SHE

First Published in 2019 by Blossom Spring Publishing

She Copyright © 2019 McSorley Creative Ltd.

978-1-9160320-6-4

E: admin@blossomspringpublishing.com

W: www.blossomspringpublishing.com

Published in the United Kingdom. All rights reserved under International Copyright Law. Contents and/or cover may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written consent of the publisher. Book cover copyright © 2019 McSorley Creative Ltd.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, save those clearly in the public domain, is purely coincidental.

Chapter 1

'JoJo's café, top of the Westbury.' Jack Sykes rested his iPhone on his bearded cheek and lowered his voice. 'Wild goose-chasing again,' he told his secretary. 'I'll give it a bit longer, then I'm heading home too.'

He buried his big face behind his newspaper and made himself suitably inconspicuous. At the cynical end of middle age, Sykes was a seasoned private investigator with over twenty years' experience in minding other people's business.

The café had been Sykes' Saturday afternoon stakeout for the past month, but so far, he'd drawn a blank. He was convinced the case was going nowhere and had told his client as much when they'd spoken the previous day.

He polished off his hotdog and focused on a small angelic-looking boy in a green quilted anorak. The child sat at a table at the edge of the café and peered down through the glass balustrade to the army of weekend shoppers, three floors below.

Sykes' subject – a tall early-thirties sandy-haired man in a leather jacket and jeans – returned to the boy's table with an ice cream sundae in a big fancy conical glass. Sykes turned to the sports section of his paper, eyeing the young father now sitting with a coffee opposite the boy.

The little lad chattered to his dad and tucked into his dessert. Sykes had to supress a smile when the kid's father swiped the topmost cherry and popped it into the youngster's mouth. Other diners came and went as the child's long clinking spoon worked through layers of chocolate and strawberry. Sykes thought it all seemed so bloody innocent and wondered what the hell his client was expecting him to uncover.

He'd pressed her about her suspicions the first time she came to his office, but she wouldn't say. Maybe she was too embarrassed to come right out with it, that hubby might be slinging his hook elsewhere. Bit of a strange one, she was, arrogant almost, compared to the usual downtrodden women prepared to pay for a bit of snooping. This one probably had too much time on her hands, that and an overactive imagination. Hormone stuff.