After a suitable period of mourning for her prematurely deceased, high-rolling husband, Fleur came to the conclusion that the sort of men she dreamed of possessing her were rarely interested in either her wealth or her lifestyle, and she settled for the type she needed, rather than the type she imagined she wanted.

Fleur had met Zeno towards the end of his reign in the rock-and-roll raj. She was working, briefly, for a women’s glossy. There had been little physical tension between them, and they had quickly become relaxed with each other. She admired Zeno’s eye, and tried to interest him in opening a jewellery shop in partnership with a maharanee and herself; a three-way split. Zeno wisely declined: he correctly surmised his situation vis-à-vis the two voracious ladies.

Fleur continued to court Zeno, her interest only waning when he married. He preferred not to come to parties without his wife, and this lessened his desirability; he became less valuable as bait for ladies of socially acceptable pedigrees. Fleur, unlike other hostesses, was always short of suitable females.

This continual craving of Fleur’s to give better and more sumptuous dinner parties knew no bounds. It knew no cause either. Or rather, Fleur never gave thought to any, although some of her earlier guests speculated that the cause was Fleur’s deep-seated need, not only to be in company with the rich, famous and beautiful, but also to make them beholden to her. Most egos of an unrefined nature find all that is above or below their own standards agitating, and cannot resist showing it. Fleur’s ego, however, had become so inwardly crushed from not expressing these irritations that, by the time she reached maturity, she held herself in perilously low esteem. To be constantly acknowledged by individuals she judged to be superior to herself had become her only hope of salvation.

By the time of her carefully put-together full-moon party, her choice of man and the party games she planned were all that remained of the small girl prematurely despatched to boarding school. The house on the hilltop crescent reflected the attempt of Fleur’s psyche to erect a canopy which would deflect the jarring effect life had had on her soul.

The decor was not strictly her own taste, but more how she imagined discriminating people lived. However, her own particular style did manifest itself in the form of the books and magazines which cluttered most of the horizontal areas, discs for the CD equipment, and trays of comforting delicacies which rested close by every television set and their video decks. Within false fingernail reach of Fleur’s own bed sat a lacquered box filled with Halcyon, the elliptical lavender personality nicely bridging the potentially revealing moment between the day-long patchwork of distractions and the oblivion of sleep.

She kept a suite of rooms which she referred to as the ‘boy’s part’ for, despite the fact that no serious relationship had come her way since the departure of her husband, she did not make a move without the consideration that a man would soon form part of her life. Hotel and flight reservations were always made a deux. The ‘boy’s’ quarters were above her own, and compromised a bedroom—equally spacious, but manly—and a bathroom/lavatory which had been equipped with an eclectic array of masculine devices and tools gleaned from her varied experiences in the field: a wooden bowl containing Comptoir Sud Pacifique shaving soap, and a bottle of Pinaud’s Elixir Shampoo, both from Paris; a Simpson size 3 best badger brush, barely used. And amongst the more ornate objects used for seduction purposes, a folding leather clasp of cut-throat razors, seven in all, individually named for each day of the week. Behind the door, on a hexagonal brass hook —which Fleur hoped would one day soon serve a permanent butch dressing gown—hung the accompanying leather strop.