Gregory and Lisa were coming home from a hard nights work. Each of them carried a big dark heavy duffel bag in each hand as they approached their house. It was a middle class estate, no crime and no-one looking out their windows thinking suspiciously to themselves, what are those two doing. It was a nice neighbourhood, the perfect plot for the couple to set up their new business.
“I'll be glad to put these away as soon as possible”, Gregory said to Lisa as she huffed and puffed a metre or so behind him. Her feet were tired, and she had a wobbly heel on her left shoe. She just wanted to get home and have a nice long bath.
“Me too, it's far too much”, she replied, her arms aching from the duffel bags contents. Each night the bags got heavier and her biceps got a bit more bigger.
They walked up the garden path to the semi detached house they owned in Windsor. Gregory saw himself as man a head of his time. He was providing the local community with something new, something that they hadn't experienced before, and something that would shake up society from it's core and change life in Britain for ever. It was the late 60's the Summer of Love and although they weren't hippies they knew a few and the right sort of hairy stoner that could make them money in these days of free love and dancing in fields.
Gregory got to the front door and holding a bag between his arms managed to turn his key in the latch and push open the front door. He held it open with the side of his right foot for Lisa to get in behind him before closing it and double locking it.
They both made their way into the lounge and Gregory pulled a chair out from the side table near the wall, where the little window from the kitchen was. It was a modern idea for these times, supposedly making it easier for the woman of the house to slide through a hot piping dinner to the dining table from the kitchen after a hard days work. However in this partnership Gregory and Lisa were equals they both of them took turns at everything, Gregory could even cook a tidy pot roast now. They were like this probably because they knew that if anything went wrong they would face the consequences together, and therefore they shared everything good and bad in life as a pair.
Gregory hopped up onto the chair and lifted his arms up to a decorative slatch in the ceiling. It looked like one of the floor doors you had to use to enter your loft, but this one looked plain and unusable. Instead it was a ruse, and led to a hidden apartment under the main bedroom where their double bed was.
“Hand us a bag” he said reaching down with one arm. Lisa gave him a bag and he took it and pushed it into the hole and under the bed upstairs.
“Hand us another”, he said again, and once more she passed him a heavy duffel bag which he pushed into the slot under the bed upstairs.
“There's not much room left up here”, Gregory said to Lisa as he struggled to put the next bag into the reaming gap between the ceiling and the hole under the bed upstairs in their secret compartment.
“Well there's only one more to go” said Lisa as she huffed and puffed and stretched her arms up as far as they would go to reach Gregory with a bag in her hands.
He took the bag and tried to squeeze it into the hidden trap but there was very little room left. He pushed as hard as he could and the chair beneath his feet started to wobble. He gave it one more massive push before the bag went into the hatch.
However there wasn't enough room for all of the bags and as Gregory tried to pull the decorative slate back across the hole he fell off the chair, just as the roof above him started to crack.
Just as the chair could take no more of his weight and the cracks in the ceiling were getting too big, a loud bang was heard at the door.
“What the heck”, said Lisa, and then another bang on the door pushed it open and a crowd of Bobbies ran into the front room.
Gregory fell to the floor and landed on his arse as the Bobbies looked at the two of them. They were being showered by huge rocks of cocaine powder and ceiling dust, it fell all around them as if it was snowing.
“Gregory Smith and Lisa Taylor”, said one Bobby, “You are under arrest for distribution of a prohibited drug”.
Gregory looked at Lisa one more time as the Bobbies all stood watching in amazement at the amount of powder and ceiling dust fell all around the couple. Gregory didn't know where to look as huge chunks of cocaine mixed in with asbestos fell over his head. He turned to Lisa.
“I guess we won't be going to Paris for Christmas after all”, he said. Lisa just shook her head and looked back at the crowd of blue standing in front of her.
“I guess Holloway, will be just as pleasant”, she tried to joke, “They both stink and are full of arseholes”.
Gregory and Lisa were sent away for a 12 stretch each, this was before the days of the 1974 misuse of drugs act, and still in the heyday of the “English Experiment”, when Cocaine addicts could get their fix from their GP just like any other medicine.
However the couple had tried to expand the population of users and now it was their turn to go right to the bottom of the Windsor close neighbourhood coffee group. They wouldn't be sharing a pot roast from Gregory for a long time.
© 2021 – All Rights Reserved - Robert Reid
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