LITMIR.BIZ

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example and get himself a regular job and, even more important, a regular salary with one of the many computer firms head-hunting the pick of the crop of the university’s graduates.

      Bram hadn’t been able to wait to be head-hunted. He needed to earn money immediately to support himself and Jay. Instead he had opted for freelance work, which brought in a smaller income perhaps, but allowed him to be at home.

      It was Helena, a friend from his university days, who had first suggested he set up his own company. She had always had a shrewd head for business.

      Unlike Plum—or Plum’s father.

      Helena had christened her daughter Victoria, but Flyte MacDonald, her first husband—the big powerful redheaded, vehemently left-wing Scotsman she had fallen in love with and married all within the space of a month and totally against her parents’ wishes—had immediately nicknamed their baby Plum, and the name had stuck.

      Flyte had been and still was a sculptor, an unknown one then, but a highly acclaimed one now. Bram thought that Plum’s name rather suited her. There was undoubtedly something ripe and sweet about her, luscious, a sweet juicy allure which went with her hedonistically sensual nature.

      Helena had divorced Flyte when Plum was three years old and had later married her second husband, James, with whom she had had two more children. Neither of whom was anything like Plum.

      Shortly after her sixteenth birthday, Plum had announced that she was leaving school and going to live with her father.

      Normally controlled and calm in everything she did and said, Helena had been white-faced with anger and disbelief when she had related their quarrel to Bram.

      ‘Flyte’s to blame for all this, of course. He’s the one who’s encouraging her to ruin her life like this. James is furious.

      ‘She’s always been rebellious…difficult….’ She had frowned and looked away, unable to look directly at him as she admitted, ‘There have been problems…at school…boys, that kind of thing, but James persuaded them to let her stay on…. And this is how she repays us.

      ‘Can you imagine what people are going to say…to think, when they learn that she’s moved in with her father? Everyone knows the kind of life Flyte leads…his reputation is notorious. He—’

      ‘He is her father, Helena,’ Bram had said, trying to placate her.

      Privately he suspected that Plum would soon get tired of living with her father. Flyte’s work as a sculptor might be highly acclaimed, but there was no denying the fact that his lifestyle was as brash and unconventional as the man himself.

      He lived in a small mews house on the fringes of Chelsea, which he had bought years before when property prices and the area itself reflected the bohemian lifestyle of its inhabitants.

      Now things had changed and so had the neighbourhood, conventional middle-class couples replacing the original inhabitants. But Flyte had not changed along with them—much to the chagrin of his neighbours, who did not enjoy the fallout from the frequent and noisy quarrels Flyte enjoyed with the succession of equally uninhibited lovers and models who passed through his life.

      The Porsche-owning city broker who lived next door had complained that his impressionable children could be affected by Flyte’s lifestyle. Also, he added, he did not enjoy the constant interruptions from the sculptor’s visitors, who weren’t sure which house was his.

      The neighbour was not pleased by Flyte’s response. As an apology, or so he said, Flyte had given him a statue—of a pair of naked lovers enjoying a form of physical intimacy which duplicated the number of the broker’s house. The faces of the lovers in the statue had an uncanny resemblance to those of the broker and his wife.

      ‘You could put it in your front garden,’ Flyte had explained innocently. ‘That way there won’t be any danger of anyone mistaking my house for yours.’

      Somehow or other the incident had been picked up by the papers, much to the fury of the broker. Matters were not helped, from the broker’s point of view at least, by his comment, quoted in the press, that he had never participated in such an activity with his wife, never mind modelled for the sculpture.

      As Bram had prophesied, Plum did not stay long with her father, who, to his credit, had refused to allow her to leave school.

      She was now back living with Helena and James, ‘when she bothered to come home, that is,’ Helena had complained bitterly to Bram, several weeks earlier.

      ‘I know that things are different now from when we were young, but—’ she had bitten her lip ‘—James says if she can’t behave properly and decently then she will have to live somewhere else. He’s concerned about the effect her behaviour will have on our other two,’ Helena had explained. ‘He believes that if they think we’re condoning what she’s doing, they might… What else can we do, Bram? I just can’t get through to her. She’s always been so difficult…so very much more Flyte’s child than mine. I really feel as though I don’t have anything in common with her. She’s so emotional, so…so uncontrolled.’

      So sexual, she might have said, Bram recognised, but she didn’t.

      Plum herself, however, appeared impervious to her mother’s icy disgust at her high sexual profile, her sexual exploits and the widespread reputation she had gained.

      Bram was inclined to feel sorry for Plum more than anything else, despite the fact that—

      The shrill ring of a telephone in a neighbouring office cut across his private thoughts. He glanced at his watch. He would have to leave soon if he was going to keep his appointment with Anthony on time.

      He had known Anthony, or rather Sir Anthony now, since their university days and they had remained in contact, even though their career paths had widely diverged; his into his own business and Anthony’s through work as a student with the voluntary overseas service into the post he now held as the head of a large charity.

      ‘I’ve got a proposal to put to you and a challenge,’ Anthony had told him several months earlier, and when he had explained what he wanted, Bram had laughed and agreed.

      ‘You’re right, it is a challenge.’

      ‘And one you don’t want?’ Anthony had asked him.

      ‘Leave it with me,’ Bram had responded. ‘Let me think about it….’

      Now Bram hurried into the corridor having suddenly remembered something. ‘Jay,’ he called out as he entered his son’s office.

      ‘Yes.’

      Ignoring Jay’s curt hostility, Bram reminded him, ‘You haven’t forgotten about Plum’s eighteenth-birthday party, have you? You’ll need to get her a present.’

      Bram winced inwardly as he saw the look in Jay’s eyes. His son had never particularly liked Plum.

      ‘What have you got in mind? The way I see it, it’s either a chastity belt or a copy of the Kama Sutra, although I suspect that the latter would be superfluous since, according to gossip, she’s already run through every position in it and invented a few more of her own into the bargain. And as for the former—’ he gave his father a wintry, slightly malicious smile ‘—it would be rather a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, wouldn’t it?

      ‘Still, it’s good to know that even the supposedly infallible Helena isn’t quite the perfect mother she would like us to think.’

      Bram listened to his son in silence. If anything, Jay disliked Helena even more than he did her daughter.

      ‘Plum’s a child still, Jay,’ Bram said eventually in defence of his godchild. ‘She’s…’

      ‘She’s a slut,’ Jay supplied brutally.

      As he walked past his son’s office half an hour later on his way out of the building, Bram noticed that the door was open and the office empty, Jay’s desk cleared.

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