Blame (7 page)

‘Mrs Harman?' says Detective Sappington.

‘This room looks exactly like the one on television, the one that they use in that show about a woman detective,' says Caro.

‘Mrs Harman, please—we really want to just finish the interview, so that you can go home.'

‘Fuck, fine; Caroline Harman, fourth of July 1977.'

‘Thank you. Now, before we go on, are you sure we can't get you anything? Some water or tea or coffee? I notice your hands are shaking. Are you all right to continue the interview?'

Caro clenches her hands into fists, hearing a slight edge of smugness in Detective Sappington's reasonable tone. ‘Bitch,' she thinks. ‘I'm fine,' she says, trying to moderate her voice, ‘but I would like some water. This has been an awful couple of weeks, as I'm sure you're aware.'

‘I'll get it,' says Detective Ng. He is dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, as though he's just the intern. Caro likes his smile, but knows already that he's not the one she has to worry about.

‘Thanks, Brian.' says Detective Sappington. ‘Are you sure you're okay?' she says to Caro.

‘Stop asking me that and just bloody get on with it,' says Caro.

‘I'm not trying to upset you; I'm just concerned for your welfare.'

‘I've said that I'm fine. I don't want to talk about this anymore. Ask me your questions.'

Detective Sappington pushes her glasses back up her nose and consults her notes. Caro pushes her nails into her palms. She is pretty sure that Detective Sappington is trying to annoy her. ‘Surely you've read those already?' she wants to say but keeps quiet.

If Detective Sappington wants to punish her for being rude, then fine—let her go ahead and do it. The silence grows in the hot room and Caro begins to understand why they don't have windows in the interview room. She is sure anyone confronted by a person as self-satisfied as Detective Sappington would have smashed the glass.

‘Let's just start with how you and Mrs McAllen know each other.'

‘We met at the clinic.'

‘The clinic?'

‘Don't you have children?'

‘No, not yet.'

Caro nods her head. Now she understands. The detective in her neat, perfectly ironed pantsuit, still has the illusion of control in her life. Wanting children, having children, raising children makes most people realise that everything is random and chaotic and completely out of their control.

She feels a little more kindly towards Detective Sappington now. The woman has no real idea about life. No idea at all, and since she looks like she is well into her forties, it may be that she will never have children, and so she will most likely be able to continue with that illusion for the rest of her life. Caro thinks that her ‘not yet' is a standard
response that she must have been giving for years, and that there will be a terrible day when Detective Sappington looks in the mirror and realises that her ‘not yet' has become ‘never will'.

Caro wonders if she has ever wanted children, yearned for them and been denied that joy. She may have no interest in children at all, but then why not simply answer ‘No'. ‘Not yet' implies hope for the future.

‘Every neighbourhood has one,' she says. ‘You take your baby there to be weighed and measured, and to talk to the clinic nurse about anything that worries you. I was there for Alexa's twelve-month check-up and Anna was there for the same thing. Our daughters are . . . were . . . born just a week apart. We must have missed each other at the hospital by a day or two.'

Caro relaxes her hands a little, and takes a deep breath as she remembers those astonishing few days after Alexa's birth. Detective Ng returns with her glass of water and Caro takes a cautious sip. She had thought she would literally die during labour, which went on for sixteen hours, leaving her so exhausted that Geoff told her afterwards she asked him to ‘Just let me die . . . please.'

She doesn't remember this. She doesn't remember much before the moment the midwife placed her squalling baby on her chest with the words, ‘Here you go, Mummy.'

At times during her pregnancy, Caro had been worried that she would not bond instantly with her baby, that she would fail to fall in love with the squirming alien inside her
body, but then her daughter was there. She had breathed in the smell of her child, and Lex had stopped crying and opened her eyes to peer at her, and then, seemingly satisfied that her mother was in control, she had closed her eyes and gone to sleep.

‘Careful,' Caro had admonished the midwife as she took Lex away to be cleaned and wrapped. The love she felt for Lex instantly consumed her and she felt high for weeks afterwards. It was a magical time, despite the sleep deprivation and the loss of control, or maybe because of it. She just gave into it, into everything.

‘So, you were both at the clinic on the same day?' says Detective Sappington, pulling Caro away from her dreamy recollection.

Caro sighs. ‘Yes; you can just drop in on certain days and wait to see the nurse. I came in and put my name—well, Alexa's name—on the board, and then I put her on the floor to play and saw Anna. She was sitting alone flicking through a magazine without actually looking at it. Mostly she was watching Maya, her daughter; just staring at her as though she thought she might leap out of her pram at any moment. Maya was watching a video on one of those portable DVD players, and every time she got to the end of it, she would press one of the buttons to rewind it, and another to make it play again.

‘I couldn't believe it. I mean, Lex was trying to walk, and she already had two words—“star” and “cat”, I think—but Maya's fine motor skills were amazing. She was just sitting
in her pram, watching this video. At that stage, if Lex was awake, she was moving. She barely even sat still to eat. I looked at Anna and she looked like she'd stepped out of a magazine, like she'd just come from hair and make-up. She was even thinner than she is now . . .' Caro stops talking. She hasn't seen Anna for a couple of weeks. She may be thinner than ever now; thinner than when they first met. Anna stops eating when she is stressed or unhappy.
It's a wonder she hadn't faded away altogether even before the . . . the accident.

‘Mrs Harman,' prompts Detective Sappington.

‘Oh . . . yes, I was saying that she looked amazing. She was dressed in neatly ironed jeans, and a soft leather jacket and high-heeled boots. “Who dresses like that to come to the clinic?” I thought. I had barely made it out of my pyjamas, but Anna looked perfect. There wasn't a blonde hair out of place but there was still something about her that looked wrong.' Caro pushes her lips together. She has just gone on and on as the memory of meeting Anna assailed her. Her first glance of Anna had led her to look around the room for the nanny she assumed would be with the overly made-up mother and quiet, beautifully behaved child, but then she had looked again.

‘Wrong?' asks Detective Sappington.

‘Yes, wrong. She was holding onto the magazine so tightly she was crumpling it and her body was so stiff it looked like she was trying not to touch the chair.'

‘So you started talking to her?'

‘Well, not at first. There were a couple of other mothers there with their children and I recognised them and smiled
at them but they didn't seem interested in getting into a conversation. I wasn't really friendly with them. I knew a lot of the mothers in my community by sight. I went to a lot of stuff with Lex then . . . mothers group and Gymbaroo and music time . . . but I'd never seen Anna anywhere. I thought that she may have just moved into the area and that she must be lonely.

‘Geoff always says that I have a way of adopting lonely people and trying to help them, but I don't think that's true. I just felt for Anna when I saw her. I moved one seat closer to her and watched Maya, and then I asked Anna how old Maya was.'

Caro hadn't immediately started talking to Anna. She had felt the unwelcome possibility of rejection from the yummy mummy in tight jeans, and so she had tried to smooth her hair and pull her shirt further down over her maternity jeans. She was usually able to tell herself, ‘Fuck it, I have other things on my mind,' when she felt she looked like she had just crawled out of bed, but for a moment, Anna made her wish she had started her diet three weeks before and that the gym membership Geoff had given her for her birthday wasn't lying unused in a drawer. But then Lex had pointed at a picture of a kitten on the wall and said, ‘Meee', which was her version of ‘meow', and Caro had smiled at her daughter and glanced quickly at Anna, and seen not another mother acknowledging how cute toddlers were but something else. Anna looked away from Lex, like she didn't want to see her. ‘Odd,' thought Caro and wanted to know more.

‘So you started talking and you became friends.'

‘Yes. She told me that Maya was the same age as Lex, and I didn't believe that because Maya was just calmly looking at the video and making it repeat every time it got to the end. I mean, the girls were both around the same size, but Anna was so thin and small that I thought her child must be a lot older, and just small, like her.

‘“Is she your first?” I asked her and she said, “Yes and you?” I told her that Lex was my first child and then we just sat in silence for a minute, and then, without thinking about it, I just said, “Fucking hell, isn't it?” And she looked at me like she'd never even heard someone use words like that, and then she sort of sagged against the chair, like the air was slowly going out of her. “Oh yes,” she said, “it is absolute hell.” The thing is, I didn't really mean it. I'd had a bad night with Lex, who usually slept from around eleven until six in the morning by then but had been up every two hours for no particular reason the night before, and I was tired but I was mostly happy to be a mother. I loved watching Lex changing every day and she made me laugh all the time, but for Anna, I think it literally was hell.'

‘Why, Mrs Harman? Why do you think that?' asks Detective Sappington and she sits up straighter in her chair. It occurs to Caro that this is exactly the reaction she had wanted and exactly what she has come here to get. She wants to tell them all about Maya, so that they will understand that the child's death was not her fault, was not her choice. Her death must be blamed on Anna. But,
as she opens her mouth to explain, she remembers Anna's pinched face on that first day and feels strangely protective of her—regardless of what she is now accusing Caro of.

‘You know about Maya, don't you? I mean, you've discussed this with Anna?'

‘No, Mrs Harman. I've been briefed about what happened but I haven't actually met Anna yet. I wasn't there that night. Detective Anderson attended the hospital—do you remember him?'

‘Was he the tall one with dark hair? Yes, I remember him. I only saw him for a moment, after I had my blood test. I wanted to go up to Anna, but Keith didn't look like he wanted me anywhere near them, so I stayed away.'

She had desperately wanted to go to her friend, had wanted to wait with her for news of Maya, but she could see that it was impossible. Everything had changed, and she knew from the way Keith looked at her that she would never be welcome near Anna again.

She thinks about how simple the words she has just uttered—‘so I stayed away'—are. They do not begin to cover what she felt that night. They don't touch on the horror and the confusion, and on how hard it was to keep herself from running to her friend and throwing her arms around her. They don't explain her own grief and guilt, or the shame that washed over her when Keith locked eyes with her and silently shook his head, warning her away. They are a few simple words that cannot even begin to describe that moment.

Caro closes her eyes and sees Anna rocking in the thin plastic chair at the hospital. She smells the stringent antiseptic in the air and sees again the look Keith gave her. She had been able to taste his hate in her throat, to feel his accusing glare bouncing off her body. It was bitter, choking. Her skin felt burned.

‘I couldn't hear what Detective Anderson was saying,' she tells Detective Sappington, forcing herself to get on with what she needs to say, ‘but I could see that he was helping Anna, was helping both of them, and then I left. The constable drove me home. I wanted to stay but I didn't . . . I had to get home.'

Detective Sappington sits back in her chair. She folds her arms across her chest but remains silent.

‘He did seem nice,' says Caro as she recalls the large detective sitting next to Anna, murmuring softly to her. “He's very good looking, isn't he? You probably think I'm a bad person for noticing that but I'm sure a lot of people do. It's the black hair and the green eyes, I think.'

‘Mrs Harman . . .' says Detective Sappington, and then she smooths her perfectly smooth hair and Caro knows that she has definitely noticed how good looking Detective Anderson is. ‘Someone has a crush,' she thinks, imagining that police stations are like soap operas, with romances sizzling around every corner. She wonders how long Detective Sappington has been infatuated with Detective Anderson and if she has any chance of having her affections returned. Maybe they are in a relationship
already but Caro doubts it. Knowing this secret about the person opposite makes her feel a connection with her. The poor woman is just like she is—wanting what she can't have.

‘Look, you might as well call me Caroline, or Caro . . . I hate being called Caroline.'

‘Okay, Caro. We were discussing Maya,' says Detective Sappington.

‘Yes, Maya. The clinic nurse came out—I don't think I will ever forget her. Her name was Lucille. She was one of those women who'd been trained one way and refused to learn anything new. I think she was already in her sixties, and she wore a white uniform and had grey hair cut really short, and when she looked at you, you felt like you'd somehow done something wrong. She was very bossy with the mothers. She turned all of us back into children. Her favourite phrase was, “Well, I don't hold with all this new rubbish.” No matter what I said, she always said that. I mean, she was very kind and really knew how to handle a baby, but when I asked her about introducing solids and told her that I wanted to wait until later, because Lex seemed to be doing fine on just breast milk, she gave me the “rubbish” line and told me I had to start solids that afternoon. I had this kind of love–hate relationship with her; she stuck to her own ideas but she thought every baby was just amazing. She loved them all, and would talk softly to Lex while she undressed and weighed her, and even sing to keep her calm. And she never forgot a child. She'd
see a name on the board and look around the room, and recognise that baby or child immediately.