Mary's Prayer Read Online Free PDF

know where to turn.’
    ‘About what?’ He knew he shouldn’t have asked; he didn’t really want to hear her answer.
    She looked straight at him, with a lawyer’s honest face. He knew he was getting into deep water. ‘If I tell you, you’ll want
     to do something about it. Are you prepared for that? If not, then I won’t say another word.’
    She was good; she was playing him well. ‘Just tell me – then I’ll decide.’
    She looked sad, distressed; he felt honoured. He was getting the whole range for free. Well, on second thoughts, not for free
     – whatever she wanted was going to cost. He knew that from past experience.
    ‘It all came to a head a couple of weeks ago. But it had been building up for ages.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘One of the legal secretaries in the firm, a friend of mine—’
    ‘What about her? Been caught with her fingers in the petty cash?’
    Charlotte stared at him. ‘No. She died.’
    He immediately regretted his flippancy; he tried to make up for it with a blast of sympathetic sincerity. ‘That’s terrible.
     How?’
    ‘Well … the official verdict was suicide. But—’
    ‘What?’
    She tried to be as undramatic as she could. ‘I think it was murder.’
    Larkin fell silent.
    ‘I’ll tell you about it,’ she said.
    She explained that her friend, Mary, had been married to a cruel, abusive man, – ex-Army, ex-Security Consultant, ex-anything
     in a uniform – who had regularly beaten her up. When he had destroyed as much of her soul as he could, he left her for another
     woman. This resulted in Mary feeling completely worthless. Full of hate for herself. Charlotte paused, then continued.
    ‘After a while she recovered. Started going out with the gang from the office, that sort of thing. That’s when the two of
     us became friends. She would confide in me, tell me her secrets. It was like seeing a new person emerge. She still didn’t
     have much self-confidence, though. A friend of a friend put her in touch with a counselling group – she was reluctant at first,
     but eventually she went. Did her the world of good. She discovered she wasn’t the only one in her situation. It made her realise
     she deserved something more than she’d been getting.’
    ‘Good for her,’ said Larkin.
    ‘Yes. The next thing that happened was she started going to a singles club. Didn’t meet anyone special there, I don’t think.
     Maybe she wasn’t ready, maybe she didn’t like any of them – I don’t really know.’
    ‘How old was she when she started doing this?’
    ‘When she died she was forty-seven … She suddenly found this new boyfriend, – where from, I don’t know. His name was Terry,
     she said he was twenty years younger than her and she fell in love with him. We couldn’t believe it. Mary, of all people,
     had a toy boy.’
    ‘What was he like?’
    ‘Don’t know. I never met him, none of us did. That was the peculiar thing about it. Mary wasn’t the most gregarious of people
     at the best of times, but I thought I was close to her. I thought she trusted me. I asked her to introduce me to him, but
     she put me off, every time. We started to drift apart. She became more remote, started to behave – strangely. Secretive, almost
     furtive, as if she was doing something forbidden. Something that she enjoyed. Then she started to deteriorate; she began to
     look like she had when she’d been living with her husband, towards the end of her relationship. Finally,’ she gave a courtroom
     pause, ‘she killed herself.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘Shotgun.’
    Larkin’s mind went into flashback; a shiver slipped down his spine. He tried to concentrate on the present. ‘Sounds like she
     just couldn’t bear being a victim all over again.’
    ‘I think there’s more to it than that. She got through it once before, she could have done it again. She was a strong person,
     Stephen.’
    ‘But if she’d staked all her future happiness on this Terry—’
    ‘Look,’ said Charlotte,