Blame by Nicole Trope Page A

the first time she held her, the same thing she thought every time she looked at her daughter: ‘How could I have produced such an exceptional creature?’ And every now and again she thought, as she did then, ‘How could I have produced a creature with such a capacity to wound?’
    ‘Daddy should not have told you that, Alexa, and it really has nothing to do with you.’
    ‘It has everything to do with me!’ shouted Lex. ‘They’re going to put you in prison! Everyone will know my mother’s a criminal.’
    ‘No, they are not. What rubbish. Where did you even hear such a thing?’
    ‘I read it on the internet. The news sites said you were speeding and drunk.’
    ‘Alexa Robin Harman, you are talking absolute crap, and I’ve told you before that I don’t like you being on the internet without permission! I’ll throw that computer away if you can’t stick to my rules!’
    ‘You don’t stick to any rules. You just do what you want. You shouldn’t have been driving. It said so on the internet. Lots of people are talking about you on the internet. They’re saying horrible things about you. You shouldn’t have been in the car, and now Maya is dead and my mother killed her and everyone’s talking about it at school.’ Lex had burst into noisy tears, and Caro knew she needed to put her arms around her child and comfort her but she couldn’t move.
    Everyone was talking about it at school. Everyone was talking about it at school. Caro felt her cheeks colour as she imagined the mothers and children passing her name back and forth. She could hear the sniggers and the gasps of horror. She had been working so hard to keep it all at bay, to make the whole thing seem unreal. Even as she had discussed it with Geoff and talked to Keith on the phone, continually begging him to let her speak to Anna, she had been separate from it.
    Each time Keith had told her that Anna wouldn’t speak to her, she had been heartbroken but that wasn’t the only thing she’d felt. She also felt relief, a relief so strong that it sometimes felt like her first hit of vodka, because what would she say to her friend, what words could she use? The daily phone call to Anna had become something she just did, and each and every day since the accident, she has pressed Anna’s number on her phone and thought, ‘I’ll just have a quick chat,’ and only when she hears the ringing of the phone has she realised what she’s doing.
    She thought about what happened like it had been someone else in the car, someone else who had felt the heavy thud of Maya’s body against the metal. Someone else had watched Anna’s mouth form a scream. Someone else had leapt from the car and stared down in stupefied horror at Maya lying on the road.
    Caro had stepped away from it sip by sip and waited for it all to go away, but now they were talking about it at Lex’s school and on the internet, which meant that it was everywhere. She had known that there would be an article or two but had assumed the story would disappear with the news cycle, but it hadn’t. She could drink an ocean of alcohol and it still would not change the facts or alter the truth. There was no way to make it disappear. No way for it to somehow be someone else driving the car, someone else who’d hit a child. There was no way for it to be someone else.
    Why hadn’t she considered the internet? Whispers, rumours, speculation and accusations all found a home on it.
    She understood now that she would never be able to walk through the school gates, or sit in a parent–teacher interview, or watch a school concert, without someone looking at her and judging her. There would be looks in the supermarket and at the petrol station, glances of recognition as people tried to place where they’d seen her face and what they’d heard about her.
    She had been so wrapped up in the loss of Anna, and in her own pain and fear, that she had almost forgotten about the world outside her front door. That first