HI Reader
I've wanted to write an occasional series of short stories for a while now. The premise being to write about the adventures of a group of friends living in present day London. There is no single protagonist. There are in fact four, with perspectives alternating between the different characters. That's the idea anyway.
The stories are mainly for my own benefit, to test my creative/erotic writing skills, but if anyone else finds them fun then it's a bonus. The first couple of chapters will be spent introducing the main characters and so there isn't much plot to begin with. Hopefully this will come as the story develops.
Constructive criticism is always welcome and if you enjoyed a story then please let me know what you enjoyed about it, so that I can improve my writing.
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Chapter 1
Elise Curtis sat in the First-Class section of the Airbus 380 as it made its way from Los Angeles to London. Even though the partition to what the airline called her 'suite' was closed she could still hear raised voices coming from the lounge bar. A group of minor reality show celebs were getting drunk on Champagne at their production company's expense. It was probably more refined in Cattle-Class, Elise thought to herself.
She looked through the extensive list of films and TV programmes on the plane's entertainment system and eventually found the one she was looking for. 'Night Watch' was in its third series now. A gritty, no punches pulled, prime time drama about a specialist police unit brought in to track down serial killers. It was up for several BAFTAs this year and Elise thought that she should at least try to watch it, especially as Caitlin Parsons, the woman she called mother or more precisely 'mummy", was in the starring role.
Caitlin Parsons (her maiden name) was a national treasure, a star of the British stage and screen for thirty years now. Her husband, Elise's father, Piers Curtis was held in similar affection, especially since appearing as Lord 'such and such' in the highly successful Netflix period drama 'Downerton'.
Caitlin and Piers had met in their early twenties, during a season at the RSC. Their affair had begun almost immediately, despite Caitlin being married at the time, to a theatre impresario twice her age who had 'discovered' her in more ways than one. The affair had been passionate and within two years, Caitlin was divorced and she and Piers were married.
It wasn't what you'd have called a traditional marriage however. Both partners' indiscretions were plentiful and, as their careers took off, well documented by the tabloid press, who couldn't get enough of the couple.
It was one of these indiscretions that had resulted in Elise. After they married, Caitlin and Piers employed a housekeeper, an eighteen-year-old Swedish girl called Inge. Inge had impossibly perfect Scandinavian looks and Piers had fallen for her. She became one of his many conquests. Unfortunately, he also got her pregnant. When Inge decided that she wanted to keep the child, Piers and Caitlin agreed that they would do the decent thing and support Inge and the baby.
Sadly however, Inge died in hospital four hours after giving birth to Elise, from undiagnosed internal bleeding. Elise's birth certificate showed Inge as her mother and Piers as her father. A subsequent adoption certificate showed that Caitlin had become her adopted mother.
Piers and Caitlin were loving parents but they lacked both the time and the skills for the job. So they outsourced the task to another pretty young woman named Carole, who lived with them. Carole first acted as nanny to Elise and then, when she grew older, as a kind of governess while her parents were working. Some years later Elise would come to realise that Carole was both Caitlin and Piers' lover. A relationship that endured to this day.
Carole treated Elise like a daughter and gave her the grounding she needed. Elise was a wild child however, which wasn't helped by her parents' laissez-faire attitude to just about everything. As she matured, they allowed her to drink, have boys stay over and do pretty much whatever she wanted. But it was Carole who'd collected her from the police station after she'd been detained on public order charges and it was Carole who would pick up the teenage Elise, drunk from parties and with tear smudged mascara after some boy had let her down.
Elise was a bright child though and managed to get a place at the London School of Fashion where she excelled in the creative, avant-gard, world of design. The real key to her success however was in inheriting both her birth mother's genes. As she matured, Elise turned into a beautiful, tall blonde, with the sort of angular features that photographers couldn't get enough of. Her celebrity lineage did her no harm either and modelling agencies fought to have her on their books.
Modelling took her all over the world but despite earning a small fortune Elise didn't leave home until she was twenty-five. Her parents' permissive attitude and Carole's practical support meant that she hadn't really needed to. It was only in the last couple of years that she'd finally moved out to a mews house in Chelsea, which she shared with her boyfriend, Rufus.
Now, at twenty-seven, Elise was a brand ambassador for a French fashion house, the face of a well-known perfume and a woman with her own swimsuit and lingerie range. It was the latter that had brought her to L.A. just a short trip to discuss using her upcoming collection in a movie.
After watching a couple of episodes of Night Watch, Elise took some pills to help her sleep. They must have been strong because the next thing she was aware of was the cabin attendant waking her for breakfast. The minor celebs were quiet now. Hung over from the previous night's free booze.
The flight landed at Heathrow ahead of time on Thursday morning. Jane, Elise's assistant had organised a car for her and a man stood in the Arrivals area with placard. Observing the driver fight through the London traffic reminded her how busy the city was these days and it took the best part of an hour to do the fourteen miles from Heathrow to the King's Road.
The driver carried her bags into the house then drove off. Elise closed the front door behind her and then, silence. She wasn't keen on silence. It was one of the reasons she'd lived at her parent's house for so long, she got lonely on her own.
When her phone rang she was pretty sure she knew who it would be.
"Hi. It's Peter. I'm just phoning to make sure you got back ok."
It was good to hear Peter's voice. It felt like ages since they'd last spoken.
"Hi. Yes, I'm fine. The flight got in a bit earlier than expected."
"That's good," he said. "How do you feel?"
