Guilty
Authors: Joy Hindle
© Joy Hindle 2015
Joy Hindle has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
“Guilty.” The word echoed around her head. She saw the sea of staring faces, frozen with shock; some devastated like herself, others in disbelief that justice had finally been meted out. As if all were turned to stone, there was a moment’s complete silence, followed by the loudest buzz of comments, cheers, howls, applause, sobs, sighs of relief, sighs of despair, joy, anger, praise, condemnation; all a mixed-up recipe, jammed together to form bedlam.
How could one word have so many repercussions? Yes, she herself was guilty of so many things that the verdict came as no surprise to her.
Guilty of overindulgence, helicopter parenting, overloving. Could you really love somebody too much? Guilty of guilt! There were so many secrets she had kept from her family and friends. If only they all knew.
The myriad of counsellors over the years had proved useful and she had developed the ability to self-counsel so well. She had often used meditation; she had gained great comfort from her course on cognitive behavioural therapy. She had become a disciple of Emotional Freedom Technique and found the tapping on her meridian points while voicing positive affirmations really did help remove her negative thoughts.
“Get a grip,” she told herself sternly. “Be realistic. Take the spotlight off yourself, you sympathy seeker. This is not your moment and more importantly this is not your sentence. It’s hers.”
And then the tears fell. The uncontrollable sobs, yelping from her with each anguished breath. They were howls. Twenty-five years of pent-up disappointment seeping out. Her red tassels fell forward, covering her contorted face.
Disappointment wasn’t an exact enough word, she analysed. She had been given so much joy from her, none of it conventional, but nevertheless she could not deny it. And love. There had been and there still was boundless love. How could she still love her despite all she had done? Because she had shown her countless times that love never dies.
Caroline had been unsuccessful in her mission but her heart was still in one piece, badly damaged but whole, because nothing could break their special bond, not even death itself. Of that she thought she could be sure.
They tried to lead this beautiful creature out of the dock to begin her sentence. The oval face which had always worn a smile, the crystal eyes that had shone throughout every misdemeanour, the brunette hair worn so casually today in a ponytail which bobbed as she tried to move her feet.
Every muscle in Caroline’s slim frame tensed as she watched her precious baby stumble in a trance behind the guards.
Caroline recalled the first time she held the tiny newborn in her arms. Two piercing blue eyes had looked defiantly into Caroline’s face as Cupid’s arrow pierced her heart. Maternal love had flooded her, waves of warmth from head to toe. She had scooped the little girl to her breast and her heart; all her broken dreams were made whole. A baby to love and cherish at last.
Would those sapphire eyes turn to look at her now? That would be the life-saving medication she so needed at this moment in time to assure her that they would continue despite the barred and barren future that this one word would lead them to.
“Sadie, please look, Sadie please. Sadie, I need you to look,” her silent thoughts screamed telepathically across the crowded courtroom. One look would suffice for her to carry on. One look was her only remaining expectation from her daughter’s life. Long gone were the hopes for qualifications, careers, and permanent relationships. She had moved the goalposts so many times that the nets had now completely disintegrated!
Bri, Caroline’s eldest son was waiting for her. His typical arrogance and impatience typified by the fact he was revving his red Porsche as he hovered on double yellow lines. “Get in, Mum,” he commanded.
He observed her tears. “Got what she deserved then?” he sneered. “Don’t know why you bothered going, Mum. It’ll make you ill again. Look at the state of you.” Bri glared at her as he pulled up his arm so that the sleeve of his Gucci jacket revealed his Rolex.
“Better get a move on. I’m seeing a client in just over an hour. I’ll drop you off at the old man’s. You can report back to him, that’s if he’s interested. Wouldn’t blame him if he isn’t.”
Caroline sighed. What was the point of responding? Neither Bri nor Simon had any empathy concerning her feelings for Sadie. As far as they were concerned, Sadie had sailed off out of their lives into a vast ocean many moons ago, to a far-off land which neither had any intention of visiting.
She fiddled in her clutch bag for her slimline, silver mobile, trying desperately to switch it on before Bri could get irritated with her. She and technology just did not get on but Bri had insisted on buying her this complicated model. Why did she need half the things it was supposed to do?
She must ring Oliver. She knew he would be waiting anxiously for news of his big sister’s fate. Bri seemed to deliberately turn up the music. Disconcerted, she willed Oliver to answer.
She drank in the warmth of his voice; his genuine concern soothed her instantly. He always had that effect on her and she felt her body relax. She sighed as she settled into the leather seat, half closing her eyes. Mentally banishing Bri, she gushed out all the details to her youngest son. She was sobbing; he was calming her, sympathetic but not just empty phrases.
Bri put his foot down, cut the corner, an angry horn raged at him. One large swerve up the drive. His brakes would have screeched, if it had been a cheaper car, as he slammed them on. Simon peered out, the yellowed net curtain frailly lifted from the mucky panes.
“Speak later, love,” she managed.
Simon, breathless from staggering out to meet her, was holding the door for her. Observing the wet cheeks, the red eyes, he gently took her bag and her arm.
“Thanks, love,” she called, as Bri backed out, electric window enabling an arrogant half-hearted wave.
*
Bri drove recklessly, wiping the tears, which his Mum would never have believed, on the sleeve of his expensive jacket. He had become an expert at quelling his emotions.
He was quite hurt really that his mum believed his hardness of heart was all he felt; this stone heart still had a core of love for Sadie but she had robbed them all of so much quality family life, introduced such disgrace and shame into their home. He had stumbled upon this coping mechanism and somehow the hard exterior had launched him into a successful marketing career. He had become the package required to survive in his competitive world. He was well respected by his bosses and earmarked for grand things. His salary and accompanying perks already revealed his success to his family and friends. But it attracted the wrong sort of friends, the ones that made it even more impossible to back down from this alter ego and he had become embodied as a role model for other young colleagues to emulate, a role model he himself secretly loathed.
How could Caroline not even have a clue by the fact that he had been there waiting outside the court? Had his own mother not noticed how he had winced when she had filled Oliver in with all the details of the outcome of the long trial? Sadie was not the only one imprisoned. Caroline had mentally categorised Bri into the callous being he now felt enforced to act out.
She would have thought he was there to gloat, to add another nail to the coffin, slowly killing any happy memories and there had been trillions of those but they were fading so quickly these days they could have been the product of a sweet, sweet dream. In fact, were they?
He revved the engine and reverted back to the macho man they all knew him as, the cold, calculating middle child, supposedly created due to lack of attention. Caroline did have some stupid theories, he mulled. He threw back his blond mane, perfectly sculptured at a top salon so it had sufficient volume to stylishly toss as he turned his head, yet it remained perfectly groomed even on the windiest of days. It truly was his crowning glory but then everything about Bri’s appearance added to that overall language of sophistication. He would have looked stunning in the oldest pair of paint-splattered jeans but in reality there was nothing in his wardrobe that did not bear a designer tag.
*
Simon put a protective arm around her shoulders as he gently escorted her into his comfortable semi. He had been most generous with the divorce settlement and Caroline and the children had been able to stay on in the large family home.
He was such a good man, so kind, hardworking, faithful, all you could ask for in a husband. They had shared so many laughs over the years but he was not a mentally strong man.
“We all have weaknesses,” she had consoled herself over the years, and Simon’s was his frail mental state. He just could not cope with the terrible strains that Sadie had introduced them to. Introduced and then left them drowning in, lakes of them. They had been relentless over the two decades, storm after storm after storm.
Simon had not been able to take any more and the broken man had made her choose. How could a mother choose between her daughter and her husband? He had realised it was an impossible choice so he had made it for her. He had simply left when Sadie was eighteen. He felt he had been honourable enough as he had seen the devil child into her adulthood but not so his other two sons.
His departure had left a very wide chasm. Anger, shock, disbelief, severe blame had enveloped her for months. He had taken the coward’s way out, in her opinion, and her disappointment in him had prevented any amicable conversation for the first two years. Sadie might have been an adult but her behaviour was still so childish, demanding and far reaching. Caroline still needed support with her, in some ways much more now than when she was younger. It was only now that the girl was showing her true colours.
Neither of them had taken other partners. It would have felt adulterous because they both still loved each other, although it was never communicated but they both knew it.
However, just as time can be a great healer it can also be a great disguiser and they had now travelled to a place from which there probably was no realistic return. Caroline and Simon both knew that their respective loneliness would one day lead them into new relationships.
He left her sitting on the worn, green velvet sofa as he wandered off to make her a brew, his typical offer of solace to all the various problems over the years. Sighing, yet again, she wondered why she had let Bri bring her here. Unless she mentioned Sadie he would just skirt around the reasons for her obvious distress. He would be patient enough and kind, but small talk would be all he could offer. His mental wounds would not tolerate him delving into the viciousness of a court scene. His absence had spoken for him. Bri was right – the scars in his mind would force him to be disinterested.
“You need a holiday, Caz,” he started, as he passed her the chipped mug bearing the faded words “World’s best Dad”. He was a homely looking man with his round face and balding head. About five foot eleven, he had once towered over Caroline’s petite five-foot-two frame, but his loss of confidence, his low self-esteem, had seen him shrink as a more hunched stature took hold.
“Do you want me to get the internet up and we could look if there are any last-minute bargains?”
She threw the mug on the floor, the steaming tea puddling on his tattered rug. He gasped, horror-struck by her viciousness. Caroline was equally shocked but the pent-up frustration had given birth to a new pang of anger at her so-called family. Family were supposed to stick together through thick and thin.
“Why can’t you just ask about her?” she screamed.
“I can’t. You know I can’t go down that route again, Caz. Don’t ask me.” He stopped to wipe the spill with his hanky, as useless as his efforts had ever been at mopping up the messes Sadie had left in her trail. Caroline sneered at the allegory she saw so clearly.
“I’m off.”
She knew she had no transport but she didn’t really have a destination either, a ship lost at sea, in a deep fog. Blindly she ran out into the early evening shadows as he half-heartedly called after her.
She had no clue as to where she was heading but Simon knew. The pub would be calling her, offering her oblivion once more. What was the point? He had sacrificed his marriage to escape from all of this. Her alcoholism was supposedly conquered but he understood; the demon was always on her back looking for any moment of weakness. Who would ever have believed that sweet Caroline, the innocent teenager he had first dated over thirty-five years ago, would have ever taken to drink to drown her sorrows? Caroline had been raised very strictly. Her own father had suffered at the hands of his alcoholic mother. Tales of physical and mental abuse which he had suffered had been passed on to Caroline, supporting the Amish-style upbringing he enforced upon Caroline and her sister, Noreen, three years her senior. Maybe it was in Caroline’s genes; maybe it had skipped a generation.
Simon flopped into the armchair discarding the handkerchief on the cream rug. There truly was no point in trying to clean up the mess. Their lives were broken and all due to one girl. If only she had never been born and then he shuddered with disgust at the bitterness of his own thoughts.
A sweet little curly-haired toddler floated, grinning, into his mind’s eye. He felt the flutter of affection in his heart and he bellowed, thumping his eyes with his fists. They were destroyed, the lot of them. If only they could turn back time but even in that moment of utter despair he recognised that Caroline would go ahead with the sperm donation all over again. Despite everything, she had no regrets. She loved that girl unconditionally.