The Bridge

by Enza Gandolfo

  ‘That school’ was an inner-city government high school. Her mother had planned to send her to a private school — Melbourne Girls Grammar, Camberwell Girls Grammar, or perhaps Methodist Ladies’ College. Schools with history and character and reputation. Sarah’s brothers went to private schools, but Sarah refused to go. There were fights and arguments, but her father supported her decision: ‘If she has a brain on her, it won’t matter what school she goes to.’ For such a successful and intelligent man, Sarah’s father was naïve. Of course, even Sarah knew she would’ve done better academically if she’d gone to a private school, but she was glad she hadn’t. At her high school, she’d had a different sort of education. Of her friends, only Jess came from a white middle-class family, and Jess’s parents were artists, living just above the poverty line. They worked part-time in cafés so they could buy art materials to make their ‘work’: large collaborative installations that involved hours of collecting from tips, hard-rubbish collections, op shops, and markets. At Jess’s house, Sarah slept on a mattress that Jess’s mother picked up from a roadside hard-rubbish collection. Sarah didn’t tell her mother, because she would’ve demanded to know if the mattress had been fumigated, but Jess’s mother never, ever used chemicals to kill living creatures. Sue, a refugee from Cambodia, lived in a small housing commission flat, with peeling paint and dripping taps, with one television for the whole family and not enough money to spend on the after-school art lessons for her talented younger sister. Ada’s family was Greek — seven people in a small three-bedroom terrace. Ada’s father worked on the docks and her mother was a cleaner. They had three children and two widowed grandmothers to look after. The grandmothers grew vegetables in the front garden, cooked big hearty meals, spoke only broken English, and argued with their grandchildren, who refused to speak to them in Greek.

  When Ada’s younger brother was arrested for stealing a car, his parents panicked. They didn’t have the money for a lawyer. Sarah went to her father for advice. He gave her a brochure about legal aid. The legal aid lawyer represented Ada’s brother. He was found guilty, but they didn’t send him away; they gave him a good behaviour bond. It didn’t save Nick. He was often in trouble — drugs, stealing, assault with a weapon — and ended up going to prison anyway. But the idea of a lawyer giving free help and advice to people like Ada’s family was a revelation for Sarah; there were people working to make an unfair world fairer. She was so impressed she decided to become a legal aid lawyer.

  Constable Lumina took a final drag on her cigarette. ‘Let’s go back in,’ she said.

  ‘Sure.’ Sarah butted out her cigarette and picked up her bag. This case was going to be tough. She’d have to keep her own feelings out of it. Focus on Jo.

  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.

  Constable Peters resumed the interview with questions about the accident itself.

  ‘I can’t remember what happened,’ Jo said. ‘The car started to skid. I remember thinking, don’t put on the brake. The mechanic who serviced the car said that because the car didn’t have power steering, braking too fast would make it skid. But it was like, my foot, I couldn’t control my foot, and I slammed on the brake, but the car … I lost control of the car. I heard screaming. But I don’t know who was screaming. And then nothing. I don’t remember anything after that until someone, a woman, was standing next to me and telling me to open my eyes. I didn’t want to open my eyes. And someone speaking, someone saying, “She’s dead.” I didn’t know if they were talking about me, if I was dead …’ Jo stopped; it was as if she’d been running and hit a wall. And it was as if she were back in the car, with her eyes closed. And it was as if the paramedic were shouting in her ear to wake up. Sweat dripped from her temples, slipping down the sides of her face.

  If only she hadn’t woken up, if only she hadn’t kept her eyes shut. If only she’d refused to leave the car. Was it possible to stop time? To go back. Could she trade her life for Ash’s life?

  When the interview ended, they charged Jo with culpable driving. She was surprised that they let her go home.

  ‘You’re on bail,’ Sarah said as they were leaving the police station. ‘There are conditions. You can’t leave the state. If you move house, you have to notify the police. No driving — your licence is suspended. And no drinking, of course.’

  Chapter 12

  There were four messages on Jo’s phone from Ash. All of them sent after the accident.

  You should be dead.

  You’re a killer.

  You killed Ashleigh. You killed her.

  Murderer, scum of the earth, it should have been you who died.

  Was Ash’s mother or her father sending those messages? Jo couldn’t imagine it. Maybe Jane? Feral Jane, Ash often teased her sister because she wore tight jeans with rips in the knees, and men’s checked shirts, and went everywhere on her skateboard, her hair flying. They fought a lot, the two sisters. Jane rummaged in Ash’s room when she wasn’t home. She pinched Ash’s make-up without asking. Jane and her friends skated up and down the driveway. Loud rumbling and thumping as the skateboards rolled over or crashed into the obstacles Jane and her friends set up to jump over, to slide off, to mount with their boards. ‘It’s torture,’ Ash complained. She screamed at them, and if they didn’t stop she chased them with the hose on full spray. The sisters fought and made up and Ash would promise to take Jane out — to the movies or shopping — and forget and make other plans and they’d fight again. Sometimes when they were younger, Jane would say to Jo, ‘I wish I was your sister.’ As loud as she could to annoy Ash.

  Jo deleted the text messages.

  There were other messages. From Laura: I hope you are okay. I can’t believe that Ash is gone. I wanted to come and see you but my parents said no. Stay strong Jo. xx

  From Mani: I’m so sad and so angry.

  Kevin wrote, Jo, are you okay? Call me. Let’s talk.

  ‘Kevin is too laidback,’ Ash had complained recently. When Jo asked what she meant, Ash said, ‘He’s a softy, doesn’t stand up for himself. He wants to do film or photography, be an artist, but his parents convinced him to do architecture. I told him, If you want to make films, make films.’

  When the three of them went out together, Jo was jealous. All the kissing and touching between Ash and Kevin, and Ash forgetting she was there. It pissed Jo off. But now she wished desperately that Ash had invited him last night. If Kevin had come to the party, Ash would be alive.

  From Bec, her partner for the History presentation: So sorry to hear about Ashleigh. Worried about you. Do you feel like a visit from a friend?

  Jo began texting back, Ash was my friend. But she deleted the message and began again: I killed my friend. And then deleted that too. She switched the phone off and buried it under her socks and tights in the bottom drawer of her dresser. She shut down the computer and disconnected the power. She didn’t want to look, she didn’t want to read Ash’s Facebook page or hers; she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She didn’t want to read the accusations or the sympathies, the tributes to Ash.

  There would be no more friends. She couldn’t be trusted with a friend.

  ‘We are in limbo,’ Mary said. She was sitting at the table, a cup of tea in hand. The pot of chicken soup she’d spent the morning making remained untouched on the stove. The aroma of it wafted through the house, but it hadn’t enticed Jo out of her room.

  ‘I don’t know anything about limbo. This feels like hell to me,’ Mandy said, as she leaned against the kitchen bench. Ever since the police had knocked on her door the morning of the accident, she’d been resisting the temptation to pack up everything, to leave the house and Jo and all of the sadness and not come back.

  ‘Stupid, stupid girls,’ Mary lamented into her cup of tea.

  Mandy didn’t respond. She wished she was some other woman in some other life. A single woman, childless and disconnected, not related to anyone. A woman without a daughter. What kind of a mother made those kinds of wishes? What kind of mother was too weak to stop her drunk daughter from driving? Too weak to even try?

  ‘I can’t go anywhere no
w,’ Mary continued. ‘This morning at the supermarket, everyone was looking at me and whispering. Some people feed on this stuff, and now the gossips will be out, and they’ll be looking at us and blaming us.’

  Mary’s wrinkled face, caked with foundation, showed no physical evidence of the impact of the accident or its aftermath. That morning, as well as making soup, she’d put on a full face of make-up, soft pink lipstick, eyeliner. She’d dressed for going out, in her green woollen jumper and brown jersey pants, and put on the green topaz earrings her grandfather had bought her when she turned twenty-one. Last year, Mary had found the earrings after years of thinking they were lost. When she wore them, she often touched them as she talked, rubbing the topaz as if it were a good-luck charm. Mary had been to church that morning, and to the supermarket. Most of her life was spent within a couple of blocks of the Yarraville shopping centre; she’d lived in the same house since she was married, more than forty years. Mary was right: everyone already knew about Jo’s accident. Mandy tried to control the sudden urge to grab her ex-mother-in-law by the shoulders, drag her out of the chair and into the street, and tell her not to come back again.

  ‘It’s best if we stay close to home and don’t go out too much,’ Mary said. ‘At least for a few days. Especially Jo. I rang David and told him about the accident. He said he’d phone and talk to Jo. You should send her away for a while. She could go and stay in Adelaide with her father. It’ll be hard for her now, around here.’

  ‘Well, let’s wait and see if he rings; nothing yet.’ Mandy couldn’t imagine David inviting Jo to hide out in Adelaide.

  ‘He probably thinks she isn’t up to talking yet,’ Mary said. ‘I’m sure he’ll call.’

  ‘We have to find a way through this, Jo and I,’ Mandy said. ‘I have to find a way to steer myself and Jo through this. It’s up to me. It’s always up to me.’