LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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