The High Flyer Read Online Free PDF

to be an outsider on the make. He had no parents who might prove tiresome. His marriage was already ending so no one could accuse me of breaking it up, and there were no children about to be deprived of a father. I had, of course, taken care to establish that the absence of children was not his fault; apparently something was wrong with Sophie’s Fallopian tubes, and an operation to unblock them had failed. I felt sorry for her. But I also felt very relieved that the absence of children did not disqualify Kim from becoming my husband.
    I seemed to have reached the point in my assessment where all I had to do was list his virtues. He had charm, brains, chutzpah, sex appeal, sophistication . . . I ran out of fingers on my left hand and began to count on my right. He was more than acceptable in bed. I knew he had to be a killer-shark in the boardroom, but he apparently had no trouble leaving this side of his personality at the office and becoming the friendly dolphin in his leisure hours. (This dual-natured temperament is far from unknown in big business, and those who possess it often make devoted family men.) I could think of only one disadvantage: he was a little old. It would have been better if he had been five years younger— but then he would not have been earning so much. However, despite being in his late forties he seemed reasonably fit. He walked to work, swam at weekends, had regular check-ups. He was a fraction overweight, but what’s half a stone between friends? He drank, but not to excess. He smoked cigars occasionally but he had given up cigarettes. In short, it seemed reasonable to assume his sperm-count was adequate. (I know this sounds calculating, but a mature woman has to be clear-eyed when assessing middle-aged men as potential fathers, and I was no dewy-eyed fluffette.)
    Kim’s final virtue was that he had no interest in dewy-eyed fluffettes and made no secret of the fact that he wanted someone who had the brains to share his London life to the hilt. It was true that he was hardly likely to marry a brainbox who looked like the back end of a bus, but fortunately looking like any part of a public conveyance has never been my problem. I took care of myself. Looking good is a weapon when one jousts continually with treacherous males. All the Hitchcock blondes knew that. Hitchcock would have approved of me, even though my big flaw is that I’m two inches too short. Five feet six is the ideal height for a high flyer. Anything taller gets called butch and anything shorter gets stamped on. Many were the men who had tried to stamp on me and wound up with bruised feet . . . But even the brightest men, as I have already noted, can make massive errors of judgement.
    When we were back in London and Kim was telling me about the eminent lawyer who was handling the divorce, I said idly: “It’s a pity you can’t cite adultery by Sophie to hurry the process along. How can you be sure she hasn’t embraced the single life by reversing her anti-sex stance and taking up with some overmuscled hunk twenty years her junior?”
    He found that possibility very amusing. “Sweetheart, Sophie wears size twenty clothes and has her grey hair set in corrugated-iron-style waves!”
    “For heaven’s sake!” I exclaimed, appalled. “Why doesn’t she slim down, smarten up, get a life?”
    “She thinks she’s got a life. She’s a pillar of the local church.”
    “Oh God, are you saying she’s one of those ghastly Born-Agains?”
    “No, just a member of the mainstream Church of England.”
    A terrible thought belatedly occurred to me. “Kim, you’re not religious, are you?”
    “I certainly wouldn’t describe myself as a Christian. But I think there’s something out there.”
    “God, you mean?”
    “I’ve never found ‘God’ a helpful word. But I have my own views on what St. Paul meant when he talked of the Principalities and Powers.”
    “That sounds like serious fantasy! All I can say is that if you’re