Alex was describing Ashleigh’s body, his little girl, cold and still and covered in blood. He told them that Rae collapsed. He thought it was a heart attack, but he couldn’t bring himself to do anything. He watched her fall, watched the police run to her, watched them call a doctor, watched Rae waking, heard the doctor saying she’d fainted and she was fine. He told them how shocked he was that Ashleigh was lying there dead but his heart and Rae’s heart were still beating.
Antonello’s heart kept beating its irregular beat — atrial fibrillation, an ageing heart, an old man’s syndrome — but it too was beating.
‘Jane was on the couch, waiting — she was wearing her tomcat pyjamas, and I wanted to yell at her to take them off. They’re too happy, those pyjamas. She sat with her arms wrapped around her knees, she was sobbing, and she’s so young and I wanted to say, “No, it wasn’t her. Ashleigh’s alright — it was another girl, Ashleigh’s safe.” But I had to tell her it wasn’t a mistake, that her sister was dead. That we came home without her. All we have is a bag with her phone and the choker she was wearing. That’s all we have left.
‘Everything is lost and broken. I was meant to keep her safe. I’m her father. I was supposed to keep her safe.’
Antonello saw that his son’s face was wracked with grief and fatigue and anger. Alex no longer looked like himself — his eyes were hard, his jaw tight, and deep furrows had formed across his forehead. He told them Jo was speeding and drunk. ‘She’s fine, though, a couple of scratches,’ he said, his voice slow and heavy. ‘She’s home. She’s okay. She’s okay. All in one piece. Home in bed. And her fucking mother can stand at the door and watch her sleeping… They said Ashleigh was already — my baby — gone when the ambulance arrived, that they tried, but they couldn’t…’ Alex banged his fist on the table.
Ashleigh gone. Taken at the bridge. Antonello’s head throbbed. He’d planned to destroy the bridge. After the collapse, he’d spent hours lying in bed, walking around his father-in-law’s garden, imagining ways he might blow it up or tear it down. He should’ve destroyed the bridge. He should’ve stopped them from finishing it. If only, if only, then his granddaughter might be alive. Instead she was dead. So young, so beautiful. He expected to see her running into the kitchen, sneaking up behind Paolina and covering her grandmother’s eyes with her hands and whispering guess who in Paolina’s ear. And Paolina laughing as she guessed all the wrong people. He expected her to run into the kitchen and laugh at her father, teasing him for thinking she was gone when she was upstairs asleep all that time.
But Ashleigh would never run into the kitchen again. She had died at the base of the bridge. He didn’t want to think about the bridge. Or Ashleigh. Or death. He wanted to stop thinking.
‘Poor Jo,’ Paolina murmured.
‘How dare you say that, Mum?’ Alex shouted, slamming his fist on the table again, his face flushed. Paolina gasped. He’d never yelled at his mother. Not even when he was a teenager. Never. But now, a middle-aged man, thickening around the waist, hair speckled with grey, he towered over Paolina. ‘Don’t you dare feel sorry for her,’ he roared. ‘She was driving and she was drunk and speeding and she killed Ashleigh. And she’s alive.’
‘They were best friends, Alex. They loved each other. She must be going through hell,’ Paolina whispered. She put her hand on Alex’s where it had come crashing down on the table, but he pulled it away. When Paolina reached for him again, he moved away from the table.
‘Do you know what it’s like to lose a daughter? I feel dead. No, I am dead. I want to be dead.’
‘I’m sorry, Alex. Ashleigh is my granddaughter — I love her too. I’m sorry.’ Paolina took the rosary beads out of her pocket and ran them through her fingers. ‘Let’s say a prayer.’
‘Jo’s alive and my baby, my daughter, is dead. And I don’t want to hear any of your religious shit. No God, no forgiveness. I don’t want to hear any of it. Do you hear me?’ Alex snatched the beads out of Paolina’s hand and threw them across the room, where they smashed against the wall. Paolina cried out. Alex yanked open the sliding door and slammed it shut behind him so hard that Antonello thought the glass might break.
Antonello picked up the rosary beads and handed them to Paolina. She kissed the cross and clutched the beads to her chest. His faith had collapsed with the bridge, pulverised into dust along with the concrete structures, along with the lives of his friends and workmates. If he went to funerals and weddings, he stood outside the church with the smokers, refusing to go inside. For years, Paolina avoided mentioning God or religion and rarely went to church, but she’d insisted the children were baptised, and they were, though unlike their cousins they didn’t go to Catholic schools. She kept her faith to herself. But after her diagnosis, Paolina prayed more openly, carrying rosary beads like a talisman everywhere she went.
They’d spent so many hours in this kitchen, and in earlier versions of it, watching Ashleigh and Jane grow up. They’d squeezed around the table with the whole extended family to celebrate all of Ashleigh’s birthdays. They’d watched her blow out the candles, and each year, waited for Paolina to say, “Cut the cake now, but don’t touch the bottom or you’ll have to kiss the nearest boy.” They were there all the years when Ashleigh screwed up her face at the idea of a boy and a kiss, until the last birthday, when she’d grinned and touched the bottom and kissed her boyfriend Kevin, who’d turned bright red.
‘I meant,’ Paolina whispered, ‘the girls were always together, they were so close. It must be awful for Jo too.’ It was true that when they were together they shut the adults out, that when Jo was around, Ashleigh ignored her parents, her grandparents, her sister. And now she was dead because of that girl, that girl Ashleigh loved and had often chosen above her parents. But hadn’t they all, at some point, chosen other people above their parents? It was what young people did. It was part of growing up, wasn’t it?
If Ashleigh was alive, she’d be telling them that they were overreacting, that accidents happen. She may or may not have learnt a lesson, and the accident would’ve been a lucky escape, all part of growing up.
Stupid, reckless girls, all of them. Stupid, reckless.
Ashleigh is dead. Ashleigh is dead. Ashleigh is dead. He repeated it to himself so that he didn’t forget. Because all he wanted to do was forget.
Antonello understood Alex’s urge to break, to smash, to hurt. Underneath that rage was grief, the grief that Alex didn’t want to acknowledge, that he was trying to keep at a distance, the grief and the guilt, and the shame: ‘I was meant to keep her safe. I’m her father.’ That grief wasn’t going to go anywhere; it would never go away. It would weigh him down, pull him under. Eventually he’d have to surrender to it.
‘You’re right, Paolina,’ he said. ‘Jo deserves our pity. She might be alive, but being the one left behind, being the one responsible, that’s going to be hard.’
Paolina squeezed his hand. ‘Yes. But we’ve all been left behind.’
They retreated into silence. Outside, birds chirped and whistled. Alex paced, ignoring Lewis, the family jack russell who was nudging an old ball towards him.
‘I was remembering Ashleigh’s birthday,’ Paolina said eventually. ‘When they were planning the food and the music.’
Antonello remembered too. The two girls had sat on the floor organising a playlist for the party. They had a laptop opened, an iPad connected. They both wore headphones. Rae wanted Ashleigh to help plan the menu for the party — she was running through lists of finger food — but Ashleigh was ignoring her mother. Occasionally, either Ashleigh or Jo pulled the headphones out and loud music came crashing into the room. Several times Rae told them to turn the music down. Later she said to Antonello, ‘Ashleigh’s controls are stuck on high speed, high volume, and when she and Jo are together, it’s impossible.’