Read Judith Wants To Be Your Friend for Free Online

all share the laughing. Oh, if Maureen could see me now! I laugh a bit more, pretending I am still thinking about the fat girl whose dad makes her dresses.
     
    I go for lunch dreading Ken coming in to press me for a date. I am really not ready for this yet but he is central to my plan for Maureen. He pops in to the canteen but it is to apologise to me. He is going away for a holiday with the lads. It seems they are keen golfers and it is a cheap time to go to Spain and they have the golf courses virtually to themselves. No kids running around, empty roads but enough bars and restaurants still open so they don’t have to cook. Apart from the golf bit, I think it sounds rather good. I decide it’s time that I give something to this conversation, well, and the relationship.
    ‘Oh Spain, lovely. I go to Spanish conversation classes on Monday evenings. That’s why I couldn’t go out with you earlier in the week.’
    ‘I had a few lessons last year,’ he says, ‘at Trinity School. But actually everyone speaks English where we go so I haven’t used it. Can’t remember most of it anyway.’
    ‘That’s where I go. I’m hoping to go to Spain next year sometime.’
    I thought for a moment he was going to suggest we go together but he said he would tell me all about it when he gets back. He asks for my email address to send some photos and I tell him I haven’t got one. He looks surprised.
    ‘I’ll set you up with a hotmail account when I get back,’ he offers.
    Why is it that men think that if you haven’t got something it’s because you don’t know how to get it? Of course I’ve got an email address; it’s a computer and internet access that I haven’t got. I’m not going down to the internet cafe to look at his drunken holiday snaps. I murmur something non-committal and hope he forgets.
    Or maybe I’ll win the lottery and be able to afford all that stuff again; a Blackberry phone, Sky Plus and a decent car – well, any car. He probably thinks I don’t drive either and will offer to give me lessons. It’s time to go back to the cash office and I decide to enjoy the last two days of peace without Maureen asking if I balance. She won’t balance by the time I’ve finished, cash-wise or any-wise.
     
    Tuesday 20 th October 2009
    Maureen is driving me nuts. I was going to wait a while before starting my plan but it’s going to be today. It has to start somewhere. She keeps going on about her holiday, how they went on a city break to Rome that cost more than two weeks in Majorca. I thought she was painting the village hall all week. If I hear her tell someone about the Coliseum and the Trevi Fountain one more time, I’ll explode. I’m not one for impulsive decisions but no harm in starting to sow the seeds of doubt. We have finished cashing up and have put our cash into trays ready for the banking. The buzzer goes at the window by the checkouts and Sal goes to answer it. The buzzer goes for the duty manager to sign the banking and Maureen answers that. While she waits the few seconds for the outer door to close then releases the inner door, I whip a twenty pound note out of one of her bundles and drop it under her desk. The personnel manager, or HR as they call it now, sits down to weigh each bundle and to put her neat little initials on each one. Click, sign, click, sign, click, sign, click, sign, click, silence, click, click.
    ‘Maureen, this bundle appears to be short.’
    This never happens on Maureen’s shift. She glares at us all.
    ‘Whose signature is on the bundle?’
    ‘Yours.’
    ‘Mine? No way! I double-checked. I always do. Don’t I?’ she asks around generally. ‘I’ll re-count it by hand.’ And as she moves back towards her desk she sees the twenty pound note on the floor. ‘Thank goodness, there it is. How did that happen?’
    ‘Indeed,’ says the little personnel lady, ‘how did that happen?’ She fixes Maureen with a stare that says she is not amused.
    I decide that the day has