I am paying my brother’s gambling loan because the lender knows where our mother lives

Dear Delyara, My brother owes money to people he met through gambling. Not a bank, not a credit-card company, nobody whose letters can be filed away while you wait for a payment plan. Last month, one of the men went to our mother’s house and asked for my brother by name. Mum is seventy-four. She knew nothing about the debt. She called me afterward and said there had been “a strange man at the door,” trying to sound casual, but I could hear the fear in the way she kept checking whether I was still on the line. My brother broke down and told me everything. I borrowed £8,000 across two credit cards and paid what he said would settle it. It did not. A week later, they said there was more. My brother has entered gambling treatment and cries every time we speak. I love him, and some days I hate him enough that I have to put the phone down before he hears it. My wife knows I helped but not how much because she would insist on reporting everything, and my brother is convinced that will bring these people back to Mum’s door. Tonight, she asked whether I wanted to book a small holiday next spring. I said money was tight. She replied, “It’s always something lately.” She has no idea that every month I will be paying interest on bets I never placed because somebody discovered where my elderly mother sleeps.