Although from a humble background, Peach Madoc was the archetypal career woman: chic, intelligent, talented, university educated, now wealthy, but above all else ... ambitious. She gazed down on the city from her office suite, at the little ant-like people running around in circles as they led their little meaningless ant-like lives.

It was as it should be: as director of public relations for the DogCat oil company her rise to the upper echelons of the corporate empire had been meteoric.

She gazed at her reflection in the mirrored walls of the designer office, practising her range of subtle pouts and smiles; she had recently discovered that a slight, almost imperceptible, dilation of the nostrils could register a hit.

She was a single woman in a world of bored married men and knew, without the slightest shadow of doubt, the devastating effect her feminine sexuality could have on even the meanest son-of-a-bitch.

She was mounting a challenge for the greatest achievement of her career to date. But then her career had always been like that and always would be. She'd planned it out from an early age. She'd always wanted to do something with her life: there'd always been that inner drive and determination without which ambition is unthinkable let alone attainable.

Not that she wouldn't marry one day and have children, that was all part of the plan. But, at the end of the day, it would be a career move and to be on equal footing she would need to win her next battle. Then, and only then, would it be safe to enter into a contractual arrangement which would have written into it the necessary level of financial compensation should an incident of a force majeure nature occur. Not that her husband, identity as yet unknown, would necessarily be in truth the guilty party ... but legally he would be.

She had the duplicitic mind of the lawyer: nothing was black and white, nothing was as it seemed, life was about winning and losing, it was a war in which the winner takes all, and the loser ... the loser sucks. And she didn't suck. Well, sometimes, but only as a tactic, as she sold a dummy in a career move. It wasn't for real.

What was for real? She knew what was for real as she glanced over her shoulder checking the straightness of the seams of her stockings, smiling inwardly to herself at the realisation that even the dumbest male couldn't help but fail to register that she was wearing a thong.

She was glad that the old millennium was over, glad too that the year 2000 was over. To her 2000 had seemed a phoney new millennium. But now it was 2001 and the new millennium seemed real ... She pouted to herself and whispered slowly with determination: "You sure are one gorgeous bitch, the most gorgeous meanest bitch this side of the pond ... You are the American dream."