Free Please Release Me by Rhoda Baxter

She was an attractive woman and they got on very well. He considered her a friend. But lately, he had been thinking of her more often than he should. Out and about in the day, he would see things that reminded him of her. Sometimes, he daydreamed about what it would be like to kiss her.
    Being in a car with her for any length of time would not be a great idea. He loved Sally. He had no intention of throwing that away. He knew he couldn’t trust his own emotions these days. He probably didn’t even fancy Grace that much. It was just that he’d lost his sense of perspective. Not for the first time, he wondered if he should take his mother’s advice and go see a doctor. No. Things weren’t that bad. He could handle it.
    He wondered whether he should call Harry and ask him to swap lifts. Harry was giving some other guy a lift and they’d all agreed that people driving in a state of high nerves was a bad idea. Harry had suggested that Peter might be able to help calm Grace’s fears. After all, he knew about climbing and abseiling, whereas Harry would just wind her up more.
    He convinced himself that he was doing it out of friendship and common sense and not because he found Grace attractive.
    He had finished having an early breakfast when there was a banging on the door. Odd. His mother didn’t usually show up until much later in the morning. Besides, she knew he was going to be out most of that day.
    Frowning, he opened the front door to find a man with spiky hair and a tattoo of a starburst on the side of his neck, standing outside, brandishing a letter.
    The man jabbed his finger at the letter in his hand. It had something red on the top of it. ‘Where’s Sally Cummings? I need to talk to her.’
    ‘She’s … not here. I’m her husband.’
    ‘Well where is she? Tell her we’re not having this. We’ve had the bloody bailiffs round again, threatening to take our stuff away. I told them she didn’t live there no more, but they came again anyway. Scared the crap out of my girlfriend. She’s in her third trimester you know. It’s not good to scare pregnant women like that.’
    Peter put his hands up defensively. ‘Wait. Slow down. What are you talking about?’
    The man shoved the letter at him. ‘We’ve been getting these for ages. We kept sending them back to sender. Then the bailiffs started to show up. It’s taken me bloody ages to find out where she went to. I’ve had enough of this. Here. It’s your problem now. I’ll be passing this address on to the bailiffs when they next come round.’
    Peter stared at him for a moment and took the letter. He had paid all of Sally’s debts off ages ago. ‘Okay. I’ll see if I can sort things out. I had no idea she owed any money to anyone.’
    ‘Oh.’ The man seemed surprised. The bluster seemed to drop out of him. ‘Oh, okay mate. That would be great. Er. Thank you.’
    Peter smiled. ‘No problem. I hope everything goes well with the baby.’
    ‘Cheers. Me too.’ He took a step back. ‘I guess I’ll be off then.’
    ‘Bye.’ Peter retreated back into the house and shut the door. He skimmed the letter and spotted the address of the collection service. Sally has assured him that she had no more debts. Perhaps this was an old one that she had forgotten about. He scanned down to the details of when the loan was taken out and did a double take. The date was two weeks before the wedding. That was strange. By then he had paid off all of Sally’s gambling debts and if she needed money, all she would have had to do was ask. What did she need money for that was so secret she couldn’t tell him about it? Five hundred pounds.
    He frowned. Perhaps she had been gambling again. An uneasy vision of the lottery ticket crossed his mind. She’d said ‘don’t you trust me’, but he’d seen the temptation in her eyes. Perhaps he had been right not to trust her.
    He dismissed the thought as unworthy. Sally had been going to Gamblers Anonymous for two months before