last chance..... a girl's dream

chapter four

Chapter four

Mr henry couldn't stop staring at his cup of coffee, the sight of dispersing steam seemed to be his area of focus. Suddenly, the beeping from his pager drew his attention and he slowly picked it up, had a qiuck glance and dropped it.

'I can't work in this condition.' he slowly whispered. He took out his phone from his pocket and gazed at the number from his last received call. He deleted it soon after, dailled the girl's mother and her voice was heard some seconds later.

'Hello Victoria, I'll be coming with the girls this tuesday.' Henry said with full seriousness in his voice.

'But thats way earlier than planned.' a lowpithed reply could be heard from the phone.

'I know Victoria, just make arrangements for us okay.' he said and got her acceptance before hanging up.

Mrs. Serusuis couldn't believe something so awful was happening to her.

'my business can't possibly be failing.... of cos not, it can't be.' she thought to herself.

She had invested Nicola's college fund hoping to gain triple; her personal savings were exhausted already and this was really her last shot.

Mrs. Serusius was a brunette which stood at 5 foot 8; she was in her late thirties, had a pale skin and a really fit body. She had Nicola at a young age and maintained her body shape. She had many suitors after her divorce but merely waved them away for she didn't want any other man in her life. Nicola was everything to her and if her business failed she would have to watch him leave.

'So do we take the school bus or wait?' Claire cried. Nicola had volunteered to pick them up this week and had been fulfilling this feat til now. Mr. Henry was having a busy week and their appointed driver was down with a flu so Nicola decided to squeeze out time to help.

'This totally sucks... imagine us on that bus.' Claire said with a look of disgust. She wasn't the proud one but hated the idea of going on a bus with children of all ages which practically taunted and teased people for fun. Plus she was with her sisters, she was sure to be the talk of the bus.

'Give Nicola a break okay... we are practically trying to turn him to our full time driver.' Jessie cried in Nicola's defense.

'Bus! bus! bus!' Annie kept screaming. It didn't really matter to her how people saw her or what they said.

The bus left 40minutes after their daily classes were over. Student's houses were integrated in the buses GPS and each student going on would present a card to the driver which when slotted in would give the Student's address info.

The bus was protrayed as being for the nerds, Goths and inferior students since the school had a higher amount of rich students who had private drivers, stayed in dorms or owned private cars so the schoolbus was seldom used by the popular kids.

The girls were sitting on a bench right before the schoolbus. Jessie took a quick glance at the kids left in the parking lot; it was still pretty full and the bus was leaving in 10minutes.

'well, this will be social suicide... but daddy wouldn't want us getting home late,' Jessie said. 'besides it's just for a day and we might be moving anyways.'

*******

Victoria could no longer write; words seemed to have vanished entiley from her mind. She kept staring at the blinking cursor on the window of her laptop's screen and then her screensaver kicked up; It was a picture of her, Henry and the girls. It had been three years ago, when they were all together and it never lackedlustre to her.

Victoria had picked up writing at a young age. although her parents were wealthy, she never had the chance to travel the world and it had been her childhood dream.

Life in London had mostly been formal and full of expectations. Though she learnt the majority of activities her parents enlisted her in, she never felt they were ever satisfied and so she gave up schooling in Oxford to pursue her dreams of writing and exploring the world.

She had met Henry on a plane to Chicago when she first left London. It was the perfect love story; love at first sight and fate making them end up in the same hotel.

It had only taken them four months to decide that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together and although her parents didn't approve at first, they came around when the heard Victoria was pregnant and completely welcomed the girls. Henry wasn't totally accepted and as he wasn't stable, the girls had to move with their mother to her parent's house in London.

When Victoria had published a successful book, she went on tour and travelled round the world to gain more life experiences. Presently, she was working on a romance novel and had moved to Melbourne Australia. She had stayed a while already and adapted to it's lifestyle but bringing the girls here would be a great challenge.

The screensaver got her smiling again. The girls and Henry were everything to her and her memories of them kept her going.

'I have to start making huge preparations if they'll be close to comfortable here.' Victoria whispered as she shut down her laptop and took to her feet.

Jessie couldn't wait to get off the bus. It felt like forever to get home and she got tired of sitting next to Annie who kept throwing pieces of paper to her friends. Most of the youngsters on the bus bought the idea so there was a low-key paper battle going on.

Claire got hit a couple of times as some kids missed Annie and it was highly irritable to her as she was trying to concentrate on a novel she was reading.

'Anyone going into the Lancelot's estate should get down here.' the bus driver yelled out.

What!!! Jessie exclaimed, 'but our house is way innnn the estate.' looking as puzzled as her sisters.

'Well you better start walking then,' the bus driver retorted, 'the school changed the rule of dropping kids off in front of their houses, was wee stupid in the first place.'

'Since when?' Jessie screamed as she turned and smacked the giggling Annie who found Jessie's frustration entertaining.

''Out of ma bus or i'l take to da next stop.'' the bus driver answered with a frown. The look on his face was horrifying, Jessie was sure he wasn't bluffing.

'Come Annie, Claire... let's go.' Jessie said as she stood up and made her way off the bus.