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Neighbourhood > Guest Character Profiles > Debra Fleming Charm Lee

The flighty, scheming daughter of one of Lassiter’s Hotel’s best clients, Debra Fleming was instantly taken with Shane Ramsay when he picked her up from the airport. As he showed her to her room at the hotel, she asked him to stay behind for a drink and her constant flirting led to them having sex. She then told him that she had an important meeting in Wodonga, a few hours’ drive away, and he would have to take her.

The following day, as they returned, Shane’s partner in the chauffeuring business, Helen Daniels, saw him dropping Debra off and the two of them kissing outside the hotel. She immediately took Shane off the job and decided to drive Debra and her father, Lewis Fleming, that evening. Debra was unhappy to find out that Shane had been replaced. When Debra and her father then began doing business with Paul Robinson, her affections quickly changed. Although she was interested in Paul, it didn’t stop her turning on him when she suspected that he’d been working with his grandmother, Helen, to con them on a land deal. When it turned out to be untrue, she apologised and offered to take Paul out to dinner. Shane then arrived in the middle of their date and Debra made it quite clear to him that she’d only been using him and was no longer interested. He told her that she wasn’t worth anything to him anyway.

Paul, meanwhile, was proving hard-to-get for Debra, but she was determined to have him. She found a new way to get to him when she spent time visiting his younger sister, Lucy, who was in hospital. Paul was flattered that she would go to such lengths to spend time with him and she gradually wore him down. After getting him to trust her, Debra then suggested to Paul that they share offices for a couple of months, while she’d be around doing some business for her father. Paul agreed and Debra was delighted, later phoning her father to tell him that their plan was working and she’d soon be able to beat the Daniels Corporation to the acquisition of Lassiter’s Hotel. She furthered her plan by employing one of her father’s workers, Margaret Owens, as the new temporary secretary.

Despite her obvious attempts to cover her tracks by appearing romantically interested in Paul and taking him to dinner, he soon realised that something wasn’t right. When Jack Lassiter mentioned that he’d received another offer on the hotel, just 1% higher than the Daniels Corporation’s bid, Paul realised that there had to be a spy in the office. With secretary Zoe away on sick leave, Paul narrowed it down to Margaret and Debra. He decided to hire a private detective, Brian King, to check on both women, as well as Zoe, to be on the safe side. He set up a fake deal and deliberately mentioned the company name to Debra, in the hope that she would try to cheat him once again. Meanwhile, Debra was also busy getting her revenge on Shane by setting him up to be fired from his landscaping job at the hotel. She set up a fake limousine client for him, then, while he was gone, had her company poach Shane’s labourers, leaving the landscaping job unattended. When Mrs Mangel fell down a hole, left by the gardeners, and threatened to sue, Paul was forced to sack Shane.

Shane quickly realised that he’d been set up and managed to get his former labourers to tell him which company had paid them to leave. Realising that Fleming was behind it, he told Paul, who re-employed him and explained that Debra was about to get what was coming to her. Upon Zoe’s return to work, Paul left an important contract on her desk, which she promptly mentioned to him, leaving him certain that Debra was behind everything. A call from Brian confirmed this and Paul promptly told Debra to leave. Before going, she told him that their time together had meant a lot to her, but Paul wasn’t about to be fooled again and kicked her out, warning her not to come back.

Biography by Steve

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