Still Shining Behind The Clouds

I wake early and start cleaning -  the taps, the kettle, the loo. I chop tomatoes and cucumber, wash the lettuce for lunch. Would be better if I sat and meditated.... or prayed..... to quiet my churning head, but my moving hands seem to know what's best. My husband sleeps on till the sun creeps through the blinds.

My sister arrives with her big warm smile and I feel immediately soothed, stronger. She drives us to the court. At the security check-in they confiscate my husband's Swiss Army pen knife - the blade is too long for safety - but they let us take it back to the car.

Our lovely lawyer sits with us in an interview room and explains what will happen. He says we have a listening, courteous and fair judge on the bench today.  When I ask if I can sit with my husband in the court to explain anything he may not understand, he says no. He says the judge will want to know why and he doesn't want to bring up my husband's medical condition as it isn't relevant to the speeding charge. I trust him completely -  to me this court world is like an ocean of dangerous and harmless fishes but he knows how to navigate between them, how to sweeten them, how to use them. We wait nearly an hour.

The hardest part is when my husband goes through one door and down the steps into the court room and my sister and I go through another door into the public gallery and I look down and see the back of his head behind the glass panel and he looks small and young and alone.

The judge asks him to say his name and address and if he's pleading guilty or not guilty. My husband says it so quietly he has to repeat it. Then lovely lawyer says his piece and shows the photograph from the police camera of my husband in his red car overtaking a white van in the nearside lane of the dual carriageway. He says he can't explain why his client was going that fast -  73mph in a 40mph limit -  but he's very sorry and he has a clean licence and he's early retired...... and some other stuff we can't hear.

Then it's over. The judge says Disqualified from driving for one week, £200 pound fine, £85 court costs and £20 for something else. I can hardly believe it. Smiles break out like a rash of sunshine.

Celebrating with our habitual Carluccios' hot chocolate and lemon tarts is off the cards (now that I'm watching my weight) so we go home and tuck into hot smoked salmon fillets and the salad I prepared this morning when the world felt like a much harsher, scarier place. 

Much later I celebrate again - crack open five fresh walnuts -  and think a lot about how I could avoid all this stress, this wild imagining, which eats into my bones, greys my hair and freezes my love. How can I dilute my fear with trust... how can I  remember to breathe one breath at a time when it feels as if the sun has been killed instead of just waiting, still shining behind the clouds?