Octavia

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The idea for OCTAVIA first came to me in 1968. I wrote it as a long short story called OCTOBER BRENNEN and it appeared in serial form in Petticoat. I then took the story and completely rewrote it, and the result is OCTAVIA.

The moment I set eyes on Jeremy West I knew I had to have him. I was sitting in Arabella’s, watching a crowd of debs and other phonies undulating round the floor and thinking they were dancing, when suddenly the bamboo curtain was pushed aside and a blond man walked in and stood looking around for a waitress.

Even in the gloom with which Arabella’s conceals its decor I could see that he had class — tall and lean, with one of those beautiful high cheek-boned faces with long, dreamy eyes like Rudolph Nureyev.

As the waitress came up to him, I watched to see if he’d leer down her exposed jacked-up bosom. He didn’t. She led him to a table next but one to ours. He was obviously waiting for someone. Then a plump girl came through the bamboo curtains and stood blinking round with short-sighted eyes. He stood up and waved to her, and her face broke into a smile that was faintly familiar. Then I recognized her. It was Gussie Forbes; we’d been at school together. How on earth had she managed to land a havoc-maker like that?

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