Blame by Nicole Trope Page B

night, she had left her car where it was because the police had told her she had no choice.
    ‘You’ll have to come with me to the hospital to be tested for drugs and alcohol,’ the policeman had said. ‘Is there anyone you’d like to call?’
    ‘No,’ Caro had replied because she needed to keep it secret, thought she could keep it secret. The policeman had dropped her home hours later, and she had stumbled into the house to find Lex on the couch, clutching her childhood rag doll, all the lights blazing, and Geoff pacing up and down with the phone in his hand. She had turned off hers while she waited to have the blood tests. She knew her family would be worrying but she needed to sit and think.
    ‘Where have you been? What happened? You look . . . what happened, Caro?’
    ‘An accident,’ she had said to Geoff over and over again, and even as she spoke, she was pulling the bottle of vodkaout of the freezer, filling a glass and drinking it down, trying to distance herself.
    ‘An accident,’ she kept saying. But that wasn’t what everyone else was saying.
    Everyone was talking about it at school. The accident had been on the news but she hadn’t seen it, hadn’t read about it. Geoff had passed on the details. Kindly? Cruelly? She had done very little since Anna screamed, ‘You killed her, you killed my baby!’ at her before Keith pulled her into the car with him. Very little except drink.
    ‘I want to go with her,’ Anna had shouted as Keith grabbed at her. He had arrived home at the same time as the ambulance pulled up outside their house. He always got home at six. He had pulled to a screeching halt behind Caro’s car, the police car and the ambulance, and leapt out, leaving the motor running. Caro had been holding Anna, and she had watched the policeman pull Keith away from the paramedics and talk quickly, urgently, to him.
    It was less than a minute later—less than, more than, Caro had no idea—that suddenly the ambulance doors were closed, and Keith was pulling Anna away and snarling at Caro, ‘Get away from us!’
    ‘I need to be with her, I need to be with her,’ said Anna.
    ‘They need room to move, Anna; just get in the fucking car.’
    ‘I’ll come with you,’ Caro had said.
    ‘Get away from us,’ said Keith. The ambulance started its lights, its sirens and its race to the emergency department.
    Once Caro was home from the hospital, she had felt a creeping paralysis in her body. She couldn’t move, couldn’t think. But what she could do . . . was drink.
    And now everyone was talking about it at school . It shouldn’t matter, it should be the least of her worries, but it did matter.
    Caro had not wanted to continue the discussion with Lex. She had wanted her daughter to leave the room, so that she could pour herself another drink. ‘I can’t . . .’ she had thought, ‘I just can’t.’
    She had summoned the last of her energy, and stood a little straighter so that she could look down at her daughter. ‘Alexa,’ she said, lowering her voice, so Lex had to take a step or two closer to her and had to be quiet herself to hear what Caro was saying, ‘I don’t have to explain anything to you. It was an accident, and you’ll get into the car with me because you have no choice.’
    ‘Dad can take me.’
    ‘Dad has to go to work; now, I’m not talking about this anymore. I’m the mother and I’m in charge! I’m fucking in charge, okay!’
    And then Lex had sworn at her. ‘Fuck off and die. I hate you!’ She had whirled around and run for the living room door, sobbing as she went.
    ‘What’s going on here?’ Geoff had said coming in from the kitchen, where he was cooking dinner. He hadn’t even given Caro time to answer, running after his daughter instead.
    The argument had tipped the balance in Lex’s favour. Her father had driven her to school this morning.
    ‘Mrs Harm . . . Caroline,’ says Susan, and Caro puts any thoughts of Lex away for now and continues with her