Free Second Hand Jane by Michelle Vernal Page B

don’t
know, my girl.”
    “Thursday
night, actually. He’s taking me to the opening of a new cocktail
bar.”
    “Oh, thank
goodness for that. Thursday night, Frank—she’s going to a cocktail
bar with him.”
    Her suspicious
tone returned. “He doesn’t have a drink problem, does he?”
    “ Mum! ”
    Marian ignored
her. “What are you going to wear? Please tell me you won’t be
donning one of your weird and wonderful thrift shop creations.”
    “I don’t know
yet and for your information, some of my weird and wonderful
creations are actually designer vintage collectables.”
    “If you say so,
dear, but in my opinion that’s just gobbledegook for old. Take it
from your mother, the voice of experience: you can’t go wrong with
a little black dress.”
    “Well, I do
have an Anne Klein black wool dress I was thinking of wearing.”
    “I’m not sure
about wool sending the right message and for goodness’ sake, don’t
you go wearing any of those awful big knickers that come in packs
of six I found in your drawer that time. Decent knickers with lots
of lace, my girl, if you want to land yourself a decent man. I
could get some couriered over express if you don’t have any.”
    “ Mum! ”
    “ Marian! ” She heard her father protest in the
background.
    It was no good,
though; she was not suitably chastised. “I’m not naïve, Jessica
Jane. I know what you girls get up to these days but whatever you
do, don’t let him hit a home run. Are you listening to me? First
base maybe but a home run so early on in the piece is a no-no.”
    She had made
the excuse she was desperate for the loo after that and had gotten
off the phone quick smart, determined not to listen to any more of
her mother’s sex education class.
     
    ***
     
    Peering into
the darkness to where the red digits of her alarm clock glowed,
Jess saw that it was gone three a.m. and she was still wide awake.
Talking to her Mum always gave her a good dose of insomnia and left
her feeling wound tighter than a pair of knickers two sizes too
small. She gave a long, drawn-out sigh because she knew she was
wasting her time tossing and turning in bed when she could be doing
some work. She’d managed to finish the piece she’d been working on
earlier and despite the interruption halfway through thanks to her
mother, she was pleased with the way it had turned out. It would
definitely get her into Niall’s good books, she thought, stretching
with satisfaction.
    Whenever she
wrote something, though, she liked to leave it at least twenty-four
hours before going back over it. It was amazing the mistakes that
jumped out glaringly when she cast a fresh eye over her work. So
there was no point working on her brief brush with celebrity life
anymore tonight. She could get ahead of her game, though, she
thought, tossing the duvet aside and sitting up, by making a start
on tracking little Amy Aherne down.
    Dragging the
duvet into the lounge behind her, she dumped it on the couch and
switched her laptop on before padding into the kitchen to make a
cuppa.
    The problem was, she mused, setting the
steaming mug of tea down on the coffee table next to her
computer, Little Amy—as she had begun thinking of her—wouldn’t
be so little now. In fact, she’d be a middle-aged woman of
forty-six and had probably been married for years. Plonking down on
the couch, she flexed her fingers and then let them hover over the
keys as she pondered what she should begin to search under. Unless
she had decided to become a nun, keep her own surname or hyphenated
it, it would be a waste of time searching under Amy Aherne. Still,
she had to start somewhere.
    As she’d
expected, she got no hits—just a whole lot of stuff to do with the
Troubles, as the sectarian fighting spanning the late 60s to the
mid-1990s in Northern Ireland was referred to. She didn’t want a
gloomy history lesson, so maybe she would be better off doing a
Google search for the brother Owen and seeing where that got