Jo flinched.
‘I think we should take a break,’ Sarah said and stood up. ‘A coffee break.’
Constable Peters turned the recorder off, picked it up, and left the room. Constable Lumina offered to make them tea and coffee and followed him out.
‘You don’t have to admit you were drunk.’ Sarah shoved her chair out of the way as she stood up.
‘I wasn’t drunk. Not when we left the house.’
‘Okay. But later. When they ask about later, don’t lie — you can tell them how many drinks you had if you remember — but don’t admit you were drunk.’
‘We were all drunk.’
‘Jo,’ Mandy hissed, and both Sarah and Jo turned to Mandy, but she didn’t say anything else.
‘You were the one driving.’ Sarah’s voice was soft but stern. ‘It doesn’t matter whether Ashleigh or the other girls were drunk.’
‘But we… we usually drank together.’
‘Yes, but the person driving is the person responsible,’ Sarah said.
‘It’s my fault. Everything is my fault?’ Jo pleaded. Fat cow, Jo thought. Anger was rising in her. ‘It wasn’t only my fault. Fuck. It was Ash’s fault too. It wasn’t…’
All your fault. All your fault. Killer Jo. That voice again, spitting and hissing in her ear. You want to blame me?
‘According to the law, Jo,’ Sarah said in the same soft voice. ‘I know it’s hard, but that’s the law. Unless there is something else you’re not saying. Unless someone forced you to drive the car, unless they held a gun to your head, unless Ash took the wheel or put her foot on the accelerator, unless someone cut you off on the road…’
‘Don’t call her Ash,’ Jo said. ‘She hates other people calling her Ash.’
‘Okay.’ Sarah rose from the table. ‘But you drank too much. You’re a P-plate driver. No drinking. No more than two people in the car. You know all this.’
Jo didn’t respond.
‘You do know this, Jo, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Jo whispered. ‘Yes.’ She tried to remember if she’d thought about it on that night. When she first got her licence, she had been so careful. No alcohol at all. But she often felt on edge and tense when they went out, so worried about what everyone was thinking. A drink or two helped her relax. What was the harm in that? She rarely got drunk. She hadn’t felt drunk at the party, had she? Had she driven knowing she was too drunk? ‘I said I’d drive. Taxis are so expensive. My mother doesn’t drive, and Ash hates asking her parents. We were tired. Ash wanted to go home. She was working the next day. She wanted to go home. How were we supposed to get home? I’m a good driver. I don’t drink much. I’ve driven home from parties before, plenty of times. I don’t know what happened, it was an accident.’
‘Did you drink less because you were driving?’
‘Yes.’ She always drank less because she was driving. She teased the others, told them that when they had their licences they’d owe her, they’d have to drive her everywhere, that she’d be the one getting drunk. But she didn’t mind. She liked being the one with the car, the one they counted on.
‘So you drank less that night because you knew you were driving.’
Jo didn’t say anything.
‘When they did the blood test you were over 0.07.’
‘Was I? I didn’t feel that drunk.’
‘You were drunk, too drunk to drive,’ Sarah said. She gripped the back of the chair. She waited for Jo to meet her gaze. ‘You need to admit, at least to yourself, that you did the wrong thing. That you shouldn’t have been driving. It doesn’t matter what the others did. They shouldn’t have gotten in the car with you. They should’ve stopped you driving. The people whose party it was, the people at the restaurant, they should’ve stopped you driving. Your mother, she should’ve stopped you taking the car in the first place. She should’ve taken the car keys and thrown them away. But they won’t be charged because you’re an adult now and you drove the car. You,’ Sarah said. She rummaged in her bag, pulled out her tobacco, and headed towards the door. Before she opened it, she turned back to Jo, her hand on the knob. ‘For God’s sake, Jo, show that you know what you did was wrong. And apologise and keep apologising and don’t stop.’ She opened the door and left the room.
‘Fuck,’ Jo heard Sarah mutter as the door closed behind her.
Jo imagined what Sarah might’ve been thinking: That girl is an idiot, a stupid, dumb bitch… a murderer. But what would Sarah know, or Mandy or the cops? How could Jo make them understand? Of course she was sorry. So sorry. So fucked up. She wished Ash was alive. She wished she hadn’t been driving. She shouldn’t have been driving, of course. Her body was slack in the chair, as if she were a rag doll, as if the stuffing were seeping out of the unstitched seams, as if she might collapse on the floor and disappear.
Too many drinks, was that what it came down to? The Cruiser with Ash while they did their make-up, the champagne afterwards. ‘Let’s have some champagne with dinner,’ Ash had said, popping the cork.
Did they drink the whole bottle?
Jo willed herself to think about something else. Anything else. School. The English essay, due Friday. The presentation for History, with Bec, who was distracted, private, who hated group work. How would she get these done? Would she be expected to get them done? Would she be allowed to go back? She almost asked her mother, ‘Do I keep going to school?’ But that was a stupid question. What was the point? No need to concern herself with these things.
Go directly to jail, do not pass go.
Jo shivered.
Would she go to prison? Even if they didn’t lock her up, she couldn’t go back to sit in a classroom, to give a History talk. Ash was dead. There would be no more school. No more work in the café. No more life. She didn’t deserve to have a life. There was more than one way to be dead. She could forget VCE. She could forget work. She could forget friends.
Who’d want to be friends with a killer?
Who’d want to go out with a murderer?
Jo cupped her ears. Now she was sweating; her face was damp and hot. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt Ash. I didn’t mean to,’ she cried out.
She killed Ash. This is what the cops and Sarah were really saying; they were telling her, ‘You killed Ash. You’re responsible.’
‘I know.’ Mandy’s response surprised Jo. They were both staring ahead, at the wall with the posters, but until now it was as if they were in separate rooms, as if between them there were a thick, impenetrable wall.
‘They think I did it on purpose.’
‘No. No, I don’t think they do,’ Mandy said quietly.
There was silence for a few minutes and then Mandy, in a low voice, her resigned voice, the voice she used when she told Jo Grandpa Tom wouldn’t survive the cancer, when she told Jo her father was getting remarried, when she told Jo she couldn’t be bothered arguing with her anymore, said, ‘You shouldn’t have driven while you were drunk. That was wrong and irresponsible. And I shouldn’t have let you take the car that night. That was wrong too. Stupid mistakes, bad mistakes —’
‘People do it all the time,’ Jo said automatically.
‘Stop it, Jo,’ Mandy said. Her voice remained low and restrained. ‘You aren’t ten years old. You haven’t broken a toy or come home late… Yes, people do stupid things and get away with it sometimes, but sometimes they don’t. And then —’ She paused for a moment and then said, ‘What’s the point?’
‘The point?’
‘Yes. What’s the point of anything? Of this conversation. Too late now.’