For pretty much the better part of a half a century, Olivia “Babsy” Grange has hidden, in plain sight, a deep and dastardly pain that no woman, no one surely, should bear. The image of a happy camper with the ready smile that she so easily projects on the national stage is lethal cover for either immense guilt or a monstrous wrong perpetuated against an innocent young woman.

It is a story this protégé of the late Prime Minister Edward Seaga has not often been able to tell in such a graphic way… until now. And if it brings you to tears, dear reader, then there may yet be hope for us all. For well do we know that, invariably, whenever the political blinkers are removed, baring our true Jamaican souls, copious flows the milk of human kindness and compassion.

And so, now if Olivia Atavia St Veronica Grange, or the more familiar household nomenclature — Babsy Grange — has not clothed herself in overt bitterness, put it down to a fierce determination to soar above her circumstances and continue her relentless climb from the depths of 1940s West Kingston poverty to stake her claim in what dream her beloved Jamaica might yet have to offer.

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