Jessica Steele - Temporary Girlfriend

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.