Everything to Nothing (26 page)

‘Don’t worry.
I’ll send Ray or Alfred.’

‘They’ll hate
you!’

‘I don’t care.
We pay them enough.’

‘Fair
point.

‘Pick you up in
fifteen minutes?’

‘Perfect.’

‘Want me to
come in the Rolls! We can pretend we’re princesses like we used
to!’

‘Are you drunk
Sally?!’

Sally laughed.
‘Come on, it will be fun!’

‘Okay, whatever
you want. I’ll have to clear it with the grump and then all should
be good.’

‘You’ve got him
wrapped around your little finger so I’ll set out now then!’

‘True, true.
See you soon babe.’

‘Definitely!
Bye!’

‘Bye!’

Michelle put
the phone down on her bed and quickly stripped off her clothes and
grabbed her favourite jeans and a comfortable top. She quickly ran
downstairs and listened for her father and mother. She couldn’t
hear them so she headed to the rear of the house where there was a
door into the garage.

The rear of the
garage had been converted into a performance studio, with
sound-proofed walls. There were no windows, just a door with a red
light above it. The red light was not lit which meant they were not
performing so Michelle tapped on the door and it was opened from
the inside.

‘You’re just in
time. We were just about to start,’ said her mum. This meant the
red light would have been turned on and Michelle would not have
entered unless the house was on fire or other such disaster was
occurring.

‘Sally has
invited me to her place for the night. Can I go?’

‘You can go,
but you’ve got college in the morning. Back for ten.’ Her dad
turned away from her and started to press buttons on the
equipment.

‘Huh? I’ll get
dropped off by Sally in the morning. I don’t see what the
difference is.’

‘Your exams are
coming up. Back for ten.’

‘Huh? No
they’re not. They’re next year.’

‘Your mocks are
coming up.’

‘They’re not
important and I’ll be fine with them. I’ve been revising.’

‘They are
important because universities use them to judge whether they’ll
give you a provisional place or not. Back for ten.’

‘Dad! Let me
stay at Sally’s!’

‘No! Back for
ten. You want to be a lawyer; here are some words you need to get
used to - case dismissed!’

‘Ohhh dad!
She’s coming for me now!’

‘Well she can
still come for you and her butler can bring you back for ten!’

Michelle
stamped her foot and the argument was about to escalate until her
mum beckoned her out of the room. She held up one finger and
mouthed one minute to Michelle. She stepped out of the room and her
mum closed the door behind her. Michelle pressed her ear to the
door to try and hear how the discussion was going but the heavy
soundproofing meant she could hear nothing. She lightly kicked the
door and muttered, ‘Stupid soundproofing!’

After a few
moments her mum opened the door. ‘Your father has kindly agreed
that you can stay at Sally’s tonight but there are some conditions.
If you do go to a bar you are to be back at Sally’s for ten. You
then call your dad’s mobile from her house phone, not your mobile,
with the house number not hidden so your dad can check that you are
actually at Sally’s. Understand?’

‘Yes. No
problem. We’re not going out anyway; we’re going to watch a
movie.’

‘That’s fine
sweetie. Thank your dad for letting you stay out.’

‘Thanks
dad.’

‘I’ll be
waiting for your call.’

‘Okay. I’ll
definitely call. Better go and get my overnight things together.
Good luck with the rehearsing.’

‘Thank you. You
have a good night.’

‘You too.’

Michelle
stepped out of the studio and walked back through the house and
threw some essentials into a bag such as her toothbrush and a
change of underwear. She then moved downstairs into the living room
and occasionally peered through the curtains to check for the
arrival of Sally. She arrived almost exactly when the fifteen
minutes were up and Ray flashed the lights of the Rolls-Royce.
Michelle picked up her bag and ran out of the house, closing and
locking the front door behind her.

A few people
were on the street, but they were locals and they were quite used
to seeing expensive cars pulling up outside the Walmesley’s abode
so they did not even give the expensive car a second glance.

Ray had got out
of the car and held open one of the rear doors and took Michelle’s
bag from her. She got into the car and hugged and then kissed her
best friend on the cheek. The interior of the car was exquisitely
designed as one would expect in a Rolls-Royce. In the rear of the
car there were two individual seats as opposed to a lounge seat
configuration. Each seat was covered in sumptuous cream leather.
Between the two seats was a centre console which housed storage
compartments, controls for the rear entertainment system and also a
cool box that currently contained an expensive bottle of Krug
champagne.

As Ray got back
into the car and proceeded at a sedate pace back towards the
mansion, Sally opened the champagne and poured the drink into two
crystal glasses that were held safely and steadily in one of the
storage compartments designed for this purpose. Sally pressed a
button on the centre console and a privacy screen rose between the
front and rear of the car. It was not a usual feature of this
particular model of Rolls-Royce, but her father had it specially
fitted at a, for him, small expense.

They clinked
their glasses together and said, ‘Cheers!’ to each other.

Michelle sunk
into the thick leather chair and let out a sigh of contentment. ‘At
moments like this I’m sooooo glad we became friends!’

‘Yes, it’s good
isn’t it.’

‘It is more
than good, it is blissful!’

‘Indeed.’

There were a
few moments of silence before either of them spoke. ‘Hey, I’ve got
the new Red Hot Chili Peppers video set-up to go. He looks so hot!
You want to watch it?’

‘Lordy, if it’s
not Johnny it’s Kiedis. He can’t even sing that well.’

‘What?! How
dare you?! He is gorgeous and he sounds like an angel!’

‘Okay, okay,
whatever. Put it on then.’

Sally pressed
another button on the centre console and because of the way the
privacy screen was designed it left the rear of the two front seats
exposed. This design therefore allowed the rear occupants to view
the twelve inch monitors that were housed in the back of the two
front-seats.

When Sally
pressed the button they automatically swung open and when she
pressed another button the music Blu-ray started to play. They
watched this in silence for five minutes or so and when it had
finished Sally pressed another button and the screens swung back
into their housing.

‘Well, what did
you think?’

‘It was good.
One of their better recent songs.’

‘Good? It was
brilliant. Didn’t he look hot?’

‘Not my
type.’

‘Oh, and I
suppose Simon is?!’ The words leapt out of Sally’s mouth before she
could stop them and the words crashed into Michelle’s ears before
she could call them back.

Michelle looked
slightly surprised that the topic had been brought up so early into
the evening, and so abruptly. ‘Erm, well, you’ve got to admit that
he is kind of hot!’ Michelle replied hoping to make a joke out of
it.

‘Yeah, exactly
why I was having a date with him, because he is kind of hot.’

‘I’m sorry
Sally, but I thought you hadn’t turned up and that for some reason
you weren’t interested anymore.’

‘Well, I didn’t
turn up because my car broke down, my phone signal went, I got
drowned in the rain and looked like a rat…’

Michelle let
out a little laugh. ‘A rat? That would be a first! One of the best
looking women in the world looking like a rat!’

‘Well, thank
you for the compliment, but believe me when I say that Friday night
I looked like a drowned rat!’

‘Okay, I
believe you. Carry on. It sounds like an eventful evening!’

‘It was. So, my
phone signal went, I got soaked and looked like a rat, I got
attacked and then I kneed and kicked him in the balls, I ran in my
new Pradas which was highly traumatic…’

‘Whoa, whoa,
whoa! Back up a little! You got attacked? Who by? Where?’

Sally pressed a
button on the centre console. ‘Ray?’

‘Yes
Sally?’

‘Can we go back
via a slightly indirect route?’

‘Of course.
Anywhere specific you would like me to head towards?’

‘The coast,
then go along the coast road and then home. Is that okay?’

‘Of
course.’

‘Thanks
Ray.’

Sally then
proceeded to tell Michelle about everything that happened, and
everything about David.

‘So you’re
meeting him on Wednesday?’ asked Michelle.

‘Yep.’

‘Then what
about Simon?’

‘Well even
though I don’t agree with what you did, he’s all yours. After
everything that David did for me I really want to get to know him
better. The way he helped me and the way he took so much of his
time out to fix the car…’

‘He sounds
great. Which is exactly what I think of Simon.’

‘So what
happened if you didn’t sleep with him?’

‘Believe me
now?’

Sally nodded in
the affirmative and looked slightly uncomfortable. So Michelle told
Sally all about her night. While they were talking the level of the
champagne dropped and Ray continued along the coast road which they
had just reached.

‘And that’s it.
We’re also going on a date on Wednesday.’

‘Are you? Cool.
We could double-date?’

‘No, not on our
first date.’ said Michelle.

‘Yeah, I
suppose it wouldn’t be appropriate.’

‘And it would
be slightly awkward considering you were meant to have a date with
my date earlier in the week!’ exclaimed Michelle.

‘Indeed. Let’s
forget about that now. It clearly wasn’t meant to be. Call it fate
or karma, whatever you want to, but let’s forget about it.’

‘Okay, fine by
me.’

They sipped
their champagne and looked at the view as the Rolls-Royce
majestically made its way along the road that hugged the
seashore.

‘Crikey!’ Sally
lifted the bottle out of the cooler. ‘We’ve had most of the
bottle!’

‘I know. I can
tell!’ Perfectly timed Michelle gave out a little hiccup.

They giggled,
chatted and talked as Ray turned away from the coast and headed
back inland towards Sally’s estate.

‘I’ve just
thought of something! You said it was running in your Pradas that
was highly traumatic, not the attack?’

Sally laughed.
‘Well they were both highly traumatic experiences, but getting
attacked just about beats running in the Pradas as most traumatic
by a nose!’

It was
Michelle’s turn to laugh and by now they had reached the country
road that led to the gates of the estate. Just as they were
approaching Sally dropped the privacy screen and saw headlights
heading towards the Rolls at quite a pace. However, the oncoming
car sensibly slowed down when the driver saw the Rolls indicating
to turn onto the estate, and as the car went past Michelle leaned
forward in her seat to pick up the cork from the champagne from
where it had fallen.

*

As David
glanced into the interior of the Rolls-Royce he was surprised to
see that the car did not have privacy glass and he caught a glimpse
of a pretty looking young lady with brown hair. He was on his way
back from the garage where again he had been putting in some
serious overtime. Behind the brunette, in the other seat, he
thought he saw a quick flash of black hair and then he was past. He
looked quickly into the rear view mirror hoping to catch another
glance of the other person in the car, the one with the black hair,
the same colour as Sally’s hair. He was concentrating so much on
the rear of the Rolls-Royce that he nearly went straight on at a
sharp right hand bend. His Fiesta’s muffler roared as he quickly
downshifted and firmly braked, swinging the car into the corner. As
he regained firm control of the car his thoughts flashed back to
the flash of black hair he had seen in the back of the Rolls, but
he immediately rejected it.

‘No way! Just a
coincidence,’ he stated out loud. He thought about it some more
then shook his head and said out loud again, ‘No way young man,
coincidence! You couldn’t be that lucky!’

*

Ray parked the
Rolls in front of the main doors and the girls scampered through
the chilly night air into the entrance hall. Michelle was used to
the opulence in which her friend lived but every time she entered
the magnificent room she was always staggered. The hall had more
floor space than her whole house and the massive paintings on the
wall of Sally’s mother still looked bigger than her house even
after all these years. For a few months after Sally’s mother had
passed away, Michelle had had nightmares concerning those pictures
and how they came to life and chased her through the mansion. But
that was many years ago and now Michelle hardly glanced at the
paintings as they made their way up the stairs and along the
lengthy corridors to Sally’s bedroom.

On entering
Sally picked up the phone and ordered some food from the kitchens.
They both fancied something junky to soak up the champagne so it
was a burger and chips for both of them. As they waited, Sally
noticed the pile of clothes and shoes that had not yet been cleared
away by one of the maids.

‘Just as well
the maid who usually tidies my room is off today otherwise the
shoes would have gone already.’

‘Yeah, but
where do they go Sally?’

Sally shrugged
her shoulders and muttered, ‘I don’t know.’