Chapter 15
Grandma was not pleased to see me when I rocked up at her door that night. She had changed the locks and my key no longer worked. But she let me in and gestured me to sit down.
‘I heard you left Longhurst. Your mother is distraught. What is it going to take, Ruby?’
‘Grandma, I promise you, I’ve been sober for ten days. I’m sober now. I don’t have to stay in that place not to drink. They said I could leave. Please, I have nowhere else to go. And I’m sorry for all the trouble I caused.’
‘Ruby, I can smell the drink from you.’ I had stopped in a bar and allowed a guy to buy me a few drinks, maybe three, but definitely not much more than that.
‘You are lying about this, like you lie about everything. The drinking. I know what the root of it all is. I know what happened back in Boston was terrible. We should have talked about it as a family –’
I zoned out at that point, but I could feel the anger rising inside me. I had been sober for ten days in there. I had only had a few drinks before I came home to give me the courage to face Grandma and apologize to her. I had proven that I could stay sober. I’d had no coke or pills at all.
‘Stop talking about Boston,’ I said.
She ignored me. ‘I decided when you came here that it was best to pretend it hadn’t happened, but I see now that was the wrong thing to do –’
‘Please, Grandma, I can’t –’
‘There are specialists, you know, who deal in cases of rape. There’s the Rape Crisis Centre in town.
All you have to do is call them. Or your father would pay for any help you need with therapy.
I’ve been reading about it. Don’t you know how lucky you are to have those opportunities?
You probably have post-traumatic stress disorder. You need help.’
‘I got help. I told a psychiatrist in there everything.’
Grandma folded her hands on her lap. ‘I’m not a psychiatrist, but would you like to tell me what happened? You know I love you. You know I want the best for you.’
This was the last thing I wanted to talk about. I loved her too. How could I explain what happened?
‘You were just a child. What that monster did to you was outrageous. You did nothing wrong.’
‘It wasn’t like that, Grandma,’ I whispered. ‘He was a good man.’
‘He tricked you into believing he was. You can’t still think you were at fault?’
I had a devil that lived inside me, and I needed to get it out.
‘I lied. He didn’t rape me. I wanted to have sex with him, but he wouldn’t. I made it up.’
The words fell out of my mouth. I felt nausea rising from the pit of my stomach. I ran past Grandma, who was sitting stock-still, aghast, and threw up in the bathroom.