A Sister's Secret Read online

  ‘He forced me to give him oral sex,’ I said. ‘Sometimes he did it to me too. I felt so degraded just having to lie there while he put his tongue or his fingers inside me.’

  I couldn’t even make eye contact with her. It was horrendous having to tell a stranger such explicit details and afterwards I felt like I was going to be sick.

  ‘Is it OK if we have a break now?’ I mumbled, beads of sweat running down my forehead.

  ‘Of course,’ she said.

  I got up and walked as quickly as I could to the toilet, where I threw up. I was in there for so long, Karen came to find me.

  ‘Debbie, are you all right?’ she called.

  ‘Yes, I’m coming now,’ I said.

  I didn’t tell her I’d been sick, though. I didn’t want her to think I was weak.

  The questions seemed endless but I tried to answer them as best I could. I knew there was one thing Karen couldn’t get her head round.

  ‘I need to ask you this, Debbie, but why did you both keep going up there when you knew what Ryan was capable of?’

  ‘Laraine didn’t have any friends and Alison was such a sweet girl,’ I told her. ‘I know it’s hard to understand but we were seven and nine; we didn’t make rational decisions. I only went up there to protect my sister and after a while the abuse became a way of life. I got so used to it, I just accepted that it was going to happen.’

  After four long hours, it was finally over.

  ‘I’ll just print out your statement, then I need you to read it through and if you’re happy with it to sign it for me,’ Karen told me.

  I took one look at that statement and I almost fell to pieces. It felt so degrading seeing it there, all written down in black and white, and it really brought home to me what Patrick Ryan had done. My hands were trembling as I signed the bottom.

  ‘Right, that’s it, you’re all done,’ said Karen.

  Lorna, bless her, was still waiting for me in reception and she drove me home. There was a bottle of white wine in my handbag and I couldn’t wait to get home and open it. But as soon as I got back, I knew the first thing I needed to do was to have a bath.

  It was exactly as it had been when I was a girl. Just talking about the abuse had made me feel so dirty that I wanted to try and get myself clean again. I ran a boiling hot bath and soaked in it for nearly an hour. Afterwards I got into the shower and scrubbed myself with a loofah until my skin was red raw. Then I opened the bottle of wine and drank it down, desperately trying to erase the memories of the day from my mind.

  ‘How did it go?’ Rob asked when he got home from work.

  ‘It was horrible,’ I said.

  Only then did I allow myself to cry.

  ‘It brought it all back to me,’ I sobbed. ‘It’s almost like it’s happening all over again.’

  I hardly slept for the next few days, I was just replaying things over and over in my mind. Mum rang one evening when I’d been drinking as usual. Laraine had told her that she’d made a statement to the police about Patrick Ryan but neither of us had told her about my involvement yet. Mum was really worried about Laraine.

  ‘You know she’s back on the booze, Debbie?’ she said.

  ‘Yep, she was out of it when I went up there last week,’ I told her.

  ‘And all this Patrick Ryan business,’ she sighed. ‘Surely I would have noticed if my daughter was being abused?’

  I was furious.

  ‘No, you wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘You didn’t bloody notice when Patrick Ryan raped me or my father for that matter!’

  As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted it.

  It was totally unforgivable of me to tell her like that but I was drunk and it all came tumbling out. Mum was horrified.

  ‘W-what do you mean?’ she stuttered. ‘He did it to you, too? And your father?’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, Mum, but it’s all true. That’s why I went up to London last week – I was making a statement to the police about what Ryan did to me. How he raped and abused me over a period of three years.

  ‘And you should have known. You’re my mum, you should have seen the signs and you didn’t notice a bloody thing!’

  ‘Oh, Debbie, I don’t know what to…’

  But before she could finish, I put the phone down. I didn’t want to talk to her.

  I was drunk, I was angry and I suppose I needed someone to blame for this whole sorry mess, so I blamed her. She rang my mobile and the home phone but I didn’t answer.

  ‘Debbie, please pick up,’ she begged. ‘I need to talk to you about this. I’m so sorry.’

  I could tell she was crying.

  Weeks went by but I couldn’t bring myself to speak to Mum. She only lived ten minutes away and always came round on a Sunday for a roast dinner but I didn’t want to see her.

  Rob spoke to her.

  ‘I told her you just need a bit of space,’ he said. ‘She’s shocked and upset too, Deb. This has rocked her to the core. She feels so guilty that she didn’t realise what was going on for all those years.’

  ‘Good,’ I said.

  In the end it was Laraine who got Mum and I talking again. Laraine was drinking more and more, and I was so worried about her. Ironically, I was doing the same thing but because of her past problems, I knew any alcohol could have a very serious and immediate effect on her.

  I was so angry with her. She’d set the wheels in motion by going to the police about Patrick Ryan, but at this rate she was doing her best to make sure that she wouldn’t be around for any court case, if ever there was one.

  ‘She’s going to bloody well kill herself if she’s not careful,’ I ranted to Rob.

  But my anger soon turned to worry. Every day when I rang up, she was drunk. So I swallowed my pride and phoned Mum for the first time in months.

  ‘I’ll go up and see her,’ said Mum. ‘Maybe she’ll listen to me?’

  She phoned me from her house.

  ‘Debbie, she’s really ill,’ she said. ‘She’s all bloated and she can’t get out of bed, and when I tried to get her up, she just collapsed.’

  ‘Mum, phone an ambulance.’

  ‘I have,’ she said. ‘It’s on its way.’

  I was on tenterhooks, waiting for her to call me back.

  Please don’t let her die, I thought. I couldn’t bear losing my sister as well as my brother.

  ‘I want to go up there and be with her,’ I told Rob.

  ‘Just sit tight for now until you know what’s happening. There’s nothing you can do,’ he said.

  Mum rang a couple of hours later from Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich.

  ‘Oh, Debbie, it doesn’t look good,’ she sobbed.

  I could hardly take in what she was telling me. Laraine was in intensive care. Her kidneys had started to fail, she had cirrhosis of the liver and she had internal bleeding in her oesophagus.

  ‘You need to come up now,’ said Mum, her voice cracking with emotion. ‘The doctors don’t think she’s going to make it.’

  Chapter 15

  No More Secrets

  I hardly recognised the figure lying in the hospital bed. She was covered in tubes and there were machines bleeping all around her. Any anger I’d felt about her drinking again instantly disappeared the minute I saw her.

  I sat on the bed and held her hand.

  ‘Oh, Lal,’ I said. ‘What have you done to yourself?’

  She was drifting in and out of consciousness, so I wasn’t sure if she could hear me. The doctors had warned us that she was critically ill and might not pull through but I refused to believe it. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing my sister, especially not in the same hospital where my brother had taken his last breath.

  ‘You’re going to be all right,’ I told her. ‘I love you. You’ll get through this.’

  Her liver was so enlarged she looked seven months pregnant and they were draining litres and litres of fluid out of her. I was shocked at the state that she’d got herself into.
/>   Mum was slumped on a chair in the corner. She looked like she hadn’t slept for days and I could see the worry etched on her face. I hadn’t seen her for weeks since our argument on the phone and things were still strained between us.

  ‘I can’t believe she’s done this to herself,’ she said. ‘I should have realised what was happening to you both. I should have recognised the signs.’

  ‘It’s not your fault, Mum,’ I said. ‘I was just looking for someone to blame.’

  ‘I knew things weren’t right but I always put it down to the way your father was and Dad dying. How could I not have realised?’

  ‘There’s no point dwelling on the past now,’ I told her. ‘We just need to focus on getting Laraine better.’

  The doctors were doing their best to stabilise her. All we could do was wait. I spent hours pacing up and down the corridors, saying a silent prayer over and over again inside my head.

  Please let her pull through. Please let her make it.

  We needed nothing short of a miracle and, very slowly, we seemed to get one. As the days passed Laraine started to get stronger. The internal bleeding stopped and her kidneys and liver started to function again. After three days she was moved out of intensive care.

  Every few days I went to see her. She was still very poorly and doped up on pain-killing medication but the main thing was she was still alive; it felt like she’d turned a corner. I knew I had to tell her about what Patrick Ryan had done to me. She needed to know now before someone else told her or the police contacted her.

  Rob came up to the hospital with me. I was terrified about how she was going to react and I was worried that she’d blame herself for what I’d been through.

  ‘What if it makes her worse?’ I said to him. ‘She’s been through so much, I don’t want to tip her over the edge.’

  ‘She needs to know and it’s important that she hears it from you,’ he said.

  He went for a walk while I sat down on the chair next to Laraine’s bed. She was still on a drip and very weak.

  I took her hand and said, ‘There’s something I need to tell you. Before you were rushed to hospital I went to see the police to make a statement about Patrick Ryan.’

  ‘I know you did, Deb,’ she said. ‘You told them about how you’d pulled him off me.’

  ‘No, Lal, this was another statement…’

  I paused.

  ‘…about what he did to me.’

  Laraine looked puzzled.

  ‘What do you mean, what he did to you?’

  ‘The thing I need to tell you is that he did it to me as well,’ I said. ‘Patrick Ryan raped me too.’

  Laraine looked shocked, completely flabbergasted in fact.

  ‘Oh, Deb,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry, I never knew. I never saw him do anything to you.’

  ‘He was a clever bastard, that’s why,’ I said. ‘You see he told me he would stop hurting you if I let him rape me. I was doing it for you. To protect you.’

  Laraine started to cry.

  ‘I can’t believe you did that for me,’ she said. ‘But why didn’t you tell me? Why did you keep it a secret for all these years?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Because I felt so ashamed and so dirty and disgusting. I never told anyone about it. I tried to forget and even though I couldn’t, I didn’t want to talk about it.

  ‘When we were little, I don’t think I had the words. I was scared and I could see how it had affected you, messing the bed and being so withdrawn and all that.

  ‘That’s why I didn’t want you to go to the police because I didn’t want anyone to know. And I didn’t want you to find out because you were drinking so much by then and I didn’t want to make it worse.’

  ‘I don’t think you could have made things much worse,’ she said, giving me a smile through her tears.

  I hated seeing her so upset. I could feel my eyes filling up too but I was determined not to cry in front of her. I didn’t want to seem weak: I was her big sister, I’d always been forced to be the strong one. I knew I wasn’t really inside but that was the act I always put on.

  We talked for a while but I could see Laraine was tired.

  One of the nurses bustled over to us and said, ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to go now, visiting time is over.’

  I was worried about leaving Laraine in that state but to be honest, I was desperate to get out of there and have a drink.

  ‘Deb, please don’t go,’ she begged. ‘I want you to stay with me for a bit longer.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Lal, I’ve got to. You heard what the nurse said.’

  I gave her a kiss on the cheek as I left.

  ‘It’s going to be OK,’ I told her, even though I wasn’t so sure of that myself. ‘I’ll be back in a few days.’

  It was only when I walked out of the ward and saw Rob waiting for me in the corridor that I broke down. I couldn’t keep up the façade any more and I collapsed into his arms.

  ‘You did it, Debbie,’ he said. ‘You did the right thing.’

  I’d been so worried about telling her it actually felt like a huge relief to have that off my chest. For the first time in my life I had nothing to hide and I hoped it helped Laraine to know that she wasn’t alone.

  Most of all, I realised something had shifted in me. Ever since I’d made my statement, I’d slowly come round to the idea of the case going to court. I’d gone from wanting nothing to do with it to wanting the world to know what Patrick Ryan had done to us. If I blamed anyone for the state Laraine was in, it was him.

  I was petrified of him being charged and it going to court but I was even more terrified of no action being taken against him.

  I went back to see Laraine a few days later. She’d obviously been thinking about it.

  ‘What did Patrick Ryan do to you?’ she asked. ‘Was it the same as what he did to me?’

  But I was so scared of us jeopardising any court case or putting words into each other’s mouths, I couldn’t answer.

  ‘I’m sorry but the police said we should try not to talk about specific details that we put in our statements,’ I told her. ‘We’ve got to be so careful.’

  All I knew was that they’d said our statements were similar. I just wanted Laraine to get better and come home so we could get on with the legal proceedings.

  ‘This is our chance now, Lal,’ I said. ‘Now everything’s out in the open you need to get yourself well so we can make him pay for what he did to us.’

  ‘I don’t think I can do it, Deb,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’ve got the energy to see it through after everything that’s happened.’

  I could feel rage building up inside me. She was the one who had said something in the first place and dragged me into this.

  ‘You bloody started all this,’ I said.

  ‘And you can bloody well finish it,’ she replied.

  I prayed that she didn’t mean it.

  ‘We shouldn’t be arguing about this,’ I told her. ‘We’re in this together.’

  With both of us prepared to testify there might be a possibility that there would be a case against Ryan. As the months passed, Laraine grew stronger. She had a major setback when she fell out of bed one day and fractured her pelvis but after four months, the doctors said she was well enough to leave hospital and go home.

  ‘Now you heard what they said,’ I told her. ‘If you ever drink again it will kill you.’

  ‘I know,’ she sighed. ‘To be honest, I don’t even feel like it.’

  She was in a wheelchair and she needed carers to come in and help her at home during the day, while Brendan was out at work. But hopefully, with physiotherapy and rest, she would eventually get her strength back.

  It was ironic, really. As Laraine was recovering from nearly dying from alcohol, I was drinking more than ever. I couldn’t stop myself.

  I was ringing in sick to work and I was like a dog with a bone; I just couldn’t let it go. Every day I’d ring the Sapphire Unit and speak to Car
ol, Jo or Karen, anyone who’d answer, really.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I’d slur down the phone. ‘Is there going to be a trial? Have you heard from the CPS yet?’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s no news,’ they told me.

  I was becoming their worst nightmare. Rob was at the end of his tether, too. I managed to function enough to get the kids their breakfast and get them off to school but after that I’d buy a box of white wine and drink the lot. From the minute I got up to the minute I went to bed, I had a glass of wine in my hand. I was drinking so much I was almost immune to it and I couldn’t get drunk any more. God only knows what my poor children were thinking.

  ‘You’re going to have to tell the kids what’s going on,’ said Rob. ‘They keep asking me what’s wrong with you and why you keep drinking so much. They’re not stupid.’

  I knew that if it got to a trial they would have to know what was happening anyway, so I sat them all down. Vicky was seventeen by then, Louise was fifteen and Daniel was thirteen. I’d had a drink of course for Dutch courage, but I was still dreading it. How could I explain to a thirteen-year-old boy that his mum had been raped? But I knew that I had to do it.

  ‘I know I’ve been hard to live with lately,’ I told Vicky and Louise. ‘But there’s been a lot going on and I want you to know why I’ve been acting like this.

  ‘When Auntie Laraine and I were little we were sexually abused by a neighbour and hopefully it’s going to go to court after all this time.’

  They were shocked and upset but they didn’t cry.

  ‘You can ask me anything you want and I’ll be completely honest with you,’ I told them.

  ‘What did he do?’ Vicky asked.

  Calmly I told them about the rape and the things he’d made me do to protect Laraine. I could see they were disgusted.

  ‘I know it’s a lot to take in but I also need to tell you about your granddad and what he did to me.’

  They were even more horrified because they remembered him.

  ‘I hate him,’ said Louise. ‘Why did you ever get back in touch with him?’

  ‘That wasn’t me,’ I said. ‘That was your Uncle David’s fault.’