I met John and everything was perfect. He was handsome, kind, loving, giving — the list just went on. That was until I met his mother, Marion. Oh, she was just lovely to me in front of John but behind his back it was another story. She constantly told me I wasn’t good enough for John and that he would soon see the light but I refused to listen and ignored her snide remarks. John was oblivious to it all. He was an only child and had been brought up solely by Marion from the age of four, so he thought the world of her and I decided to let it be.
John soon proposed and I couldn’t have been happier. Marion couldn’t have been more miserable, although she didn’t show it to John. As time passed I learnt to deal with Marion constantly degrading me and treating me like rubbish. She would often get me to run her errands of dry cleaning and grocery shopping, as she found my job as a part-time drama teacher to be “trivial”.
When I fell pregnant I was ecstatic, not only for the new addition joining John and I, but also for the possibility that Marion and I now had something to bond over. At last we had some common ground, as her job as a wealthy and powerful cosmetic sales executive ensured our lives were vastly different. When I told her of the happy news she was anything but thrilled, seeing it only as a sign of John and my happiness together.
Once our beautiful baby girl, Jane, was born, Marion became a constant fixture in our home, infuriating me to no end. To make matters worse, she spoiled Jane rotten, completely ignoring my wishes on how I wanted my daughter to be brought up.
As I was not working, money soon became tight. Although John would never have accepted, Marion never once offered to help us out, even though she had just recently received a pay rise. One day, after finishing Marion’s grocery shopping, I popped into the newsagent to complete yet another of her errands — checking her lotto numbers. The woman that worked at the newsagent gave me an excited look and told me that “I” had won $4300. “That’d be right,” I thought, Marion has yet more money to spend on her exotic garden or some antique vase.
On my way to the head office to pick up the cheque, the more I thought about it, I realised that perhaps this was a sign. John and I could desperately have done with the money right then, and Marion sure wasn’t in any need. Perhaps it was a reward for putting up with Marion’s constant degradation of me over all these years? So I cashed the money in and told John I had bought a scratchie because I felt lucky. Marion never questioned me about her lotto numbers, thinking nothing of it.
Many years have passed and since that day John and I have been financially secure. John soon got a pay rise and I went back to my job. I do not regret what I did that day, but have since repaid Marion slowly over the years through gifts and anonymous deposits into her account. To this day I still see it as a sign given to help my family in a trying time, and one secret that I will carry to my grave.
Picture posed by models.
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