I cant wrap my head around it! Her own mother went to the lengths of making her daughter exit this world entirely.
Id been pals with Mabel since we were tots, thick as thieves for years. Shed often lament how hard life was all because shed spent two decades living with her husband and her own mum under the same roof.
Agnes was the sort of woman who treated people like tools, and it didnt matter that the tool in question was her own fleshandblood. Nothing ever seemed to go right for her. Her mum was a spry 85yearold, still trotting about the garden with the vigor of someone half her age.
Agnes kept insisting that Mabel owed her everything, that she owed her life itself. The logic was simple: when Mabel got pregnant, her husband up and left her for another woman, and all the rage she couldnt vent elsewhere was dumped straight onto the daughter, who, by the way, had inherited her fathers stubborn streak.
Mabel was never the beloved daughter Agnes fancied she was more a servant, a cleaner, a slave, but never a child to be cherished. She slogged away at two jobs. After a long shift, shed trot home, mop the floors, and whip up a meal. Her mother refused to lift a finger in the house, and would get touchy whenever Mabel cooked something she didnt approve of. In the end, the poor lass quit her job and moved to the far side of town just to be near her mum and cook whatever Agnes demanded.
It happened to be Mabels birthday. We all piled around the kitchen table shed laid on a cracking spread but I saw right away that she was a gloomy sight. She whispered that she and her mum had just had a proper scandal. We all ducked out early, feeling a bit uncomfortable.
The next morning I woke to discover Mabel had vanished. It turned out that after wed all left, Agnes had sparked another row. Mabels heart gave way, and no one bothered to call an ambulance. She slipped away in the night, the very mother whod always kept the night under her thumb.
Its the sort of twisted British tragedy that makes you wonder whether Mother knows best ever meant Mother knows how to push the emergency button.
