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and I’ll give her the bad girl’s guide to eating a weenie.’
    Oh God, please don’t, Delilah prayed silently, hoping and hoping that a weenie was only a sausage.

5
Beachcomber
    42 ml light rum
    14 ml Triple Sec
    14 ml each of lemon and lime
    dash of sugar syrup
    14 ml grenadine
    Oh the bliss of being so idle. Beth lay stretched out on her lounger with her eyes shut, her book face down on her tummy. The huge cream canvas parasol shaded her face against the ageing ravages of the sun and factor fifteen was slicked all over her body and limbs. She could hear the nearby slap-slap of flip-flops on concrete, a hard, rhythmic splash as someone being sporty in the pool swam up and down, and the rise-and-fall ripples of chatter from the tables by the Sundown bar. She could smell the sweet coconut tang of suntan lotion and taste a hint of sea salt on the breeze.
    Better than work, this, definitely, she thought. Far, far better than spending the morning experimenting with herbal seasonings for Savoy Cabbage FlemishStyle (
Savooikool op Z’n Vlaans
) to a background chirruping of Wendy detailing how effectively HRT was boosting her libido. Why was it, Beth wondered, that whenever Wendy stirred a gloopy, steaming sauce, she felt compelled to discuss bodily fluids of some kind? From a past medieval existence, was she missing the arcane visceral contents of a cauldron? Ned had a theory that she’d hit on her winning formula for international extreme cuisine after casseroling her own babies’ placentas. If that was the case, Beth fervently prayed she wouldn’t return to her original inspiration and expect her to help testing out concoctions such as caul pâté or umbilical soup. Surely there was only so much the nation’s couch cooks could take?
    â€˜Hot, isn’t it?’ Lesley, alongside with a Jilly Cooper and sipping a glass of iced water, wafted air in front of her face with her sunhat. ‘Think of all the poor souls back home, bundled up against the cold and the day getting dark before the afternoon’s half gone. Hee hee!’ she chortled gleefully.
    â€˜I’d rather not think about home,’ Beth told her. ‘We’ve left Nick and his Felicity floozy in charge of the house. I hope they’re OK.’
    Would they be? Suppose there was a sudden wintry freeze-up and all the pipes burst, sending water from the loft tanks cascading through the ceilings? Suppose a gang of vicious burglars followed Nick home late at night and beat him to a pulp for the plasma-screen telly?
    â€˜They’ll be all right. Don’t you worry about it.’ Lesley waved away her concerns. ‘Anyway, there’s not a lot you can do about anything from here, is there, even if they have trashed everything you own. Just relax and forget about home. That’s what you’re paying for.’
    â€˜I’m trying, I’m trying!’ Beth insisted, wishing domestic arrangements hadn’t crossed her mind. That was the problem with the one-in-charge role, it was so hard to switch off. ‘But I can’t help imagining Nick making a late-night bacon sandwich and forgetting to turn the grill off. We could be going home to a pile of cinders and an insurance company wriggling out of paying, on grounds of leaving an irresponsible teenager in place of me.’
    â€˜Well you can stop that right now or you’ll worry the whole fortnight away. Beats working, this, though, doesn’t it?’ Lesley echoed Beth’s earlier thoughts, stretching her arms into the breeze and yawning. ‘It’s just after lunch, home time. If I was back in Guernsey I’d be ironing a whopping great pile of pillowcases. What about you? You’re still working for World Wide Wendy, aren’t you? What’s she up to?’
    â€˜Oh the usual,’ Beth told her. ‘Wendy’s now working on the cuisine of Belgium. There’s a new book on its way, with a TV one-off