Hayley leaned back from her computer screen, the expensive chair she used creaking as she shifted in it. She ran her fingers through her hair, letting out a long sigh of frustration, before screwing her eyes up tight, pressing the palms of her hands against them, and giving voice to an angry groan.

There was no getting away from it. This month she’d completely screwed herself over. Maybe more accurately she’d been screwing herself over since she started up her consulting job, and hadn’t realised until too late to even enjoy it.

The issue was simple. The issue was tax day, and the fact Hayley hadn’t got used to thinking about what she’d need to deduct from her fees yet. She’d been undercharging and not setting enough aside to pay her taxes from what she did charge, which she’d only realised with two months of the tax year to go. Currently, one of those months remained, and while she’d made efforts to redress the balance by upping her prices, hustling for work, and essentially doing nothing but work for the past month, she wasn’t going to complete everything she needed to complete in time to even start making a payment plan work.

There weren’t enough hours in the day and when there were, there wasn’t enough will in her to stay focused throughout. She was going to end her first business year as a business owner screwing up royally and being in debt to the government. It wasn’t even going to be close; if she could get all the work she’d brought in done, maybe. That just wasn’t an option.

She needed all the work done by the end of the week. It was Wednesday. And there was more than a month’s worth of work there…

“Fuck,” she said, but so quietly that she could pretend to herself she’d said nothing at all. Then, “FUCK!”

She pushed herself away from the desk and got up, driven by her own anger at herself, driven by a need not to be anywhere near her screen. The futility of doing even her best job with her work made it hard for her to want to do any work whatsoever.

Her frustration took her eventually out of the house entirely, where she stomped off down the road and detoured through a park nearby. She found herself less and less angry as the first five minutes of walking wore on, but the frustration and the worry were still there, surrounding a core that had been rage and was now a hollow, empty fear.

Half an hour later, as she unlocked her front door and went back in, Hayley still had that hollow, empty worry, but she’d set aside her frustration for the time being. She knew herself well enough to know that coming soon would be a wild abandonment of what she could do - if it wasn’t going to be enough anyway, why not throw it all away? It was stupid, and she’d know it was stupid while she was doing it.

She was hoping that if she made a pot of tea in time, she might be able to come up with something…

Really, the problem was that she couldn’t work fast enough. If the work was all done in short order, she could get paid in time. But the only way to solve that would be to bring in help - and help would want paying.

…Wouldn’t it?

*

It turned out there were services out there where you could get help for as close to three as possible. Hayley had always written these off as scams, and she was almost not desperate enough to test that yet. But she did take a bit of time out to see how long payment could be deferred on the various services, just in case. She knew it wouldn’t be long enough, but if she didn’t confirm that, she’d always wonder if she’d screwed herself over.

She had to check. And she went through the famous sites, then some less famous, then started searching random combinations of words that might - maybe - give her another option.

Your Jobs Done | Remote or Hanover NH

Expert work done by experts at a competitive price. You can afford us, but can you afford to miss out?

Set in the middle of the other links in the search, it stood out. Confident to the point of brashness and vague to the point you couldn’t be sure of anything, the phrasing wasn’t like anything else.

And they were local. Hayley vaguely remembered from a free video course she’d taken while she was preparing to go freelance that ‘local search’ was a big thing, and honestly it might be the only reason this site had showed up for her search. The cursor hovered over the link for a long, long time before Hayley actually clicked through.

The site was honestly pretty basic - it had probably been put together by someone who knew basic templates and not much more - but the photos were pretty eyecatching; it looked like a female team, and Hayley knew from experience how much harder an all-woman team would be prepared to work just to compete. There was a long list of different jobs they’d done, but each one was accompanied by a photo of someone doing the job and looking like they knew what they were doing; and when she clicked over to Meet the Team, she saw several of the same faces.

And, in the footer: Competitive rates or ask about our alternative revenue stream

Which did, she admitted to herself, sound like it might be a scam. In other circumstances she’d have closed the tab and gone on to something else. But instead, Hayley left the computer and brewed herself another mug of vile tasting instant coffee, taking her sweet time over every step of making it, her mind on the website throughout.

Trying to talk herself into the gamble she knew she needed to take.

She made her way back to her desk, sat there for a moment to steel herself, and clicked on the button labeled Add to Basket.

It looked like the checkout had been designed for a standard online shop, maybe one of the ones where you could order wine glasses with custom engraving; there were plenty of boxes for her to add details, and she did, giving her contact information, the basic outline of her requirements, and the deadline. Just above the Place Order button were three checkboxes for payment methods.

Hayley skipped right over the credit card - not maxed out, but as weighed down as she was willing to risk - and the PayPal options and checked Alternative Revenue Stream.

She was relieved to see that this auto-adjusted her order estimate down to $0.00, and she placed her order.

She sat quietly at the computer a while longer, cradling her coffee mug in two hands that were both grateful for the extra warmth, wondering what she’d done. Yet she couldn’t deny that with the decision taken she felt much more comfortable.

When her cellphone rang she jumped, and only barely prevented her coffee from going everywhere. Some of it still splashed over her hand; she sucked in her breath from the initial sting, but it could, she told herself, have been much worse.

Setting it down, she picked up her phone with the other hand and fumbled with the box of tissues to start the drying process. “Hello?”

“Is this Ms. Daniels?” The voice was female, confident, and (a word Hayley hated, but still appropriate) peppy.

“Speaking…?”

“Excellent. I’m Ms Parsons, but you can call me Britney. Ms Bryant at Your Jobs Done has assigned me to your case. Is this a good time to talk?”

The peppiness had not left her tone even as she switched to her professional script and mode. Hayley got the distinct impression this Britney just was that cheerful - probably at all times. Eeeuch. “Uh - yes, I suppose so. To tell the truth I didn’t expect to hear from you today.”

“OH? Ms Bryant told me time was of the essence. Is that fair to say?”

“Well…” Hayley sighed. “Yes. Honestly I’m not sure we have enough time no matter what.”

“Well, you could be right,” Britney returned. “But I’d like the chance to assess that first. So… what can we do for you?”

It was the right question at the right moment, it turned out. Certainly, afterwards, Hayley would wonder how she came to spill all her worries to a woman sounding so cheerful there was no way she understood. Except that Britney did. The floodgates were open, Hayley went rapidly from talking to talking quickly to babbling, and Britney didn’t have chances to do much more than squeeze in “Mmm”s and “Yeah”s - but they were in the right places, and they sounded invested, not disinterested.

When the tale was finally told, Britney drew in a deep breath. “Well,” she said. “That sounds pretty awful, but I think we can help. I have a number of ladies under me who have training in that area. Would you be happy with us visiting tomorrow?”

Hayley spluttered. It wasn’t so much that help was on the horizon; it was how breezily and confidently the help was being offered. Something she’d agonised over for more than a month, had to try not to think about when she lay down to sleep every night, and to this woman it wasn’t a challenge. Which seemed like a slap in the face - but also it was the best thing that could possibly happen for her. “That’s… seriously?”

“Of course, Ms Daniels,” Britney said cheerfully. “If we can show up tomorrow, we can get started then. And if you know that, you can sleep easy tonight.”

“I…” She swallowed. “Wait. There’s one thing I need to know before that.”

“Oh? Well, I’m sure I can help with that. What do you need?”

“This alternative payment thing…”

“Alternate revenue source. Yes?”

“When do I… you know… pay?”

“Well, I imagine you don’t want to until this is done,” Britney said briskly. “And probably not until you’ve made some money in the new tax year to start rebuilding a cushion. So let’s say instalments begin in three months?”

“Uh - what’s the interest rate?”

“We don’t add interest.”

“Hang on,” Hayley said, brows knotting into a frown. “How does that work?”

“I’ll discuss that tomorrow, if that’s alright,” Britney said, breezing straight past the question. “Is there anything else? No? Then I’ll see you tomorrow, mid-morning. Oh - how do you take your coffee?”

“What?”

There was only the briefest pause. “I’ll play that by ear then,” Britney said. “See you tomorrow.” There was a click as she rang off. Hayley stared at her throne, wondering what had just happened, feeling somehow unmoored and uncertain.

But that night she slept like a baby all the same.

*

The knock on the door came between nine and ten in the morning; earlier than Hayley was ready for by some way. She opened it to four women, all in business suits. The woman in the lead stood taller than the others, long blonde hair swept back over her shoulders, flawlessly made up, glasses Hayley would bet were non-prescription perched on her nose, a confident, warm, reassuring smile on her lips.

A far cry from the ditz Hayley had pictured on the phone, but nonetheless she knew instinctively this was Britney.

“May we come in, Ms Daniels?” she asked, and Hayley nodded, stepping back so they could file in. The other women seemed odd, somehow. They moved almost in unison, their eyes seemed vacant. They held briefcases or laptop bags and they stood upright and attentive, and yet somehow Hayley was left with the definite impression they were somehow dreaming.

Britney, on the other hand, was one of the most intensely alive people Hayley had ever met. Having that woman’s eyes focus on her was something special; it had a weight, an impact that Hayley couldn’t have expected. She looked away first, her own gaze dipping from the other woman’s eyes.

Britney wasn’t wearing a blouse under her suit jacket. Bare skin and a silver necklace, a small star dangling from it with a green gem winking in the light. Her confidence clearly went hand in hand with her sensuality. “Ms Bryant hand-picked the team for you,” Britney said, and nodded to the group of three women standing watch nearby. “All of them have relevant experience. Loni there actually used to do the same work as you, though she didn’t have the bravery to take the plunge into self-employment as you have.”

Loni was the epitome of a platinum blonde to Britney’s archetypal bleach blonde. Looking at her more attentively Hayley realised the woman was actually much taller than she’d thought at first, possibly taller than Britney; it was just that she didn’t stand tall, her body language so self-effacing you mentally knocked three or four inches from her height. The skirt to her suit was short and tight, to the point Hayley almost couldn’t believe the woman could walk comfortably; everything about how she was dressed was technically professional, but on the other hand, if Hayley had seen the woman drinking in a hotel bar, she’d have assumed she was a call girl.

Most confusing at her, though, was the expression; there wasn’t one. Not a case of resting bored face, not a case of someone suppressing their personality to fit in at work; her facial features, though beautiful, didn’t seem to have that animating spark, and combined with the vacancy in her eyes that Hayley had already noticed, it really stood out. The other two with her - one a brunette, one a stunning black woman whose hair had been painstakingly straightened and grown out into a ponytail almost reaching her waist - looked pretty similar.

“Umm…” Hayley said. “Can I… talk to you? In private?”

Britney grinned. “Certainly,” she said, and gestured to the nearest door. “Through there?”

Through there was the kitchen. Hayley gave the three other women an apologetic half-smiled as she eased the door shut. “Are they… okay?” she asked quietly as she turned back to face Britney, who smiled knowingly but warmly.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I take it you’re worried about the way they look?”

“You could say that.” Hayley couldn’t help but laugh a little as she answered. Britney seemed so unconcerned that the worry she’d felt was half gone just from that.

“Well, that’s easily explained,” Britney said. “They’re hypnotised. That’s all.”

Hayley could feel her expression set into an unmoving, half-polite smile. She blinked twice. “I’m sorry?” she asked, her apparent calm deceptive.

“They’re hypnotised. It’s part of our talent management system.” Britney waited just long enough for Hayley to recognise that what she’d just said didn’t make sense before she pressed on. “Let me put it like this,” she said. “The work you’re doing now - before you went solo you were doing all this for someone else, right?”

“Right…”

“And leading up to you deciding that was going to stop, it was getting to you, wasn’t it? Someone else made all the money. You got a tiny amount. But you were working hard. I bet you’d started to hate the job.”

“You could say that,” Hayley admitted dubiously.

“Imagine if instead of having to go to work and slog through eight hours every day you just… went to work, and then as far as you were concerned it was eight hours later,” Britney said, smiling gently, her voice soothing, those eyes of hers never leaving Hayley’s, her integrity obvious and absolute. “Like you blink, and then you have you free time. Work doesn’t take up space in your head.” Britney took a step closer to Hayley, her eyes bright. “Doesn’t that sound good?”

Hayley could feel her scalp tingling. “Yes,” she agreed cautiously. The word seemed to take twice as long to say as it should.

“Good,” Britney repeated, and her voice was soft and warm and caring and everything Hayley needed to bear. “So that’s why Loni and Lynda and Pam are the way they are. And they’re going to do good work for you, and completely forget it afterwards. Yes?”

“Yes,” Hayley nodded. Britney was so close now, and the intensity of the woman’s focus was such a rush, so sensual…

When had she started being so aware of the other woman in that way? And why?

“And that’s good for you. Not just the good work. But the confidentiality. You want your client list kept secret, don’t you?”

“Yesss…” Hayley slurred. What was wrong with her?

Standing now close enough to (kiss) touch, Britney reached up and put her fingertips against Hayley’s forehead. She began a massage, the pressure of her touch firm yet relaxing. As her scalp tingled, it didn’t even occur to Hayley to ask about it. She was thinking so slowly, and Britney’s attention was so pleasant, and her worries were all but gone, and… and…

“You want this to work,” Britney said softly. “Don’t you?”

“Yesss…”

“Ms Daniels?”

“Yes?”

“Sleep.”

Hayley’s eyes rolled back as her eyelids came down. Her shoulders sagged, her knees buckled, and she slumped forward against Britney’s warm softness. The other woman caught her with an arm around her back, steadied her. She was talking to Hayley, but it didn’t sound worried or frantic or anything but caring and kind and confident and she thought Britney was calling her a good girl and…

*

Hayley opened her eyes. She was back at her desk, sitting upright, but she felt as well rested and as peaceful as if she’d been asleep for hours. And to judge by the quality of the light from the window, maybe she had been?

That didn’t make any sense, but nothing about the day had made any sense. Nothing had made any sense about any of this since she found the website the previous day, or at least not since the phone call.

She’d woken up, she suddenly realised, after hearing a very familiar sound - the sound of the front door opening. Leaning back in her chair she could see the front door through her open office door, and saw Britney closing the door behind her, back in the house.

When had she left?

Britney met Hayley’s eyes and smiled brightly, heading briskly across. “Welcome back,” she said cheerfully. “How are you feeling? Not so worried?”

The question stopped Hayley in her tracks. She’d been feeling much improved, much happier, but when Britney brought it up specifically she suddenly realised - there wasn’t any worry left. All she had, instead, was a strange confidence that things were going to work out. “I guess… yeah,” she said quietly.

“Good,” Britney nodded. “The ladies are done for the day, but they’ll be back tomorrow morning. I won’t be asking tomorrow night, but if you could review what’s been done this evening and email me any notes on things that need changing?” She flashed a reassuring smile. “Then I can correct them before we start back up.”

“Sure,” Hayley said warmly. She realised only afterward that she’d decided to agree the moment she realised Britney was asking her something. It didn’t matter what she was asked, she was just happy to have the chance to agree.

Still, the thing she actually was asked to do was something useful for everyone, so Hayley wasn’t inclined to complain.

Britney gathered the other three up and swept them out of the house, taking a little more time to collect Lynda as the brunette had been busy at Hayley’s sink. Four mugs, freshly washed, rested on her draining board. Four small plates were already there, as were four forks, a frying pan, and a saucepan.

Hayley had no idea what had been cooked nor who had cooked it, but it was clear that she had shared, with the other three workers, a freshly cooked lunch (a lot better than what Hayley usually managed for lunch, as some kind of cup noodle instant meal or some toast was her usual standard) and at least one hot drink each. And they’d tidied up after themselves.

It was like the fairytales of hardworking pixies doing someone’s work overnight, except that hardworking pixies didn’t have smiles that lingered in your memory, full red lips that made you want to bite your own lip. For a good half an hour after Britney had left Hayley thought about nothing but her eyes, her attention, her smile, and the tantalising realisation that there was no blouse under her suit jacket.

She didn’t feel the need to work late into the evening; she didn’t actually spend much more time at her desk that night, but she did pass a while looking through her email to the work that Pam, Loni, and Lynda had sent across.

It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t as good as the work Hayley was capable of. But it wasn’t far off and, crucially, it was better than the work Hayley had been producing since she started to get nervous. On an impulse, she checked her own work - and found she’d done more in eight hours than she usually did working late into the evening, and the quality she was achieving was higher than it had been in quite some time.

She decided to set work aside and wandered into the kitchen, wondering what to cook, only to find her chopping board out near the oven. Somehow she hadn’t noticed it when she’d glanced in earlier, despite the fact it should have been right in front of her. Maybe she’d just overlooked it?

Set out on the chopping board was minced onion, minced garlic, celery, and carrot. A single portion of ground beef sat nearby, along with some sliced mushrooms and some passata. All of it the right amount for one person, all laid out in the order it would need adding for a beef ragu. That certainly wasn’t something Hayley had done, or ever thought to do.

She had her pan on the heat, the oil warming, before she even noticed she’d begun, and the meal was cooked throughout in much the same fashion, Hayley always acting then registering that she had. It was as if she was watching a chef, just from behind the chef’s own eyes (and admittedly, a professional would likely do a better job than this.)

The vegetables had been fresh. The meal had actually been balanced. And, working on automatic, Hayley hadn’t been able to do what she usually did by leaving out the seasonings. It was the best meal she’d had in her own kitchen for about two years; the year of her self-employment and the last year at her old job, while the despair had settled and grown. And it was probably also the healthiest meal she’d had in the same amount of time.

She had no idea how it had happened. She definitely hadn’t bought any celery in at least a few years, let alone had any fresh to hand. It had to be Miss Britney’s doing, but she didn’t understand why or even how.

It didn’t occur to Hayley that she went to bed at a sensible time, either. But by the following morning she was well-rested and already feeling better. Instead of pulling on a much-abused pair of leggings and a T-shirt before work, she picked out some of her best white lingerie, layered a white blouse she hadn’t worn since she quit her last job over it, and went with a too-tightly-fitting pair of khaki slacks to complete the outfit.

Hayley was more presentable than she ever was on a day she didn’t expect to have to go out.

*

Britney’s care pulled up outside the house at eight thirty sharp. Hayley was just finishing off a healthy breakfast and wondering why she’d even started making it; breakfast was usually the first meal to be abandoned as the day properly began. She made her way to the front door and let the other women in just as they arrived on the doorstep, and only then did she come to wonder how she’d known they were there…

…except, she realised, that wasn’t right either. She hadn’t known. But as she finished her dinner, she suddenly knew she had to go and answer the door.

Britney led the others over the threshold. As she passed Hayley, her hand rested on her shoulder, and Hayley felt her knees quiver. A sudden wave of happiness washed over her; a contentment, an excitement, and a certainty. They were going to get this done.

In fact, they weren’t just going to get this done; by the end of the tax year, the four of them would have hustled up enough business and resolved it to finish up with savings in her account. She knew that as firmly as she knew her own name and, with that knowledge, the last dregs of apprehension fled from her mind.

“Good morning,” Britney said to her as the other three trooped by, those same strange, glassy expressions on their faces feeling somehow now more familiar and almost comforting.

“Uh, good morning,” Hayley said quietly, biting off the urge to say “Miss,” at the end of the sentence. It would have been embarrassing.

“How are we feeling this morning?” Britney asked.

“Good,” Hayley said. She took a deep breath and said, a little more firmly, “Real good.”

“I’m glad.” The smile was warm, friendly. It made Hayley feel special, like she was the focus of something more important than herself. “I’ll leave you all be until tonight,” she said, “Did the girls do good work yesterday?”

Hayley was blushing as she nodded. “Very.”

“Great, then.” Britney reached up, cupping Hayley’s cheek. She started to stroke her thumb along Hayley’s cheekbone. “Everything seems to be going fine, then?”

“Better,” Hayley breathed. She didn’t dare move in case she broke the contact, which she found herself craving now she had it.

Britney nodded. Her other hand came up and braced against Hayley’s shoulder. “Hayley?”

“Yes?”

“Sleep.”

Hayley’s eyes rolled back as she flopped into the other woman’s arms.

*

Hayley opened her eyes, dimly registering that the front door had closed. She was seated at her desk, and the house was silent, with that strange extra quietness that a house only has when there have been people in it and they are abruptly gone. It was, by the quality of the light outside the window, late afternoon, and she felt completely, inexplicably, at peace.

She walked slowly through the silent house, feeling its emptiness where there had been three other people, its stillness where just minutes before there had been bustle. Returning to her desk, she skimmed through the day’s work, and knew she had made the right deal.

No, deal wasn’t the word for it, was it? You cut deals with business people. As businesslike as Britney (and, doubtless, the Ms Bryant at the top of the tree) was, this was much closer to a fairytale. This wasn’t a deal. She had made a bargain.

And as with many bargains in fairytales, she didn’t fully understand the price - and this second day she hadn’t had the chance to ask.

Somehow, she knew she wasn’t going to get an answer the following day, either. Miss Britney was keeping her secrets, and the more she thought about it, the more comfortable Hayley was with that.