The Bridge Page 12

  ‘But you hope we won’t be. You hope you can drop me, hang out with Kevin, and meet new, more interesting people.’

  ‘What’s with you two tonight?’ Mani asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Jo said. ‘Not a fucking thing. Not us. Haven’t you heard? We’re like sisters.’

  Beyonce’s ‘Single Ladies’ came on and Jo turned the volume up. Mani and Laura started singing.

  ‘This is our song, Jo. Ash and Laura are taken,’ Mani called out.

  Jo snatched a look at them in the rearview mirror and tears slipped down her face — slow steady drops, falling silently. As they turned the corner, the West Gate Bridge came into view. Almost home, almost there. She wished the car was empty. She wished she had magic powers that could make them all vanish.

  ‘Please slow down,’ Ash said.

  Jo’s heart throbbed; her hands shook. She was hot and agitated. She was sweating. As she rolled down the windows, the wind rushed in cool and loud, and Mani raised her voice, singing her own lyrics along with Beyoncé: ‘Cause if Rob likes it then he’ll have to put a ring on it. If Rob likes it he should put cuffs on it!’

  Mani and Laura were singing and waving and swinging their arms in the air. The whole car was shaking. Jo was drunk, she knew it now. She couldn’t steady herself, she was shivering, her hands were shaking. She should stop the car, but the car was accelerating and she was singing too, and swaying from side to side. She had to keep pace with the beat; she had to go faster, faster, faster.

  ‘Jo, slow down!’ Ash yelled over the music and reached for the volume.

  ‘Fuck off,’ Jo yelled back, smacking Ash’s hand away. ‘Leave it on.’

  Ash withdrew. Mani and Laura stopped singing.

  ‘What the fuck is going on?’

  Don’t say anything. Get home. Just drop them off and go home.

  You don’t fucking give a shit about me. You wrote about all those other people and nothing about me. You can’t wait until you don’t have to see me again. You’re a user. You’ve used me and now you don’t want to …

  ‘Slow down. Jo, please.’ Ash was pleading now. ‘What’s with you? Slow down and talk to me.’

  This time Ash managed to switch the radio off. The silence in the car hit Jo like a slap. Jo switched it back on, but instead of music, it was a couple of radio jocks talking. Their voices were irritating, their laughter garish. Jo gripped the steering wheel tighter to stop the trembling. Her body was all pulse and beat, her mouth parched and bitter. The dark night was a stream of speeding lights: lights coming towards her, lights chasing her, lights on the bridge, white and yellow lights shooting back and forwards, lights turning the river into sheets of coloured glass.

  They were under the bridge now, and its long concrete tail towered over them.

  Focus on the road. Focus on the road.

  When the steering wheel slid out of her hand, she tried to grip it again, but it was too late to stop the car slipping across the roadway. ‘Don’t put your foot on the brake’ — Jo remembered someone saying that, but not who had said it. The car spun as if they were on a ride at the show, at Luna Park, lights and screams and the car soaring and not stopping. Jo begging it to stop. Stop, please stop. And lifting her foot and smashing it down hard on the brake, and the car skidding, and skating and swerving, and finally her hands finding the steering wheel, the resistance of it, and screeching and groaning and more screaming. And the car airborne, and the barricade, a giant eagle, wings open, flying towards them. Arms up, eyes closed, the bellowing crash of metal against metal, thunderous and explosive.

  Chapter 7

  ‘Wake up, wake up. Wake up … Can you open your eyes?’

  A hissing and ringing, constant and low-pitched, muffled everything else.

  ‘Open your eyes?’ The woman’s voice was cracked and fragmented; a series of echoes. There was banging, and sirens and alarms and shouting. Jo wanted to cup her ears, but her arms wouldn’t move.

  ‘You’ve been in an accident … an accident. You blacked out. Open your eyes. Open your eyes … We need to get you out of here.’

  Clamped tight, her eyes refused to open.

  ‘Let go of the steering wheel.’ The woman’s hands were cold as she gripped Jo’s hands one at a time and pulled them off the steering wheel and onto her lap.

  ‘Can you tell me your name?’ There was a pause. ‘I’m going to open the door now and take your seatbelt off.’ Her voice was harsh and impatient. It reminded Jo of Mr Marsh’s voice, of being told off for homework not done properly, of being the source of frustration, of irritation, of having done something wrong and sitting still and quiet and waiting to be punished. The woman yanked at the door until it gave way with a creak and a groan. There was a gush of cold air and the woman’s arm reached across Jo’s chest to unbuckle the seatbelt. With its release, her body slumped. There was a sharp ache across her belly. She winced and doubled over with the pain.

  ‘Your name’s Jo, is that right? My name is Teresa. I’m a paramedic. I’m here to help you. Jo, you have to open your eyes.’ She put the emphasis on ‘have to’.

  Paramedic. Mrs Chang said, ‘You have a level head, you’d make a good paramedic.’ But Jo didn’t have a level head. She didn’t want to drive around the city to collect the dead and dying. The dead and dying … she remembered Ash and Mani and Laura.

  ‘I don’t want to see,’ she muttered. The buzzing in her ears was a roar now, as if she were on the tarmac at the airport, as if she’d fallen into an enormous jet engine. And beyond the buzzing, far off in the distance, there were many voices. People shouting. Someone sobbing.

  ‘Where are my friends?’

  ‘We need to get you out of the car.’ Teresa again. ‘Are you hurt? Can you move your arms?’ Teresa’s fingers on her pulse, her hands on Jo’s forehead.

  ‘Get up — come on, Jo.’ Hooking her arm around Jo’s shoulder, Teresa eased her out of the car. The pain across her abdomen intensified. Her hands throbbed; she struggled to open and close them.

  ‘Open your eyes.’

  Jo finally opened her eyes. Laura and Mani were sitting on the ground. A male paramedic was putting a bandage on Laura’s hand. Huddled together wrapped under the same blue blanket, they were both crying. Mani’s head was resting on Laura’s shoulder. Friends forever. Jo turned back to look at the car. The front seat was empty.

  ‘Where is Ash?’ Jo asked. Teresa wore a yellow safety jacket over her blue uniform. Her lips were pursed tight and she avoided Jo’s eyes. She pointed to Laura and Mani. When Jo looked over at them, they turned away.

  ‘No.’ Jo shook her head. ‘Ash was in the front seat.’

  ‘Come on, keep walking.’

  Walking hurt. She resisted. ‘Where are we going?’ She was blinded by bright lights in the darkness, and disorientated by voices, so many voices.

  ‘To the hospital.’

  ‘Is Ash there?’

  ‘Come on.’

  Jo tried to pull away from Teresa and stumbled. A man came and took her other arm, and together he and Teresa steered her towards the ambulance. Around them there was so much movement. Flashing lights. Sirens. Horns. Cars and trucks zooming past.

  ‘What happened? I don’t know what happened.’

  Teresa shook her head. ‘You had an accident.’

  ‘Where is Ash?’ Jo asked again.

  ‘We’re going to take you to the hospital. The police will call your parents. They’ll have to do a blood alcohol test. Do you understand?’

  ‘No,’ Jo repeated. ‘Please no.’

  ‘It’s the law,’ the paramedic said.

  Jo pried herself free again. She needed to see Ash. Teresa let out a long sigh. She grabbed Jo’s arm, leading her into the back of the ambulance and onto the stretcher.

  Once she was lying down, Jo shut her eyes again. As they began moving, she felt na
useous. When she was young she had suffered from motion sickness, especially if she was in the back seat. If Pop Jack was driving, he’d stop so she could walk around. Usually the nausea subsided quickly; she rarely vomited. Lying on the stretcher in the ambulance, she concentrated on not vomiting, on not thinking, on not thinking about Ash, but it didn’t work. Bitter and putrid bile spewed out of her mouth and into the bucket that Teresa held under her chin. By the time they arrived at the hospital, she was shaking and cold.

  ‘When can I see Ash?’

  No one answered. She knew the worst was to come. She refused to let herself speculate, but already she knew she would be better off dead.

  Chapter 8

  Mandy had watched Jo and Ash walk to the car. They were grown women, and it wasn’t any longer her job to worry about them, but she hadn’t moved until the car disappeared around the corner and out of sight. She poured herself the remaining champagne and watched an old movie — You’ve Got Mail — and went to bed. She fell asleep and into a dream in which she was alone on the beach at sunset.

  The white foam of the breaking waves was luminous, the horizon a flaming orange and pink. Strolling along the water’s edge, carrying her shoes in her hands, the lukewarm water lapping up against her legs, Mandy gazed at the long stretch of beach ahead. There was a light breeze, but she was warm and content.

  Without warning, the wind changed direction and the temperature dropped. She heard footsteps: the shuffle of thongs across the sand. But behind her the beach was deserted. Was someone lurking in the shadows? As she quickened her pace, an alarm, shrilling and insistent, rang once and then again and again, bellowing across the dunes. Was it an emergency warning? Should she be running? Where was everyone? She ran towards the road, her feet sinking into the soft sand. The moon slipped behind clouds, into the darkness. The alarm grew louder. She was exhausted, breathless, her heart beating faster, panic rising … She was awake. Hot, disorientated. She kicked the doona off. The alarm was still ringing. It was the doorbell. 3.04 am. Who rang the doorbell in the middle of the night?

  ‘I thought it was you,’ she said later to Jo. ‘I thought you’d locked yourself out, left your keys behind, or came back too drunk to open the door. I was angry. I wanted to stay in bed. I didn’t want to get up.’

  The doorbell rang again. And again. There was a pause — only a few seconds, but long enough for Mandy to drop her head back on the pillow.

  It rang again and she stumbled out of bed and down the hallway to the door, calling out, ‘Is that you, Jo?’

  ‘Mrs Neilson, it’s the police.’

  Mandy closed her eyes. This is a dream, just a dream. You can wake up now. It’s just a dream; turn around and go back to bed.

  Years earlier, during a spate of particularly disturbing nightmares, Mandy had read an article by a dream therapist who believed the dreamer could alter the shape and direction of their dreams — he suggested it was possible for a person to will themselves out of bad dreams and nightmares. Adopting the therapist’s techniques helped her to sleep and to control the dreams she’d begun having after she and David separated. In those dreams, she constantly lost Jo. She lost Jo while they were doing their shopping in the crowded Little Saigon shopping centre, surrounded by the cackle of voices, of vendors calling out their specials, of men and women talking in foreign languages, of long rows of fruit and vegetables, of counters piled high with meat and fish, of wet and slippery floors. She lost Jo in the middle of a crammed street as they waited for the Moomba parade, amid families and picnic baskets and toddlers chasing balloons. She lost Jo in the stands at the football; she lost Jo in a crowded school ground; in the playground at the park. She lost Jo in places she and Jo had never been, were unlikely to ever go — midtown New York, with its flashing neon lights; in a rush of tourists on the Great Wall of China; in giant mazes; at overcrowded heavy-rock concerts. But the most frightening of all the dreams began with an explosion at the Mobil Oil terminal, and huge, monstrous flames flying across the road and threatening the house. In that dream, the police came to the door, knocking and yelling at them to evacuate, evacuate now, but Jo was missing and Mandy ran in circles around the house trying to find her … In those dreams, the terror of losing Jo was so real that Mandy woke up shaking and shivering, unable to go back to sleep. On those nights, she pulled a chair up close to Jo’s bed and watched her daughter sleep. When Mandy read the article about dream therapy in a magazine in the doctor’s surgery, she tore out the pages — she hadn’t done that before. She hated it when people tore things out of other people’s magazines. She took the article home and read and re-read it. Over a couple of months, she taught herself the art of altering her dreams. The moment in the dream when Jo’s hand slipped out of hers, she wished the crowd away, or she called Jo’s name and Jo materialised.

  While the police stood on the other side of the door, Mandy willed the dream to change. Go back to bed and everything will be fine. Stop the bell. Make them go away. Go back to bed, it’s a dream.

  But the doorbell rang again and she knew she was awake.

  ‘Mrs Neilson, please open the door.’

  Mandy resisted. She didn’t want to open the door, she didn’t want to hear what they had to say. She didn’t know if Jo was in bed. The bedroom door was closed. She couldn’t remember if it was closed when Jo and Ash left. She hadn’t heard Jo come in, but it was late. Surely she was in bed.

  ‘Mrs Neilson? Please open the door.’ They rang the bell again and knocked on the wooden frame.

  ‘I’m coming,’ she said, slowly unlocking and opening the door. On the step there were two police officers, a woman and a man. Behind them, the ghoulish oil tanks glowed under the security lights.

  ‘Are you Mrs Neilson?’ the woman asked.

  ‘Yes. Is it Jo?’ she said, holding her breath.

  ‘Jo’s fine, Mrs Neilson. Jo’s been in an accident. She’s in hospital, but she’s not hurt.’

  Mandy’s hands were shaking. She began to breathe again.

  ‘I’m Constable Lumina and this is Constable Peters.’

  ‘What about Jo’s friends, Ashleigh and Mani and Laura? Jo left with her friend Ashleigh and she was going to drive them home later.’

  Constable Lumina was a girl, not much older than Jo. The uniform — the heavy boots, the thick black belt, and the gun — were meant to bestow her with authority, but standing at the door, she looked like a teenager in fancy dress. Too young to be on Mandy’s doorstep at 3.00 am. Hesitating, avoiding Mandy’s eyes, she let Mandy’s question hang in the air between them. Mandy heard the distant rumble of the traffic on the bridge. She breathed in the smell of the petroleum and the sea and Constable Lumina’s floral perfume that reminded her of her mother, of being a little girl, of the years of watching her mother deteriorate, of the constant presence of fear.

  ‘Can we come in?’ Constable Peters asked. He was older than Constable Lumina, but not by much — in his mid-twenties, perhaps. A solid man. His blue shirt too tight, showing the shape of his muscular arms and chest. Mandy moved aside and the police officers stepped into the hallway.

  ‘Can we sit down?’ Constable Lumina said. But none of them moved.

  ‘What about the other girls? What about Ashleigh?’

  ‘Mani and Laura are fine, but I’m afraid Ashleigh died on impact.’

  ‘No.’ Mandy shook her head. She felt as if she were standing on a thin, unstable ledge and any moment she might fall into a void. ‘But they were here … just hours … they were all dressed up, going to a party, they — couldn’t Ashleigh … couldn’t they help her?’

  ‘It was too late,’ Constable Lumina said, reaching out for Mandy’s arm, but Mandy slid back. Her body felt light and thin in the cold. Her nightie was flimsy, an old cotton garment she should’ve thrown out years ago; it had paint stains and a couple of small holes and it was no shield against the night air. Jo had given Mandy the ni
ghtie on her third Mother’s Day, the year she and David separated. The year she and Jo moved in with her father. Jo and her grandfather had gone on their first shopping trip together, down to Forges in Footscray. Forges was the only place Tom ever shopped, and then only rarely — that’s where he went when he wanted socks and underwear, a new pair of jeans (once every five years), a shirt or a t-shirt. The parcel wrapping was ripped by the time Jo gave it to her, but it was special. The nightie was too big. The nightie was too thin. Mandy wrapped her arms across her body and pulled the nightie tight until it was a twisted knot. She wanted to tell them to go away, to go away and to let her go back to bed. To let this be a dream, a nightmare.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  ‘Your daughter was driving. She’d been drinking. We’re not sure what caused the accident, but the car spun out of control, and they hit an embankment.’

  Mandy wanted to scream. Anger and rage caught in her throat: that girl, that girl. She pushed against the wall behind her to stop herself from falling. She couldn’t look at the police officers. She stared at her bare feet, her small and pale and cold feet. Both officers were wearing heavy walking boots, like the ones her father used to wear when he worked in the foundry.

  ‘You need to go to the hospital.’

  She didn’t want to see Jo. She thought she might never want to see Jo again.

  ‘I can’t … I don’t have a car.’

  ‘We can drive you to the hospital.’

  It was cramped with the three of them standing in the narrow hallway, and Mandy longed for them to go. ‘I’m not dressed.’

  ‘We can wait.’

  But she didn’t move.

  ‘I know it’s difficult, Mrs Neilson, but Jo needs you.’

  She longed to tell them to go away, to fuck off, to leave her alone. What if she didn’t want to see Jo? How could she go and see Jo when Ashleigh was dead? ‘Ashleigh, poor Ashleigh. And her parents — and Jane. Jane is so young.’