[kiasusam]

Petite, 39 years old Jenny was a Singaporean mother of two delightful daughters; 19 years old Natasha, and 18 years old Nabila. They lived in Singapore leading the lives of a reasonably well off family.

The father spent a lot of time overseas on business and so Jenny and the two daughters were alone together for a lot of the time. Jenny worked to help support the household but it was the husband who looked after the family budget.

It was money or rather the way in which Jenny started to spend it on gambling that led to the traumatic Sunday that is the subject of this story.

Jenny, like most lonely 30 something mothers spent a lot of her time alone on the internet via her tablet computer. Nabila and Natasha were often out in the evenings now that they had graduated from high school and found boyfriends. This left Jenny alone and bored. Jenny enjoyed gambling on a small and modest scale. Sometimes she would play cards with friends for small stakes; just fun really. It was when she discovered 'on line' casinos that her troubles began.

She saw a television advertisement for an 'App' offering 50 dollars worth of free stakes if you signed up to the site with your banking details.

She thought about it for a while but finally, after a few days she signed up to the site.

Her favourite game was Black Jack and after spending an hour or so on line she had increased the initial free fifty dollar stake to one hundred dollars of winnings.

Encouraged by her success she increased her stakes and initially made even more money. Of course this didn't last. It took a few days but by the end of the first week she had lost three hundred dollars.

Her husband was due home in 8 days and she was scared that he would check their bank balance and discover her losses. She decided to open another account in her name and keep it secret from her husband. The only pressing problem was how to pay back the loss to the usual family bank account before her husband's return.

She asked around her friends and eventually one of them recommended a shady character that helped her with a loan some time ago and gave Jenny his phone number. She made the call and a few minutes later he agreed to lend her the three hundred dollars on the understanding that in one week's time she would pay back the three hundred dollars in full.

She didn't hesitate. She felt confident that she had just had a short period of bad luck and that in a few days she would easily recoup the money.

The money lender insisted that she told him her address so that he could bring the money to her and at the same time confirm her address in case she defaulted. He agreed to telephone her first so that she could tell him when the other family members were not around in order to keep her little arrangement a secret from them.

A week went past and, with only a day left before her husband was due home she had only managed to break even. The money lender called. Jenny explained that she could not pay at the moment and asked if he could wait a few extra days.

In her innocent naivety she had assumed that it was a friendly and flexible arrangement so when the guy sounded angry and insisted that he would visit her house to get payment immediately, it shook her and took her by surprise. Despite her pleading with him on the telephone he refused to listen, announcing that he would be at her house within 5 minutes to collect anything she had to the value of 300 dollars and then hung up the phone.......