Free The Party Girl's Invitation by Karen Elaine Campbell

London,” Crystal stated.“I’m thinking of setting up business here, aimed at the American tourist market, primarily. I have contacts back in the States, so it would be a new angle. I was thinking about it on my way down from London on the train. All those acres of countryside, small fields, pretty villages and the ubiquitous ‘cream tea’, it’s all very alluring to the American market. They are more used to miles of freeway and mass urban sprawls, depending on what part of the States you’re from, of course. Where I was in LA, they would find this all very ‘quaint’, especially our pubs and tea shops and heritage. I thought we could bring them in by train from London and then put them up in one of the nice hotels in Bath. If we offer a package, Stonehenge, Avebury, a few war memorials, ending up with the pump rooms and the Royal Crescent it would have universal appeal. We could make a few days of it, and offer a West End show on the last night, as an optional extra, finish the whole thing off with a bit of pazzaz. I need to do some market research before I put some proposals together and thought you might know a few hard up students who would be prepared to help me. There won’t be much cash in it, but I could call in a few favours and pay them in concert tickets.”She rattled off a list of top artists and bands due in at the capital over the next few months, some sold out weeks ago.
    Lolly inspected her nails, looking downcast. “There are people around here who would do anything to get their hands on some of those tickets, we’re a bit out in the wilds here. It all sounds very glamorous. What I don’t understand is why you would give it all up, to return home here?”
    Too many questions, Crystal thought. She really must remember to keep her mouth shut. “Homesick,” she replied brightly, “I just miss my roots,” she lied.
     
    Jazz stared irritably at a blank computer screen. Did nothing work around here? He’d been given every excuse from ‘the water table’ to the ‘Cotswold Hills’ for his lack of reception, but he really wasn’t buying it. This was the twenty-first century, internet communication and telecoms links could connect via satellite to every remote corner of the world these days, they even had a fully functioning webcam on the South pole, surely London to Bath couldn’t be that complicated?
    He’d had so called ‘experts’ in here by the barrow load, and still they’d not fixed the problem. When he asked the staff, they all looked shifty and muttered in broad ‘West Country’ accents about the lead lined walls and historical ‘problems’ with the boss’s office. It was well known that things would switch themselves on and off at the most inopportune moments and papers often seemed to temporarily ‘disappear’ only to turn up again later in the day, once the current crisis was past.
    He’d never heard such rubbish, and he wasn’t impressed. If they thought they were going to disrupt his day with their prophetic ramblings, then they were sorely mistaken. The computer screen suddenly pinged into life, without him touching anything.
    He frowned and kicked at the junction box under his desk, must have a loose wire or something. He’d get a new power breaker installed tomorrow, fluctuating power supply could cause chaos with sensitive electrical equipment. He rummaged in his desk drawer for a screwdriver.
    What a mess. The whole lot looked like it had been dumped out onto the floor and then given a shuffle before being stuffed back in the drawer again ‘any old how’. Who had been going through his things? More importantly, how was he supposed to find anything in here?
    He didn’t have time for this. It would be easier to just call someone else in to do the job for him. The box of condoms, tucked in with his business cards caught his attention. He picked the package up, and smiled. Now there was a story. He wondered what else had been lurking there, in the back his