Age-Net

I hate Fridays

Most people I know are happy on Fridays. They look forward to the weekend and spending time with their families.
I haven’t got a family now unless you count Cousin William who feels he should come to visit me once a month. Actually, I really wish he wouldn’t bother because most of the short time he spends with me is taken up by his moans and groans.

“The bloody bus was late again and the woman next to me was so fat I was balanced on the edge of the seat the whole way.”

I point out that the train would be much quicker and easier but William has an answer for everything.

“The train always gives me a headache and I would have to change twice so it would be expensive and you know I only have my pension now.” William whines a great deal.

I get up and look out at the sky, which is a dark, heavy, grey and full of storm clouds. It seems to be permanently raining these days. It is Friday again and I feel really down.

Friday is the day that both my Mother and my husband Mark were killed so I suppose even after three years I am bound to still be grieving or so everyone tells me - stil,l most only know half the truth. I know I appeared to be really cut up when both mum and Mark died in that awful car crash but inside I was really glad that Mark was no longer around to put me down.

I really do miss my mum. After all, you only get one mum, but I don’t miss Mark one tiny bit. I had married Mark because he seemed like Mr. Right but everything changed after the wedding. It did not matter what I wore, he would put me down with phrases like “People as fat as you Jane should never wear floral, it does nothing to flatter”

Or after I had made a special effort to have my hair done and spent hours on my make-up and clothes, he would say in that cutting voice of his. “Come on Jane, time you got yourself ready, we don’t want to be late and have everyone look at us do we?”
All his compliments were saved for my mother who was a very attractive widow.

“Why can’t you be more like your mother?” he was very fond of asking. It took me five years of marriage to realise that not only was Mark a really nasty piece of work but he was also sleeping with my mother.

At the funeral I had cried as though my heart would break.

“What a tragedy,” the friends and relatives had said to each other as the coffins went behind the screen in the crematorium - I had them both cremated togethe r- just in case - well, you never know these days.

I still miss mum more than I would have expected. After three years the pain has lessoned although the guilt has grown.
How could I have known that Friday morning Mark would give mum a lift in his car after I had cut the brake cable? A sob catches in my throat. I meant to kill Mark, but I really didn’t want my mum dead.

She had been sucked in by Mark’s Mr. Nice-Guy and would have come to her senses eventually but I really hated him. Not because of the affair with mum but because of the cruel way he treated me. People think that abuse is when someone beats you up but verbal abuse can be worse because the words hang in the air like poison and stay there to keep hurting.

I always seem to start thinking like this on a Friday. I should be able to put the whole sorry episode out of my mind after all this time but every Friday it pops into my brain like a little maggot gnawing away.

Mel bangs on the door. “Come on Jane, I thought you would like to have tea with me.”

I am glad to get out of my lonely room and do something other than read. I have a pretty limited social life these days and I am grateful to Mel who has become a really good friend in the three years since Mark died. I cheer up a little as we stop to speak to a couple of Mel’s friends on the way to have tea. We have a really pleasant time but Mel suddenly looking at her watch spoils it. “Better get back it’s getting late.”

We walk back together. I call goodnight to a few people we see still out. I wish that the evening could continue because I don’t get out that much. So together we walk back. Back to our prison cells.

I really do hate Fridays.