Chapter 69
‘Mum, why are you crying? Are you guys divorcing?’
‘Your mother has something to tell you,’ Jack repeated.
‘Jack, no.’
‘You tell her, or I do.’
‘What did you do, Mum?’
‘Your mother is a rape victim too.’
I disassociated myself from my body. I saw sixteen-year-old me clamping my legs around Milo’s hips. I saw the confusion and then the horror on his face when he realized what I was doing. The way he turned his face away when I tried to kiss him on the mouth.
‘Mum, why didn’t you ever tell me?’
Jack answered for me. ‘Your mum didn’t want you to ever see her as a victim and it’s still traumatizing for her.’
‘Is that why you disappeared that night?’
It was. I was crying harder now, crying at the lies I didn’t want to repeat again.
‘And is that why you didn’t come home last night? Oh, Mum.’
She was alarmed and put her hand on my arm. It was the first time she had touched me in a long while. It was not comforting. I moved my arm away.
‘I’m so sorry, Mum, when did this happen?’
‘In Boston, when she was young. He was arrested, there was a trial, he spent thirteen years in prison. He denied it all the way. Stupid asshole,’ said Jack.
‘He wasn’t stupid,’ I said, ‘he was going to be a doctor.’
Jack looked at me strangely. I shouldn’t have defended Milo.
Lucy, undeterred, put her arms around me. ‘What happened?’
I stiffened. I had for so long wanted to feel her touch, but not for lies. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. Your father knows I didn’t want to talk about it.’
She stood up and went to the window. Jack went to put the kettle on. She turned to face me slowly. ‘Mum, is your rapist my real dad?’
I was shocked. I couldn’t say anything for a moment. Jack looked at me and then to Lucy. ‘No, honey, of course not. She was sixteen,’ he said.
I had always been truthful with Lucy. I had told her that she had been the result of a one-night stand.
When she was old enough, I told her, ‘I honestly don’t know who your father is.
I feel shame for that.’ Jack and I got together when Lucy was three, though he had been in her life from the day she was born. She knew that.
We had been unsure of what to tell her and when.
We broached the subject when she was seven, by telling her that Jack wasn’t her real daddy, but she wasn’t terribly interested then.
I think she was nine when she began to ask questions: ‘Do I look like my real dad?’ ‘Is my real dad rich?’ ‘Is his house bigger than ours?’ ‘Has he got a dog?’ ‘Is he dead?’ I was tempted to say that he was dead to stop the questions.
I got called into the school once and a teacher told me that Lucy had been saying her mother didn’t know who her real father was.
The shame washed over me like a blood-red tide.
It angered me that I was going to have to lie to this nosy bitch.
I chose not to. When I didn’t respond to what felt like an accusation, the teacher got flustered and implied that I should make something up until Lucy was old enough to cope with this information. I bristled.
‘Are you suggesting that I lie to my child? She’s coping fine.’
‘Well, no, it’s that she might be teased.’
‘So she hasn’t been teased yet?’
‘No, not yet, but children can be judgemental.’
‘So can teachers,’ I said, standing up from the desk and swinging my bag on to my shoulder.
We had allowed everyone outside immediate family to assume that Jack was Lucy’s father, and I think most of the time Lucy forgot that he wasn’t. He certainly did.
But now nineteen-year-old Lucy had further questions. ‘If my father was the rapist, I’d want to know.’
Jack stepped in. ‘He wasn’t. She was twenty-three when you were born, you know that.’ Jack was doing all the talking.
‘Mum, why didn’t you ever tell me? You’ve told me everything else, haven’t you?’
‘It’s a private thing. I didn’t even want to tell your father. How many people do you want to tell, about Simon?’
‘Ruby, for Christ’s sake,’ said Jack. I was furious with him.
‘I’m sorry you went through that, Mum.’
When she went back to her room, Jack looked at me triumphantly. ‘There, that wasn’t so bad, was it? You didn’t have to go into detail and Lucy feels less alone.’
‘I don’t believe her,’ I said.