**Holding Out Till Friday**
That Wednesday morning, for the first time in three years, Edward couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed. Not because he was ill, nor because of traffic, nor forgotten alarms. But because something inside him had snapped. He sat on the edge of the mattress in his worn-out dressing gown—the one Amelia had given him years ago with a smile—and stared numbly at his feet, as though the answer to why he should carry on lay hidden in those motionless toes. He found nothing.
The clock read 8:17. His phone blinked with notifications—”meeting in 40 minutes,” “project deadline,” “pay the broadband bill”—everything that had once been routine now filled him with revulsion. He turned the screen off. From the kitchen came the familiar whistle of the kettle, as though the house, out of habit, still pretended things were normal. But Edward didn’t pour the water. He stood, walked to the window, pushed it open, inhaled the crisp London air, and lit a cigarette—though he’d quit nearly two years prior. His hands shook. And then, silently, he wept. No sobs, no sounds. Just tears, steady and quiet, like a man who had held too much inside for far too long.
Edward was 39. He worked in IT, owned a three-bed flat in the suburbs, took his holidays in October, ate on schedule, and went to the gym three times a week. “Successful, stable”—that’s how he had defined himself, until everything began to rot. Not collapse, but decay, imperceptibly, from within. Colleagues felt like strangers, polite conversations stilted, and every project felt like a meaningless conveyor belt. Smiles were hollow, meetings pointless, and each morning began with the same desperate question: *Why am I doing this again?*
Amelia—his ex—had once said to him flatly, “Edward, you’re like a switched-off telly. I don’t know if there’s anything alive left in you.” Then she left. No arguments, no drama. Just packed her things and vanished. And he hadn’t stopped her. Hadn’t begged. Just stayed behind, alone, in a flat where every object had once been chosen together and now felt like it belonged to someone else.
That same Wednesday, he pulled on jeans and a jacket, left the building, and—without thinking—drove not to the office, but to Hyde Park, the very place where, years ago, he’d played guitar with friends. He’d called in sick, blaming a headache. Bought a coffee and sat on a bench by the pond, where the first sparrows of spring darted across the frost. He just watched. The passers-by. The dogs. The children. For the first time in months, he wasn’t thinking of deadlines or feeling guilty for doing nothing. He was nobody. And it wasn’t terrifying—it was freeing.
“Run away from it all too, have you?” came a voice beside him.
He turned. A woman. Petite, maybe early forties, chestnut hair neatly braided, wearing a coat with a mended pocket. Her voice was soft, like morning mist. Not demanding, not pleading—just there.
“Suppose so,” he replied. “You?”
“I run when it gets unbearable inside. Today was one of those Wednesdays.”
She introduced herself as Margaret. Worked at the local library, raised a teenage son, long divorced. And whenever it got too much, she came here. Just sat. With a book. Or without.
They stayed side by side for nearly an hour, speaking barely a dozen words between them. Then she stood. “I’m here Wednesdays and Fridays. If you fancy it, drop by.”
From then on, Edward came. Sometimes just to feel he existed again. Sometimes to listen as she read aloud from Dickens or Austen. Sometimes to sit in silence. But always to *be*.
Margaret was unpretentious. With her, he didn’t need to be strong. Didn’t need to pretend. Didn’t need a *why*. Her presence was like a house with open windows—a place where he could simply *be*.
After a few weeks, he told her, “I can feel something breathing in my chest again.”
She smiled. “There we are, then. That’s not the end. That’s the turn.”
Six months passed. The job stayed the same. So did Edward—he hadn’t transformed into some suddenly cheerful hero. But he began waking up not in dread, but with curiosity—*What will today bring?*
He noticed things in his colleagues he’d once ignored—their exhaustion, their worries. He started talking to his father for longer than three minutes. Dug out his old guitar from the loft. Even wrote to Amelia—not to ask for anything, but to thank her. And he realised: the hollowness inside him was gone.
Then came Friday. He went to see Margaret, bringing an apple pie in a box. Just because he knew she’d like it. But when she opened the door, her face was pale, tear-streaked, fingers clutching a crumpled letter. Her son—a tumour. Serious. Fast. Cruel. She wasn’t crying; she was just standing there, gripping the paper so tightly her knuckles whitened.
He didn’t leave. He stayed. Held her up when she crumpled. Searched for specialists, slept on hospital chairs, squeezed her hand when the weight of it all stole her breath. He didn’t say, *It’ll be all right*. He just said, “I’m here. We’ll get through this. Together.”
A year later, her son was recovering. Laughing again. Arguing about politics and The Beatles. Margaret wore the same mended coat and laughed with that familiar rasp at the end—a sound Edward now loved best in the world.
And him? He no longer searched for meaning in spreadsheets. No longer counted the days to the weekend just to escape. He just lived. Breathed in the mornings. Drank his coffee. And whenever the weight returned, he remembered:
Sometimes, to survive, you just have to hold out till Friday.
Then the next. And the next. Until it gets lighter. Until you start living again.