Is That You, Jim? A Psychological Thriller

By Ken Fry

Nobody would call Jim Beresford pitiful. He has a perfect life. All traces of his once miserable childhood has been erased and best forgotten. He is successful, popular, rich, with a beautiful wife and three daughters. They are the love of his life.

Jim has it all. Until one day, everything he's ever worked hard for crumbles into dust.
Poor Jim. There's only one thing left to do.... Right?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ken Fry
• Release date: Apr 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370580231

Ken Fry

Bestselling thriller author, Ken Fry, holds a university Master's Degree in Literature and has extensively traveled around the world. The places and events are reflected in his stories and most of his tales are based on his own experiences.He was a former publisher before deciding to retire and devote his full time to writing. He now lives in the UK and shares his home with 'Dickens' his Shetland Sheepdog.Fry has published 7 suspense thrillers with more to be released in 2017. The Patmos Enigma, Red Ground, The Lazarus Succession, Suicide Seeds, The Brodsky Affair, and 2 short stories, Check Mate and Is That You, Jim?Join Ken Fry's Circle of Readers and get free books and discounts:http://www.booksbykenfry.com

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Jim Beresford is a self-made man. He had started his career at an early age selling old records and musical items from a market stall in the East End of London. He didn’t have much else going for him apart from his cheerful friendliness and a sneaky ambition, which allowed him to sail close to the wind on many occasions.

In fifteen years, he had become CEO of a major Anglo-American publishing house. He cultivated an aura of largess around his personality, and had figured out that by doing so, he could increase his stature in commerce and in social events.

When he had a little too much to drink, Jim would regale anyone within reach with raunchy tales of East End life. Yet, to look at him wouldn’t give you that impression. He had acquired the clothes and manners of the wealthy members of society. Additionally, he undertook six months of elocution lessons to remove any traces of his East End Cockney accent. Coupled with that, he underwent assiduous hypnosis and therapeutic training to help him cope with his earlier anxieties when he was still struggling to accumulate money and investments.

Recollections or the sight of the less fortunate struggling through life would cause him to turn his head aside. He was not an unkind man. Jim would never pass by beggars, and not surreptitiously drop money or sandwiches into their hands. But poverty appalled him. Even the sight of threadbare clothing would bring back unwanted memories of his earlier struggles.

To blot out those recollections, he spent large amounts on a huge Georgian mansion close to Ascot, in an area known as the ‘stock broker belt.’ He wasn’t mean to his family, and went to great lengths to give them the very best in clothing and education. What he went through, he didn’t want his children to experience. How he had seethed with an awareness of his inferiority, and the embarrassment of having to spend hours swotting through books on English grammar, etiquette, and history, while the rest of his colleagues guffawed their lives away at golf and other social events.

But he made it… and he made it big time. It would not be untrue to say he was well liked generally, and would be a welcome guest in most places.

Jim didn’t enter into marriage until he was approaching middle age. He wouldn’t entertain it until his bank balance and income reached a certain level. The ghosts of his upbringing and his parents’ struggles still haunted him. Theirs hadn’t been a union he would ever want to discuss. It was full of bitterness and recriminatory acts of pain, both verbal and physical. Neither his mother nor father was happy. The only way they could approach that indefinable state would be with heavy infusions of whisky or gin, which they drank from tea cups since all the glasses had been broken, because they threw them at each other. They had decided years ago that Jim was next to useless. Beatings were the norm.

The portrait they presented of love and affection may have left Jim with a jaundiced picture of the emotional discharge involved in human involvements. He had considered the prospect of marriage several times, and when he decided to make the leap, he chose a much younger woman than himself. Twenty years younger to be exact.

It was said she was pretty and even-tempered, and Jim, for all his worldly success, retained a secret fear, and a lack of confidence in his abilities to handle the emotions a marriage engenders. He found her beguiling. It wasn’t long before the rocky walls of his emotional defences began their inevitable crumble.

His pride and delight in her were apparent for all to see and hear. It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the high manner in which he spoke of her to others invariably caused them a degree of disappointment when she was first encountered. He guessed at that too, and knew how to manipulate others. Many of them were in awe of his success and played along with the game. But, that didn’t sully his genuine love for her.

Whenever he arrived home, either from a trans-Atlantic business meeting or a London based event, the very sight of her warm and welcoming presence would fill him with a rush of love… a love that had been absent from him all those years back. He would throw his hat onto the table, ignoring it as it skidded in circles and dropped to the floor, before he took her