Where the Cherries End Up

Where the Cherries End Up: A Memoir
by Sandra Ramberran
Published by Wood Dragon Books
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$19.99 ISBN 9781990863769

“You have not lived until you have shared a staff room with ten other women, sharing information about male genitals …” British-born Sandra Ramberran writes in Where the Cherries End Up: A Memoir. This quote exemplifies the brazen author’s honesty and matter-of-fact confessions in her tell-all, and clearly demonstrates that from the time she was nine and a fellow student “put his hands down [her] knickers,” her body’s been controlled by others. Soon an older man was also taking advantage of her and other “young, maturing school girls” by offering to “put money in their training bras.” The quick cash allowed them to “buy sweets or single cigarettes from the local shop.”

Born the eldest of six with an alcoholic father, Ramberran’s rape at age fourteen and the ability to drink “more than most women,” seemed to set the stage for several challenging decades among “the world of massage parlours, drugs, and sex.”

School was something to be endured, and as a teen, “done with childhood games,” her focus turned to “chasing boys and being chased”—and she had an eye for the bad boys. At sixteen she was sleeping with a married-with-family man. Pubbing, fighting, losing jobs … this was the writer’s experience before she met a dashing older man in “a three-piece suit and tie.” She was soon entangled with Richard, a “con man,” whom—after his divorce came through—she married and moved to Canada with. They set up house but happily ever after was not to be, and the marriage crumbled.

Harry, Ramberran’s next lover, introduced her to cocaine and quickly began “grooming [her] for prostitution.” Her career in the sex industry took place in “high-end hotels,” and she writes that in retrospect she was “desperate to be wanted, loved, and protected.” After a few months she briefly returned to England—back and forthing between Canada and England is a constant in this memoir—and upon her return began decades of employment with “Bob,” who owned a “fully licensed” massage parlour, where “full service” (there’s a euphemism!) wasn’t allowed, but sharing whirlpool tubs and shenanigans were. “Before long, I was literally throwing money in the air,” Ramberran writes. Bob rented her an apartment, took her on extravagant trips, made her the manager of his business (there were “25-30 girls working at the parlour”), and—although Bob was married with children—the pair had a son together with the help of a surrogate, who was also the parlour’s assistant manager. Surprisingly, Bob and his wife accepted this son as one of the family; he was provided with a university education, a car, and a home. “I am not proud of many things,” Ramberran writes, “but I am proud of my son.”

Now in her seventies, Ramberran lives in “a 55-plus building” in western Canada, “volunteer[s] in a food kitchen,” and says her life “has finally moved beyond all the drama.” After a lifetime of wildness and pain, it seems, thankfully, that she’s settled down and found peace.

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