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‘Was she happy at school?' asks Cynthia.

Anna sits up again. ‘She was . . .' her voice trails off.

‘How much do they know?' she wonders. It's possible they have already been in touch with the school. It's possible that they know about the tantrums and about Maya hurting other children. For a moment, she doesn't know whether to be evasive or simply tell the truth. The
longer she waits to speak, the more they will question her answer. In the end, she decides on truth. ‘She was happy when she first started there. It's a great school, with a teacher-to-pupil ratio of one to three. It's almost impossible to get into.'

‘So, she was happy at school?' asks Walt, and Anna understands that he's repeated the question because he thinks there is more to the answer.

‘She was, but not lately. She's been getting aggressive with the other kids—you know, biting and kicking. I often had to pick her up early because of . . . an incident.'

‘An incident?' says Walt. ‘Can you give me an example of the kind of incident you're talking about?'

‘It was usually to do with her hurting another child. A few days before she, she. . . died I had to pick her up because she bit another child,' says Anna. Walt seems to shrug his shoulders as if to say, ‘so?' and Anna knows that he's filing this under normal childhood behaviour. ‘It wasn't the first time she'd bitten another child but it was the first time she had drawn blood,' says Anna and she feels her mouth twist as she remembers the way that Mary had looked at Maya, as though despite being involved with autistic children her whole career she had never seen such a thing.

‘And how was the school handling those . . . those incidents?' asks Walt while he writes.

‘They were doing their best,' says Anna, ‘they had strategies in place but a lot of the time they didn't work with Maya. They were doing everything they could, just like
I was doing everything I could. Some days she responded to the methods we were using, most days she didn't. I think the school was beginning to run out of options for dealing with her. I was supposed to meet with them the Monday after she died.'

‘Do you think they were going to ask you to remove her from the school?' asks Cynthia gently.

Anna shrugs again. ‘That school was costing us sixty thousand dollars a year. There's no way we would have been able to afford it without help from Keith's parents. They were used to dealing with kids like Maya. It's what we paid them to do. I'm sure they just wanted to try some different strategies or something,' says Anna, parroting Keith's words.

‘That's a lot of money,' says Walt.

‘Yes,' says Anna. ‘A lot.' She and Keith had not taken a holiday since Maya was born. They rarely went out to eat, and when they did, Anna felt guilty because Keith's parents were helping them pay for the school and for Maya's extra therapy and then had to come over and babysit for them. Keith had missed out on promotions that would have meant travelling because he wanted to always be home for Maya, so his salary never increased to a point where they could afford to relax. Anna wonders what they will do with all the extra money and then remembers that she is no longer part of a ‘we'. It's just her.

She doesn't think she has ever felt this tired in her life. Somewhere inside her, a voice is telling her to be careful,
that Cynthia is being patient and kind for a reason, but she doesn't care anymore.

She has thought about taking her own life every day since Maya died. She feels a sense of peace in the middle of the night when she plans exactly how she is going to end it all. She even knows what clothes she is going to wear. She allows herself a dramatic funeral and imagines people shaking their heads at the sadness of her end. Her doctor has prescribed the strongest-available sleeping pills and she tells Keith she's taking them, but she's hoarding them. The growing pile and the thought of another prescription keep her functioning.

‘You must allow yourself time to grieve,' her doctor had said. ‘Here's a list of names. You need to talk to someone.'

‘I don't think therapists are very effective,' said Anna. She is tired of listening to other people, tired of blocking out the voice in her head.

‘You are doing the best you can,' each of her therapists told her. ‘You're a great mother,' Caro told her, and Keith told her, and all the people who helped with Maya told her, but she knew that they weren't really believing it. What else could they say—‘You're doing a crap job of loving this child'?

People say that you are never given more than you can handle, but Anna knows this isn't true. Caro was not equipped to handle the heartbreak of losing so many babies, of losing Gideon. And Anna has met many, many mothers with autistic children who handle it better than she did. They have more energy, greater reserves of strength and
patience, and more love to give than she felt she had with Maya. Maya was too much for her to handle.

Whatever she did and however hard she tried, she never managed to deal with her child the way she knew she should have been able to.

‘I don't think anyone can really conceive of the amount of money it takes to care for a special needs child until they have one,' says Anna. She twists her hands together, studying the prominent veins and dry skin as she remembers the pile of bills on the table by the front door that still have to be paid. Bills for occupational therapy and physical therapy and speech therapy—all of which were in addition to the school fees. ‘I don't know how people manage if they don't have enough money or relatives to help them. Maya had every therapy that money could buy. Not that it ever made much of a difference.'

‘Did you . . . did you have any feelings of resentment towards Maya, Anna?' asks Cynthia softly. She sits forward and catches Anna's eye.

‘Resentment?' says Anna, like she doesn't understand the question.

‘Yes,' says Cynthia, ‘did you perhaps resent her because she was so difficult and took up so much of your time? Because of the cost of the school, and because she used to lash out at you and hurt you?'

Anna smiles at Cynthia. ‘I must say, I did feel a little resentful that my life was never going to be my own again—is that what you mean?'

She hears that her tone is flat. And her smile feels wrong, as though her lips haven't really moved.

‘Yes,' Cynthia says. ‘Something like that.'

Anna nods and starts talking again. ‘I got angry and upset, especially when she attacked me and actually hurt me. All mothers have times when they wonder about the choice they made to have children, don't they? They take up so much time and energy. That's what used to drive my mother crazy when my brother and I were younger. I didn't understand it then, I thought she was mean and selfish, but I get it now. Kids demand everything and Maya demanded more than most. Of course I resented it, resented her. Don't tell me you've never had a bad thought about your kids, Cynthia, because then you'd be lying.' Anna smiles her strange smile again.

‘I wouldn't say never,' says Cynthia. ‘There's a reason they call it the hardest job there is.'

‘Yeah, but most kids give something back. They smile at you when you smile at them, and then they learn to talk, and tell you what they see and hear and feel. They sit on your lap and let you read them stories. They wind their little arms around your neck and tell you that they love you, and then they get bigger and go into the world, and come home to tell you everything they've seen and heard. Your kids are going to grow up and get jobs and get married, and one day they'll bring you their children to play with, and you'll know that you've created this little group of human beings.'

‘That feels like it's pretty far away, Anna.'

‘Do you know what happens to an adult with autism?' asks Anna. ‘I don't mean Asperger's, or someone at the lighter end of the spectrum; I mean someone severely affected by autism, like Maya was.' She is staring at the wall behind Walt's head. Her speech is slow and soft. She knows she is in a room with two detectives but also feels like she is alone, like her words don't really matter, because no one else can hear them.

She hasn't heard if Cynthia has answered her question, so she just continues speaking. ‘They end up living in aged care facilities if their parents can't take care of them. I used to worry that I'd die and leave Maya alone in a world that still doesn't understand her disability. I used to see myself old and bent, pushing a walker, and still trying to get Maya to brush her teeth in the morning.

‘She hated brushing her teeth. She didn't like the sound of the scrape of the toothbrush across her teeth and she didn't like the taste of any toothpaste I bought. It used to take ten minutes, twice a day, just for her to brush her teeth and that was if she was in a compliant mood. If not, there'd usually be a tantrum and teeth brushing would go out the door. They had to sedate her at the dentist's. I remember one visit where our dentist gave me a twenty-minute lecture on my responsibilities as a parent because Maya's teeth were in such a bad state. “You give her too much juice and too much junk food,” he said.

‘“I don't give her any of that,” I said. “She's on a sugar-free, dairy-free, gluten-free diet.”

‘“You mothers with your ideas,” he sneered. “Children need to eat proper food to grow. It is also your responsibility to make sure she brushes her teeth.”

‘“But—” I said.

‘“But nothing. Gum disease in children is one hundred percent preventable.”

‘I just sat there listening to the idiot dentist, you know. What was I going to say?'

‘It's getting late, Anna,' says Walt, looking at his watch. Anna looks at the detectives and, for a moment, forgets what she was saying. Then she nods like she understands. She knows what he wants her to talk about, she knows where he wants her to go, but she's not stupid. She'll draw this out for as long as she can because she can't explain what happened on her front lawn two weeks ago. She remembers what she was wearing, and she can feel the heat of the sun, smell the cut grass next door, but when she thinks about the last moments of Maya's life, the back of her head pricks with pins and needles. ‘Was that me?' she thinks. ‘Was that really me?'

Once Maya had stopped screaming, Anna had sat listening to the soft thumping sound for at least an hour. The whole house was silent, and even though Maya was locked in her room, far away from where Anna was sitting, the
thump
,
thump
, sound began to fill the house until it was the only thing Anna could hear. She felt it eating into her, taking her over.
Thump
. . . pause . . .
thump
. . . pause . . .
thump
. . . pause . . .
thump
. . . pause . . .
thump
.

She had tried turning on the television but hadn't found anything to watch that was distracting enough. She put her fingers in her ears but the thumping sound grew louder. It seemed to be taking over the whole house. She thought about calling Keith and telling him he needed to come home, but she didn't want him to know how badly she had fucked up.

‘You can manage her yourself today, can't you, Anna?' he had asked when he was getting ready to leave that morning.

‘I manage her myself every day, Keith.'

‘Yes, but she goes to school and there's therapy after school, and I know that, sometimes, if you have to have her for a whole day, it can be difficult.'

Anna had taken a large sip of her coffee and refrained from answering. Keith went to work every day. Yes, he came home at six and, yes, he helped whenever he could, but he got to escape every single day. He got to have a cup of coffee without worrying about someone knocking it over. He got to go to the bathroom without having to make sure Maya was occupied and the door was locked. He got to just sit and think, without having to always have one eye on his child. Anna had heard other mothers complain about this, about how unequal it was, but the difference, the enormous difference, between her life and other mothers' lives was that by the time their children had reached the age of six or seven, the complaints slowed, and then they simply stopped and the children became ‘Easy to deal with,' and ‘Busy with their friends, and ‘On their computers.'

Thump
. . . pause . . .
thump
. . . pause . . .
thump
. . . pause . . .
thump
.

‘I can't, I can't, I can't,' Anna had muttered in time with the thumping.

Thump
. . . pause . . .
thump
. . . pause . . .
thump
. . . pause . . .
thump
.

‘She'll go to sleep soon,' she thought.

Thump
. . . pause . . .
thump
. . . pause . . .
thump
. . . pause . . .
thump
.

‘Soon . . . soon.'

Thump
. . . pause . . .
thump
. . . pause . . .
thump
. . . pause . . .
thump
.

Thump
. . . pause . . .
thump
. . . pause . . .
thump
. . . pause . . .
thump
.

‘This is never going to end,' she said aloud.

She had heard her voice on her mobile phone, asking Caro to come over.

‘I'll come over,' Caro had said, or something like that.

‘Yes, come over Caro,' Anna had said because this was exactly what she wanted to hear. ‘Come over now.' Then she had switched off her mobile and taken the home phone off the hook.

‘Seven minutes,' Anna had thought.

Thump
. . . pause . . .
thump
. . . pause . . .
thump
.

She had stood up and walked to Maya's room.

‘It's going to be fine,' she had whispered, comforting herself, soothing herself. Her voice sounded different. Her body felt different.