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frame. With her eyes closed shesaw the big round head with its full grey beard leaning down towards her. Fat fingers adorned with gold rings tickled her ribs, and she shrieked her joy. The air had been thick and sweet from his marijuana. ‘One day soon, I’ll fill you with Jesuslove,’ his slurred voice rumbled.
    She had laughed then. Shuddered now.
    But then, she thought miserably, that was always the way when it came to men – boys. She just never seemed to have any luck. So far they had fallen into two categories; the first she hadn’t even believed existed until afterwards. More handsome than Adrian, wittier than a channel comedian, with the culture and manners of a Royal. But most of them had no real money – executive assistants, flavour-of-the-month artists, impoverished aristocracy, men who could make deals to retire on if they just had backing. They haunted the fringes of society, sharks who homed in on her name, her money like fresh meat, which in a way she was. She had been too young, too stupidly blind with the whirlwind of holiday romance. And in bed his immaculate body had made her scream out in glory. Only afterwards did she find out she was simply part of his grand scheme.
    She had fled from one extreme to the other. Back to her exclusive Swiss school, and into Joel’s arms, a boarder at the boys’ school down the road. He was the same age as her, the sensitive type, mild-mannered, caring, just perfect for a true first love, she knew he would never exploit her. And in bed he was an utter disaster; she would lie in his twitchy embrace and remember how sensational sex could be. Thankfully it had fizzled out soon enough, her leaving her school, him returning to France, neither making much effort to keep in touch.
    The soul-bruising knocks and disappointments had set up a barrier, a psychological flinch. And the boys seemed aware of her mistrust, finding it difficult to breach. Anyone who could was too smooth, those that couldn’t would be like Joel. What she wanted more than anything was one good-looking boy who didn’t know who she was to look at her and think: yeah!
    Then Kats had come to stay at Wilholm, injecting somemuch-needed laughter to the long procession of warm, wet, boring days; and she’d brought Adrian with her. Adrian: who fitted the bill as though he had been born for her, mature, athletic, no doubt very experienced in bed, fun, intelligent, not at all arrogant. And when he had smiled and said hello there had been no barrier, no hesitancy at all. It would’ve been utterly sensational, if Kats hadn’t enchanted him first.
    Julia shivered slightly at the involuntary recollection of Primate Marcus and the cult. She’d been ten when the upheaval came, the big Texan, known later as Uncle Horace, had arrived to take her away. Over the sea to a near-mythical Europe and a grandfather she’d never even known she had. Lady Fauntleroy, the other commune kids had teased before she went, bowing, curtseying. She’d giggled with them, playing along, secretly terrified of leaving the gently curving sandstone passages with their broad light-wells and the eternal magnificent desert above. Her mother had stayed with the cult, her father had accompanied her.
    The bioware processors helped Julia suppress the name, the whole concept of
father
, pushing him below conscious examination, a fast, clean exorcism. He brought too much pain. Childhood ignorance was a blissful existence, she reflected.
    Europe and Philip Evans, her grandfather; and the astonishing revelation of Event Horizon. A company to rival a
kombinate
in size, heroically battling the British PSP, which surely made Grandpa a saint. Socialism was the ultimate Antichrist.
    Her grandfather had sent her to the school in Switzerland, where starchy tutors had crammed her with company law, management procedures, finance; twittery
grande dames
teaching her all the social graces, etiquette and deportment, refining her. She’d dropped her American