Dot (Araminta Hall)

read people and understand what they meant. Life raced at her like a storm, whipping away her ability to see or think straight.
    Yet Dot was now an urgent presence in her life and by the end of that day Alice knew she wouldn’t go back to bed ever again. But she always remembered that she wasn’t to be trusted, that her grip on emotions was tenuous and she mustn’t let her bad judgement rub off on Dot. That the only way her daughter was ever going to be happy was to learn nothing from her, that it was a hard ask, but that she must make her own way. Alice decided she would give her all she needed to be as complete a person as she could be, but that she would step back where judgements and emotions were concerned. I can do this, she thought to herself as she put Dot back into her bed that night, I can shut myself up and dedicate myself to her. The thought ran through her like cold water as she saw her life stretching into the future and she wondered how many mornings and nights there were to get through before Dot wouldn’t need her any more.
    The next morning was bright so Alice decided to take Dot to the swings on the green early, to avoid any of the other mothers she’d recently started nodding to on the street. But of course Ellen was already there with Freddie and by then Dot was excited, pulling her along by the hand so she almost tripped over herself. Ellen was the last person, after Sandra, that Alice would have chosen to see, as the two women lived on the same cul-de-sac, their houses opposite each other. As she got closer she saw the strain on Ellen’s face and wondered with fresh horror if Sandra was spreading news of Gerry’s version of events.
    ‘Have you heard?’ Ellen asked, before Alice even had a chance to lift Dot on to the swing.
    ‘No? What?’
    Ellen put her hand out and touched Alice lightly on the arm. ‘Oh, I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you. Sandra had an accident yesterday.’
    ‘An accident?’ Dot was screeching now and so Alice bent down and lifted her into the bright yellow swing. ‘What sort of accident? Is she OK?’
    ‘She’s alive. In hospital. A few broken bones, but she lost the baby.’
    ‘Oh my God, what happened?’ The weight of responsibility hovered above Alice’s head, ready to crush her.
    ‘I don’t know exactly. I saw a police car pull up after lunch yesterday and then Gerry came rushing round and asked me to look after Mavis. He didn’t say what was going on but I could tell he was beside himself. He came back a few hours later and said Sandra had crashed their car and was in the hospital. I felt so sorry for him: he nearly cried when he told me about the baby dying, Mavis stayed the night in the end. He came to get her early this morning and he looked in a right state – my God, you should have seen him. Can you imagine?’
    Alice didn’t seem able to stop pushing the swing backwards and forwards.
    ‘They’d obviously had a row,’ Ellen was saying. ‘I heard some raised voices coming from their house in the morning. He must feel so awful. Do you know what it was about?’
    The question didn’t seem real. ‘No.’
    ‘Because you all went to the circus on Saturday, didn’t you?’
    ‘Sandra didn’t come actually, she was sick.’
    Alice could feel Ellen staring at her, as if the answers to all her questions might be written on her face. ‘That’s odd. She’s too far gone for morning sickness. Or at least, was. God how terrible.’
    ‘It was just a bug, I think. Do you know which hospital she’s in?’
    ‘Cartertown General.’
    Alice walked back home in a daze. There was no need to put two and two together, what had happened was obvious and rooted in something she’d done, as if she’d gone round and stuck a knife deep into her best friend’s belly. Hadn’t Gerry called her a prick tease? Maybe she’d said the wrong things to Sandra? Maybe she should have pretended it had been her who had made the pass and saved her from the truth? Or maybe there were words that she would never know that could have made her friend feel better, stopped her rushing off into a terrible disaster? She felt so ragged by the time she got home that she immediately went to find her mother and told her everything without being asked, before asking her to watch Dot while she went to visit Sandra.
    Clarice told her to take the car so she drove back along the roads she’d been driven down only the night before last, wondering which bend in the tarmac