It Was A Tuesday

I hadn’t meant to kill him. Well, not on that particular day at least. 

It was a Tuesday and Tuesday is my day at the knitting group. ‘Stitch & Chat’ is its official name, the one the library use on their noticeboard to advertise us. To us regulars though it’s known as ‘Stitch & Bitch’. With a lot more bitching than stitching if the truth be known.

Numbers can change from week to week, but there’s a small group of us, six in all, that rarely miss a meeting. 

There’s Maureen from the retirement flats opposite the library. A lovely lady. She tells us she was once a full time wrestler. Went under the name of Mad Mo. Used to be on the telly. Was a tag partner to Big Daddy. Or so she says. A real whizz at crocheting.

Then there’s Audrey from Baker Street normally sits next to her. I’ve known Audrey for years. We were both at Chalkwell Juniors together. We were real friendly at one time. Then we had a little falling out over a boy. Something of nothing really. I can’t even remember his name. All forgotten now. She’s a dab hand at tea cosies. 

Sally, who lives next door but one to me, is another regular. We usually travel in together on the bus. She lost her husband recently. He went off with a barmaid from the Crown and Thorns. No real loss. In fact he’d been gone a fortnight before she’d even noticed.

 Sally’s forte when it comes to knitting – bed socks. She can usually knit two pairs in one meeting. Those needles of hers move so quickly it makes you dizzy just watching.

Then of course you’ve got Brenda. Not been in the group long but turning out to be quite a stalwart. Married to the local undertaker. She can be a veritable mine of local gossip. Scarves are her thing. Never seen her knit anything else. Mind you she can get a bit carried away. The scarf she was working on last month, a present for her grandson, stretched from the Crime & Thrillers section in one corner of the library right the way across to the Childcare Section in the other corner.

Finally there’s Miranda. Bit of a dark horse. Doesn’t talk much about her private life. But Sally reckons she saw her coming out of one of those new flats in town holding hands with a woman. Not that I’ve got anything against that sort of thing. All to their own I say. And she’s a lovely knitter. She’s presently working on an Aron cardigan. Very complicated pattern.

Anyway, killing Peter, he’s my husband, or was,  been married 33 years this July,  that’s what made me a little late. It was putting all the different bits of his body into freezer bags – took me longer than I thought it would. 

Then I had to move the raspberries out of the chest freezer and put them in the small stand up freezer in the kitchen to make room for his head. Surprising how big his head was considering what a small man he was.

So,  I nearly missed the bus. Fortunately Sally was at the bus stop and made the driver wait as I hurried up the hill. “You look awful’” she said as we sat down. “I feel it,” I said, “I shouldn’t be running for buses at my age.”

“Is that blood on the cuff of you blouse?” she said. I nodded, wondering how much I should tell her, what with the bus being somewhat crowded. It always is on a Tuesday – market day in town. “Had a bit of an accident with the carving knife”, I told her. “Tell you more later.” 

“If it is blood,” she said, “I’ve got a mixture at home for getting rid of it. It was a recipe I found in Woman’s Weekly years ago. Works a treat.” 

She’s a dear is Sally and a good friend but she does go on a bit sometimes. And as for recipes and concoctions of one sort or another she’s got a cupboard full of them. Whenever I go round she’s always mixing something or has her latest cure-all boiling away on the cooker. She once gave me an ointment she’d made for getting red wine out of the carpet. Said she found it in an old book about stain removals she’d found in the Save The Children shop. 

The spilt wine had been his of course. I never touch the stuff. Brings on my migraines. I sometimes have a small sherry on a Sunday. My little treat while I’m cooking the Sunday roast. And I’ll push the boat out at Christmas and have a bucks fizz with my turkey. 

He’d had one too many, as usual. I remember telling him to get a coaster and put his glass on the coffee table. But he ignored me. Nothing unusual there. 

Thought he knew better. Balanced it on the arm of his chair and the next thing it was all over the new cream carpet.

I tried Sally’s ointment. It smelt quite nice. She told me she’d mixed in some lavender. “Rub it in gently,” she’d told me, “Leave it over night and in the morning it’ll look as good as new.”

When I came down next morning the wine had gone but so had a patch of the carpet. Great big hole where the wine spill had been. I didn’t say anything to Sally. She would have been mortified. I got a small rug from Debenhams. It covers up the hole quite nicely.

Don’t have to worry about spilt red wine now. What with him being dead. But I will have to get that blood off the kitchen walls. I wonder if Sally’s got something for that. Must ask her after the knitting group. 

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