Creative Writing: Who Is To Blame

In the back seat of the police car, Mandy sat quiet and still. They drove down Hyde Street, and she thought about Ashleigh’s parents, and Jane, and that they’d now be grieving for their daughter, their sister, who was gone… forever.
The police drove to the hospital through the empty streets. Mandy thought about Ashleigh, in her blue top, all smiles and laughter, Jo and Ashleigh with their arms around each other posing for photographs, and her jealousy; jealous of their youth, of their lives. And now Ashleigh was dead, and it was all Jo’s fault. And if it was Jo’s fault, than it was her fault too. She’d let it happen.
‘She was so alive, a few hours ago,’ she said in an attempt to convince the two police officers, and herself, that it was a mistake. It was impossible, she wanted to yell at them, shake them, make them realise, …show more content…
Like falling in love with Jo, it would, in her memory, seem instantaneous. When Jo was born, Mandy bonded with her immediately. Jo was an easy baby. The nurses said she was lucky. It was only years later when other women friends had their babies, and she’d witnessed first baby blues and anxieties, post-natal depression and colicky babies that refused to sleep that she realised how lucky she’d been. Her love for Jo was unconditional, it rose out of her in waves, and even during the recent difficult adolescent years, even as Jo rejected her, even though she no longer knew what her daughter thought about, dreamed about, even though when she asked questions Jo was rude and distant, she had not doubted her love. It was the one love that would endure anything, survive anything and everything. She’d promised Jo. When David left, when they split up, Mandy said, ‘Your father and I can’t live together, we don’t love each other anymore, but we’ll always love you,’ she’d promised the 3 and 4 and 5-year-old Jo over and over