rung, and George had left her to answer it. She heard him speaking, and then a silence, and she had just started to the door to find out why he hadn’t come back when the lights all went out. The next thing was an ether pad over her face.
    ‘Well, look on the bright side. You hadn’t had the pizza,’ I said.
    George we discovered humped on the floor in the sitting room, and it was rather plain from the start that the Lotus Elan touch was a bit wanting. He looked a disaster and obviously felt it, and it was clear from the way Flo was shuffling about that she knew that as far as George’s associations were concerned, her wagon was fixed.
    All we ever got out of him, even after we switched from instant coffee to Flo’s half-bottle of Japanese whisky, was that he had been knocked down by a middle-aged man with a stocking over his face. He was also stinking of ether.
     
    I had the pizza pie myself, after we telephoned the police at my suggestion from the flat up above. We got to bed finally at three, after the police had fingerprinted the rooms and asked a whole lot of questions. All we’d lost were Flo’s bracelet and my American earrings from Mummy, which had been too nice to throw away. I was always getting presents from Mummy which were too nice to throw away. My three good family pieces were all right because I was wearing them. I always wear them, sometimes under my clothes and sometimes on top. It reminds me, if I needed reminding, that I am the daughter of the fifth Baron Forsey of Pinner . . . of the late fifth Baron Forsey of Pinner. Hell.
    George slept the rest of the night on the sofa, and I cried with my head under my pillow until Flo gave me six aspirins and the rest of the Japanese whisky, and I had a wonderful night.
     
    My brother, Derek, flew over for Daddy’s funeral. I didn’t want to go: I had a hundred and fifty brandy snaps to make for a wedding in Hampshire, and brandy snaps by Flo are simply well-rolled tarmacadam. However, the lawyer-trustee, whom I rather go for, came back from his shoot and took me to a nice plushy lunch at the Cafe Royal in order to jaw me, and then Derek rang up to say he was back from Ibiza and would I take a taxi round to the Dorchester, which he would pay for.
    Daddy never stayed at the Dorchester; he couldn’t afford it but of course he’d been there hundreds of times at private parties and functions, and I knew how to swan in and where. I had a goodish cloth coat, which I’d shortened rather a lot, and a super black hat of Flo’s like a highwayman, and long black boots.
    Derek’s room had a high bed with kicked Queen Anne legs, and there was a battery of taps like Bofors guns in the loo. Derek’s pad was usually the Hilton, with non-stop taped music and an iced-water tap and big lamps for snogging in strategic places all over the room. Not that Derek would bother with girls. He is just split-level minded and goes for efficiency.
    We are not much alike. I’m fair, like the Forseys, but Derek is brown like Mummy was before she had it turned pink. He’s not much taller than I am, which he hates, but he bathes a lot oftener. Derek is a great soap-and-shoe-polish man. He even went through a health-regime fad: sauna baths and nut rissoles, the lot, but he grew out of it and isn’t a bad cook at that. At least when he takes you out, you can be sure of a good meal and a decent bottle of wine, although he won’t touch spirits or smoke. He isn’t bad really, he’s just anti Daddy, and I don’t suppose you can blame him.
    Anyway, he hadn’t much to say about Daddy now. It was suicide all right, they’d found the razor dropped from his hand. He