Thomas Chandler was a good looking man in his late forties. He was a charmer, a man you wouldn’t want to get involved with, but nevertheless a man women just couldn’t resist liking. Tom’s second wife, Jenny, didn’t seem to mind the fact that he was always surrounded by women though. She knew she had a hold over him and that he would never leave her for another woman. He couldn’t, she knew too much about him. More importantly Jenny was a woman of independent means and he enjoyed the luxury lifestyle she enjoyed that he now shared.
Tom was a lovable rogue, not exactly a seasoned criminal, but not exactly a strictly law abiding citizen either. He had become a reformed character since meeting Jenny though, who usually kept a tight rein on Tom’s “dodgy” deals if she knew about them, although now and again she had to turn a blind eye to some of his business methods, if they were not going to put her family or her life in jeopardy.
Under the pretext of being the owner of a contract cleaning business, Tom was always on the look out for other ways of making money. He called himself an entrepreneur. Jenny called him a wheeler-dealer. He had his fingers in several other business pies, none of which ever seemed to make much money. The forever-optimist Tom always was convinced that they would make him a fortune when the business eventually took off. He was a born salesman, but unfortunately had little business acumen.
Tom was a good family man though. Although Matthew and Katy, his own grown up children, had long since gone their own ways, he loved Jenny’s teenage daughters, Olivia and Emily, and treated them as if they were his own.
Having built his business up so that he could leave a manager in charge, weekends had become sacrosanct to Tom. He loved spending time pottering around at home in the garden and invariably left his mobile phone switched off on a Sunday while he went to play a round of golf. He knew his regular customers would phone him for any little problem they might incur, but he also knew that most of them could wait until Monday morning for him to sort them out, or they could get in touch with his manager if they had an emergency.
One particular sunny Sunday morning in June, Tom was on the way to the golf course in his flashy new 4×4 when he spotted a van belonging to a customer parked haphazardly by the side of the road alongside a woodland. Tom parked up and went to investigate. Both the driver and the passenger doors were open but there was no sign of the driver.
Tom didn’t like the look of things. He cursed the fact that he had left his mobile phone at home, but he knew he had to find out what had happened to his customer. He warily started walking into the woods.
March 2018 Creative Writing Homework – a character study with a first episode chapter for a serial to be added to by other members of the Creative Writing group
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