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the man who had brought his parents to ruin was sitting opposite him. She had changed her name to avoid the stigma that accompanied being the daughter of a fraudster, but she lived her life under the threat of exposure.

    “Time to pack it in, then,” Simon yawned. “We’ve got several time zones to get through anyway. See you in the morning - or evening, whatever it is.”  

    But despite the luxury jet’s opulence, Tamara did not sleep easily even though the passenger seats reclined so far back it was as if she were in a decent sized bed, and she could only doze fitfully as their jet bore them effortlessly toward Italy.

    ***

    Tamara had been dreaming. It was that dream . She didn’t have the dream so often now, but she still awoke unsettled   - and sad.

    It always began the same way: Tamara was a small girl again, playing with her parents. She was in the living room at home, and she felt indescribably happy. Her mother was laughing, and her Daddy was stroking her hair, and calling her his special little girl. She had the intense feeling that the moment would never end, that she would be happy for ever after, like the endings of the bedtime stories which her father read to her when he got home from work.

    But then, the dream changed: she was elsewhere, and she had grown up. Everything was different now. She was dreaming that she was alone, standing in the vastness of the Australian outback. She was desperately searching for something, but Tamara didn’t know what it was she was looking for. She knew only that she had lost something so precious that she might never be fully herself again until she found it.

    And then, just when she realised that she was never going to discover her goal, the dream ended. She would wake up, knowing she wouldn’t get back to sleep again.

    It was the same when she woke up on the flight feeling thirsty and dehydrated..  

    Tamara ordered   black coffee, and sat disconsolately gazing into the darkness as the Gulfstream cruised high above Asia.

    It had been the same when her mother had telephoned. Tamara was getting dressed when the phone rang. She’d known instinctively before she heard her mother’s voice that something must be wrong, but she couldn’t believe any more disaster could strike her family. But to be called at this hour meant that there was another crisis.  

    “Darling? I don’t know how to - “

    “Mum? What is it? What’s wrong?” Then, “Is it Dad?”

    “Darling -” And her mother had burst into tears.  

    “What’s happened? What’s going on? MUM?”  

    Douglas Ahern had been found dead in his apartment. He had taken an overdose.  

    The newspaper headlines screamed at her from every news kiosk as Tamara walked to work next day. “Disgraced Finance Chief Found Dead!” “Multi-Million Fraudster Commits Suicide!” “Trial To Be Adjourned.”

    The next few weeks were nightmarish. Journalists were door stepping he mother’s house; Tamara disconnected her landline but they somehow found her cell phone number.  

    “Miss Ahern ? Will you be giving the money back? What about the pensioners? How do you feel?”  

    How could you, Dad? How could you have put us through this? You bastard….. Oh, Daddy……..

    And then she wept, crying for the father she realised she had never known, grieving for the loss of all that she had believed rock solid.

    The enormity of her father’s embezzlement unravelled as the trial had progressed. The lifestyle she never thought of questioning because it had been the backdrop of her life since she could remember, turned out to be built on lies and deception.  

    At first she joined her mother in the courtroom, requesting compassionate leave from work. But the weeks dragged by, with endless details of intricate financial arrangements and descriptions of fake invoices - it was more than Tamara could take.  

    She hardly glanced at her father, sitting between his lawyers. He never made eye contact with her,