groping blindly for it.
'Lo.
Mitzi?
Hi, Dad, are you coming up? She came half-awake at her father's voice,
remembering that this was the day he would fly up to join the family at
their holiday home.
Sorry, baby. Something has broken here. I won't be up until next week.
Oh, Dad! Mitzi expressed her disappointment.
Where's Davey? her father went on quickly to forestall any
recriminations.
You want him to call you back?
No, I'll hold on. Call him, please, baby.
Mitzi stumbled out of bed to the mirror, and with her fingers tried to
comb some order into her hair. It was off-blonde and wiry, and fuzzed
up tight at the first touch of sun or salt or wind. The freckles were
even more humiliating she decided, looking at herself disapprovingly.
You look like a Pekinese, she spoke aloud, a fat little Pekinese, with
freckles, and gave up the effort of trying to change it. David had seen
her like this a zillion times.
She pulled a silk gown over her nudity and went out into the passage,
past the door to her parents suite where her mother slept alone, and
into the living area of the house.
The house was stacked in a series of open planes and galleries, glass
and steel and white pine, climbing out of the dunes along the beach,
part of sea and sky, only glass separating it from the elements, and now
the dawn filled it with a strange glowing light and made a feature of
the massive headland of the Robberg that thrust out into the sea across
the bay.
The playroom was scattered with the litter of last night's party, twenty
house guests and as many others from the big holiday homes along the
dunes had left their mark, spied beer, choked ashtrays and records
thrown carelessly from their covers.
Mitzi picked her way through the debris and climbed the circular
staircase to the guest rooms. She checked David's door, found it open,
and went in. The bed was untouched, but his denims and sweat shirt were
thrown across the chair and his shoes had been kicked off carelessly.
Mitzi grinned, and went through on to the balcony. it hung high above
the beach, level with the gulls which were already dawn-winging for the
scraps that the sea had thrown up during the night.
Quickly Mitzi hoisted the gown up around her waist, climbed up onto the
rail of the balcony and stepped over the drop to the rail of the next
balcony in line. She jumped down, drew the curtains aside and went into
Marion's bedroom.
Marion was her best friend. Secretly she knew that this happy state of
affairs existed chiefly because she, Mitzi, provided a foil for Marion's
petite little body and wide-eyed doll-like beauty, and was a source of
neverending gifts and parties, free holidays and other good things.
She looked so pretty now in sleep, her hair golden and soft as it fanned
out across David's chest. Mitzi transferred all her attention to her
cousin, and felt that sliding sensation in her breast and the funny warm
