tight. There was never much left over each fortnight. Treats were a rarity. Presents were always cheap little things, both on birthdays and at Christmas. Last Christmas hadn’t been a big problem. Emily hadn’t been old enough at three to understand that all her gifts had come from a bargain-basement store.
But Jessie had realised at the time that by this coming Christmas, Emily would be far more knowing.
As much as Jessie had enjoyed being a full-time mother at home, the necessities of life demanded that she get off welfare and go back to work. So last January, Jessie had enrolled Emily in a nearby day-care centre and started looking for a job.
Unfortunately, not with great success in her chosen field.
Despite her having her name down at several employment agencies and going for countless interviews, no one in advertising, it seemed, wanted to hire a graphic artist who was a single mum and who had been out of the workforce for over three years.
For a while, earlier this year, she’d done a simply awful—though lucrative—job, working for a private investigator. The ad in the paper had said it was for the position of receptionist. No experience required, just good presentation and a nice phone voice. When she’d got there, she was told the receptionist job had been taken, and she was offered investigative work instead.
Basically, she was sent out as a decoy to entrap men who were suspected by their partners of being unfaithful. She’d be given the time and place—always a pub or a bar—plus a short biography and photo of the target. Her job had required her to dress sexily, make contact, then flirt enough for the target to show his true colours. Once she’d gathered sufficient evidence via the sleek, hi-tech mobile phone which the PI supplied—its video recording was excellent—Jessie would use the excuse of going to the powder room, then disappear.
It had only taken Jessie half a dozen such encounters before she quit. Maybe if, just once, one target had resisted her charms and shown himself to be an honourable man, she might have continued. But no! Each time, the sleazebag—and brother, they were all sleazebags!—wasted no time in not only chatting her up but also propositioning her in no uncertain terms. Each time she’d dashed for the ladies’, feeling decidedly dirty.
After that low-life experience, she’d happily taken a waitressing job at a local restaurant. Because of Emily, however, Jessie refused to work at night or at the weekends, when the tips might have been better, so her take-home pay wasn’t great. On top of that, her expenses had gone up. Even with her government subsidy for being a single parent, having Emily in day-care five days a week was not cheap.
The only bonus was that Emily adored going to her pre-school. Jessie sometimes felt jealous over how much her daughter loved the teachers there, and the other kids. She’d grown up so much during this past year.
Too much.
She was now four, going on fourteen.
Last weekend, she’d begun asking questions about her father. And had not been impressed when her mother tried to skirt around the subject. A flustered Jessie had been pinned down and forced to tell Emily the truth. That her daddy had died in a tragic accident before she was born. And no, her mummy and her daddy had not been married at the time.
‘So you and Daddy aren’t divorced,’ she’d stunned Jessie by saying. ‘He’s not ever coming back, like Joel’s daddy came back.’
Joel was Emily’s best friend at pre-school.
‘No, Emily,’ Jessie had told her daughter in what she’d hoped was the right sombre and sympathetic tone. ‘Your daddy is never coming back. He’s in heaven.’
‘Oh,’ Emily had said, and promptly went off, frowning.
Jessie had found her in a corner of the back yard, having a serious conversation with her life-sized baby doll—the one Dora had given her for her fourth birthday in August. Emily had fallen ominously silent when her mother approached. Jessie had been very relieved when her daughter had finally looked up, smiled brightly and asked her if they could go and see Santa at K-Mart that afternoon, because she had to tell him what she wanted for Christmas before it was too late.
Clearly, Emily was too young at four to be devastated by the discovery that the father she had never known was in heaven.
But Emily’s reminder that Christmas was coming up fast—along with the fact that Jessie already knew the main present Emily wanted for Christmas—was what had brought Jessie to make the decision to do one more wretched job for Jack Keegan. The PI had said to give him a call if she ever needed some extra cash. Which she surely did, because a Felicity Fairy doll was the most expensive doll to hit the toy market in ages. Jessie would need all of the four-hundred-dollar fee she would earn tonight to buy the darned doll, along with all its accompaniments. There was a fairy palace, a magic horse and a sparkling wardrobe full of clothes.
Speaking of clothes…
Jessie stood up and smoothed down the short skirt of the black crêpe halter-necked dress she’d dragged out of her depleted wardrobe for tonight’s job. It was the classiest, sexiest dress she owned, but it was six years old and Jessie feared it was beginning to look it.
‘Are you sure this dress is OK?’ she asked Dora in a fretful tone. ‘It’s getting awfully old.’
‘It’s fine,’ Dora reassured. ‘And not out of fashion at all. That style is timeless. You look gorgeous, Jessie. Very sexy. Like a model.’
‘Who, me? Don’t be ridiculous, Dora. I know I’ve got a good figure, but the rest of me is pretty ordinary. Without my make-up on, no man would give me a second glance. And my hair is an uncontrollable disaster if I don’t drag it back or put it up.’
‘You underestimate your attractiveness, Jessie.’
In every way, Dora thought to herself.
Jessie’s figure wasn’t just good, it was spectacular, the kind of body you often saw in underwear advertisements these days. Full breasts. Tiny waist. Slender hips and long legs. They looked even longer in the high, strappy shoes Jessie was wearing tonight.
It was true that her face wasn’t traditionally pretty. Her mouth was too wide, her jaw too square and her nose slightly too long. But anchored on either side of that nose were widely set, exotically shaped dark brown eyes which flashed and smouldered with sensual promise, the kind of eyes that drew men like magnets.
As for her hair…Dora would have killed for hair like Jessie’s when she’d been younger.
Blue-black, thick and naturally curly, when left down it cascaded around her face and shoulders in glorious disarray. Up, it defied restraint, with bits and pieces escaping, making her look even sexier, if that was possible.
Dora hadn’t been surprised when that private detective had snapped Jessie up to do decoy work for him. She was the perfect weapon to entrap cheating husbands. And possibly non-cheating ones as well.
‘Is this the guy?’ Dora asked, picking up the photo that was resting in the middle of the table.
‘Yep. That’s him.’
‘He’s handsome.’
Jessie had thought so too. Far better looking than the other creeps she’d had to flirt with. And younger. In his thirties instead of forties or fifties. But she had no doubts about the type of man he was.
‘Handsome is as handsome does, Dora. He’s married with two little kids, yet he spends every Friday night at a bar in town, drinking till all hours of the night.’
‘But lots of men drink on a Friday night.’
‘I doubt he’s just drinking. The particular city bar he frequents is a well-known pick-up joint,’ Jessie pointed out drily.
‘You could say that about any bar.’
‘Look, the wife says this behaviour is out of character with her husband. She says he’s changed towards her. She’s convinced he’s being unfaithful to her and wants to know the truth.’