Then Josephine, the MC, arrived.
‘Thank you for coming,’ she said. ‘We’re hoping you can shed light on Rachel and her drug-taking.’
I felt myself shrink and cringe and pull myself back into the chair, in an abortive attempt to disappear. I always hated hearing what people thought of me. My whole life had been an attempt to get people to like me and it was hard to listen to the extent of my failure.
Mum opened the bidding by bursting into tears. ‘I can’t believe Rachel is a drug addict.’
You’re not the only one, I thought, trying to fight off terrible wretchedness.
Dad took charge. ‘Rachel hasn’t lived at home for the last eight years.’ He’d dropped his Wild West accent for the session. ‘So we’d know very little about drugs and the like.’
Big lie. Didn’t they share a house with Anna?
‘No problem,’ Josephine said. ‘There’s plenty of other vital information you can give us. Particularly about Rachel’s childhood.’
Mum, Dad and I stiffened as one. I didn’t know why, it wasn’t as if they’d locked me in a cupboard and beat and starved me. We had nothing to hide.
‘I’d like to ask you about a time she remembers as particularly traumatic,’ Josephine said. ‘She got very upset about it one day in group.’
‘We didn’t do anything to her,’ Mum burst out, shooting me a furious look.
‘I’m not suggesting you did,’ Josephine soothed. ‘But children often see the adult world in a distorted way.’
Mum glared at me.
‘Did you ever suffer from post-natal depression?’ Josephine asked.
‘Post-natal depression!’ Mum snorted. ‘Indeed’n I did not! Post-natal depression wasn’t invented in those days.’
My heart sank. Nice try, Josephine.
‘Did anything happen to you or the family shortly after Anna arrived?’ Josephine pressed.
I squirmed. I already knew the answers and I wanted it to stop.
‘Well,’ Mum said warily, ‘two months after Anna was born, my father, Rachel’s grandad, died.’
‘And you were upset by this?’
Mum looked at Josephine as if she was mad. ‘Of course I was upset by it. My own father! Of course I was upset.’
‘And what form did this upset take?’
Mum threw me a filthy look. ‘I cried a lot, I suppose. But my father had died, what was I expected to do!’
‘What I’m trying to get at,’ Josephine said, ‘is did you have some sort of a breakdown? Rachel remembers it as a very painful period and it’s important to get to the bottom of it.’
‘Breakdown!’ Mum’s face was aghast. ‘A breakdown! I’d have loved a breakdown, but how could I, with a family of small children to rear?’
‘Maybe “breakdown” is the wrong word. Did you ever at any stage take to your bed? Even for a short while?’
‘Chance would have been a fine thing,’ Mum sniffed.
And I felt small childish voices clamour inside my head. ‘But you did! And it was all my fault.’
‘Do you not remember those couple of weeks?’ Dad interjected. ‘When I was away on the course…’
‘In Manchester?’ Josephine asked.
‘Yes,’ he said, shocked. ‘How do you know?’
‘Rachel mentioned it. Carry on.’
‘My wife was finding it hard to sleep, with me being away and it only a month since her father died. So her sister came to stay with us, and she was able to take to the bed for a while.’
‘You see, Rachel,’ Josephine said triumphantly. ‘It wasn’t your fault at all.’
‘I remember it differently,’ I muttered, finding it hard to accept this version of events as the truth…
‘I know you do,’ she agreed. ‘And I think it’s important for you to see how you do remember it. You exaggerated everything. The scale of the disaster, the length of time it went on for and most importantly of all, your part in it. In your version you played a starring role.’
‘No,’ I choked. ‘Not a starring role. More like, more like…’ I searched for the words to express how I felt. ‘… more like, the role of the baddy! The evil streak of the family.’
‘Not at all,’ Dad blustered. ‘Evil! What did you do that was evil?’
‘I pinched Anna,’ I said in a little voice.
‘So what! Anna pinched Helen when she arrived. And Claire did exactly the same to Margaret and Margaret did the same to you.’
‘Margaret pinched me?’ I blurted. I’d thought Margaret had never done a bad thing in her life. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I am, of course,’ said Dad.
‘Remember?’ He turned to Mum.
‘I can’t say that I do,’ she said stiffly.
‘Indeed you can,’ he exclaimed.
‘If you say so,’ she said, in a tone that let everyone know she was humouring her poor, deluded husband.
Josephine looked at Mum, then looked at me. Looked at Mum again, then gave a secret little smile.
Mum’s face reddened. She suspected that Josephine was laughing at her, and she might have been for all I knew.
‘The way I remember it,’ Dad gave Mum a funny look, then turned to me, ‘is that you were no worse and no better than any of your sisters.’
Mum muttered something that sounded like ‘No better, certainly.’
I felt sick.
‘Have you some kind of resentment against Rachel, Mrs Walsh?’ Josephine asked.
I reeled from her brazenness.
So did Mum from the appalled look on her face. Then she rallied.
‘No mother likes to have to come into a treatment centre because her daughter’s a drug addict,’ she said sanctimoniously.
‘Is that the only thing you have against her?’
‘That’s all.’ Mum looked murderous.
Josephine looked questioningly at Mum. And Mum tossed her head, her mouth pursed into a cat’s bum.
‘So, Rachel.’ Josephine smiled at me. ‘I hope you can see now that you’ve nothing to blame yourself for.’
Would Mum have done all that crying just because her father had died? I wondered tentatively. Had Dad left merely to go on a course?
But why would they lie? They’d no need to.