Sims Life Musings

As mentioned in my last post, I’ll be posting the occasional non-Sims story here in place of White Horse Vale. My Round 1 story for the contest at Sims Contest was posted for voting yesterday, so here it is! For this round we had to choose a picture from a wedding dress/ball gown site and write a story based on the picture and whatever ideas we had. I chose the following picture, and as the style of dress was named Alice I also used that name for one of the characters.

The Scarlet Gown

Our plan had worked perfectly, and no one suspected us for an instant, not even the police. You see, we knew every detail of our employers’ lives – all of their secrets and little idiosyncrasies that they guarded jealously against the outside world. It would have been so easy to blackmail them and take them for every penny they had, but we were not that greedy. All we wanted was each other, and the chance to live together quietly until the end of our lives. Of course there were risks involved, and one of us would have to play extra nice to her for a few months, but in the end it would all pay off very nicely. And I would finally get the only other thing I’d ever desired.

I’d been working for Sir Charles and Lady Alice Pearson for two and a half years, rising slowly through the ranks from housemaid to lady’s maid. Sir Charles was an ex-stockbroker from an old county family, and after the death of his first wife he became smitten with Alice Jacobs, the daughter of the village butcher. She was forty years younger than Sir Charles, and it was obvious to everyone in the village and on the estate that the stupid old fool would make her his wife. He loved her and she loved his money, so both of them got what they wanted from the arrangement. Sir Charles was so in love with her that he turned a blind eye to all of her affairs, which were numerous and frequent. However there was one man that Alice loved more than anything in the world; more than she loved Sir Charles’ money. Neither of us knew his identity, but when they were due to meet for one of their illicit trysts it always coincided with a shopping trip to London. Jack and I were the only members of staff required for Alice’s visits to the City, and it was one particular visit six months ago that gave us the idea for planning our escape.

Alice and I spent the whole morning trying to find the perfect dress for the charity ball that she was hosting at The Dorchester, and we’d almost given up before I spotted it. The gown was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen – full-length scarlet with hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny crystals that shimmered in the dimmest of lights. As soon as I saw it my heart stopped, and I knew in an instant that one way or another it would be mine. A plan quickly formed in my mind, and it was easy to convince Alice that I’d found her exactly what she was looking for. Half an hour later she was in some hotel or other, whilst Jack and I made love at her apartment in Eaton Square and planned our future together. As we lay in each other’s arms we discussed everything down to the last detail, Jack’s beautiful green eyes sparkling in the late afternoon light as he pulled me close and told me that he’d love me forever.

When Alice came home later that evening she told me that she was leaving Sir Charles. She’d been finalising her own plans that afternoon, and would be leaving after the charity ball. Sir Charles never ventured to the City, so she wouldn’t have to slip away from his watchful gaze. Instead she would leave the ball early, feigning exhaustion from all of the organisation, and after changing into some shabby looking clothes she would collect her lover and fly out of the country. She chuckled like a schoolgirl as she confessed that she’d been eating away at Sir Charles’ fortune ever since the day they’d married, depositing the money into an overseas bank account under a false name and no one had even noticed.

The day of the ball arrived, and once again Jack and I travelled up to London with Alice. The excitement in the air was overwhelming, with Alice laughing and buzzing around the apartment as she packed a small suitcase with her “going away” clothes. A passport that she’d obtained using a false name, and a small amount of cash, were hastily thrown into a cheap handbag that I managed to find at a second-hand shop, together with the details of her new bank account. An hour later everything for her escape was in place, and she finally left for the ball. The evening seemed to crawl along as Jack and I packed our belongings. It had already been arranged that we would go back to the estate as soon as Alice left to meet her lover, although Sir Charles was under the impression that she was going to take the train back in a few days after she’d taken care of some other charity business.

At 10.30pm Alice came home and hastily changed into a cheap sweater and jeans. She hugged Jack and I and thanked us for our services before picking up her bags and running out of the apartment. She’d managed to find an old Ford Escort in good working order to serve as her getaway car, and it was parked two streets away so that anybody who saw her drive away wouldn’t recognise her. Ten minutes later she would collect her lover and head for the airport. She left in such a hurry that she didn’t bother to check that everything was in her handbag. While she was at the ball I’d removed the bank details and passport and packed them with my own belongings. As soon as she’d left the apartment for her new life abroad, Jack and I locked up and drove to the flat that we used when we had some free time away from the estate. We quickly hid the bank details in the wardrobe and threw in our spare clothes before leaving. The scarlet gown was carefully arranged in its original box and wrapped in tissue paper.

We were almost back at the estate when the late news came on to the radio. There had been a fatal car accident close to Heathrow airport. Two bodies, believed to be a male and a female, were pulled from the burning wreckage of the Ford Escort. No other vehicles were involved in the accident, and preliminary examinations indicated that the car’s brakes had failed ….