Blame (19 page)

Caro can't say this to the detectives. She bites down hard on her lip, trying to replace the nausea with pain.

‘Anna was upset, really upset,' she says. ‘She said, “It's been a bad day, Caro.” And I said something like, “Poor you” or “I'm sorry,” I can't really remember, but then she said . . . she said . . . oh God, I remember, she said, “No, Caro, you don't get it, it's not like all the others. This has been worse, Caro; it's been the worst day of my life.”'

Caro is surprised she's recalled the words. They were different, not the words Anna always used. It was not a typical day and Anna hadn't even sounded really upset, more as though she were just stating an ordinary fact. ‘I missed it,' thinks Caro, knowing that she'd heard but not heard, like she always did when she had been drinking.

In the same way she'd heard but not heard Lex telling her about the school excursion she'd be late home from and then spent the next afternoon sitting outside the school, frantic that Lex had not emerged. In the same way that she'd heard and not heard her sister telling her that her nephew, Mark, had to have his tonsils out and then had to apologise profusely because she hadn't called to ask how he was. In the same way that she heard and didn't hear Geoff telling her he couldn't deal with her drinking anymore.

There were so many things people said to her, asked her and explained to her that when they were said she thought she'd never forget, but sometimes the memory of a conversation came back too late, just like it had now. Anna had been trying to tell her something and she hadn't heard it.

‘I missed it, and now Maya's dead and they're going to blame me,' she thinks.

She knows that the conversation she had with Anna is the key to getting the detectives to understand. That's all she can do now. She can't think about what kind of a friend she was on that Saturday, can't wonder how things would have gone if, instead of getting into her car, she had said, ‘Tell me why, Anna. Tell me what you're feeling.' If she had just been able to think straight.

‘So, she was pretty upset,' says Susan.

‘Yes, but not only upset, it was more than that. She was . . . I don't know—defeated? Yes, that what she sounded like, like she couldn't go on anymore, and that's when she asked me to come over, and she sounded so bad that I said I would. I knew it wouldn't be for long, because Keith would get home soon.' Caro wrings her hands. She hadn't thought that at all. What she had thought was, ‘Fuck it, I don't feel like this tonight.' That's what she had thought.

The memory of that thought comes back clearly because there had been many times over the years of her friendship with Anna that she had not wanted to deal with her friend's bad days. It wasn't as if she could ever say to her, ‘Things will get better,' because they weren't getting better. Maya, if anything, got worse the older she got. She was more delayed and more violent, more frustrated and stronger, with each passing year. Anna was stranded in the long, dark tunnel of raising Maya and there was no light at the end.

Sometimes it was too much for Caro. If Anna had been a different kind of person, it would have been easier, but Anna could not focus on Maya's triumphs, on the moments
of joy she experienced, because they were overshadowed by her child's failures and tantrums, and by Anna's inability to accept her life. Sometimes, Caro wanted to grab her and shake her, and say, ‘Just accept it, accept it and make the best of it,' but she understood she didn't have that right. The fact of her child, her beautiful, intelligent child, meant that she had no right to tell Anna how to feel, because she had no real idea what she was dealing with.

‘Okay,' says Susan. ‘And how many drinks had you had by the time Anna called you?'

Caro is silent. She unfastens one of her clips, smooths her hair and clips it up again. In the back of her throat, she can taste the chocolate she's eaten. She cannot lie, she knows that, but maybe she can round down, as the test results aren't back yet. The thing is, she doesn't really know, but she assumes the fuzziness of her memory about that day means she'd had a lot. ‘I'd had about two or three glasses of wine,' she finally says.

‘Over what time period?' asks Brian.

Caro closes her eyes again—it's easier not to look at the two detectives. ‘About two hours,' she says and then opens her eyes.

Brian shakes his head a little but says nothing. ‘Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit,' she can see him thinking.

‘I prefer to drink at night. I don't drink much during the day—at least, I didn't until the accident. I have a child to take care of, you know.'

‘Yes,' says Susan quietly, ‘we know.'

‘How far away do you live from Anna's house?' asks Brian.

‘It's exactly seven minutes by car. We measured it once, just as a joke, because we'd been seeing so much of each other. I used to tell Anna that it was harder for me to come to her, because I had to cross a main road with a bit of traffic, but she could go the back way, down a one-way street, to get to my house. Of course, if she had Maya, I always went to her, because Maya liked to be in her own environment, but we did see each other during school days. So, one day we measured it. It took me exactly seven minutes to get to her house and it took her five to get to mine. Why am I telling you this again?'

‘Oh, no reason,' says Brian, ‘just interested.'

‘Caro, why do you think this accident was Anna's fault? I think you've had enough time to explain things and I still don't understand why you think it was anything more than an accident.'

‘But don't you see?' asks Caro. ‘I've explained it all. She knew I was coming. She asked me to come over and then she was out in the street with Maya.'

‘Okay, so she was out in the street. Maybe she wanted to get out of the house for a bit? Or maybe they were taking a walk? People are allowed to be outside their houses, Caro, and sometimes they do walk out into the road. Kids run into the road all the time. That's why we have speed limits,' says Susan.

‘Yes, but Maya wasn't supposed to be outside—'

‘Yes, Caro, but she was, and any other child in that street could have been outside as well. Now, you were not travelling very fast, according to our investigators, so you had to have seen Maya, to have seen them both. You could have stopped, so what I want to know is, why? Why didn't you stop?'

‘I did!' shouts Caro. ‘I did stop but I didn't stop soon enough. I wasn't speeding and I wasn't drunk. I saw them and I slowed down, but suddenly Maya was right in the middle of the road.'

‘Did she jump out in front of your car?' asks Brian.

‘No, she was . . . no, she . . . she did . . . yes, she did, she jumped in front of the car.'

Brian and Susan look at her. Even to her own ears, what she has said sounds like a lie.

‘Caro, I'm sorry,' says Susan, ‘but I don't believe you're telling us the truth. You don't even sound sure of the answer yourself.'

‘I am sure. She jumped out in front of the car . . . that's what happened. It's just because I'm not feeling well and I . . . I've been drinking a lot . . . and my memory . . .' Caro leaves the sentence unfinished. ‘I really fucked this up,' she thinks.

‘Shall I tell you what I think happened?' asks Susan, and Caro finds herself sitting back in her chair. Susan's tone is no longer reasonable. There is a hard edge to it.

‘You don't know . . . what happened,' says Caro and she tastes the chocolate again. She holds her hand across
her mouth and swallows hard. ‘I need to go,' she says, standing up.

‘Not right now,' says Susan. ‘Sit down!' It's a direct order. Caro sits down.

‘I think,' says Susan, speaking slowly and clearly, ‘that you were sloshed. You got a call from your friend, and instead of telling her that you'd had too much to drink, you got in your car and drove over there, because drunk people have a habit of making stupid decisions, and an inability to think through consequences. When you got closer to her house, you saw Anna and Maya outside, and maybe you even saw Maya run into the road, but because you had so much alcohol in your system, you couldn't stop in time. Alcohol slows down reaction times. That's an undisputable fact. It's why you're not supposed to drink and drive. It doesn't matter how well you think you can drive when you've been drinking, because you're not thinking straight.

‘So, you saw Maya run into the road and you pushed down on the brake, but because you were drunk, you didn't push down hard enough or fast enough, and you hit and killed your best friend's daughter.'

The words are a slap and Caro feels their violence. Susan's lips curl and her eyes squint. She looks like she hates Caro, who can feel the change in the air. They are going to blame her, and they are going to send her to prison, and she will never see Lex again.

‘No,' she says quietly. ‘No, no, no, that's not what happened,' she continues, beginning to shout. ‘You don't
understand how difficult Maya was. Anna was so unhappy, so sad. She was afraid of her own child. You don't get it.'

‘Then tell us,' says Brian. ‘Explain what we don't get!'

‘I saw her,' says Caro and she swallows again. ‘I saw them fighting, and as I drove towards her, I saw her push Maya into the road. I saw Anna push Maya in front of my car. I saw her push her—she pushed her.' Caro stands up and looks wildly around the room, and then pushes back her chair and grabs the small metal garbage bin. She vomits everything in her stomach while the detectives watch.

She vomits and vomits and everything comes out.

Chapter Thirteen

‘Explain it again, Anna,' says Walt.

Anna touches her wrist. She can feel the blood rushing around her body. There's a pounding in her head. ‘Careful,' she thinks. She would like to put her arms up over her head to protect herself.

Walt is leaning forward, pen in hand. He is waiting for her to slip up and then all of this will be over. Anna's focus narrows; all she can see are Walt's beautiful green eyes but they seem darker now. He doesn't wear the gentle smile she saw two weeks ago. Now he is just a cop. Anna feels pursued. She fights the urge to leap out of her chair and run until she's out of the building.

‘I think I'd like to come back tomorrow,' she says. ‘I'm too tired to finish this today.'

‘That's fine,' says Walt. ‘But before you go, I need you to tell me again why you lied about calling Caro to come over.' He has asked this question four times already, four different ways.

When he'd left the room Anna had heard him greet a woman. She'd heard them speaking but their voices were too low for her to hear anything. Now she knows that he was speaking to the detective interviewing Caro. Walt had come back from talking to the other detective and crooked his finger at Cynthia to join him outside. Anna had heard some urgent whispering but been unable to make out what Walt was saying to Cynthia. They had both come back into the interview room and he had said, ‘Oh, just checking, Anna . . . you said Caro just popped over to see you, right? You had no idea she was coming?'

‘No, I didn't know she was coming,' Anna had said. ‘She often just popped over for a chat.' She had not been concentrating as she said the words. She hadn't noticed the way Cynthia and Walt were looking at her.

‘Well, Anna,' Walt had said slowly, ‘that's not what Caroline Harman says. She says you knew she was coming over. She says you called her and asked her to come over, in fact.'

Anna had been unable to prevent a small gasp.

That small detail, that tiny detail, was something she had not thought about at all.

She had tried to deny it at first, to turn it back on Caro, but that hadn't worked.

‘No, I . . . I . . . I didn't. I didn't call her.'

‘She says you did, Anna. She's very clear about that, and what I would like to know is why you told us she was just dropping over for a visit if you actually knew she was coming?'

‘She's the one who's lying,' Anna had said. ‘She knows she's going to go to jail for this and she's trying to find a way to make it all my fault.'

But Walt had not accepted this. He had sat back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. ‘Try. Again. Anna,' he had said and Anna had felt a chill at his words. She was fourteen again and trying to get out of detention for not finishing her homework. She was seventeen and lying to her mother about sleeping at a friend's. She was a child caught in an adult world that she didn't know how to navigate.

‘Maybe I forgot that I called her,' she said and had been relieved when Walt nodded. She'd said the right thing, but then he'd continued to badger her about why she had forgotten, as though he'd missed everything she'd told him about that day. And now, ten minutes later, he was still asking the same questions.

‘Did you lie about calling Caro and, if so, why?'

‘Can you tell me any reason why you'd lie about calling Caro to come over?'

‘Is there some reason why you felt the need to lie about calling Caro to come over?'

‘Explain it to me again. Why did you lie?'

‘I told you,' says Anna, frustrated still to be answering the same question. ‘I forgot! I didn't lie, I haven't lied, I don't lie! I just forgot. It had been a long, bad day and I just forgot. Okay?'

‘Not really,' says Walt.

Anna tries again. ‘I've told you what a bad day it was. I've explained about how difficult she'd been. I just forgot, okay?'

‘No, not okay, Anna. According to what you've been telling us, you forgot you'd called Caro to come over, and you forgot to lock the door behind you so Maya wouldn't run out of the house. Are you usually such a forgetful person?'

‘I . . . no . . . it was just a . . .'