sliding door to the men’s toilet was locked. She thought about knocking. Out of control, she felt out of control and wanted to shout those three words through the door. She ducked her head round the corner to see if they were visible, and realised Andrew had a clear sightline to where she stood.
When Dot came out of the women’s bathroom Daniel was back in his seat, eating rice with a ceramic spoon. She shifted her mother along and sat next to Andrew, who looked intently at her, then away, with a sharp turn of his head.
‘What?’ she said.
A chair fell on its side. Andrew’s stepmother stood and retched into the potted palm behind the table. She rounded on them, eyes wide, her lips hugely swollen. Hives bloomed from her neck up her cheeks. A terrible noise came from the back of her throat, a hiss like a feral cat, and she pushed the table with the heels of her palms, retching again. ‘Fhihh.’
‘Oh my god,’ said Andrew’s father, scrabbling through his wife’s handbag. ‘Where’s your EpiPen?’ He tipped the bag upside down and spilled the contents over the table – a lipstick rolled off the edge and onto the floor, a receipt floated onto a plate and absorbed the dark liquid of a beef sauce – then he snatched the pen about the size of a vivid marker and popped the lid and yanked up his wife’s skirt and jammed it through the black tights into her leg. A long look at the control-top pants. All of them held still while he counted to ten in one-thousands. The stepmother’s breathing came fast and shallow, but the internal war was calming as the epinephrine moved through her blood. Andrew’s mother offered her a glass of water and she held it with both trembling hands and drank.
The stepmother and Andrew’s father left for the ER and the remaining parents fake-argued about the bill and drove off, stale mints from the duck-egg blue bowl at the till dissolving to granules in their mouths. The restaurant staff stood in their wake holding foil-covered plastic boxes of leftovers, concerned in white jackets.
‘Are you OK?’ Dorothy asked Andrew. ‘I think we better go.’
He slid away from the hand she’d put on his forearm.
Daniel passed the leftovers to Ruth. ‘You should take these home,’ he said.
‘Thanks. Eve? Can you give me a lift?’
Evelyn was the only one with a car. She focused on Daniel’s chest as she asked whether anyone else needed a ride home, a hand twisting the rope of her long blonde plait.
‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘I’m into walking after that.’
Dorothy hugged her sisters goodbye and watched them walk away towards the parking building, their matching light sashay, Eve’s arm suddenly around Ruth’s slim waist and Ruth doing the same thing back, the two of them holding onto each other as they rounded the corner, heads close. This is what happens, Dot told herself. You end up with men. It’s normal.
Michael crossed the road for a soft drink from the all-night service station and the strange girls passing had bare arms and legs and riding-up dresses in the chilly night. Dorothy was saying something, commenting on the short tight dresses, the bare thighs, when without warning Andrew pushed Daniel hard in the chest right there on the street outside the Chinese restaurant. Daniel pushed back. Andrew recovered his balance, lunged and wrapped an ankle around Daniel’s. They went down together and for a moment the two of them lay on the pavement violently hugging. But Andrew extricated himself fast, then cursed and kicked their old friend, this waif and stray, in the side as he began to rise from all fours on the ground.
‘Stop it,’ Dorothy yelled. ‘Just stop,’ and Daniel scrambled up against the wall outside the restaurant, tiled slippery white below spray-blasted concrete.
Michael jogged across the road between oncoming cars and yelled, ‘What the fuck.’
‘What are you doing?’ Dorothy cried, and Andrew said, ‘I know, I fucking saw you,’ and he was shaking and strung out. ‘I saw you, I know,’ and she shouted, ‘Saw what, there’s nothing to see.’
Daniel examined his palm where it was grazed from the rough concrete wall, and licked it.
Michael pushed Andrew’s shoulder and he staggered backwards. A couple of bouncers from the club on the corner approached. Dorothy remembered the time Andrew had sent a random car tyre hurtling down the road; that was how they walked, unexpectedly heavy, not quite in control of their velocity.