The Stranger (Abbie King Thrillers Book 1) by Mark Ayre

Author:Mark Ayre [Ayre, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Conundrum Publishing
Published: 2022-01-23T16:00:00+00:00

Nineteen

The food arrived and proved to be delicious from the first bite. Abbie made all the right noises. It took Pranil longer to get into his because it was taking him longer to get over Abbie’s story. It wasn’t his tragedy, of course. He had never been raped, and his brother was not in prison for battery with the intent to kill or whatever the charge had been. On the other hand, Abbie had had longer to deal with the pain, so she gave him some time.

Halfway through dinner, after some idle chat about nonsense topics, Pranil said at last, “I feel silly telling you about my problems now. If your tragedy was a city-levelling earthquake, mine’s a missed step.”

“Our demons are personal. It’s not a competition,” said Abbie. “Besides, your problems are current, mine from years ago. You get bonus points for that.”

This coaxed back the smile she feared she had driven away for the evening.

“It’s fairly straightforward,” he said.

Abbie took another bite of her meal. She gave no further encouragement. Waited for him to find the strength to talk.

“Okay, it’s like this,” he said. “Coming up to the autumn before last, my father was made redundant. At this point, we were a happy family: my parents, my two much younger siblings, and me. Afraid to destroy this harmony, my father made the cardinal error of not revealing his redundancy to anyone, including my mother. Instead, he pretended to go to work while job-hunting, sure he would not long be unemployed.”

Pranil took a bite of his food. Took far longer chewing than was needed. Abbie said nothing; he had to tell the story his way.

“He was wrong,” said Pranil. “After three months, not only had he not found a job, but the family savings were almost depleted. My mother could not much longer be kept in the dark. At this point, he realised he should have told her of his redundancy the day it happened. It was too late for that. He still would have been better owning up then, even after three months of deceit, but he convinced himself this was impossible. She would leave him and take his children, if he was honest. He had to fix this alone. To do that, his only option was to make a lot of money and make it fast. But as you probably know, for most people, there’s only one way to make fast money, and that’s via dishonest means.”

A chill chased up Abbie’s spine. She thought of Michael’s mother with her drugs and her loan sharks, Owen with the debt left by his brother’s theft. She thought, Here we go again. But this was Pranil’s story, so she kept her mouth shut and waited.

“To top up the savings and tide him over until he found a job, Dad visited a loan shark working for a local criminal named Francis Roberts’ and borrowed twenty-five grand. He told himself this was the perfect solution. It ensured my mother never had to

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