For Emma Renton

with Love

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?

‘Look,’ I said, nudging Charlie. ‘That’s Gussie Forbes, we were at school together.’

Charlie peered over his very dark glasses, which he only wears to emphasize his Mafia-like appearance.

‘She doesn’t seem to have recovered from it as well as you have,’ he said. ‘She obviously skips the features on slimming, when she reads women’s magazines, and concentrates on the ones about “three dimensional charm”. I suppose you want to rush over and reminisce about the “dorm” and the French mistress’s beard?’