A flash from the past

I was rummaging through my memory stick last night, and found this. Gawd knows I've lost all ability to write new stuff, so here's something from a few months ago:

Gazing down the length of her body, she knew she had done the right thing. The fur was divinely beautiful; she would have been insane to let it go. There was something gently nurturing in its soft warmth, a plush luxury that reminded her of when she was tiny, snuggling up to her mother and her comforting, familiar scent. The symmetry of the markings delighted her – perfect black rosettes against caramel background.
She paced slowly back and forth, revelling in the thick ripples of the fur as she walked. She knew, some day, that her determination to have the coat would lead to repercussions; even now, she was privately ashamed of the cost. She didn’t even particularly want to be seen in it – it was enough for her just to possess it.
Turning, the leopard pawed absently at the corpse of the hunter, before bounding sleekly back to her den to feed her cub.

Beep beep!

Well, well. Who'd have thunk it? After just over a year of juddering, stalling and screaming (and that's just from the instructors), not to mention a frankly horrifying amount of cash spent, I can now drive! On my own, and everything! I can exclusively reveal that my examiner from this morning is without a doubt the most generous man in England - he seemed to view my rolling gracefully backwards on a hill start as nothing more than a pleasant diversion from the dreary business of proceeding forwards, and he accepted that stalling needlessly at junctions merely adds to the interest of the drive. What a lovely chap. I hope his team wins the DSA Euro 2008 sweepstake, and more especially I hope that the sour-faced harpie who glowered throughout the whole of my first test has got Switzerland.

A flash of lamp light

Olivia ran, splashing through puddles, silting her Jimmy Choos with ruinous mud. She clattered into her apartment building and tore up the stairs. In the kitchen, she tremblingly poured a huge Scotch, and swigged it down despite her breathlessness.
It couldn’t be possible.
Not Daddy.
‘Think of the family name,’ had been his mantra, especially when Olivia was negotiating her teens. Every prospective rebellion or lower-class potential boyfriend had been delicately dealt with, usually with crisp wads of banknotes and earnest lectures, and eventually Olivia had come to believe in Daddy’s creed. No scandal, at any cost.
Until this evening, that is, when Olivia had popped in to show Daddy her new handbag. She found him in the kitchen, red-faced, eyes closed and sweating as he rogered Forbes, his Parliamentary secretary. Olivia turned and ran.
She paced her apartment for some minutes. How could he do this to Mummy’s memory? Or to Forbes, for that matter? Mummy at least must be avenged. Olivia contemplated calling the News of the World, but knew no editor would dare cross Daddy with nothing more than hearsay, easily contradicted.
Standing at the window, Olivia cooled her forehead against the glass and closed her eyes against the brightness issuing from the nearby Tiffany lamp. Suddenly she smiled. She’d give Daddy scandal. She left.
Some time later, she returned, placing a few rapidly-printed fly bills on the table. She hadn’t had time to put all of them up, but it was a start. She shimmied into her new outfit (purchased with a shuddering thrill of cheapness from New Look), applied lurid lipstick, and carefully changed the bulb in her lamp. The pavement below the window was suddenly bathed in an inviting glow of red.