Chapter 34
A few weeks after Grandma’s funeral, out of the blue one day, Mom said, ‘I wonder what would happen now if you confessed.’
We were in my local playground, watching Lucy playing on the slide, clambering up the ladder, sliding down, clapping her hands and laughing, before running back to take her turn and climb the ladder again.
We’d been up all night because she had a temperature.
She showed no sign of it now, but I was exhausted and completely unprepared for this bombshell of a statement.
‘What do you mean?’ I said, though I knew.
‘Maybe they wouldn’t give a young mother a prison sentence, or maybe it would be a very short one.
’ She stumbled over her words. She had been thinking about this.
‘We could go back. I’d be there if you were sentenced, to take care of Lucy.
I’m sure they wouldn’t treat you so harshly. You were only sixteen years old.’
‘Mom, no –’
‘Do you ever think of Milo?’
‘Yes, of course –’
She cut me off. ‘Eight years. What would happen if you told the truth, Ruby?’
‘Why are you saying this now?’
She shifted on the bench so that she was facing me.
‘Mam’s gone. I don’t want to go back to Boston, but if I had to, I could.
I’d confess my part too. Perhaps they’d only imprison me.
I shouldn’t have panicked. I should have told your father.
He would have done the right thing, even if it destroyed everything he’d built.
I don’t think it’s too late to do the right thing, Ruby. ’
I beckoned Lucy to come and join us. I needed to use her to show Mom what she was suggesting I sacrifice.
She climbed easily on to my lap. ‘You’re not thinking straight.
Dad would never forgive us; Milo would sue us.
You said at the time, Dad would lose everything, and what if we were both jailed, what then, Mom? ’
She started to cry. She’d been crying a lot since Grandma died. ‘We did a terrible thing, you and I,’ she said.
‘Mom, it wasn’t your fault. You did whatever you could to protect me. It was a mother’s instinct. I have a mother’s instinct too and it’s telling me to stay here with my daughter. There is no guarantee that either of us would get off with a light sentence.’
Lucy reached towards Mom and stroked the tears from her face. ‘Granny sad?’ she said.
‘Yes, and it’s Mamma’s fault.’ I wrapped her up in my coat and she was quiet.
‘Mom, I’m so sorry. Please don’t think about this any more.
You’re not to blame. And, you know, there’s another way to look at this.
They say that ninety per cent of rapists get away with it, either because the rapes are never reported in the first place or because they cannot be proven in court.
It’s most often a case of her word against his.
If one innocent man goes to prison, doesn’t that redress the balance a tiny bit?
One or two wrongs don’t make a right, but maybe a thousand wrongs do? ’
‘No. No, they don’t. I can’t force you to do the right thing and I can’t do the right thing without you.’
‘Mom, I’m sorry, but I can’t take the risk of losing my daughter.’
‘You never mentioned Erin, what it did to her.’
Erin hadn’t crossed my mind. Now, I thought she might kill me if she found out. That’s what I told Mom. That the truth would cause further damage to our family, our careers, the people who cared about us, the people we loved.
‘It can’t stay a secret forever,’ she said as I drove her home. It was the most chilling thing she had ever said to me.
We stayed away from each other for the next few weeks, and then gradually we started talking again. We needed each other and Lucy needed both of us. There was a tacit agreement that we would not discuss it again.