Temporary Girlfriend

‘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.’

‘And you didn’t think about it afterwards!’ Elyss gasped, belatedly realising she had been remiss herself in not following up when no certificate of motor insurance had come through the post. When it hadn’t arrived she had just assumed it had gone to her old address by mistake and would catch up with her. She supposed she should blame pressure of work, staying late reorganising, for making her forget all about it. But, oh, grief, she had been happily driving around these past two months without motor insurance. Oh, heavens, she was uninsured!

So much for thinking that there must be some clause in her insurance that allowed Nikki to drive her car. Neither of them was insured. Oh, my sainted aunt, to have moved that car so much as an inch on the highway had been a criminal act!

‘Oh, don’t be cross with me! Please don’t be cross with me, Elyss,’ Nikki begged, fresh tears falling. ‘Everything’s going so terribly wrong for me just now.’

‘Oh, Nikki!’ Elyss answered helplessly, again aware of how very distracted Nikki was. She was starting to feel much the same way herself as it very quickly dawned on her that there would be no money forthcoming to replace her written-off car. But, worse than that, there would be no money from her insurance company to pay for the repairs to the car which Nikki had crashed into either! Criminal! If she couldn’t find the money out of her own pocket, she could be sued in the courts for it!

She pulled herself away from her own worries as she became aware that Nikki was getting herself into something of a state again. ‘It’s all right!’ she tried to soothe. All right? Thanks to Nikki she could end up with a criminal record! Ye gods! It didn’t bear thinking about. Yet she just couldn’t ignore it and hope that it would go away. ‘Sit down, Nikki,’ she instructed, and as Nikki complied, dabbing at her eyes, Elyss found it impossible to sit down herself. ‘I’ll make a pot of tea,’ she said as kindly as she was able—and got busy, her mind shooting off at a tangent.

She didn’t have any money to pay for repairs! She could end up with a criminal record! Calm down. So, okay, she had been in complete ignorance about the fact that she wasn’t insured. She had given her cheque to someone else to pay the insurance for her—oh, that was certain to go down well in court! Heavens—her parents! They’d be thunderstruck that, within months of leaving them, she had landed herself in this mess.

But it wasn’t her mess, it was Nikki’s. Oh, Lord. Elyss could just imagine Nikki’s reaction if she so much as mentioned court. She sighed, realising full well just then that it might be Nikki’s mess, but she was the one who was going to have to clear it up.

She poured some tea and felt wretched when, as she handed Nikki a cup, she saw that Nikki’s hands were shaking so much she could barely hold it.

‘Come on, Nikki,’ she said bracingly, sounding far more confident than she felt, though her initial shock was starting to wear off. ‘Nothing’s as bad as that.’

‘You reckon!’ Plainly Nikki didn’t believe it, and Elyss wasn’t convinced herself, but nothing was going to be achieved by both of them breaking down in floods of tears.

She tried hard to be objective. Perhaps, as she’d told Nikki, nothing was so bad. Perhaps, if the damage to the other car was only slight, she might be able to settle. If she asked Howard Butler for an advance on her salary—though that would mean letting him know she lived from pay-day to pay-day, of course, and it would bruise her pride. Oh, grief, she couldn’t do that! He’d wonder why she couldn’t ask her parents for help—and no way was he, or anyone else, going to know that her parents were as hard put to stretch their resources as she was.

‘Er—was there very much damage to the other car?’ she asked Nikki with seeming casualness, glad to see that, for all her eyes were red and puffy, Nikki had stopped crying.

‘I s-sort of caught him semi-sideways on. I think he’ll need a new door—at least,’ Nikki answered.

Elyss inwardly paled. A new door—that would cost hundreds. ‘What sort of car was it?’ she followed on, praying for something small: a mini would suit, but even that wouldn’t come cheap.

Nikki swallowed. ‘A Ferrari, I think.’

A Ferrari! Elyss’s legs went weak—forget hundreds, she needed to think thousands. Great! The way her luck was going Nikki had most likely crashed into some judge, or, at the very least, some chief constable. ‘You exchanged names?’ She sat down—this was a nightmare!

Nikki put her hand into her other dressing gown pocket and withdrew a small card which she passed over. Elyss took it. It was a business card. Saul Pendleton was neither a judge nor a top policeman, Elyss saw. She registered the fact that Saul Pendleton worked for a firm called Oak International. His card gave both his home and office address, and he had a flat in a very plush area of London. Suddenly she became aware that Nikki was looking at her as if she had something on her mind.

‘What is it?’ Elyss asked quietly, having heard enough to be going on with, and not certain that she wanted to hear any more.

‘I was a bit—er—shaken up last night,’ Nikki confessed.

‘Yes?’ Elyss encouraged.

‘I wasn’t thinking clearly.’

Elyss didn’t like the sound of this. ‘I—don’t suppose you were,’ she answered apprehensively.

‘He—Mr Pendleton, he was a bit—blunt.’ Well, she had banged into his Ferrari! ‘He—um—asked my name, and...’

‘And?’

‘And...’ Nikki swallowed, and then whispered, ‘I—er—gave him y-your name.’

Elyss’s jaw dropped. ‘As well as your own, you mean?’

Nikki shook her head. ‘I was too terrified to give him my name. He was—er—sort of—overpowering. I couldn’t think straight. I just told him I was—Elyss Harvey.’

Elyss was staring at her in stunned silence when Louise came into the kitchen. She looked from one to the other, observing one totally astounded expression and the puffy red eyes on the other occupant. ‘What goes on?’ she asked.

‘I hardly know where to begin,’ Elyss answered—and Nikki burst into tears. Ten minutes later, and Louise knew all that there was to know. Elyss concluded by passing her the card which Nikki had given her. ‘Mr Pendleton works at Oak International. I...’

‘Saul Pendleton is Oak International—or will be at the end of this year when the present chairman retires and he takes over,’ Louise interrupted quietly.

‘You know him?’ Elyss asked.

‘Not personally,’ she denied. ‘But we’re in fibre optics too—we’re not a multi-million concern like Oak, of course, but we have small dealings with them from time to time.’

Louise worked as a PA in a forward-looking group and, Elyss had already gathered, knew quite a few people of note in the business world. ‘You know of him, though?’ she pressed. Louise nodded. ‘And?’

Louise gave a hasty glance to Nikki. ‘He’s—er—got a reputation for being a tough operator. Straight, resolute; try to put one over on him at your peril.’

‘Oooh!’ Nikki squealed, and at her fresh outbreak of tears, Louise took a firm hand.

‘You haven’t had much sleep, have you?’ she sympathised with Nikki. ‘Come on, back to bed.’

Between them they got Nikki into bed. ‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ Elyss heard herself say—when she was a seething mass of worry herself. ‘Just try and get some rest.’

‘Logic tells me we should be tougher with her,’ Louise opined when they got back to the kitchen. ‘But she sort of gets to you.’

‘I know,’ Elyss agreed. ‘She’s in a shocking state.’

‘I thought the same myself. I don’t think Victoria’s going to work today—something to do with a day she’s owed, she was saying on Saturday. We’ll get her to keep an eye on Nikki. Now, what are you going to do about...?’

‘I’ll have to get in touch with Mr Pendleton, I suppose,’ Elyss answered; like her, Louise appeared to think that Nikki wasn’t up to dealing with it. ‘Is he really as tough as you say?’

‘Believe it!’

Oh, heck—‘try to put one over on him at your peril,’ Louise had said, and what had Nikki done but given him a false name? ‘What else do you know about him?’ Elyss asked. Perhaps he was good to his mother and stray animals. Perhaps he hadn’t got a mother. ‘How old is he?’ she asked, following that train of thought.

‘Young to be in the position he’s in. Still in his thirties, I think—and a bachelor with it.’

‘He doesn’t like women?’ Elyss questioned, seeing any chance of appealing to his chivalrous side going up in smoke.

‘On the contrary. While it’s said he keeps his work and his private. life in two very separate compartments, it seems he’s not lacking for female company.’

‘Trust him to have a Ferrari,’ Elyss commented, knowing she was being unfairly sour, but getting stabbed by darts of panic from time to time.

‘He’ll be as mad as hell when he knows he’ll probably have to pay for the repairs himself,’ Louise volunteered.

Elyss wished she hadn’t. ‘Insult added to injury,’ she sighed. ‘I’d better phone him.’

‘Do it now—it might not be as bad as you anticipate,’ Louise advised.

Elyss was reluctant. ‘It’s too early. He might not be up yet.’

‘You think he’s got where he is by being a lie-a-bed?’

‘Point taken. I’ll—er—ring him from my room,’ Elyss decided. If she was to be verbally slapped down, she’d rather it was private—even if what Saul Pendleton had to say could not be overheard.

‘I’d better go and shower, or I’ll be late,’ Louise commented and went off to the bathroom, while Elyss went to the sitting room to collect the phone.

‘Pendleton,’ a clear concise voice answered.

‘Oh, good morning. I’m sorry to contact you so early, but I thought you might have a busy day ahead.’

‘Did you, now?’ Cool, polite, waiting.

‘My name’s Elyss Harvey.’ She quickly got herself together. The pause that followed was almost tangible. He was still waiting. If he was clever enough to be in line for the chairmanship of Oak International, then he was clever enough to remember the name Nikki had given him last night, Elyss thought sniffily. ‘My car was in collision with yours last night,’ she felt obliged to remind him when he still hadn’t said anything.

That did bring forth some response, and his reply sounded every bit as tough as Louise had promised, albeit delivered in silky tones. ‘I trust you’re not ringing to suggest the mess your vehicle made of mine was my fault.’

‘I—er—my vehicle wasn’t looking too clever either,’ she stated stiffly, something in Saul Pendleton’s tone needling her.

‘True,’ he agreed. ‘According to the mechanic who came out, it could be a few days before it’s drivable again.’

Her heart leapt. Her car wasn’t the write-off Nikki had said it was! Elyss busily tried to estimate the cost of repairs while at the same time frantically searching for some tactful way to let him know that she had neither insurance nor money for her own car repairs—let alone his.

Then she found that her tact, for the moment at any rate, would not be needed. Because clearly Saul Pendleton was not a man with a lot of time to spare to be cluttered up with incidentals. ‘I’ve an appointment shortly,’ he stated. ‘You’d better come and see me tonight.’ He was also a man to whom nobody said ‘no’, apparently. ‘I’ll see you at eight.’

With that the line went dead and Elyss was left staring at the phone—stunned! It wasn’t eight o’clock in the morning yet—and he had an appointment! Whew—that was life in the fast lane, if you pleased!

She didn’t know how she felt about having to meet him that night, at his home presumably, but didn’t see that she had very much choice. It would be pointless asking Nikki to go with her. Nikki was in pieces now; she’d fold completely if she had to stand in front of that tough-sounding man and, on top of everything else, had to confess that last night she had lied to him when she had given her name as Elyss Harvey.

Elyss sat on her bed deep in thought for some minutes. It would be wrong to go and meet Saul Pendleton and to pretend that she was the one who had crashed into him last night. She knew that. But it seemed to her that whichever one of them had been driving, the outcome was going to be the same. Elyss had never done anything dishonest in her life, but with Nikki feeling so low and, Elyss judged, unable to take much more pressure—might it not be such a bad idea to keep her out of it completely?

CHAPTER TWO

LOUISE was ready to go to her office by the time Elyss had got herself a little together and emerged from her room. ‘How did it go?’ Louise asked.

‘I’m to go to his home tonight,’ Elyss answered.

‘He didn’t wish to discuss it over the phone?’

‘He’s busy—unfortunately I’m not in a position to say no.’

‘I’m afraid so,’ Louise commiserated. ‘I’m sorry I can’t offer to go with you, but...’

‘That’s all right,’ Elyss smiled, aware that Louise was seeing her ex-husband that evening about a financial matter. She realised, too, that Louise seemed, like her, to know that it was out of the question for Nikki to go. ‘I’d better get the Yellow Pages out and start ringing round the all-night recovery services. Apparently my vehicle isn’t the write-off Nikki thought. Saul Pendleton called a mechanic out.’

‘You could ring and ask him which garage,’ Louise suggested.

Elyss recalled the no-nonsense tones of Saul Pendleton. Somehow, given that the Ferrari’s owner was somewhere fulfilling his appointment, she felt she would much prefer to hunt through the business section of the telephone directory.

First, however, she went and got ready for her day. That done, she again picked up the phone and found, in actual fact, that it took less time than she would have thought to track down the correct garage. Prompt Motor Services sounded a very efficient company—and expensive. She asked for a rough estimate of how much it would cost to repair her car—and was quoted a figure that made her eyes water.

‘Er—could you give me an estimate for just making it mechanically sound, without dealing with the—er—dents.’

‘Dents! You’ll need a whole new wing—plus. Aren’t you claiming on your insurance?’

‘I—er—haven’t decided yet,’ Elyss replied—and felt just as winded by the lesser and very approximate estimate the garage man gave her. Even that figure seemed impossible to find!

But she would have to accept. To have a car was essential, if she was to get to the area where she worked. Also she had promised her father she would go down to Devon in five weeks’ time for his birthday. Her father would meet her at the station, if need be, but train fares were not cheap.

‘Would you go ahead with just the essential repairs, please?’ she requested, and ended the call. Then she rang Howard Butler to tell him that she would be very late in.

Her next assignment was to present herself at an insurance company where she personally saw to it that her vehicle was insured. Of necessity, she took out the cheaper third party insurance in preference to her normal fully comprehensive cover. But at least she was legally insured to drive. It was a pity that for the moment she did not have a vehicle to drive. Then she visited Prompt Motor Services—and was horrified at the damage to her car! No wonder Nikki had been in shock. It was a miracle she had got out of it alive!

Elyss was still feeling shaken herself when, by a most circuitous route, involving changing transport several times, she made her way to her place of employment. At the end of her working day, she took a similarly tortuous route back home again.

She was late getting in, but was pleased to see that Nikki, though still puffy-eyed, seemed a lot calmer. Elyss saw no point in causing her to get into a state again by revealing that she was shortly going to see Mr Saul Pendleton.

Truth to tell, Elyss was feeling in something of a state herself as she hurriedly showered and changed into an elegant dress of deep blue. As rain was pouring down outside, she topped it with her full-length raincoat.

She was certain it must be the wettest May on record, and it was cold with it. She did not want to arrive at Saul Pendleton’s house looking like a drowned rat, and left her room seriously considering the expense of a taxi when Victoria chirruped that she was going out herself. ‘Want a lift?’ she volunteered.

Louise had already told Victoria about her appointment with Saul Pendleton, Elyss discovered, and they discussed the accident and the state Nikki was in on the way.

‘If it goes on like this much longer, we’re going to have to persuade her to see Dr. Lowe. Perhaps he’ll prescribe something to calm her down,’ Victoria said. ‘I’d like to get my hands on that Dave!’ She pulled up at the smart address Elyss had given her. ‘How the other half live!’ she exclaimed admiringly as Elyss got out. ‘Best of luck!’

‘Thanks. And thanks, too, for the lift.’

Elyss squared her shoulders and pushed a smart, glass-panelled door open—and discovered she was going nowhere until she had given the uniformed security man behind a desk in the foyer her name and that of the person she was there to see.

She told him she was Elyss Harvey, and she had come to see Mr Saul Pendleton, and waited while he went to the phone and relayed the information. Then he put the phone down to tell her pleasantly, ‘Mr Pendleton is expecting you, Miss Harvey. If you’d like to...’

He saw her over to the lift and was already on the way back to his post as the lift doors closed. Saul Pendleton knew she had arrived!

Elyss had eaten very little that day, a fact she was now glad of as her insides churned, and she wished the next fifteen minutes over. The lift stopped. She got out and at once found the door she was looking for.

She swallowed hard, squared her shoulders again and rang the bell. After a short while the door opened and a dark-haired, grey-eyed bachelor in his mid-thirties stood there.