Rae shook her head. ‘No, no, I can’t, I don’t… I don’t want to be anywhere near you or your daughter.’ She was wearing pyjamas bottoms and a thick old cardigan that Mandy recognised as Ashleigh’s. She felt the urge to reach out and touch it. To stop herself, she pulled her arms back behind her and interlaced her fingers. Rae pulled the cardigan tight around her waist and rocked back and forth, as if she were balancing on a narrow beam. She shivered, and Mandy saw the goosebumps, rising like tiny bubbles, on the skin of her neck. The weight of Rae’s grief was an impending tempest; Mandy felt the weakness in her knees, the ache in her belly. She could hear her heart thumping. She slid back and leant against the door frame.
But the tempest didn’t come. Instead, Rae began to cry, the tears streaming silently down her checks, rivers of sorrow that she wiped with the sleeves of her cardigan. ‘Your daughter… your daughter is alive and my beautiful daughter is… my daughter is dead,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry, Rae.’ Mandy was trembling; her hands were shaking. Behind her she heard the scrape of a chair being pushed away from the table, followed by footsteps coming up the hall. But Sarah didn’t come to the door.
‘Yes. Everyone’s sorry. So sorry. What use is sorry to me?’ Rae’s voice was barely audible, as if her throat were being strangled, as if she’d run out of air.
‘It’s a tragedy. Ashleigh —’
‘Don’t say her name. Don’t you dare say her name.’
‘Please, Rae. I loved her. We, you and me, we looked after each other’s daughters, we watched them grow up together…’ An image came of the two girls at thirteen, racing down the path and into the house. Tossing their schoolbags on the ground, Jo calling out to her, ‘Hey, Mum, we learnt the Nutbush today, I told Ash you have the song on tape.’ They had put the tape on and danced around the lounge room and Mandy joined them, and Mandy watched them dancing and laughing and filling up the room with their energy, their happiness. She wanted to share that memory with Rae but she couldn’t — never again would she share an anecdote about the girls with Ashleigh’s mother. Every pick-up for years, they’d told each other a story or two about the girls. Never again. To avoid looking at Rae, she stared at the front yard — a mess of trees and bushes she’d planted as a filter for the dusty, dirty, oily air and to block the view of the oil tanks across the road, of the trucks and semis, of the bridge.
‘My daughter isn’t going to grow up. My daughter isn’t going to go to university, or fall in love, or have children. Ashleigh wanted to work in New York. She wanted to travel the world. I was so worried about all the things she wanted to do and the risks and how I wouldn’t be able to protect her, because I thought she was safe here with me. But she wasn’t and she’s gone and she won’t ever fulfill those dreams…’ Her eyes were tearing up again, and Mandy moved out of the doorway towards her, reaching out to touch her shoulder. Rae recoiled and retreated, almost tripping over the wooden step that led from the small porch to the path.
‘No, stop, don’t touch me. People keep trying to hold me, to touch me, to put their arms around me. I don’t want anyone near me. It makes it worse. It makes me… reminds me that I will never touch Ashleigh again, never hold her… Sometimes she’d nuzzle up to me on the couch. I loved the smell of her. And just when I started to fall asleep, she would tickle me —’ The wail that came from Rae was deep and long, and she doubled over with the force of it.
Mandy was crying too now — she could feel the tears running down her cheeks — but she had no right to cry. She needed to give Rae the time to say what she needed to say. She owed her that much.
When she composed herself again, Rae said, ‘I trusted you with my daughter. I loved your daughter. I invited her to all our family celebrations, I included her in everything. She has her own coffee mug in my cupboard, her own drawer in Ashleigh’s room, her own towels.’
Mandy nodded in acknowledgement.
‘I blame you. You… why didn’t you stop her driving?’ Rae asked. It was the question Mandy had been waiting for, but she didn’t have an answer, just a series of useless excuses. ‘The police said they were drinking before they left the house, before they even went to the party. I want to know why you let your daughter drive. What kind of mother are you? They were drunk and you let them take the car.’
‘I’m sorry. I thought they’d be alright. It wasn’t that far and Jo said she was fine… I’m sorry.’ Mandy felt as if she might collapse. The effort of holding back sobs made speaking difficult. ‘I should’ve stopped them. I should’ve.’
‘It’s parents like you that are the problem. It’s your fault. No responsibility. You’re a bad mother,’ Rae said.
It hit Mandy with the force of a slap. You’re a bad mother.
‘I feel terrible…’ she muttered faintly.
‘What does it matter how you feel? What about your daughter? Is she sorry?’
‘Of course. Of course, she loved Ashleigh. They were friends, they loved each other. Please come into the house, Rae.’
‘My daughter is dead. Your daughter killed her. Why would I come into your house?’ Rae’s gaze was fixed on her, and her voice was imbued with contempt and disgust. Mandy was trapped. A bad mother, an irresponsible mother, worse than a monster. She felt shame and sadness, and anger too. Rae didn’t understand how hard she’d tried to be a good mother. But Mandy knew there was nothing she could say to make things better for either of them.
‘I am so sorry,’ she said yet again. ‘I wish I could —’
‘What do you wish, Mandy? What? That you could go back and do things differently that night? Is that what you wish? Do you know what I wish? Do you know what I lie in bed wishing?’ Rae had dropped her arms by her side, her hands in tight fists. ‘I wish it was your daughter and not mine. That’s what I wish, Mandy. That’s what I wish.’
There was more despair than anger in Rae’s words. Of course. Of course: a life for a life.
‘But mostly I wish I was dead too. Because this pain will only stop when I die.’
Mandy could not speak. There were no words.
‘I want my daughter’s things. Everything. I don’t want Jo to have anything. Do you understand?’
Mandy took a couple of short sharp breaths so she could speak. ‘Of course. I don’t know what she’s —’
‘Do you understand? Everything.’ Rae turned around to head for the gate, but then she turned back. ‘I trusted you with my daughter — all those years, I trusted you. My daughter trusted your daughter. I don’t want any of you at the funeral. I don’t want any of you near us.’ She stared at Mandy, waiting for a response.
‘Of course,’ Mandy said.
Rae walked down the path and through the gate. On the footpath, she hesitated. She looked up at the bridge and began to walk towards it, changed her mind, and headed the other way, back into Yarraville.
Mandy shut the door and began to sob. She felt herself collapsing — she couldn’t keep upright and let herself slip to the ground.
‘Jesus. Mandy, are you okay?’ Sarah asked as she came towards Mandy, offering her hand.
‘No. No, not really,’ Mandy said, burying her head in her arms. She remembered the moment long ago, sitting on her mother’s bed as Sal took her last breath. She remembered the despair, the overwhelming sense of loss, of knowing her mother would never again open her eyes, would never again speak to her, hold her, that her mother was gone. She’d climbed onto the bed next to her dead mother and hours later, when her father tried to move her, she’d raged and howled and her father had to call the doctor. The doctor, an older man, had tried to coax her out of the bed. ‘People die,’ he’d said to her. ‘Your mother was in a lot of pain, and she is not anymore.’ It had struck her as such a stupid thing to say. ‘How the fuck do you know?’ she yelled at him. She remembered that he’d given her an injection and she’d woken up the next day in her own bed and the house had never ever felt like a home again.