“Then you will have no hesitation in signing a cast-iron guarantee to that effect.” He smiled with satisfaction as he helped himself to the traditional Greek stew. “I’m sure we can have something drafted up after the weekend and then forget all about that dreadful establishment.”
Kizzy rested her chin thoughtfully on her hand. “I’m still not clear where you come into all this, why Heliades bought up the ‘dead duck,’ as you described it. Property prices in that area of Portsmouth would never be enough for the fantastic villa they’ve just bought in Cyprus, not to mention the holiday apartment in Lake Como and the cruiser. You said their debts were astronomical.”
A dark eyebrow arced upward.
“It’s none of your business now. And I’d hate for us to fall out again if you insist on pursuing this topic.” He poured them both a generous glass of wine. “Now, back to what you were saying earlier, you’re obviously quite informed about real estate. But I’m not convinced you’re up to speed with certain aspects of the law.”
“I never said I was, but—”
“Forget the interview, you’ve had your ten minutes.” He smiled lazily and was pleased to note that she seemed to relax a little. “You said you inherited debts from your mother, so presumably you had acted as a cosignatory? You wouldn’t have been a suitable guarantor, surely?”
Her face was blank.
“Your mother must have asked you to sign something, maybe passed it off as something else?”
“No, never. What kind of woman do you think she was? She would never have done such a thing.” Kizzy’s fork fell with a clatter onto the table as she looked at him in horror. “I’ve never signed anything like that. I wasn’t even party to the tenancy agreement. She kept me out of it completely.”
“Then you can’t have inherited her debts; the law doesn’t work like that. It might be an ass, but it’s crawled some way out of the dark ages. The loan company, the bank, whichever institution lent her the money, would have had to write it off if her estate couldn’t cover it. Presumably nothing much was left?”
Kizzy nodded slowly.
“So that’s brilliant news, isn’t it?” Andreas raised his glass triumphantly. “You have no debts, whatever anyone else has told you. A new, footloose life!”
“They weren’t institutions exactly,” Kizzy murmured.
“What do you mean?”
“Conventional lenders weren’t interested in her business, I’m afraid. She took an alternative route—to the darker side of finance.”
“Loan sharks,” Andreas supplied flatly.
Kizzy nodded.
“It’s okay, really it is,” she said hurriedly. “I’ve been gradually paying them off, although I’ve had to borrow from the bank to meet some of the installments—before the interest charges went up again.”
The still expression on his face made her voice waver.
“I realize you’ll think me very stupid but if I hadn’t done it that way I’d probably be minus a few body parts by now.”
She pushed her plate away as the air temperature seemed to drop a few degrees. There was no turning back now—he might as well know everything.
“On top of all that, Mum borrowed from most of her friends as well. In a way, those debts are worse as there’s a moral obligation to clear them. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I didn’t pay back every penny.” She raised her eyes to the ink-blue night sky above their courtyard table. “I’ll get there eventually, though they’re happy to wait until I’m on my feet again. There are some decent people out there. But the bank and our local gangsters aren’t quite so accommodating.”
As he wrestled with the shock of her financial situation, Andreas wondered if he would fit into that description. Did Kizzy Dean see him as decent? Probably not, he reasoned, feeling an inexplicable twinge of regret. Yet why should she? No doubt she would lump him into the same uncaring category as her fiscal captors.
“How much?” he said. “How much do you owe in total?”
Kizzy’s eyes widened with embarrassment—she wished she hadn’t mentioned it now. “About thirty thousand pounds, five of it to the bank.”
“Is that all?”
“A drop in the ocean for you,” Kizzy responded awkwardly. “But it’s going to take me a lifetime to clear it. It goes up another two thousand if I don’t make next week’s installment. So maybe now you will understand my worry about the hotel bill?”
“Then you must concentrate on the bank and forget about the loan sharks,” Andreas announced firmly. “They can’t get you here, Kizzy, unless you do something stupid and tell them where you are. But credit ratings follow you wherever you go. Forget about the gangsters, they’ll lose interest once they realize their easy target’s gone.”
“But they threatened to torch Timi’s.”
Andreas shrugged. “Saving me a few thousand in demolition fees then.”
“Everything I have is in that place!”
“It’s only bricks and mortar, Kizzy. It’s run-down, damp and condemned. Let it go.”
“I meant my stuff, personal things, photographs of my parents, the things that make me who I am. It’s not much but it’s all I have left to prove who I am, where I came from.”
“It’s all been put in storage already,” Andreas replied, and avoided her bewildered eyes.
He was beginning to feel moved by the anguish in her voice, the pain Kizzy was clearly feeling at the prospect of losing those few sentimental trinkets, and he didn’t enjoy the sensation one little bit.
“It’s not that simple,” Kizzy replied with a touch of exasperation. “They know who my mother’s friends are. And mine. One of them has just had a baby and,” her words cracked into a hoarse whisper, “they said they would all get a ‘visit’ if I didn’t pay up or if I told the police.”
Andreas swore angrily in his own language and snatched up the cell phone that still lay on the table between them. “How do you normally pay these animals?”
“They come to the restaurant every Thursday after we close. When I’m on my own.” She sighed miserably. “It has to be cash.”
Andreas stalked away from the table and made some phone calls out in the quiet darkness of the courtyard. By the time he had finished, Kizzy’s palms were damp and cold, her heart beating sickeningly against her ribs.