Free Ibiza Surprise by Dorothy Dunnett Page A

me: I looked in the mirror and got a glimpse of this great, yummy car roaring along at about 85, which was a hell of a rate, I can tell you, on that busy road. Coco Fairley was at the wheel, in dark glasses, with a gold locket and a lilac shirt open right down to the waist, and Gilmore Lloyd was beside him.
    Coco was one of Mummy’s first poets. His specialities were rich old cows and advanced concrete verse. When she went back to America, he found another soulmate, and his career since hasn’t been without incident: he had twice got himself slugged by his own poems. Mummy used to say they were good, and she was probably right. From this, anyway, you will gather that Coco Fairley was one of the world’s seven great fragrances.
    I trod on the accelerator, and a donkey cart sort of flinched out of the way. Behind, Coco did the same, grinning, and beside him Gilmore Lloyd gave a rude kind of cheer. Then I realised that they thought I was Janey. I was wearing a little Chinese coat, with a matching bikini under it, and a headscarf of the same stuff wrapped tight round my hair. It would be a mess when I got on board Dolly, but I thought it was worth it. I whipped off the headscarf and flung the car, hard, at the road. Through the driving mirror, I saw Coco’s cupid’s bow shut under his glasses. Then the locket glittered, and he drew out to pass.
    One thing I can do is drive. All the big brothers had cars, and you would be a bit of a clot if you hadn’t tried out half a dozen by the time you were 14 or 15. At the price of a bit of smooching in the back seat, it was a good way to learn. Clem Sainsbury had an old Rover which was always full of wet towels and Rugby gear, I remember. He was the best teacher of the lot, a bloody perfectionist and no funny stuff while you were driving. I suppose that was why most girls got fed up with him after a while. I had some final lessons and passed my test on a windfall from Daddy, but neither Derek nor I ever had a car till Flo and I clubbed together last year and got our ten-year-old Morris.
    The Maserati Mistral can do 155, the book says. I didn’t know what the Alfa Romeo’s top was, but I did know that I wasn’t going to let that indoor coffee plant pass me. I put my foot down and kept it there. An open-tile wall and a patch of garden marigolds, antirrhinums jumped past, and a woman sweeping the dirt with a long-handled broom slid back, a dark blur. The road narrowed, the fields dropping below: there was a grey retaining wall with a line of giant grasses on my right. Ahead, a Barreiras lorry packed full of cartons of Kelvinators, su seguro servidor, turned a corner and lumbered towards us, followed by a fat Ibiza-tours bus. Coco held it to the last second, and then moved in behind me.
    A black-and-white petrol-pump sign and a workman on an old Vespa, a wicker wine bottle strapped on his pillion. I cut out a second before Coco did and roared past the bike and the petrol station, the Alfa Romeo following, and found myself behind an old, high, scarlet Opel with a cloth roof, doing about twenty-five, with a big Seat 1500, a taxi, coming in the opposite direction.
    It was coming fast, but it wasn’t here yet. The Bar los Cazadores was coming up on the right, and the Atencion sign for the long, wire-netted swoop round to the Portinaitx junction. There we joined the main road, and I’d have to give way. I put my hand on the horn, shoved my signal light on, and drew out and found the red Opel right in the path of the taxi.
    He didn’t even have time to brake. I saw his face and heard a yell from the Opel as I skimmed past, and then I was bearing round the red-and-white netting and up to the Portinaitx junction. It said Ceda el paso. The road to the right was quite empty. A little distance away on the Ibiza road, a cart was coming towards us, an old man holding the reins. I changed down and looked back.
    The Alfa Romeo had got past the Opel and was halfway along the big curve towards me, at