Love and Other Battles

by Tess Woods

  She didn’t want to answer. The last thing she wanted to do was implicate her nan any more than she had. She gave her mum a pleading look but Jamie replied with a small nod and said, ‘Tell us, CJ.’

  ‘Um . . . I thought she might have some stashed in her room because she grows it in the backyard.’

  Her mum hung her head. ‘Oh, God,’ she said to herself.

  Detective Nguyen raised her eyebrows at Jamie. ‘You didn’t know, Miss Stone?’

  She slowly shook her head. ‘I had no idea.’ Her voice was scratchy.

  ‘Okay. Well . . . there you go.’ Detective Nguyen turned back to CJ. ‘Keep going, CJ,’ she said. ‘Have you actually seen the plants yourself in the backyard or did your nan tell you about them?’

  ‘Oh no!’ she replied, shocked at the suggestion. ‘Nan doesn’t even know that I know. She never told me. I saw the plants myself.’

  Detective Webster scribbled madly on his clipboard.

  ‘How many plants roughly would you say are out in the garden?’ Detective Nguyen asked.

  ‘Five. There are five.’

  ‘Where are they?’ Her mum sounded exhausted. ‘How have I not seen them?’ she asked nobody in particular.

  ‘They’re hidden in the fernery.’ CJ choked on the words that betrayed her nan.

  Jamie rubbed her forehead and made a face as though she was in pain.

  ‘When did you first find the plants, CJ?’ Detective Nguyen commanded her attention again.

  ‘November last year.’

  The questions continued for what felt like the longest time. CJ told them the truth about finding her nan in the fernery and how she’d acted all weird. And then she told them about hearing her on the phone to her pop, which was when she figured out that she must have been growing the dope for him.

  But when it came to the part about her and Finn, she lied. ‘So, Finn dried the leaves and we smoked them.’

  ‘Just the two of you? Nobody else was involved?’

  She shook her head quickly looking at the ground.

  ‘Where did you smoke them?’ Detective Nguyen asked.

  ‘At home,’ she lied.

  ‘Often?’

  ‘Only a couple of times, and then we broke up at the start of December so we stopped.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Detective Nguyen gave her a long look. ‘So between then and now you haven’t dried any more leaves yourself and neither has Finn?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And neither of you has ever tried to sell it or even share it with anyone else?’

  She gulped. ‘No.’ It came out hoarse. Could they tell she was lying? She felt as if her teeth might chatter again.

  ‘What made you decide to search for the marijuana in your grandmother’s room and bring it to school today, then?’ Detective Nguyen asked.

  The spit burned her throat as it went down. ‘Because I was trying to get back together with Finn and I thought that might be a way to do it.’

  CJ looked at her mum again. Jamie shut her eyes and turned her head away from her.

  Long after the bell to signal the end of lunch had sounded, Detective Nguyen finally said she had no more questions for CJ. She also said they might come back to interview Finn, ‘if necessary’.

  ‘What happens now?’ Jamie asked. ‘Will we need a lawyer?’

  ‘No, I shouldn’t think so.’ Detective Nguyen smiled at CJ. ‘We’ll compile a report once we’ve weighed the marijuana and confirmed CJ’s story of the plants in the garden. She’s not under arrest so you don’t need to worry.’ She stood up and so did Detective Webster. ‘But I do suggest your mother gets a lawyer.’

  CJ’s insides clenched.

  ‘Oh,’ Jamie said weakly.

  ‘Where’s your mother at the moment?’ Detective Webster spoke for the first time in an hour.

  ‘She’s visiting my father at Sunrise Glades Nursing Home.’

  He nodded. ‘Once the marijuana’s been identified and weighed at the lab, there’ll be a search warrant granted for your house. If the plants are found, then we’ll have grounds to arrest Mrs Stone immediately.’

  ‘I see.’ Jamie stood up. She was so white, CJ wondered if she might actually faint. ‘Do I need to arrange a lawyer for her right now?’

  ‘Yes, I think you should,’ Detective Nguyen replied. ‘These things move pretty quickly. For obvious reasons, once we have a search warrant for marijuana plants, we don’t waste much time getting to the property. I’d recommend that your mother has a lawyer present at the house within the next couple of hours.’ She paused, then added, ‘Unless you’d prefer it if we met her at the nursing home?’

  ‘No!’ Jamie said loudly, putting her hand over her heart. ‘My dad . . . he’s not well at all. You can’t go there. I’ll call her now and tell her to head straight home.’

  When the police left, CJ thought her mum might go completely off at her. But instead, Jamie turned straight to Andrew. ‘Do you know any lawyers?’ Her voice was wobbly.

  ‘I do,’ he answered, tapping on his phone. ‘I’ll send you her number now.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Mum.’ CJ stood and took a step closer to her. ‘I’m so —’

  Jamie didn’t let her finish. She gave her a look that made CJ want to curl up into a ball and hide. ‘Not now, CJ.’ Her tone was hard, clipped. ‘Your nan’s in a lot of trouble. Let me deal with that first.’

  CJ sank back in the chair. Her mum and Mr Corelli both had their backs to her while Jamie explained the situation to the lawyer on the phone.

  What if Nan went to jail? What then? What would happen to Pop? She’d ruined their lives. How could she live with herself?

  1 MARCH 2018 — 4.30 PM

  Jamie was in the kitchen making a cup of tea for the lawyer. Jess kept an eye on them while also looking on from the back door at the two gloved policemen in the process of pulling out the marijuana plants from the fernery. CJ stood next to her.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Nan,’ CJ whispered.

  ‘It’s okay, sweet.’ She patted CJ’s tightly crossed arms. ‘Everything will be just fine.’

  It wasn’t fine. It was the opposite of fine.

  The police had already ransacked every room in the house. Jess had watched on helplessly, feeling naked, violated, when they’d found and taken the dried buds buried deep inside her chest of drawers.

  She was in a whole world of trouble and she knew it — she was terrified, but not for herself. She’d jeopardised her whole family. Her daughter, a school principal, was found to have drugs growing in her home. What damage had she caused to Jamie’s reputation? Could she lose her job? Meanwhile, her granddaughter had been caught with drugs and would now have to face the consequences. Would CJ be expelled? Would she get a criminal record? Who knew what was to come?

  And worst of all, her husband would now be missing out on the one thing that helped him — the laced muffins she baked. He would deteriorate rapidly without the marijuana she gave him daily, of that she was certain. And what if she ended up going to jail? How much jail time did people serve for growing and harvesting marijuana? What would he do without her?

  All of this because she had been stupid enough to pick buds on a day when CJ was at home. Why couldn’t she have been more careful?

  The two policemen stepped out of the fernery, one after the other, carrying all five plants sealed in large plastic bags. They walked out through the back gate, presumably to put them in one of the two police cars parked on the road, and then came back into the house empty-handed.

  Detective Nguyen, who had remained inside, turned to Jess. ‘Mrs Stone, we need you to come with us to the station for questioning. Your lawyer can accompany you. I must inform you that you don’t have to say anything, but anything you do say may be given as evidence in court. Do you understand?’

  Jess’s breath caught in her throat. ‘Am I being arrested?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Stone. Yes, you are.’

  ‘No! No, no, no!’ CJ cried. ‘Please don’t
arrest my nan!’

  Everybody ignored her.

  ‘Can I come too?’ Jamie took a step closer to Jess.

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Stone, you can’t, I’m afraid. We only need Mrs Stone and her lawyer,’ Detective Nguyen replied. ‘We shouldn’t be too long, though. Mrs Stone will be home in a few hours at the most.’ She turned to Jess. ‘Have you got some ID on you, Mrs Stone? And is there anything you’d like to take with you? A handbag or your mobile phone perhaps?’

  ‘I have it all here.’ Jess pointed to the bag at her feet with a shaking finger. ‘I’m ready.’

  Jamie, who had barely looked at Jess since she’d arrived home and hadn’t said a word to her until now, gave her hand a squeeze. She squeezed Jamie’s hand back and whispered an apology to her. Saying sorry felt ridiculously inadequate but it was all she had to offer her.

  Jamie held a sobbing CJ in her arms as Jess, followed by her lawyer, was led into the police van like a criminal. Which, of course, she was.

  She stared out of the back window of the car on the way to the station. They drove through the suburb where she’d lived for the last forty-five years, but none of the scenery looked familiar. Everything felt new and odd and alarmingly disorientating. She rubbed at her temples to ease the sharp headache that had come on.

  Detective Nguyen turned from the front seat. ‘Are you okay back there, Mrs Stone?’

  ‘I’m terribly frightened,’ she replied honestly.

  ‘Don’t be,’ Detective Nguyen said with a warm smile. ‘I’m sure it will all work out in the end.’

  Detective Nguyen had what Frank would describe as ‘a face that doesn’t need greasepaint’. She had kind eyes and a warm smile. If she wasn’t ruining her life at that moment, Jess might have actually liked the woman.

  The lawyer, Grace she’d said her name was, helped her out of the car at the police station. It was cold inside and Jess wished she’d brought her shawl with her. There was a commotion at the front door seconds later. A man was brought in, thrashing and cursing and being restrained with great effort by two policemen. Jess was quickly ushered through to a private office.

  ‘Coffee?’ Detective Nguyen offered.

  Neither Jess nor Grace accepted.

  Grace asked for a few moments alone to speak to her client.

  ‘What should I say when they question me?’ Jess asked her.

  ‘Just tell them the truth,’ Grace said. ‘I’ll step in and stop them if they ask you anything I don’t want you to answer.’

  In the sparse office, that didn’t contain much more than a desk and four chairs, it was mostly Detective Nguyen who asked the questions. By the time the interview was over and the detectives excused themselves from the room, Jess felt much older than her sixty-eight years.

  ‘How did I do?’ she asked Grace, who had been silent by her side throughout and hadn’t objected to any of the questions the police threw at Jess.

  ‘Good. You did good.’

  Jess wasn’t happy with the strained look on Grace’s face. ‘Is something wrong?’

  Grace gave her a brief smile. ‘Not at all. Why don’t you have some of that water, Mrs Stone? You look a little flushed.’

  Detective Nguyen came back into the room with Detective Webster behind her. Detective Webster passed a set of documents across the desk to Grace.

  ‘Mrs Stone, you’re scheduled to appear in court in exactly three weeks today,’ Detective Nguyen said without looking up from her notes. ‘This is the information with your court date and instructions. You’re being released on bail on your own undertaking until then. I’m just going to read your charges out to you before you go to make sure you understand what they are.’

  Charges? There was more than one?

  ‘Mrs Stone,’ Detective Nguyen continued, ‘there are three criminal charges that have been brought against you. The first one is cultivating a drug of dependence. You’re also being charged with trafficking a drug of dependence. And lastly there’s the charge of negligently introducing a drug of dependence to another person.’

  ‘Trafficking?’ Jess looked to Grace in desperation. ‘I’m being charged with drug trafficking? But I never sold it to anyone.’

  ‘That doesn’t make a difference.’ Grace gave her a sympathetic look.

  ‘Am I going to go to jail?’ she whispered to Grace in the taxi on the way home.

  ‘I’ll certainly do my best to make sure you don’t.’ Grace, who looked young enough to be her granddaughter, gave her knee a pat. ‘Try not to panic too much. If we get an understanding magistrate and you plead guilty, you might get away with a fine.’

  ‘Oh.’ She released the breath she’d been holding. ‘The money’s not a problem, and I don’t care if I have a criminal record as long as I can still be there for my husband.’ She paused. ‘What if I don’t get a lenient magistrate? Could I go to jail?’

  ‘The worst of the charges is introducing a drug of dependence to another person. And luckily they’ve charged you with doing that negligently. If it was wilfully rather than negligently, it would have looked a lot grimmer for you. But this way, we can say you were only doing what you thought was best. As you said to the police, your husband is of sound mind and agreed to have the muffins, rather than being given them without his full consent. So all of that’s in your favour.’

  Grace gave Jess a reassuring smile, which didn’t reassure her at all. The charges sounded grim enough as they stood.

  ‘And CJ? Will she be in much trouble?’

  ‘No, I think she’ll get off lightly given her age and that it’s her first offence. I imagine she’ll get a warning and have to attend a drug and alcohol counselling session. It will be a rap on the knuckles more than anything. The system’s very much geared towards educating and rehabilitating minors rather than punishing them.’

  ‘Thank God.’ Jess shut her eyes as the weariness of the day caught up with her. She didn’t notice most of the drive. When they pulled up in the driveway at home, she took a deep breath and stepped out of the car to face Jamie with the news of her string of criminal charges.

  1 MARCH 2018 — 9 PM

  CJ sat up in bed, rubbed her eyes, and squinted in the dark at her alarm clock.

  Her mum had been standing in Nan’s doorway fighting with her ever since Nan had come home from the police station. Even with the door closed, CJ could hear every word.

  Her mum had tried to talk to her while Nan had been at the police station, but CJ told Jamie she felt ill and had taken herself off to bed. Jamie had come in to check on her a couple of times during the evening and strangely enough she did have a high temperature. She’d actually managed to make herself sick with anxiety — she never knew that was a thing before now.

  Jamie gave CJ medicine, made her a cheese sandwich, and told her they’d speak properly in the morning. CJ knew what ‘properly’ meant. She was about to get officially expelled — the school had a zero-tolerance policy for drug possession. Already Jamie had put in for a voluntary leave of absence. CJ wished tomorrow would never come. She was too scared, exhausted and sad to face up to everything.

  She switched on her lamp and reached for the notepad and pen that lived on the bedside table. She ignored her phone. She hadn’t looked at it since lunchtime because Mia would be messaging her for sure, and she couldn’t yet admit to her just how weak she’d been. How she’d let Finn get away with setting her up and had done nothing about it. Mia would think she was pathetic.

  Think of some words. Write them down. If she was writing, she wasn’t cutting. The pull of cutting right then was so strong it hurt. But her mum could barge in at any minute.

  ‘In muffins? Are you kidding me?’ Jamie’s voice came from the hallway. ‘It would be funny how lame that was if it wasn’t the truth.’

  ‘It was the only way!’ Jess shouted back. ‘Don’t you see? I had to do whatever I could to help him.’

  ‘Does he even know you were drugging him every day?’

  ‘Of course he know
s! What kind of monster do you take me for?’ Jess yelled.

  ‘What if you’d killed him? What if he’d had a bad reaction from it being mixed with his other medicines? Did you consider that?’ Jamie’s voice was shaky, like she was trying not to cry.

  ‘Do you think for one minute I would actually risk hurting him like that? I was a nurse for forty years. I’m not an idiot, Jamie. We had it under control.’

  In the silence that followed, CJ scribbled down:

  Pinned to the wall,

  Slice me, shame me.

  She sucked her breath in when her mum’s teary voice cut through the silence again. ‘We haven’t even discussed CJ yet. How could you give her such easy access to drugs like that? How could you?’

  Hearing her mum cry made CJ’s own eyes immediately fill with tears. She watched as they splashed onto the paper one by one, smudging the words.

  She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and read over the lyrics she had down so far.

  My body’s your battleground.

  Pierce my skin with your hate.

  Scars of blade and blood.

  Deliver me from myself.

  Jamie’s voice lowered. CJ couldn’t hear what she was saying anymore so she dropped the pen and walked quickly to the bedroom door, opening it just slightly.

  ‘Do you think I’m a bad mother? Do you think that’s why she’s turned out like this?’

  Her nan replied in a softer tone too. ‘I think you’re the best mother in the world. And she turned out just fine. She’s a sensitive, caring, bright girl. It’s okay, love, here, come in. Take a tissue. Which teenager doesn’t have issues?’

  ‘Drugs aren’t just your run-of-the-mill teen issue, Mum. It’s serious. But of course you’re not worried about it. Christ, you’re probably proud of her! You’ve finally got the child you always wanted, a hippie just like you — right down to the dope smoking. Congratulations.’

  ‘Don’t be like that. She is who she is, and you know as well as I do that it’s got nothing to do with me. She’s a free spirit, a dreamer. She’s her father’s daughter all over. It’s him you see in her, not me.’