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