Читать книгу: «Temporary Girlfriend»

CHAPTER ONE

ELYSS drove into the forecourt of the well maintained block of flats where she lived. A smile touched the corners of her lovely mouth as she parked in her usual place and thought of the contrast between where she had driven from and where she had arrived.

She let herself in through the main door of the building, musing: forget the quiet, forget the serenity of the weekend she had just spent with her parents in their Devon cottage; her forty-eight hours of peace and tranquillity were over.

Not that she minded—now. Up until five months ago, though, she had been living on the outskirts of London with her parents in a household where raised voices were seldom heard. Which was why, when she had started sharing the flat, she had at first been constantly startled by the top-of-the-range squeals that had assaulted her ears as an outraged Victoria would demand of Nikki, ‘Have you got my hairdryer?’ and Nikki would retaliate at high pitch, ‘Have you borrowed my black shoes again?’

Elyss had adjusted—now. But she guessed that her bewilderment, her fear that she might have made the wrong decision when she had answered the ‘Fourth wanted to share flat’ advertisement must have shown. Because Louise, the eldest of her flatmates and, Elyss was to discover, the more steady of the three, had told her not to worry and that the other two would calm down in a few minutes.

Which was true. In no time at all Victoria and Nikki would forget all hostility and, as suddenly as they had flared up, they were the best of friends again.

Elyss took the stairs to their second-floor flat feeling lucky to be part of the group. The flat was intended to be a three-bedroomed apartment, but when Nikki, who seemed to lurch from crisis to crisis, had lost her job over her poor time-keeping, she could not pay her share of the rent in full.

Louise, Victoria and Nikki had a conference where Victoria confessed that she was struggling financially, and Louise owned to being stretched money-wise on account of her twelve-year-old son. Her ex-husband paid Thomas’s boarding school fees, but it seemed that never a month went by when the growing boy wasn’t in urgent need of something. It was her ex-husband’s view that in paying his son’s school fees he was already doing far more than he should—anything extra was down to Louise.

The upshot of the conference was that having a fourth flatmate to pay a share of the rent and service bills would help them all out. What did they need with a separate dining room anyway? It would make an ideal fourth bedroom.

All this Elyss had learned later. At that time her family were having to make tough decisions as her father could ignore no longer that his failing business was past saving. It was time to stop throwing good money after bad.

But that was then, and Elyss did not want to dwell on a time that had been so heart-rending for her family.

She inserted her key into the door of the flat and wondered instead how her flatmates had fared that weekend. By now she was used to the weekly disasters that seemed to befall Nikki, and, though she had blonde hair herself, Elyss reflected that blondes didn’t come any dizzier than Nikki.

‘Anyone home?’ she called as she let herself in.

‘Hi!’ Louise, a pretty, brown-haired woman who, at thirty-two, was ten years older than Elyss, appeared from the kitchen. ‘Had a good weekend?’

‘It’s always good to see my parents.’ Elyss smiled, dropping her weekend bag down for a minute or two. ‘Anything happened here?’

‘Victoria’s out with some new man, and Nikki’s still being messed about by Dave.’

‘Oh, grief! She was supposed to be going out with him last night. Didn’t...?’

‘He didn’t show. She’s gone over to his place now. I know, I know. I’ve told her if you want a man to chase you, you have to run in the opposite direction—in my case I didn’t run fast enough and got caught,’ Louise inserted drily, ‘but she won’t listen. I think it’s the real thing this time—with Dave, I mean. I think she’s in love with him.’

They fell to commiserating about Nikki; for all that she was the youngest, Elyss, like Victoria and Louise, had soon fallen into feeling protective about her. ‘There’s nothing we can do to help, I suppose.’

‘Short of dropping something unpleasant on Dave’s head from a great height, not a thing,’ Louise answered. ‘Fancy a cup of tea?’

While Louise was making the tea Elyss rang her parents to let them know, as they’d requested, that she had made it to London without mishap. Then she took her weekend bag to her room. She emptied it, feeling for Nikki because she was going through such a bad time over the man she was in love with. Elyss had never been in love herself, or remotely anywhere near it, and with Dave giving Nikki the run-around, she didn’t know that she wanted to be.

She and Louise were finishing their tea when Nikki, fretful and unsmiling, arrived home.

‘He wasn’t in?’ Louise enquired gently.

Nikki shook her head. ‘I waited around for ages. In the end, what with neighbours’ curtains twitching and everything else, I expected the police to arrive any minute in answer to someone’s call reporting a stranger casing the area. I decided to catch a bus home—have you ever tried catching the bus you want on a Sunday?’

Elyss had forgotten—Nikki, after another financial crisis, had sold her car. ‘Would you like some tea?’ Elyss offered sympathetically.

‘Ooh, I’d love a cup,’ Nikki accepted gratefully, but seemed unable to settle, ‘I’ll—er—just take the phone to my room and make a call while you’re brewing up.’

Elyss went to make a fresh pot of tea, knowing, as did Louise, that by the look of her Nikki was going to try to reach her errant boyfriend by phone.

Elyss returned with three cups and saucers on a tray, noticing as she went into the sitting room that the phone was back on its station. One glance at Nikki’s face was sufficient to tell her that Dave must still be out.

‘I thought we’d join you,’ Elyss said brightly, explaining the extra cups and saucers.

‘What a good idea,’ Louise remarked cheerfully—but Nikki was not impressed by either girl’s brightness or cheerfulness.

‘It’s no good. I shall have to go over again. I...’

‘Nikki!’ Louise cried in alarm. ‘He’s not worth it.’

‘I know,’ Nikki answered. ‘He’s a snake, a slug, but I shan’t be at rest until I’ve had it out with him.’ And, tea forgotten in her haste to be away, she turned to Elyss, ‘I don’t suppose, buses being what they are on a Sunday, you’d lend me your car, would you?’

Elyss stared at her, uncertain how to reply. She was unsure if her car insurance allowed Nikki to drive her car—and immediately felt small-minded. Nikki had an unblemished driving licence, and Victoria was always letting her use her car. Victoria would have done so now, Elyss knew, so she guessed there must be some insurance clause that covered the situation.

‘Of course,’ she smiled, still wanting to help, though she was uncertain if Nikki going to confront her boyfriend would truly help.

Nikki didn’t waste any time once she had Elyss’s car keys and went hurrying from the flat. ‘Tea?’ Elyss offered Louise with a sigh, picking up the pot.

‘Why not?’ Louise grinned.

Elyss spent the evening doing some laundry, watching a half-hour of television and generally chatting to Louise. Victoria came home around eleven, but there was no sign of Nikki when they decided, tomorrow being a work day, it was time for bed.

Somehow, as Elyss saw in her mind’s eye Nikki sitting in the car outside Dave’s flat waiting for him to come home, she found sleep elusive. Oh, she did so hope Dave returned alone.

Elyss adjusted her position in her comfortable bed. She fleetingly recalled it was her bed from her old home, an elegant Georgian house that was gone now, like her father’s business.

She had worked in the company, had done so ever since she had left school. Her father had trained her in administration, and the more she had learned the more she had enjoyed the work she did. Being the boss’s daughter, however, had allowed her to be privy to the most confidential matters. Which was all to the good while the wholesale fruit importing business was doing well—but exceedingly worrying when it started to fail.

Elyss had seen the crash coming, and had tentatively broached the subject to her hard-working father. But he had only teased her for being a worrier over nothing. ‘It’s not unnatural for a company as large as ours to experience the occasional hiccup,’ he’d smiled. ‘Things will work themselves out, you’ll see. Er—meantime, not a word to your mother.’

Her father’s obvious confidence had quietened her worries. He had been in this business all his life, for goodness’ sake. What did she know!

So she waited, and waited for ‘things to work themselves out’, only they didn’t. And loath though she was to bring the subject up again, after a year had gone by and not only was business not picking up, but they were getting deeper and deeper into debt with the bank, she plucked up courage to question her father if there was anything they could do about it.

‘We’ll have to try and ride it out,’ her father had replied—only there was no confident smile this time.

They had not been able to ride it out. Month after month had gone by as the company had limped along. Their bank manager had tried to help all he could, but it seemed there were limits to his powers.

Elyss would never forget the afternoon when, his face grey, her father had returned from a meeting with the bank manager, and told her that the company was folding.

‘Folding!’ she’d echoed, leading him to a chair and sitting him down. He’d looked on the point of collapse when for the next half-hour they discussed the ending of what had been life’s blood to him.

They’d said nothing to the workforce. Shaken herself, but seeing that her father still didn’t look any better, Elyss had insisted on driving him home.

Because he was essentially a very private man, she made herself scarce while he went and revealed the truth to her mother. Elyss knew it would be a most humbling experience for him.

Her mother, though, like the wonderful person she was, was marvellous. Elyss, fretful in her room, was relieved no end to hear her father leave the drawing room and come out into the hall and call, his tone sounding much firmer than it had: ‘Come down, Elyss. Your mother—er—and I, want a family conference.’

Her mother had apparently sensed for some while that something was wrong. But when all her approaches to her husband to find out what had been brushed aside as pure imagination, she had started to consider all sorts of possibilities.

Although the news that the business had gone under was a fairly devastating shock, it was a tremendous relief that her husband had neither a mistress, nor some dreadful terminal illness he was trying to hide from her.

‘Well, the first essential is to try to see to it that we come out of this with as much honour as we can salvage,’ she stated proudly, and they were all agreed on that.

As they agreed about almost everything else to do with winding up the company. The only point on which they had a disagreement was when—their creditors by now baying to be paid—Elyss determined that the money settled on her by her parents on her eighteenth birthday should go into the family kitty.

‘Oh, no, I’m not taking that. It’s yours, its—’

‘It’s ours, Dad,’ Elyss interrupted him gently. ‘The house is going, and anything else of value. I’m part of this family. I shall take it as a personal insult if you don’t allow me to contribute.’

He huffed, he puffed, but the pride of not owing his creditors anything finally won. ‘You wretched child,’ he called her lovingly, ‘Come and give your old Dad a kiss.’

So they had settled all their accounts, and were left with nothing over; their only assets were three cars, not new but purchased in better times, and a small amount of jewellery, the value of which was mainly sentimental.

With the house sold and the purchasers wanting completion within six weeks’, all that remained was for Elyss and her father to find jobs and somewhere for them all to live.

It was then, after having had so much go wrong in their lives, that their luck began to turn. Quite out of the blue her mother had a letter from a firm of solicitors informing her of an inheritance from a distant relative.

With great excitement they had contacted the legal firm and the next day were in Devon inspecting the two-bedroomed cottage, sorely in need of modernising.

Anne Harvey finished her inspection of her dilapidated inheritance and took a deep breath. Then, as they stood in the wilderness of the large garden looking at the whitewashed walls of the rickety cottage, she calmly announced, ‘I should be quite happy to live here.’

Husband and daughter stared at her. But it was her husband who, clearly adoring his wife, commented quietly, ‘You always were an optimist, old love.’

Conversation on the drive home consisted almost entirely of the three of them moving to Devon, and of how much the modernisation of the cottage they could carry out themselves. Also, what sort of job prospects did father and daughter have in the Devonshire village, which was miles from anywhere?

They had left their Georgian home very early that morning. They returned to find that the postman had delivered a letter bearing another piece of good news. One of Elyss’s father’s few remaining premium bonds, which he had held for years and forgotten about, had come up.

The money which the premium bond had yielded was not a vast amount, but enough to ease the strain of these last few months. Although once the general euphoria they had all felt at this piece of good luck had worn off, Elyss’s father was all for giving the money to her, to go towards replacing the amount which she had insisted on putting into the kitty.

‘No way,’ she’d declared firmly. ‘You’ll need all of that to put the cottage back into—’ She broke off, a sudden thought coming to her. The idea of her father going to work for someone else after all his years of being his own boss had seriously worried her. ‘Unless... You know, if you were really, really careful, I reckon you could eke that money out and live on it until you’re old enough to start drawing your pension. You wouldn’t have to get a job and...’

‘Elyss is right!’ her mother took her up straight away. Clearly she had been experiencing the same worries as her daughter about her husband working for someone else. ‘I’ve got all the clothes I shall ever need, and provided we don’t hold any outrageous parties...’ she tossed in to lighten the atmosphere. They had never gone in for wild parties, and more than a half dozen people in the cottage would make it overcrowded.

Her husband smiled, and Elyss could see that her father was taken with the idea. He had a good year’s work in front of him licking the cottage into shape. ‘That would give me a chance to look at the wiring. And the plumbing—and that ceiling that looks as though it might fall down at any time.’

‘It would be nice to have you home all day,’ Anne Harvey smiled. And, least her husband thought her soft, she added, ‘If you were very good, I’d even let you help me with that jungle of a garden!’

It seemed settled, but the next day, while her parents were discussing where Elyss was going to sleep until the ceiling in the bedroom she was to have was fixed, Elyss saw the advert for a fourth person to share a flat.

At first she paid only scant attention to it. But when she began to wonder about her chances of finding a job in Devon—she had very good experience in administration and in assisting in the running of a company, but not a single solitary paper qualification to prove it—she started to realise that she might do better looking for work in London. It would be a wrench leaving her parents, of course. But... It was then that she started to believe in the saying, ‘Everything comes in threes’.

For it was luck, pure and simple—the third piece of luck for them as a family—that within the next hour Howard Butler telephoned. He was a fruit and vegetable wholesaler who had dealt with her father for as long as she could remember.

‘Good morning, Mr Butler. Did you want to speak with my father?’ Elyss enquired.

‘Not this time. It’s you I want to talk to,’ he stated, and went on to tell her how he was having a few office problems and needed somebody who knew what they were doing to come and sort things out. ‘I was about to advertise, while at the same time wondering who in the trade I might be able to poach.’ Plainly he had no compunction about head-hunting. ‘When it suddenly struck me that you—who must know the business inside out—might not yet have started looking for a new job.’

‘Um, I haven’t, actually,’ Elyss said, starting to feel quite excited.

‘I couldn’t pay as much as your father paid you, but if you’d like to come and...’

‘You’re suggesting I come for an interview?’ She couldn’t believe it!

‘I shouldn’t think there’s any need for that. I observed you at work when I visited your father’s office. The job’s yours if you want it—starting the first of next month.’

Heavens! Elyss did some rapid thinking. It was certain she was going to have to get a job. There was absolutely no way she was going to live off her parents in Devon while she looked around for work. ‘Er—may I think about it?’ she enquired, feeling she should say yes straight away, but also feeling sensitive as to how her parents were going to take the news that she might not be going to Devon with them.

‘Let me know tomorrow,’ Howard Butler agreed, and, experiencing a mixture of emotions, Elyss put the phone down and turned round to find both her parents watching her.

‘What was that about?’ her mother asked promptly.

Elyss looked from one to the other—it still seemed incredible that something like this should just fall into her lap. ‘I—er—think I’ve just been—er—to coin a phrase—head-hunted.’ She laughed. It was ridiculous. ‘That was Howard Butler. He’s just offered me a job!’

Ridiculous or not, everything moved quickly after that. Her parents did not want her to stay behind when they left, but neither did they want to stand in her way. However, they wanted to know where she would live. And it was then that Elyss remembered the advert for a fourth person to share.

‘Ring now,’ her father suggested.

‘The tenants will be out at their places of work,’ her mother stated.

But, on the off chance that one of them might work unsociable hours, Elyss rang. Nikki was home and sounded so sweet and friendly that Elyss instantly warmed to her. Elyss arranged to go and look at the flat that evening, when the two other residents would be there.

‘How did you get on?’ her mother asked the moment she returned.

‘You know you were sending to auction the furniture you won’t be taking to Devon? Well, can I have some of it?’

That had been over five months ago. She had started work at Howard Butler and Company—and had been quietly appalled at the state of his accounting system. How on earth had he ever been able to muddle through? It was a challenge.

A challenge that kept her very busy as she sorted out accounts unpaid and politely chased up the money, and also paid accounts that Howard Butler’s company owed. She was currently employed on setting up a more efficient system and ensuring it was working smoothly.

As Howard Butler had said, he couldn’t pay her as much as her father had paid her. And what with paying rent, her share of the flat’s outgoings, and running her car, Elyss found it a struggle to last from pay-day to pay-day. It was a comfort to know that Louise, Victoria and Nikki had the same problem.

Where was Nikki? Concern over Nikki’s present unhappiness had been niggling away in the background the whole while. Elyss turned over in her bed to check the time on her bedside digital clock. Grief, it was ten past one! Where was Nikki?

Elyss tried again to sleep, but found her concern for Nikki getting to her. She wondered if Louise and Victoria were awake too and if, like her, they had started to grow anxious about Nikki—the sometimes timid, sometimes funny, scatterbrained, occasionally downright annoying, bag-of-nerves, childlike but most often extremely likeable Nikki.

With sleep nowhere near, Elyss switched on her bedside light and sat up. She wondered about getting up and going to make a warm drink. She could make one for Louise and Victoria too.

Grief! She was getting as dizzy-headed as Nikki. Victoria and Louise were probably fast asleep in dreamland. She stood to risk waking the pair of them if she went clattering around in the kitchen.

She was just about to try again to sleep, when, at last she heard Nikki’s key in the door. Thank goodness for that. She hoped Dave had been kind to her and that there was some good reason for him standing her up. Nikki just didn’t deserve that sort of treatment.

Elyss’s hand went to the lamp—but she did not switch it off. For just then, and in a flurry of agitation—clearly she was too agitated to knock first on Elyss’s door, which was one of the few ‘house’ rules—Nikki hurried in.

‘I saw a line of light under your door. This won’t wait until m-morning!’ Nikki blurted out in a rush, tears streaming from her deeply unhappy pale blue eyes.

‘Oh, Nikki. Nikki, love,’ Elyss cried, hating Dave for doing this to her. ‘Come and sit down.’ She waited until the broken-hearted Nikki had seated herself on the edge of her bed, and then gently probed. ‘What happened? Was Dave...?’

‘I d-didn’t see Dave,’ Nikki wailed. ‘I waited and waited and waited, rang his bell, went and tried to phone him, and then went back and rang his bell again, and waited again. And h-he didn’t come home!’

‘Oh, Nikki, I’m so sorry,’ Elyss tried to soothe.

‘S-so am I,’ Nikki sobbed. ‘I w-was so upset when I drove away from D-Dave’s place. I just wasn’t thinking and—’ She broke off to catch her breath, and with fresh tears spurting, she ended, ‘And, oh, I’m s-so sorry—I cr-crashed your car.’

‘You cr—?’ Elyss didn’t take it in for a second. ‘You crashed my car?’ she checked, somehow unable to believe what she was hearing.

‘I’m sorry,’ Nikki wept. ‘I didn’t mean to. It just...’

‘I should...’ Elyss bit down sharp words. ‘Of course you didn’t,’ she said firmly, swiftly getting herself together. ‘You’re not hurt?’ she checked; first things first! ‘You haven’t been to hospital or...?’

‘No. No. Not a scratch. H-he put me in a taxi and told the taxi driver to bring me here.’

‘He?’ Elyss questioned, taking it slowly—Nikki could get her wires crossed at the best of times. Now, if Elyss was any judge, Nikki was in shock. She would be as brief as possible and see her into bed.

‘The m-man I crashed into,’ Nikki answered.

Oh, my... ‘You crashed into a man?’ she asked faintly, pinning her hopes on the fact that if he’d been able to organise a taxi for Nikki then he must still be in one piece.

‘Yes. Well, not him particularly. ‘I smacked into the s-side of his car.’

‘But he—this man—he, and any of his passengers, he—they—they’re all right?’

Nikki nodded on a shuddering sob. ‘He was by himself—he didn’t seem hurt. He was a bit short with me to start with actually—called me feather-brained—but then, when he could see I was in a bit of a state, he muttered something that didn’t sound very complimentary about my driving. He looked at your c-car and said s-something to the effect that I wouldn’t be driving that heap again in a hurry, and sent me home.’

Oh, heck—by the sound of it, her car was a write-off. Elyss looked at Nikki, half a dozen questions rushing to be asked. But then she took in how beat, defeated, Nikki looked. Added to that, Nikki was ashen and shaking. So Elyss reckoned that any further questioning could wait until morning.

She took Nikki to her room and advised, ‘Get into bed,’ and, unsure what the treatment was for shock, she added gently, ‘I’ll go and get you a couple of aspirins and a cup of sweet tea.’

‘No thanks. I don’t want anything. I j-just want to die.’

‘Oh, come on, love. It isn’t as bad as that,’ Elyss said bracingly. ‘I’ll go and get you a hot water bottle.’

Nikki was in bed when she got back. Elyss handed her the bottle, told her that she mustn’t worry about a thing—and left her to go and do some worrying of her own.

Her first concern was Nikki, who she could see was extremely troubled. From what Elyss had just observed, Nikki just wasn’t up to anything else going wrong with her world. Another disaster, and it seemed to her that her hare-brained flatmate would be even more emotionally distressed.

Well, Nikki would get no pressure from her. Okay, so Nikki had written off her car. Written off—oh, grief! How was she going to get to work in the morning?

Perhaps Nikki hadn’t exactly wrecked it. Perhaps it just looked that way. And why worry about work in the morning? By the sound of it, she was going to have to spend her morning in arranging to get her vehicle towed away from where Nikki had abandoned it, and in making contact with her insurance company.

For the man Nikki had crashed into to be able to tell the taxi driver where to take her meant that Nikki had obviously exchanged names and addresses. Elyss remembered how, only a couple of months ago, she had written a cheque when her car insurance had become due. Nikki would have been able to tell the other driver the name of her insurance company too, Elyss reflected, looking for good points in the whole of this mess. Because by sheer chance Nikki had had a job interview near to the insurance company. ‘Save yourself a stamp,’ she had chirruped in that sweet way of hers. ‘My interview’s tomorrow; I’ll drop your cheque in as I’m passing.’ Nikki had not got the job.

Elyss’s thoughts stayed with insurance companies, hoping that she hadn’t given herself a problem with hers by allowing Nikki to drive her car. She must check that with Victoria in the morning.

Elyss adjusted her alarm to go off a half-hour earlier in the morning. Perhaps with an early start she might not have to take the whole of the morning off work. She fell asleep pondering. If no one was hurt, was one obliged to report an accident to the police?

Having had less than four hours’ sleep, Elyss did not want to get up when her alarm wakened her. She opened her eyes, remembered—and stifled a groan. Shrugging into her robe, she pattered into the kitchen to find that Nikki was already up.

‘Oh, Elyss, I’m so sorry,’ she apologised fretfully once more, before Elyss could so much as wish her, Good morning.

Nikki had a little more colour in her face now, Elyss was glad to note, but she still had that anxious, haunted look about her. ‘Try not to worry,’ Elyss smiled, while trying hard to keep her own worries down. ‘The insurance companies will settle both claims, and I can travel by bus until—’ She broke off. Nikki had gone ashen again. ‘Wh—?’

‘Oh, Elyss. I really am so sorry,’ Nikki apologised yet again, only this time she put her hand in her dressing gown pocket and handed her an envelope—and started to cry.

‘Don’t cry...’ was as far as Elyss got before glancing down at the envelope; she recognised her own writing. It was the envelope she had addressed to her insurance company a couple of months ago!

A feeling of dread shot through her. Even while part of her brain was denying what Nikki’s tears and the sealed envelope might possibly mean, Elyss began to experience panic.

Quickly she slit open the envelope. At speed she took out its contents. Oh, no! It couldn’t be! But—it was. There, in her hand, along with her letter and details, was the cheque she had written to the insurance company. ‘You didn’t...’ she choked hoarsely.

‘I forgot,’ Nikki agonised, her distress quite desperate.

‘It was only when—in between worrying about Dave and your poor car, but thinking how your c-car insurance would pay for everything—I suddenly realised that I’d never handed the cheque in. I know it’s no excuse, but I put that envelope in a separate compartment in my bag so it wouldn’t get all crumpled. Only, as the hours and minutes ticked by and that job interview got nearer and nearer, I got so jittery—that everything else went out of my head.’