Holding On Till Friday
On a Wednesday morning, for the first time in three years, Edward couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed. Not because he was ill, not because of traffic, not because he’d forgotten to set his alarm. Something inside him had simply snapped. He sat on the edge of the mattress in his worn-out dressing gown—the one Amelia had given him with a smile years ago—and stared blankly at his feet, as if the answer to going on might be hidden in those motionless toes. But 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 felt orderly and routine now filled him with revulsion. He silenced the screen. From the kitchen came the familiar hiss of the kettle, as if the house, out of habit, was still pretending everything was normal. But Edward didn’t pour the water. He stood, walked to the window, pushed it open, inhaled the crisp air of Manchester, and lit a cigarette—despite having quit nearly two years ago. His hands shook. Then, quietly, he cried. No sobs, no sounds. Just silent tears, the kind that come when someone has held everything in for far too long.
Edward was 39. He worked in IT, owned a three-bedroom flat in a quiet suburb, took his holidays in October, ate by schedule, and worked out three times a week. “Successful. Stable.” That’s how he’d defined himself—until everything began to unravel. No, not unravel. Rot. Slowly, invisibly, from the inside. Colleagues felt like strangers, polite conversations strained, every project a meaningless conveyor belt. Smiles were hollow, meetings pointless, and every morning began with the same desperate question: “What’s the point of any of it?”
Amelia—his ex—had once said to him,
“Sorry, Ed, you’re like a switched-off telly. I don’t know if there’s anything alive in you anymore.”
And then she left. No arguments, no drama. Just packed her things and vanished. He hadn’t stopped her, hadn’t begged. He’d just stayed. 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 his jeans and jacket, walked out of the building, and without thinking, drove not to the office but to St. James’s Park—the very place where he’d played guitar with friends in his youth. He took the day off, claiming a headache. Bought a coffee and sat on a bench by the pond, watching the first sparrows of spring skate across the thinning ice. For the first time in months, he simply looked. At passersby. At dogs. At children. No thoughts of deadlines, no guilt for wasting time. He was nobody. And it wasn’t terrifying. It was freeing.
“Running away too, are you?” a voice beside him asked.
He turned. A woman. Petite, early forties, chestnut hair neatly braided, wearing a coat with a mended pocket. Her voice was quiet, like morning fog. It didn’t demand or plead—just existed.
“Suppose so,” he replied. “You?”
“I run when it gets unbearable inside. Today’s one of those Wednesdays.”
She introduced herself—Margaret. Worked at the local library, raised a teenage son, long divorced. And every time it got too much, she came here. Just to sit. With a book. Or without.
They sat side by side for nearly an hour, exchanging fewer than a dozen words. Then she stood.
“I’m here Wednesdays and Fridays. If you’d like—stop by.”
From then on, Edward began to visit. Sometimes just to feel like he existed. Sometimes to hear her read lines from Dickens or Brontë aloud. Sometimes just to sit in silence. But always—just to *be*.
Margaret was a woman without pretence. With her, he didn’t have to be strong. Didn’t have to pretend. Didn’t need a “why.” Her presence was like a house with open windows—where you could simply be.
Weeks later, he admitted,
“I can feel something in my chest again. Like it’s breathing.”
“That’s good,” she smiled. “That’s not the end. That’s a new turn.”
Six months passed. His job stayed the same. Edward was still himself—no sudden transformation into a happy superhero. But he began waking up—not in dread, but with curiosity. *What will today bring?*
He started noticing things in colleagues he’d once ignored—their exhaustion, their worries. He spoke to his father on the phone for longer than three minutes. Dug out his old guitar from the loft. Even wrote to Amelia—not to ask for anything, just to say thank you. And for the first time in years, the hollowness inside him wasn’t there.
Then came Friday. He visited Margaret. Brought an apple pie in a box—just because he knew she’d like it. But when the door opened, her face was pale, tear-streaked, clutching a crumpled letter. Her son—a tumour. Serious. Fast. Cruel. She wasn’t crying—just standing there, knuckles white.
He didn’t leave. He stayed. Held her when she collapsed. Searched for specialists, spent nights on hospital chairs, squeezed her hand when she was too tired to breathe. He didn’t say, “It’ll be alright.” 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 Radiohead. Margaret wore her old coat—the one with the mended pocket—and laughed with that same husky note at the end, a sound Edward now loved more than any other.
As for him… He no longer searched for meaning in spreadsheets. No longer waited for the weekend 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 make it to Friday.
And then the next one. And the one after. Until it gets easier. Until you remember how to live.