Blame by Nicole Trope

okay?’ Hannah had said and turned to go.
    ‘But I think you’re right, I need someone to help me convince Keith that we need to look into this.’
    ‘Anna, I can’t get between you and Keith, you know that. Maya’s still very young, things change quickly at that age. I’m sure she’s fine.’
    Anna had known better than to continue to push her sister-in-law. They weren’t close enough for that.
    ‘She’s still young,’ was something Anna heard about Maya for months, for years. Until it was too late to use those words because they were no longer true.

Chapter Six
    Caro feels like she has been sitting in the small interview room for days, but when she looks at her watch, she realises that it’s only been a couple of hours. Her mouth is dry and she sits on her hands for a minute, hoping to make the shakes go away. She keeps talking quickly. She needs to get the story told before she begins feeling really sick. The shakes are bad but the nausea is worse, and she knows that it’s possible things could get even worse. She knows how this works. She’s done it before, and before and before. Some months, every Monday is supposed to be the beginning of a new self. She sympathises with hopeless dieters. Monday beckons from every regret-filled Sunday night.
    It’s never really been this bad before. She’s never been this bad before. She hadn’t meant to let things get this far.All she wanted to do was block out Anna’s screams, the sound of the ambulance, and the voice of the policeman telling her she would be tested in hospital. She needed to make it all go away for a few hours and then a few days, and now she is here and it’s been two weeks, and she can’t remember the last time she chose water over vodka before she was sitting in this room.
    The two detectives sit quietly, looking as if they have nothing else to do other than listen to her tell her story.
    Caro thinks of what Lex said to her last night, ‘Fuck off and die,’ and she wants to say it to them. It’s a childish impulse that she knows comes from fear. She bites her lip, thinking about Lex’s flushed cheeks and teary eyes. She had never sworn at her mother before and Caro knows her child was more shocked by these words than she was. Caro’s first reaction had been to laugh, which had made Lex even angrier. Caro understands her daughter’s contempt for her and even knows that she deserves that contempt. It had been during the argument about Caro driving Lex to school in the morning.
    ‘I’m driving you whether you like it or not,’ she had said to Lex. ‘It’s time for things to get back to normal around here.’
    ‘I don’t want you, I want Daddy.’
    ‘Daddy has been late to work every day for the last two weeks, Lex. I’ll drive you to school tomorrow.’
    ‘I’m not getting in the car with you. You don’t know how to drive. You hit Maya. You killed Maya.’ Lex wasbrutally honest, and Caro could see she didn’t understand completely the punch her words had.
    Caro felt them hit her but knew she had to win this argument; for herself, if nothing else. ‘Lex, I’ve explained that it was an accident. Everyone knows it was an accident. I didn’t mean for it to happen. It’s wasn’t my fault. There was nothing I could do.’
    ‘You were speeding.’
    ‘No, Lex, I wasn’t. You know I wasn’t. Lex, please—I feel terrible about this. It’s an awful, awful thing and I don’t want to discuss it anymore. Please, let’s just leave it now. I’ll be driving you to school in the morning and that’s final.’
    ‘If it wasn’t your fault, how come you have to go and see the police tomorrow?’
    ‘Who told you that?’
    ‘Daddy,’ Lex said and she had folded her arms, triumphant at having bested her mother. Even as her child attacked her, Caro could not help but see her beauty. Alexa’s big brown eyes dominated her face, and her copper-coloured hair was almost down to her waist. Caro still thought the same thing she had thought