A nightmare to remember (part 2)

When Sandra was brought to the garda station, suddenly as sober as a judge, John was nowhere to be seen. She was left in a little room, all to herself, before two gardai burst into the room and started to bombard her with questions, the main one being, ‘were you selling the drugs in the club?’

‘No! Definitely not!’ was all the frightened fifty-year-old could manage.

‘Who were you there with?’ the ban garda asked her, pinching her nose with her thumb and forefinger as though she had something more pressing on her mind.

‘I went with my brother-in-law and my nephew!’ Sandra answered, a stream of tears down her face, the hand cuffs so tight they dug into her skin.

There was a male garda there who was writing madly, taking this to be her statement!

‘So, you were doing cocaine with your brother-in-law and your nephew?’ the ban garda asked her.

‘No!’ she said sternly. ‘Just my brother-in-law. But it was mine, not his! He had nothing to do with the situation! He is completely innocent!’ Sandra tried to work out, in her own mind, what would happen if John was prosecuted. He had a high-powered job that meant he had to travel a lot for work, and, if he was done for this, he would lose his job!

With that, the handcuffs were taken off and in came Barbara, a stern look on her face!

‘What the fuck Sandra?’ she asked with justified anger!

‘I’m so sorry Barb, one thing led to another and…’

‘You were caught on a security camera! They think you were dealing the stuff!’ Barbara shouted, making Sandra feel even worse than the ‘statement’ made her!

‘I tried to fix it. I said I went with John, but he had nothing to do with it!’ Sandra cried.

Barbara, being the softy she was, pulled Sandra into her arms and they cried together for what seemed like hours.

‘You promised it was only weed!’ Barbara cried.

Sandra hung her head in shame. Obviously, she had omitted details of what she and John got up to when they were alone together!

‘Do you know what this could manifest into?’ Barbara asked, her bottom lip quivered!

Sandra simply nodded.

Barbara took her wife’s face in her hands, rubbing her tears away with her thumbs. ‘C’mon, let's go home!’

Sandra nodded again.

 

As the taxi dropped them off, they entered the house to two very happy puggles. It must have been the one and only time in her life that Sandra didn’t acknowledge their presence, she simply went to bed, closely followed by her wife and their girls.

‘I thought you might like some puppy kisses!’ Barbara offered as Iris stood on Sandra’s legs and walked the length of her body until she was lying on her stomach, her two front paws on either shoulder, her head against her crying mummies face. Sandra wrapped her arms around the fawn, soft fur, and cried until she finally fell asleep after dawn!

She woke to a paw on her bladder and got out of the warm bed, still in the same jeans and shirt that she had worn the night before. She made her way to the bathroom, Iris at her feet. When she returned to bed, she lay with her back towards Barbara as she was so infuriated with herself that she messed up so badly!

To her surprise, Sandra felt a warm arm encapsulate her body and a kiss on the back of her neck. She turned to face her wife who tried to smile at her!

‘I really fucked up last night Barbara!’ she said and looked into the red eyes of the love of her life.

‘Yeah, you did!’ Barbara answered and looked right back at her. ‘But it’s nothing we can’t work through!’

With the knowledge that her marriage was secure, Sandra kissed her wife, as usual, and they fell asleep in each other’s arms. There they stayed until Bee announced that she needed a wee! Barbara was getting up, but Sandra stopped her. ‘I’ll bring her!’ she said groggily. Upon her return, she had a mug of coffee in one hand, tea in the other.

To Sandra and Barbara, the issue was theirs to work through. Yes, John was arrested too, but they talked for an eternity and concluded that no one else needed to know! That was no surprise as they kept their business very much to themselves anyway, the only hurdle was whatever John said to Sheila.

 

At about four that evening, both Barbara and Sandra, Bee and Iris, were deep cleaning the kitchen floor, when a message came through to Barbara’s phone. It read:

‘Did Sandra and John really get arrested last night?’

It was from Barbara’s sister from Dublin who left early into the ‘Sunday session’ to put their mother to bed.

‘How in the name of God does she know?’ Barbara asked Sandra. They both said in unison, ‘Sheila!’ and scrubbed the floor with such aggression that they almost wiped the pattern off the tile. As they did that, the messages began to come in fast!

That evening, Sheila presented herself to their door. Barbara let her in, and she reassured them both that there were no hard feelings, and that John was as much in the wrong as she, which came as such a relief to Sandra.

 

The following Sunday, Sheila comes to their door again, but this time it was different. She banged on the door as if there were no tomorrow, desperate to get into the house ready to kill Sandra!

Barbara opened the door, astonished as to why Sheila was aggressively trying to break their door down.

Sheila burst into the home of Barbara and Sandra, brushing past Barbara, and going straight into the kitchen where Sandra had just finished some homemade quiche. She began to scream bloody murder, Sandra got up from her seat to see what her problem was.

‘Tim told me everything!’ Sheila started, ‘why in the name of god would you bring my son into such a toxic situation?’

Sandra had no idea as to why Tim, of all people, would talk to Sheila about a situation he knew nothing about. She was eager to know what he had said, nonetheless. She raised her hands, palms facing Sheila and as she began to present her case. ‘When Tim was having a quiet pint in the Ritz last night, the sergeant of the district approached him for a ‘chat!’ He said you confessed that she was there with her brother-in-law and her nephew! Shane had nothing to do with drugs and never has…we asked him! How dare you even…’

As she was talking, Sheila was backing Sandra into a corner, literally, and pointed her finger at her face aggressively. Barbara, being the loyal wife she was, had to physically put herself between her wife and her sister.

‘I never even mentioned Shane!’ Sandra tried to explain, ‘I only saw him as I was getting into the police car!’

‘So, you saw him and presumed he was doing drugs as well?’ Sheila advanced further.

Barbara began to pull on her sister's top, afraid she was going to pick up the knife that lay on the draining board. She pushed Sheila all the way to the front door with the type of strength a mother gets when she lifts a car to save her infant child! She forced the front door shut, locking it with haste before she returned to the kitchen, where she found her wife in the fetal position on the tiles that were overly clean. She lay there and cried.

Barbara sat on the ground beside Sandra and Sandra lunged into her arms, hysterically.

When she finally calmed down, she was able to explain what she had said, ‘I told them we had gotten a taxi with Daniel to the club! When I said nephew, I meant Daniel!’

Barbara rubbed her back soothingly and their girlies went over to them, one on each lap, as they cried together.

 

The whole situation caused a rift in the family. Sheila wasn’t talking to Barbara or Tim, and Sandra had heard nothing from John.

When Sandra was called into the station for the official statement it read:

‘Johnathan White had absolutely nothing to do with me doing cocaine. It was mine! I bought it! I am the only one at fault here! Johnathan White is in the clear!’

Sandra made that statement off her own bat, without a prompt from her wife, or anyone she had ever talked about the situation with! Equally, the only person she told what she stated was Barbara, who, although Sheila was dead to her, appreciated the sentiment nonetheless!

Sandra felt responsible for the rift! She felt it her fault that Barbara didn’t see her sister for a whole year, or her two nephews who she missed terribly.

It took Barbara’s brother, Thomas, who lived with her mother, to drop dead from a massive heart attack, before she and Sheila were in the same room again for the first time since she kicked her out of the house. Barbara and Sandra stuck to one side of the room, Sheila and John the other, and not a word was shared between them! Sheila didn’t even converse with Tim, which Sandra thought unfair because he tried to do the honorable thing! He just tried to look out for his little sister and protect her for whatever he thought she needed protecting from.

Sandra knew that Barbara was disappointed in Tim because it looked as though he had picked sides. It was something they worked through, but she would never feel the same way about him again!

Sandra will forever be wrapped with guilt over the whole thing…Barbara by her side. That is what you call true love! Barbara vowed on the day they stood up in their white dresses, to love, honour and protect Sandra, and stick with her through thick and thin…which is a promise she kept, half of her family lost in the process. But nothing will feel worse to Sandra than her beloved's loss. Loss of a sister, a brother-in-law and two nephews, who she didn’t know how much information their mother told them, be it truth or a lie!

 

Over the next few years, Barbara’s mother was diagnosed with dementia and was being watched 24/7. She had a roster of people looking after her, Barbara’s day being a Monday's and a Thursday afternoon. The weekend shifts were six and a half hours each which rotated constantly. They loved it when Barbara’s sister from Dublin came down, which turned out to be at least twice a month, and she always stayed for as long as her home situation would allow.

Even then, their mother declining in front of their eyes, there wasn’t one word exchanged between Barbara and Sheila. Sandra continuously felt terrible about the situation she had produced, along with the help of John, but she powered on and went over to her mother in laws every Monday for dinner with her amazing wife!

What I wouldn’t give for a marriage as strong as that!