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Caro had kept her promise. She had stayed away from alcohol the whole day she was going to babysit Maya, and arrived an hour early, so she could adjust to her being there.

‘You look gorgeous,' she told Anna, who had looked quite startlingly beautiful. Not just well made-up and well dressed but lit up by the prospect of a free afternoon. ‘You both look nice,' she had said when Keith walked into the room.

‘Yes,' he had said, not even glancing at his wife, ‘don't we.'

Anna had shrugged her shoulders and rolled her eyes at Caro, as if to say, ‘Men!', but Caro knew that their marriage had never really recovered from Anna's termination the year before.

Their marriages, their failing marriages, were part of the ongoing stories of their lives. They felt they were both in the same situation, stuck with men they were no longer sure they wanted to be with but hampered by their children. Anna and Caro were closer than friends, closer than sisters. They texted each other all day and spoke every night. Caro had once pictured the two of them living side by side in a retirement home. She had never pictured them without each other. She had been able to imagine a time when her marriage to Geoff would be over, and when Lex would have a life completely separate from hers, but she had always seen Anna in her future.

‘Thank you for doing this,' Anna had said before she left for the wedding. She had given Caro a quick, hard hug, and Caro had immediately regretted not making a similar offer sooner. Keith's family were fond of birthday dinners and picnic lunches and family holidays—none of which Anna and Keith ever got to attend.

‘You'll be okay?' asked Anna.

‘I'll be fine,' said Caro, ‘just have a good time.'

Once Anna and Keith had left, Caro had sat on the couch, quietly watching Maya watching her space DVD. Anna had told her which snacks she could offer Maya and
exactly when to offer them; in fact, she had left a run sheet specifying how the four hours with Maya were supposed to go.

Maya had watched the video five times while Caro sat there, every muscle tense, every sense alert. After the fifth time, she had stood up and looked around the room, and on seeing Caro, she had smiled. It was a genuine smile and in it Caro had read,
Don't be afraid. I'm going to help you get through this
. She had picked up her iPad and touched the icon meaning snack, and Caro had dutifully put seven—not six, not eight—rice crackers in a bowl, and half filled a red plastic cup with water and added exactly one tablespoon of apple juice. Maya had taken the bowl and the crackers, and sat at a small wooden table with matching chairs. She was too big for them, but Anna had told Caro that she was afraid to get rid of the furniture set. When she had finished eating, Maya had disappeared from the living room. Caro had been tempted to follow her, but she knew that the whole house was set up so as to let Maya wonder aimlessly from room to room. ‘Sometimes she can do it for hours, for no apparent reason,' Anna had said.

Caro remained on the couch, fending off her desperation for a drink and refusing to look at the time. After a while, Maya had returned to the living room, holding a book, and then she had sat on the couch next to Caro and curled her legs under her, handing over the book. It was the classic story of the town mouse and the country mouse but with the language simplified to toddler level. Caro had
read it to her, and then Maya had tapped the book, and she had read it again and again and again. She can't now recall how many times she read the book but, at some stage, Maya had let her head drop onto Caro's shoulder. She had never voluntarily touched her before. The trust she was displaying made Caro want to cry.

Caro had kept reading until she recognised the heavy sleep that all mothers learn to spot, and then had closed the book and sat quietly until Anna and Keith walked through the door. She hadn't wanted to move, being afraid to disturb Maya, afraid that the gentle look on the child's face would disappear as she opened her eyes. Caro had seen her then as a little girl, just like Lex was a little girl, and she had understood why it was always possible to love your child, regardless of everything else.

The next day, Anna had detailed a dreadful night with tantrums and no sleep. Caro had understood then that Maya really had tried to go easy on her—she had recognised that here was someone unused to dealing with her and had tried to help. When Caro had explained her theory to Anna, she had been unimpressed. ‘She knows which environments are good for throwing fits.'

‘Yes, but perhaps it means that you'll be able to get through to her eventually; that she's smart enough to know how to change her behaviour for me, so maybe—'

‘So maybe nothing,' Anna had said. ‘She has good days and bad days, good parts of the day and bad parts of the day. The day you babysat, she'd spent the whole morning
writhing on the ground, screaming and kicking. She was probably just exhausted.'

Caro had left it because it was not her place to talk about someone else's child, especially a child with special needs. In the interview room, though, she can recall the feeling of Maya's head on her shoulder, and so, despite her friendship with Anna, she knows that she needs to tell the truth, whether she will be believed or not.

‘When Anna called me that day, she sounded . . .' Caro thinks about what she is trying to say, ‘She sounded different.'

‘Different?'

‘Yes, I don't know how to explain it. Usually, when she called me at the end, or in the middle, of a bad day, she'd be a little bit hysterical. No—not hysterical, just on edge, but laughing about it. She'd say something about what was going on, like “Maya threw one of her wooden blocks at me and it just missed my eye, so I'm going to look at that as a good thing,” and then give a little laugh, and then she'd say something else and have another little laugh, and over the years, that became her—I think you call it a tell. I knew that if Anna was talking to me and the strange little laugh came out, usually followed by “Oh well, that's my life,” that she needed a break and that it had been a difficult day with Maya. I always tried to talk to her for a while, or to go over there, so she could at least have some adult company. But when she called me on that day, her voice was kind of flat, like she'd taken drugs.'

Caro puts up her hand as Susan leans forward. She wanted to stop the detective from saying anything. ‘Not that she was on drugs,' says Caro. ‘Anna only drinks herbal tea and she won't take anything but over-the-counter pain medication. She just sounded like she'd taken something but I know she hadn't.

‘She said, “I can't do this anymore,” but nothing else. I asked her what had happened, and she told me that she'd been alone with Maya the whole day, and her voice still had this flat, dead kind of quality. I was worried about her, so I told her I'd come over and she said, “Yes, come over, Caro. Come over now,” and then she put the phone down. I wanted her to tell me not to bother, like she sometimes did. I'd rather have talked to her for as long as she needed me to, but I called her back and it was engaged, and so I called her mobile but she didn't answer, so I felt like I had no choice but to go over there. I was worried.'

‘Why didn't you just call her husband or get your husband to drive you, or wait until you had sobered up?' asks Brian.

‘That would have been the right thing to do,' says Caro, irritated by his interruption, ‘but, obviously, I didn't do that, so what's the point of asking the question? I was worried about her, really worried. In the ten years I'd known her, I had never heard Anna sound like that, so I got in my car and drove over there.

‘Her house is in a cul-de-sac, and as I turned into it, I saw Anna and Maya out on the front lawn. They were
physically fighting. They were kind of twisting around each other, like they were trying to make their way to the road one minute, and then back into the house the next. They are . . . shit . . . they
were
basically the same size, so they weren't getting very far.

‘Maya was kicking out at Anna. I saw it and I sped up—just a little, to get there quicker—and then I slowed down in front of the house, but as I got there, they'd made their way right to the kerb, and for a split second, Anna looked at me and then she just pushed Maya, pushed her hard, right in front of my car. I wasn't going that fast—at least, I don't think I was. I did try to brake but Maya was already in front of the car and it . . . and I . . . hit her, and she bounced off the front of the bonnet and slammed down onto the road.'

Caro sits back and takes a deep breath. She realises that she's crying as she sees this and hears the sound of Maya's head hitting the road.

The image and the sound she had heard through her open window have played in her head on a continuous loop only alcohol could stop. Now that she doesn't have that option, she is overwhelmed by it anew and feels as though she might faint.

‘Oh God,' she says, covering her mouth with her hand. ‘I hit Maya. I hit her.'

‘Yes,' says Susan. ‘You hit her and she died.'

Caro winds her arms around herself and begins to rock back and forth.
I hit Maya, I hit Maya, I hit Maya
, plays in her head.

‘I thought I was okay. I really thought I was okay to drive. I'd only had . . .' Caro stops rocking. She sits up. The afternoon before Anna's call comes back in full colour and she realises what's been niggling at her about her drinking.

‘I'd only had one glass of wine,' she says.

‘You must have had a lot of something else,' says Susan. She gives Brian a quick look and he looks again at the folder on the desk.

‘No,' says Caro, as her memory of that afternoon now returns with the force of a punch. ‘No, I hadn't. I had two shots of vodka—maybe three, because I poured myself a double the second time. I had one, and then I promised myself I wouldn't have another but I did, and then I opened the wine and poured myself a glass, and then I thought that I better have something to eat. There was some leftover pizza in the fridge, so I warmed that up—'

‘Caro, I'm not sure where this is going,' says Susan.

‘You need to listen,' says Caro and hears the forcefulness in her tone. ‘I promised myself that I wouldn't drink the wine until the pizza was hot. I forced myself to clean the cutlery drawer so that I'd wait. When the pizza was warm, I took it out and turned around to put it on the bench, but I forgot the wine was there. I knocked over the wine bottle with the oven tray and that toppled the glass as well. I can't believe I didn't remember this. I spilled all the wine and broke the wineglass. I had to clean it up. I hadn't even had a sip yet.'

‘Caro, this is not really the time to change your story,' says Brian.

‘I'm not changing my story. I'm remembering what happened. I cleaned it up, and then sat down on the couch with my pizza and a new glass of wine. I'd only had a few sips when Anna called. Don't you get it? I wasn't drunk. I wasn't drunk at all. I don't care what those results say. I know I wasn't drunk.'

Caro sits forward and looks at Susan, willing the detective to believe her.

‘Caro,' says Brian, ‘you're digging yourself in deeper here. When the results do come back and show that you were over the limit, you will have lied to police officers. You're an alcoholic, Caro. It's pretty much a certainty that you were drunk at the time of the accident.'

Caro sits up and looks at Susan. ‘What do you mean when they “do come back”? Don't you have the results right there?'

Susan hesitates, and then she shakes her head a little and Caro watches two small spots of colour appear on her cheeks. ‘No,' she says.

‘You bitch,' says Caro softly.

‘Hey,' says Brian. ‘Take it down a notch, Caro.'

‘She made me think those were the results.'

‘I never said they were,' says Susan. ‘But you can bet when they do come back that they'll say you were way over the limit. All this other bullshit is just designed to throw us off and that's not going to happen. Your story about Anna pushing her own child into the road is too far-fetched even for Brian to believe; isn't that right, Brian?'

Before he can answer, Caro says, ‘It's not a story. It's the truth. I know I hit Maya, I know I did, and I know I'm going to pay for that. I've relived that moment over and over again. I had to pull my best friend away from her daughter's body, so that the paramedics could get to her. If I'm standing in the kitchen, or the bathroom or the bedroom, and there's no other noise, I hear Anna screaming. I hear Maya hitting the road. The accident was my fault. I shouldn't have been driving because I had been drinking—even if I wasn't over the limit, I still shouldn't have been driving—but Anna pushed her in front of my car.'

‘As you say, Caro,' says Susan, ‘you'd been drinking. You were intoxicated. Probably more intoxicated than you're currently willing to admit but we'll have the truth in a few weeks. Maybe you think you saw Anna push Maya, but it's possible it's not the case.'

‘I know what I saw,' says Caro. ‘I will never forget it. I don't care if you believe me or not. I have nothing to gain from this, am I right?'

‘We don't know,' says Brian.

‘It will affect the case but will also mean that we have to focus on Anna. She is, or was, your best friend. Are you sure you want to do this?' asks Susan.

‘I'm not sure of anything right now. I'm not even sure I want to wake up tomorrow,' says Caro. ‘Not sure at all.'

Chapter Nineteen

‘It must have been very difficult to always be patient with her,' says Cynthia.

Anna has relaxed in her chair. ‘Aren't we done?' she asks.

‘Not yet; I just want to get the final details.'

‘Some days it was fine,' says Anna. ‘On days when she'd been up a lot the night before, it was difficult. School days were easier, and days when Keith was home were fine.'