Chapter 1: Why?

What makes a girl like Linda turn out the way she did? A child of privilege, sent to all the right schools, and all the right activities, with all the right people? Did she learn too little, or altogether too much?

Why was she caught trying to steal a bottle of scotch from a high street off-license in her home town? It couldn't be a matter of money. Her father, a highly successful lawyer, and her mother, a prominent business executive, made sure she had access to plenty of that. It wasn't some lack of intelligence. She had excelled in all her classes at school until recently, and even with the minimal effort she was expending now she was well ahead of most of her classmates. She certainly wasn't uncomfortable about her looks. Even though she tended to dress down when out with her newer friends, the fifteen year old's English-rose complexion, sparkling emerald eyes, and impish little smile had melted the hearts of her parents and most other authority figures who had tried to control her.

So why was she slumped in the back of a police car, with nothing but the clothes on her back, headed for some school she had never heard of?

Some people thought they knew the answers. It was clear that she was impatient with the status games and values of the other students at the expensive girls' school she attended. And that she had little real respect for authority. To some people in the school and community, her attitude was altogether too reminiscent of the ruthless arrogance of her parents in their respective fields. To her parents, it had to have something to do with those council estate ruffians she had fallen in with.

They were all right. And they were all wrong.

She had found her new friends a refreshing change of pace from the stuck-up, obsessive girls at school. While she could, and sometimes did, dress up and act like nobility, she was far more comfortable in her scruffiest denims, acting out her tomboy nature in the streets and parks of her home town. Her new friends accepted her for who she was. And their exploits were far more interesting than the more socially-acceptable classes and entertainments her parents pushed her into. But they weren't angels. Under their influence, she eventually graduated to less acceptable behaviours such as drinking outdoors and petty theft. It wasn't that she couldn't afford the things she stole, or even that her friends couldn't. But there was the excitement, the challenge. And sometimes, unpleasant things happened to them. On the other hand, sometimes she could use her parents' name to make good things, like part-time jobs, happen for some of them.

Inevitably, she caught the attention of the police. The first time they had escorted her home had been somewhat embarrassing, and the shocked reactions of her parents had been an unpleasant surprise. But it didn't take too long before she regarded her occasional brushes with the law as little more than minor inconveniences. Her parents' influence and money kept things from getting too serious.