Caroline Jane Wetherby
This is the second of the four volumes that make up 'Caroline's Company'. It carries on from 'After the Dreams', but does start with a synopsis of the preceeding book.,There is a break of some months. Caroline and Jo, Cassandra and Sylvie are again bathing in the lake. There is an interesting version of an aquatic relay race, involving removal of clothing, plastic ducks etc. Cassandra has been recovering from the trauma of losing her family (although the circumstances of this are only gradually revealed) and is responding well to her medication. She has also been demonstrating her engineering skills, which assume more significance as the plot develops. There is discussion between Caroline and Jo about Cassieâ€™s progress and prospects. Since Belle Newcombe, who acts as housekeeper is about to go on holiday, Cassandra, who is a good cook in addition to her many other attributes, will be deputising for her.,Sadie meets three of her friends from London, Amanda and Madeleine, who are dancers at one of the clubs involved in the story, and Amandaâ€™s brother Marley. Amanda and her bother are of Afro-Caribbean descent. Caroline has invited them to the estate for various purposes, which include Marley giving lessons in body-painting. To avoid tedious narration of background history, most of what needs to be told is brought out in conversation between the characters. ,There is another â€˜set-pieceâ€™ dinner, for which Cassie has enslaved Sylvie and Sadie (as punishment for their behaviour in the croquet match) and fitted them with various devices allowing them to be remotely controlled and sexually stimulated. These devices include tails. After dinner, Cassie gives a sex show together with her slaves. Cassie wants to demonstrate to herself and everybody else how her true nature is developing. Her relationship with Marley begins to develop, but she also seduces and/or is seduced by Amanda. ,The following day, after various other activities, there is an impromptu Ceilidh, for which dress and deportment are not those â€˜which would be approved for the Highland Gamesâ€™, and in which the remotely controlled tails make a re-appearance.,John and Janet are also part of the party, but John is about to set off on an overseas trip. He works for the Foreign and Commonwealth office, but in a UK context, this can mean something a little bit different. Janet is staying behind. ,Marley conducts a body painting class, in the course of which Amanda comes to a significant realisation. Both Jenny (Sadieâ€™s missing girlfriend) and Cassieâ€™s cousin Lucy (whom Cassie now very much resembles) were in the London Club shortly before they disappeared, both in the company of the same man. This same man later tried to chat-up Madeleine, with promises of work overseas.,Amanda explains this to Caroline, who immediately starts to build a plan to find out what is happening.,In the meantime, the body painting continues. It ought to have concluded with an orgy but â€˜somehow everyone was too tired to start one.â€™,Caroline goes to London to continue investigations, leaving Cassie and Amanda to look after Janet, and help her overcome her sexual inhibitions. They do this so well (with the aid of more of Cassandraâ€™s devices) that Janet, freed from her old self, adopts the new name of â€˜Llioneâ€™., Caroline returns with the news that both Jenny and Lucy are probably in Africa, lured there by the same man. She has put together a plan to get this man, James Parker, to lead them to the captives. It involves some technology (most of which does actually exist) and mind-games played on James using the resemblance between Cassandra and Lucy, and their but near-but-not-quite similarity to Llione. After a complex scenario involving the simulated seduction of James by Llione, he is fitted with a tracking device and persuaded that he needs to go back to Africa to find out what has really happened to Lucy. At this point there is a brief interlude when John is re-introduced to his re-named wife.,Amanda, Marley and Cassandra go to Africa to be ready for James arrival, but their plan goes astray immediately when Ray Summers, Jamesâ€™s co-villain, meets them by chance at the airport and assumes that Cassie is indeed Lucy, escaped from the brothel where he had confined her. Our heroâ€™s have some official backing, set up by John and others, and by quick thinking and the use of technology, manage to get taken to the very place where Lucy and another girl are being held. There is a complex action scene, in which the villains are arrested and/or killed or devoured by a crocodile, and the women freed. Jenny has died, the victim of very non-consensual sex (in which she took part to save her friends from doing so), and an unattended and deadly childbirth. The baby, named Hope, has survived.,Everybody returns to the UK. Hope is adopted by Sadieâ€™s brother and his wife. There is an amount of settling and healing and Cassandra goes to Thailand for her sex-change operation. When she returns Caroline, Cassandra, and their team begin planning their retribution against the villains, in such a way as to make sure that Lucy never feels threatened again. It has also been established that it was Ray Summers who killed Andrew/Cassandraâ€™s father in an automobile accident. Amidst the love that many of them feel for each other, there is a growing hatred for Summers and Parker.
A Private Collection