Please Release Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

passed.
    ‘So, what about it?’ she said as they reached the doors. ‘Will you help?’
    Peter hesitated. He didn’t want to help. He wanted to be left alone. He was busy. He had a business to run. His wife was in a coma. Life was a ridiculous circus of work meetings, medical meetings and long, pointless evenings sitting next to Sally’s bed, waiting for her to wake up. It was exhausting. He didn’t have anything left to give anyone. ‘I don’t …’
    Her disappointment showed on her face. It was as though she had a personal investment in making him join the cause. ‘I understand,’ she said. Her face resumed its stoical expression. ‘Well, it was nice to talk to you Peter. I hope … things get better.’
    He felt like a selfish wanker, but he’d done the right thing. He was walking such a tightrope between coping and going mad with worry that he had to be careful. Too much stress and things could go very wrong. Sally was an orphan. She had no one else to depend on. He had to be there and be fit to look after her when she came round. He couldn’t make commitments he couldn’t keep.
    He watched Grace walk, her plait swinging, across the car park. Yes. He had done the right thing. He sighed and went to his own car. So why did he feel like such a git?
    Grace threw her keys into the little pot on the shelf that was there specifically for that purpose. It had once held the whole family’s keys, but now there were just hers. She hung her coat up and thought for the umpteenth time that she really should get round to throwing away her mother’s scarves that hung on the other pegs in the downstairs loo. It was on her list of things to tackle. She’d get round to it at some point.
    It didn’t take her long to defrost a meal that she’d batch cooked at the weekend. It was so much nicer to have meals already done when she got home. When the microwave pinged, the soup was too hot. She left it to cool and put a sliced bagel in to toast. Watching the toaster, she thought about her encounter with Peter. Hah. So much for doing something bold and out of character. Well, she’d tried that and look how that turned out. Take that, Harry!
    Walking around the common room had made her look at the familiar room in a different way. Suddenly, things that she’d never noticed before jumped out at her. The carpet showed tracks where feet and wheelchairs had rolled over it every day. The comfy chairs in front of the TV were worn from many different bottoms and knees and heads. The wallpaper and curtains were faded where the sun caught them. All this had always been there for her to see, yet she’d never noticed. It was as though she’d be walking through the area with blinkers on.
    The sudden feeling that this wasn’t just about a common room hit her. This could just as well apply to her life. She’d been a carer for so long, first helping her mother with looking after her father, and then by herself, looking after her mother. When she’d finally allowed herself to put her mother into a hospice, she’d felt so bad that she’d spent every spare minute visiting. Somewhere in amongst all that she’d forgotten how to be young. Now it was almost too late to learn again.
    The toaster popped. She gathered her food and sat at the table. As she ate her soup and bagel, she let her attention roam around the kitchen. This was another place that she’d got so used to that she’d stopped really seeing it. The walls were exactly as her mother had left them. The same cookbooks on the same shelves, sitting next to the same twee little tins.
    Grace twisted around in her chair and surveyed the whole room. It could do with a repaint. Maybe a declutter. She thought about the terribly difficult to use knives and the wooden spoons so old they were starting to dissolve at the ends. She could do with a new set of cutlery too. She smiled to herself. She could go on a shopping spree. Now that sounded like so much more fun than dusting around