It would be impossible to go back.
Ash would never again come into the café, arriving in her safety jacket, covered in the smell of the dogs she’d been walking, and ask for a strong macchiato to go.
Ash would never again sit in a classroom in the school where they had been students for the last six years. And Jo would never again sit next to Ash with Laura and Mani, gossiping when they should’ve been working. Never again giggling at silly jokes.
An accident. Accident. The word didn’t seem right. Accident was too small and slight. Accidents: a broken plate, a ball through a window, spilt milk…
If only. If only. If only.
If only she hadn’t been drinking.
If only Kevin had come along. If only he’d driven.
If only they’d stayed home studying. Isn’t that what VCE students were supposed to do?
If only they didn’t know Rosie.
If only they had left the car at the party and caught a taxi home.
If only she hadn’t read Ash’s journal.
If only she’d left good enough alone.
If only they had never met, never been friends.
If only she’d read the signs… There must have been signs.
If only… if only she’d died too.
Ash was going to do things with her life. Ash was smart and ambitious and going to make a mark in the world. Ash was beautiful. Everyone liked Ash.
Jo should be dead. She should’ve been the one to die.
Everyone would be thinking, It should be Jo dead.
But Jo wasn’t dead. Her heart was beating. She was breathing.
Across her belly and chest there were a few bruises, purple and black blotches spreading. No broken bones. No permanent damage.
‘Jo?’ Mandy called out through the closed door. ‘The police are here. You have to go with them to the station for an interview. They’re waiting.’
Jo listened to Mandy walk back up the hall to the lounge room, tracking the creak of the loose boards under her mother’s feet.
‘You can sit if you want,’ she heard Mandy say. ‘Would you like a drink? Tea? Coffee?’
‘No thanks, Mrs Neilson, we’re fine.’ It was a woman’s voice.
To find her clothes, Jo switched on the bedside lamp. There was an untidy mound on the floor next to the bed. On top was the red dress, ripped and stained with blood. Jo threw the dress onto the floor and grabbed a pair of crumpled blue jeans, giving them a shake. Her belly and chest ached when she moved. She unbuttoned her pyjama top and pressed her fingers, hard, into the translucent purple bruises. The pain intensified; she pressed again. She gasped, then pressed harder. But the pain eased. It was bearable. She’d have to finish dressing and come out. She slipped her feet into her thongs, ran a brush through her hair, and tied it into a ponytail. She noticed her phone on the bedside table. It was turned off. She didn’t remember turning it off — she didn’t remember bringing it home. She hesitated at her bedroom door, then went back and slipped the phone into her pocket. All she wanted was to go back to bed and never have to get up again.
‘Are you coming, Jo?’
‘Yes.’ The bathroom smelt of disinfectant and vomit; the acid, the bile, the memory of it was in her throat. She brushed her teeth and washed her face without looking in the mirror. Maybe she didn’t exist at all and there would be no reflection in the mirror. Maybe she was dead. She wished she wasn’t alive. She wished she didn’t exist. Was that the same as wishing she was dead?
The hallway was a clutter of shelves and dressers, of books and ornaments. It was her job to dust the hallway once a week. To pick up each thing, each book and vase and crystal animal, to lift each doily… on those days the hallway seemed so long, but ten steps, that’s all it was, ten small steps and she was in the lounge room: one couch, two beanbags, a television set, and a coffee table squeezed against the wall under the window. The two cops sat side by side on the couch. The man’s legs stretched halfway across the room; the woman had hers tucked back. Mandy sat on the edge of a chair she’d dragged in from the kitchen. The cops were familiar, both of them. But Jo couldn’t place them. School? Or were they customers at the café?
‘I’m Constable Lumina,’ the woman said. ‘This is Constable Peters. We met at the hospital.’
She remembered their voices. You understand that the young woman in the front seat, Ashleigh, is dead. You understand the blood test is to check your blood alcohol concentration. You have to consent to the test.
They managed to go home, to sleep, to spend time with their families, and get up and put their uniforms back on, and their guns and batons, and go back to work.
She didn’t meet their eyes. Shame, guilt, grief, sadness — she couldn’t describe her emotions.
‘You might want to grab a jacket,’ Constable Lumina said. ‘It’s cold outside.’
Jo noticed her feet. Thongs. It occurred to her that thongs and jeans might be inappropriate for a police interview. She stood up to go back to her room, and came face to face with her mother. Mandy’s face was milky white. The hollows under her eyes were deeper and darker, and her lips were thin and pale. Mandy handed Jo a jacket. It was the black windcheater with a broken zipper — she only ever wore the jacket to the gym, on cold mornings. It was old. It was the jacket she threw in the locker and on the floor of the car.
No one cares about your fucking jacket.
Jo turned to look at her mother, but it wasn’t her mother’s voice. The cops were outside now. There was no one else in the house.
Voices came and went, especially in her early adolescence; her head overflowed with voices as if it were tiny cell filled with people. You’re fat. You’re ugly. You’re stupid. You’ll never be popular. You don’t get anything. Your friends are only pretending. But those voices were her own voice, playing her doubts back at her like a chant. This wasn’t her voice. No one cares about your fucking jacket. This was Ash’s voice.
Ash’s voice: how was that possible?
The cop car was parked on the nature strip. Constable Lumina held the back door open. Mandy slid all the way across, buckled her seatbelt, and rested her head against the door. Jo followed. As soon as the car started moving, the nausea returned. Jo’s mouth was dry. She worried she might be sick. She took a deep breath. Her mother passed her a water bottle, and she took a sip and handed it back.
Jo scratched at her nail polish: blue satin, Ash’s. The floating blue flakes fell like coloured snow and then disappeared. Her nails were now a mix of blue and purple, the colour of the night sky on smoggy Melbourne nights.
The cops discussed rosters, forms, schedules, the weather (a 70 per cent chance of rain). Constable Lumina complained about the number of semi-trailers on the road, and Constable Peters said his father had been a truckie for twenty years. Life on the road was tough. As a boy, when he’d gone on a road trip with his father, he counted fifty-six abusive drivers. The two cops talked as if they were alone in the car, as if the back seat were empty, but Jo sensed their restraint as tight around their throats as a noose. She imagined they longed to turn around and tell her exactly what they thought. She focused on their conversation, on their words, on imagining herself in the cabin of Constable Peters’ father’s truck, between the man and the little boy.