LITMIR.BIZ

      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

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