Constable Peters came back, followed by Sarah and Constable Lumina. The two women were carrying half-empty mugs. They smelt of nicotine and mint. Constable Peters set up the recorder and turned it on.
‘So,’ he said, ‘tell me what you and Ashleigh did once you left the house.’ His voice was softer now. It reminded Jo of Grandpa Tom, of sitting on the back verandah with him when she was little, of him saying, ‘Tell me what’s wrong.’ Grandpa Tom never betrayed her, hadn’t told their secrets, not even to Mandy. With him, she’d been safe. Here, they’d take her words and use them against her. What could they do to her? What would be worse than the accident? Than Ash’s death? If she knew what they wanted from her, what they wanted her to say, she could say it and then she could go home.
Would it ever be over?
‘We drove to Mani’s place to pick up Mani and Laura, and then to Willy. We parked the car on the Esplanade and walked to the party.’
Constable Peters asked a series of questions about the party, including the contact details for Rosie’s parents.
‘I don’t remember the number — but they live in Stephen Street.’
‘We need the phone number.’
‘Okay, I have it somewhere ...’ Jo took her phone out of her pocket and turned it on. There were several messages from Ash. How was that possible? Was Ash alive? Was this all a mistake? The phone slipped from her hands and hit the floor.
‘Are you okay?’ Sarah asked.
Jo’s hands were shaking as she picked up the phone. Did Ash send the messages before the accident? From the party?
‘Jo, do you have the number?’
‘Yes, sorry.’
She ignored the messages, opened up her contacts, and read out the phone number. She needed to focus, to keep a clear head. The messages would have to wait. She turned the phone off before she put it back on the table.
‘Did you keep drinking?’ Constable Peters asked. With each question, Sarah and Constable Lumina paused their note-taking, resuming only as Jo began to answer.
‘Yes.’
‘What else did you do?’
‘We talked. We danced. We laughed.’ She stared at the phone on the table. When did Ash send the messages? ‘We always laughed together.’
It was true. They made each other laugh. Ash singing ‘Bart the General’ from The Simpsons in their English class: In English class I did the best. Because I cheated on the test. Jo telling Ash about Mandy’s outrage at the Australian Idol auditions. Ash and Jo dressing up as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers for a dance party and no one knowing who they were. And having to dance every time someone asked, and giggling so much that Jo had to run to the toilet, and then having to call Ash to help her out of Fred’s pants, because they were so big that to keep them from falling Ash had used half a dozen safety pins that in her haste Jo couldn’t locate. She remembered laughing so hard that they were crying. How could she have doubted their friendship?
‘You were good friends?’
‘She’s my best friend. We met at school —’ She stopped. Ash wasn’t her best friend anymore. Ash was dead. This was history. Constable Lumina passed her the box of tissues that had been sitting on the window ledge. This was the point when a best friend would be crying, but she wasn’t crying.
Over the years, she’d shed so many tears over Ash: when Mandy wouldn’t let her go and play with Ash, when Rae came to pick Ash up early, when they fought and ‘broke up’. That afternoon, after reading Ash’s journal, after Ash ended her phone call with Kevin, Jo held her tears back for hours. When Ash left to go and get her clothes for the party, Jo went to her room and cried. Torturing herself with various end-of-friendship scenarios, running them in a loop until they gained so much momentum they spun on their own.
But now there were no tears. She was wounded, damaged, ashamed, alone, guilty, sad… A string of words, but they weren’t how she felt. She didn’t feel like herself. She’d heard people say that before, I don’t feel like myself, but what did it mean? She longed to curl up into a tight ball, tighter and tighter. To shrink. To be invisible. To be able to run away. But where could she go? There was nowhere to go, not now. Wherever she went, Ash was dead. And she would never be herself again.
‘What time did you leave?’
‘I’m not sure what time it was. Ash wanted to leave.’
‘You didn’t want to go?’
‘Not really. Well, kind of, but we were talking and I wanted to talk.’
‘But she didn’t?’ Constable Lumina asked. ‘Were you fighting?’
Sarah put her pen down.
‘Friends have problems sometimes, they have fights sometimes. Were you fighting that night?’ Constable Lumina asked again.
Jo wanted to say, ‘Ask Ash. Ask Ash, please ask Ash.’
‘We were singing in the car,’ she said.
‘Laura and Mani said that you and Ash were arguing.’
Laura and Mani. Jo kept forgetting that they were in the car too.
‘You were fighting, Jo?’ Mandy asked, her interruption surprising everyone in the room.
‘Mrs Neilson, please don’t ask questions during the interview,’ Constable Lumina said.
‘Sorry, I just… I didn’t know.’
‘We were singing,’ Jo said. Laura and Mani, singing and giggling, and rolling down their windows, and singing to the river, to the road, to the bridge. She’d been singing too. But not Ash.
Finally Constable Peters asked, ‘You’d been drinking at the party but you didn’t think about getting a taxi or ringing someone to pick you up?’
‘I felt okay. We didn’t have money for a taxi. I don’t know… we got in the car.’
‘Did the other girls tell you not to drive? Did they ask you if you were okay to drive?’
Sarah dropped her pen on the table. ‘I think we need to have another break.’
Constable Peters sighed and turned the recorder off again.
When the two cops left the room for the second time, Sarah stood up. Jo noticed that the skirt she was wearing was in fact a pair of pants, long black pants with wide legs. Under the pants were red suede boots. Sarah’s feet were tiny, her body tethered on such a tentative base she reminded Jo of a stilt walker, though it would be impossible, she imagined, for someone Sarah’s size to walk on stilts.
‘You have to be remorseful,’ Sarah commanded, and Jo felt like a child who had done something wrong and was now being asked to apologise. Say you are sorry.
‘I am sorry. I didn’t mean to have an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt Ash…’
‘I know,’ Sarah said. ‘I know, but you need to make sure they know too. And you need to face what happened. You caused an accident that resulted in Ashleigh’s death. These accidents happen too often. So many families ruined. Everyone knows someone who’s lost a sibling or a child or a friend in an accident like this one. There’s no sympathy for people who drive when they’re drunk — even Constable Lumina lost her brother in an accident like yours. There’s lots of anger in the community. The police, the courts, the media. Everyone wants drunk drivers punished, they want to stop it. You’re not some drag-racing adolescent boy, but you need to show you know that what you did was wrong, really wrong, or they’ll lock you up and throw away the key.’ Sarah was now bending over the table. As she inched closer, Jo leaned back. ‘Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ Jo said. ‘I understand.’ But she didn’t care. She hoped they’d lock her up and throw away the key.
While Sarah went to call the police back to finish the interview, Jo picked up her phone and held it in her hand. As she turned her phone on to look at the messages, Constable Peters walked in the door and she had to turn it off again.