Free Dear Beneficiary by Janet Kelly

half of them to the floor. I tutted in frustration at the mess, as I’d mentioned this problem many times to the committee. I ignored the flurry of papers. Why should I pick them up when they were so obviously in a stupid position in the first place?
    When I arrived, the doors to the church hall were closed but unlocked. It was usual for the group to wait until everyone had arrived, after which they would secure the entrance against any passing murderers looking specifically for bridge club members. Most were convinced that the day they left the door open, their downfall would be guaranteed.
    I wasn’t quite of the same opinion. I told them they were paranoid and they should have sufficient confidence in their own abilities to talk themselves out of a violent death. I certainly wasn’t going to spend my life worrying about what could happen. It seems that whatever I’ve been planning falls foul of fate anyway.
    When I got into the hall I saw a few old faces. I mean old, too; used up, exhausted and lacking in the sparkle that makes youth what it is. Like a white shirt that’s been laundered so many times it never really ever looks white again, regardless of the number of bleach washes.
    Only a few of them retained any evidence of previous excitements, illicit knowledge, private reveries of days gone past; and these flashes came in the occasional surge of energy that could only be seen by looking directly through their eyes and into the core of their diminished souls.
    â€˜Hello, everybody. Sorry I haven’t been for such a long time but I haven’t been getting your emails.’
    I looked accusingly at Mavis, with the sort of stare I reserved for this and any other confrontational occasion.
    â€˜I’m sorry, Cynthia,’ said Mavis, who kept her eyes focused away and towards the door. ‘I didn’t think you had email. I just assumed that someone would let you know what was going on.’
    â€˜Well, they haven’t. So I’ll inform you of the address and I hope you’ll be sending me details of all events in future,’ I said, somewhat haughtily.
    I sat firmly on the only available chair in the hall and wondered if this is what my life had come to. I missed having Darius and the anticipation of a thrill, however short-lived. I wondered if that was what it was like to give up a drug and started to feel for the people I’d seen in court. They were driven to do things to repeat the buzz that made them feel alive, special and above the mundanity of everyone else’s tired and tiring existences.
    Tears were rising alongside an acid indigestion brought about by repressed emotion so I busied myself with my bag and coat. It was as Mavis was giving out pens I decided to make my stand.
    â€˜So, can I be assured you will now be sending me emails? I’m fully on the interweb and have my own address and hard driver. So no excuses, eh?’ I expelled a forced laugh to make sure she knew that while I was quite happy to be jovial at this stage, things could get difficult.
    â€˜No excuses, Cynthia, no excuses,’ replied Mavis, looking a bit despondent. I should have noticed she hadn’t asked for the actual address.
    The games began and I lost. It was my partner’s fault. That silly Cecil D’Eath, who refused to acknowledge how his name was pronounced.
    â€˜It’s Death, as in the act of being dead,’ I told him once but he insisted I’d got it wrong.
    To make out it’s some kind of French derivative was downright pretentious. If you hate your name that much, even if you have grown into it by dint of the inevitability of ageing, change it. No one cares anyway, but they do care if you make a twerp of yourself.
    Throughout the afternoon all I could think of was sex. Having been deprived of it in any meaningful way for most of my adult life, until the recent enlightenment with Darius, I was hankering after a good old seeing to. Shocked by the