crimson as she watched Lewis Rimmer punch the air. She screwed up her envelope and flung it at his smug face.
‘What did I do?’ he asked as she stormed off.
It’s a question I still ask myself.
I wonder if Ruth is thinking of him too as she curls her fingers into fists. ‘Meg was devastated when she failed her exams. Uni had been her escape route, I think. It would have given her the chance to distance herself from the bad influences in her life.’
‘Was there substance abuse?’
‘No, but there was abuse,’ Ruth says carefully.
Shock forces me back a step and my shoulder thumps against the window before I can right myself. What is Ruth doing?
‘When Meg died,’ Ruth continues, her gaze remaining fixed on the reporter, ‘there was evidence of self-harm and a previous attempt to take her life that we knew nothing about. She hurt herself and I believe that was because someone was hurting her more, emotionally if not physically. Through my years on the Lean On Me helpline, I’ve learnt that an abuser’s greatest weapon can be the mind of his victim.’
A frown forms as the reporter checks her notes. She’s done her research and knows there was no mention of abuse in the coroner’s verdict. The foundation’s website simply states that Meg took her own life less than two weeks after failing her exams and that it was a senseless loss. That’s always been the official line and the abuse that we as a family know Meg endured has gone unrecorded and unpunished. Up until today, Ruth has kept to a carefully edited version of her daughter’s death to avoid litigation, and I don’t understand why she’s chosen now to speak up. Or perhaps I do.
Despite our best efforts, there has been little interest from the media in our cause. Press releases have gone unread and the handful of press interviews we’ve been able to secure have resulted in minimal column inches. This pre-recorded interview is our last-ditch attempt to draw in new callers and keep the helpline open, but there’s no guarantee that it will air this evening. It’s been a slow news week after the August bank holiday weekend but if something more newsworthy comes along, our story will be shelved. Ruth wants to make sure that doesn’t happen, and she certainly has the reporter transfixed.
‘It’s no coincidence that one of the foundation’s principal aims is to give young people the tools to recognise when they’re in toxic relationships,’ she continues. ‘Tools that could have saved Meg’s life.’
The reporter leans in closer to ask the question Ruth shouldn’t answer. ‘And who was it that hurt your daughter, Mrs McCoy?’
My fingers dig into the flesh of my arms – surely she won’t do it. Naming the man we all loathe might grab the headlines, but a lawsuit would follow and my next press release won’t be to promote the helpline, it’ll be to announce its closure.
‘There was a boyfriend,’ Ruth explains, skirting dangerously close to the truth. ‘I’m sure part of the attraction for Meg was that she knew we wouldn’t approve, but I’d been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Geoff was less accommodating and, as it turned out, his instincts were better than mine. To understand what this man took from us, you would need to have known the person Meg was before she met him. When she was at her best, my daughter could light up a room. Pick a memory, any memory, and there was Meg right at the centre of it all, bright and beautiful.’ Ruth’s eyes light up, only to dim when she adds, ‘But in the space of two short years, he took every last spark of life she had and stamped it out. It was as if my sweet girl had been hollowed out. I lost her long before the day she died.’
I close my eyes, feeling a tension headache creeping up my temples. Even without a name, there are plenty of viewers who will know exactly who Ruth is talking about. I have to hope that Lewis won’t be one of them.
‘And that was three days before her eighteenth birthday,’ the reporter adds.
‘Ten years ago this coming Thursday.’
‘And the note Megan left. Did it mention anything about what she had been through?’ the reporter asks as she refers back to her notes.
‘The scrap of a note we were left with explained nothing,’ Ruth replies, choosing her words carefully.
When she looks at me, I shake my head urgently. The police investigation had found no evidence that someone else had been there when Meg hung herself, or that the note she had left had been tampered with, despite never finding the missing half to the page taken from her notepad. No matter what we might think privately, our suspicions can’t be made public. Acid burns in my stomach as I watch Ruth return her gaze to the camera, her eyes blazing with fury.
‘Meg told us she wanted her shame to be buried with her, but no child should be buried in shame. She was seventeen years old. If there’s any shame, it’s mine. I didn’t see what was in front of me, and I can never change that.’
‘You have nothing to be ashamed of,’ the reporter tells her.
‘Tell that to the people who go to extraordinary lengths to avoid mentioning how I lost my daughter,’ Ruth hits back. Her voice softens when she adds, ‘But if we don’t talk about suicide and the pain it causes families like mine, how can we open up the conversation and reach out to those struggling with suicidal thoughts? Meg thought she was sparing us. I wish I could have told her that whatever she was going through, or whatever she thought she was putting us through, it wouldn’t last. It’s the grief that goes on forever. I didn’t simply lose her that day, I lost an entire future. I’ve recently become a grandmother but I’ll never see the children Meg might have had, or celebrate countless other milestones in her life.’
‘You’ve created a wonderful legacy in her memory. She would be very proud of you,’ the reporter says gently.
‘As I am of her. The Megan McCoy Foundation wouldn’t exist without her. Our daughter thought she had run out of options and our job is to make sure that young women, and men too, realise there are always options. I’ll never know what Meg would have made of her life if things had been different, but thanks to the Lean On Me helpline, I know quite a few young people who were on a similar path and are now enjoying lives they never thought possible. It’s a lovely feeling when they get back in touch to share good news.’
‘Perhaps you could tell me about some of the people you’ve helped.’
‘I didn’t do it alone. It’s been a group effort,’ Ruth says as she catches my eye. There’s a hint of a smile. She’s back on script.
Pressing my chin to my chest as Ruth recounts the foundation’s successes, I allow the relief flooding my chest to ease away my tension.
I’m not sure Ruth realises it, but the first person she saved was me. Meg’s death didn’t only rewrite her parents’ future, it rewrote mine too. I was always the shy one, hiding behind Meg’s armour of overconfidence. She could jump from a stage and never doubt that someone would catch her, while to this day I refuse to step into a lift because I’m convinced a cable will snap. Unlike Meg, I’ve never put my fears to the test but then I don’t need to. Bad things do happen – Meg proved that.
It would have been nice if my response to my cousin’s premature death had been to grab every opportunity that life had to offer, but I didn’t see the point. Not all leaps of faith ended well, so why take the risk? Much to my mother’s chagrin, I turned down my place at university and denied her a full complement of four daughters with degrees, husbands
