‘Yes.’
‘I’m going to send you for an ultrasound to see exactly how pregnant you are, but I think you could still travel to the UK if you wanted to terminate the pregnancy. Adoption is also anoption and then you might want to keep the baby. There are choices.’
I was going to have an abortion. How could I raise a baby on my own and cope with recovery at the same time? And I wanted to finish my degree. As I left, Dr Mitchell gave me a sheaf of leaflets, information on all the options.
‘You know, Ruby, whatever you decide will be the right decision. I wish you the best of luck.’
I was going to have an abortion and that was the right decision.
I had the ultrasound that afternoon. This time, a male doctor. He didn’t flinch either when I told him I didn’t know when my last period was. ‘Right, let’s find out,’ he said as he ran a tube covered in gel across my stomach. I heard thewhomp-whompof a heartbeat. It seemed fast to me. Was that normal? ‘Would you like to see?’ he said. I was confused for a moment until he added, ‘The foetus?’ Did I? I shook my head. ‘This foetus looks about four months old to me,’ he said. His use of language was deliberate, I think. If I was going to abort, best not to use the B word.
I thought about the foetus a lot. It had been there when I jumped in the river. It had survived despite me. I didn’t have any religious hang-ups about having an abortion. In Dad’s church, he never mentioned it. Privately, he always said that a woman’s health was her own business, and though he was fixated on virginity, he meant it for girlsandboys. In fact, he was even stricter with boys because, apparently, they had urges more than girls. I’m not sure if he was right about that.
It would be easy to fly to London and have an abortion, there was no identifiable father to argue with.
Dr Corbett confirmed that I was somewhere between sixteen and eighteen weeks pregnant. I asked some questions, wondering if all my bad behaviour would have inflicted damage onthis tiny creature. By some miracle she was ‘progressing nicely’ despite all the abuse I had inflicted on my body and the baby’s. Dr Corbett had confirmed that it was a girl when I told him I wanted to know.
The identity of my baby’s father bugged me. I could rule out Darren, because he had given up exchanging coke for sex over a year ago. There were two guys in college, but I had vague memories they’d used condoms. There was a long-haired guy at a party. We had stand-up sex in the cloakroom. I didn’t remember his face or his name, and I didn’t remember whose party it was or even where the house was. There were two men whose houses I went back to after a long night’s drinking. I don’t remember if I slept with either of them, or both. There were many times in those final weeks at the height of my addiction when I woke up in a stranger’s bed. I had to let go of the task of trying to identify him.
Sheila was the only counsellor in Longhurst who knew I was pregnant, and she respected my confidentiality. She reminded me that there would be extra doctors’ bills on the invoice my mother would receive, but that who I told was my own business. I didn’t think Mom would look at the invoice closely. She’d send it to Dad. But it was only a matter of time before it became obvious.
With renewed determination, I engaged in rehab, attended the meetings, listened to the other addicts, volunteered to help. I stuck to the story of the incident with Amber. There was nothing I could do about that. Part of the Twelve Step programme was making amends. You must go to everyone who you hurt through your addiction and apologize and thank the people who had tried to help you. Almost everyone had tried to help me.
The thing is, I never hurt Milo because of my addiction. I hurt him because I was an immature child and he rejected me, and when I dug deep, I was trying to take something from Erin. I had tried to come clean too late in the day. Lives were destroyedand changed in ways that could never be reversed. I had to let go of that guilt. In my therapy sessions, I told a different kind of rape story to Amber. Some of it was true. I had tried to seduce Michael (I never called him Milo in my sessions). I had dressed provocatively. I had pulled away and that’s what caused the rip in my shirt. I had kissed him first. He protested but then, as I described it, ‘the mood changed’ and he turned aggressive. This was the new version. I didn’t want to present myself any longer as this pure-of-thought virginal girl. I apportioned some blame to myself, but Amber didn’t accept that.
‘What do you mean when you say the mood changed, Ruby?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it any further.’ And I never did. I couldn’t go on talking about something that never happened nearly seven years previously. I’d described it in detail back then, though I find it strange that they believed me. It was because of who I was, whose daughter I was, because of who he was and where he came from, and – most importantly – because of the DNA.
22
The Incident
‘Nobody has to know about this.’ As Milo was saying this, he picked up one cup and the pieces of the other and put them on the hatch shelf that was between our lounge and the kitchen.
‘You’re too young, too –’ he looked at me, a sobbing mess – ‘sweet. Does your head hurt? You want me to get some Tylenol before I go? It’s just a graze. You’re going to be okay.’
I was angry now. I said nothing.
He said, ‘I love Erin. I would never do anything to hurt her, and especially not –’ he gestured towards me with his hand – ‘this. I’m sorry, Ruby. I had no idea you were thinking like this. I don’t think I ever said or did anything to make you think …’ He was backing towards the front door and, without finishing the sentence, he left.
I stayed on the couch for fifteen minutes, hot with rage. Then I went upstairs to Erin’s room. It was freezing as usual. She always had the air conditioning turned up high.
I used to watch Erin even when he wasn’t there. She slept on her back, with both arms above her head resting on the pillow. She looked like a Disney princess when she slept, her mouth slightly open. And every morning, she woke up perfect. I lay down on her bed.
How dare Milo reject me? Why didn’t he want me? I thought about all the ways I could take revenge. I would tell Erin that he had tried to seduce me. But would she believe it?
I buried my face in the pillow. I had seen through the tiny hole in the wall what they’d been doing to each other before Mom and Dad woke up this morning. I looked around the room and spotted the trash can under the dressing table. There were several tissues in it. I knew what he used these for. Erin had jerked him off in the early hours of this morning.
I found a tissue in the trash that was still moist. I knew what I was looking for because I had examined the contents of Kenny Carter’s condom out of curiosity. The semen was viscous and sticky. I pulled down my panties and wiped the tissue all around my private parts, pushing it up inside myself, before flushing it and the other tissues from the trash down the toilet in the family bathroom. I washed my face clean of all the make-up.
Then I went downstairs and allowed the tears of anger to come. I took off all my clothes and dropped them on the floor around me, adding a bra to the discarded pile, swapping out the shorts for a pair of high-waisted jeans. I wrapped myself in the blanket and waited for Dad to come home, while I made my plan to destroy Milo Kelly. It was perfect. He had ripped my shirt. He’d said, ‘this never happened’ and ‘nobody has to know’. I had said ‘no’ three times. And I had the trump card. There were, at the very least, traces of his semen inside me. Erin’s perfect smile would be wiped off her face.
23
Ruby
Leaving Longhurst the second time in February 2006 was emotional. I thought I’d made friends for life. They all gathered to say goodbye. Sheila said I had gone from the lost-cause category to the best-hope category. The other recovering addicts had made me a card. They sang as I walked down the avenue to my mom’s car, ‘Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag …’
