I can give it back to Vanessa?’
‘What about Lucy?’
‘Then we’ll get her out.’
He leans his hand in and touches Lucy’s shoulder for a second, his face tender. Then he walks into my front yard and tips out the bucket and looks around for the hose, while Vanessa leans against the car and Alex remains sitting on the porch. It’s too dark to see Alex’s face, except for the glow of the zinc that is still all over his cheeks.
Zach comes back with the bucket and hands it to Vanessa, who throws it into the passenger seat of her car. She really is very relaxed about mess.
Zach sticks his head back into the backseat. ‘Now what?’ he asks. He seems to have accepted that Vanessa and I are in charge of the situation.
‘Now we get her inside,’ I say.
Lucy is awake, or sort of awake. I saw her eyes flutter open and then shut again, and I can feel some tension in her body, but she’s pretending to still be asleep as Zach, Vanessa and I manoeuvre her out of the car.
‘We have to carry her,’ I say. Vanessa and I line up to take a leg each, but Zach scoops Lucy up in his arms in one quick movement.
‘You’re okay,’ Zach whispers to her, kissing her forehead, and it feels so intimate that I look away. Zach carries her towards my front door.
Alex stands up, looking alarmed. ‘Is she okay?’ he asks.
‘She’s fine,’ I say.
‘Why are you carrying her?’ Alex says to Zach.
‘She’s tired. And drunk. And a little bit sick.’ I keep answering the questions even though Alex is asking Zach.
I unlock the front door, and Zach goes in first with Lucy, followed by Vanessa. Alex hesitates at the door, glancing at me, waiting until I give him a small nod, then walks through. He’s still holding his water pistol.
Zach has put Lucy down on my bed, and we all stand around her. She looks like a little drunk angel curled on her side, and I think she has properly fallen asleep, because she is making small snoring noises. I pull my doona over her, feeling very motherly.
Zach walks into the lounge room, and Vanessa and Alex follow him, and suddenly I’m hosting a very awkward gathering.
‘Would you like something to drink?’ I say. I’m mostly speaking to Vanessa, since I’m still possibly fighting with both Alex and Zach, but no one answers me anyway. I go into the kitchen and they all follow.
‘I have, um, water?’ I say, staring into our fridge, which has three cartons of expired milk and nothing else, because Mum keeps forgetting that Dad was the one who drank all the milk and we don’t need as much anymore. I can feel all three of them behind me, silently judging the contents of our fridge, so I shut it and usher them back into the lounge room.
‘What about tea? I’ll make everyone a cup of tea,’ I say, because I need to fill the silence and also have something to do. Probably I should kick them all out. I don’t even know how Alex and Zach got here, or what they’re planning to do now.
I know how Zach drinks his tea, and Vanessa requests a green tea. Alex says nothing. I have no idea of his tea preference, and I don’t want to ask him, because I don’t want Vanessa and Zach to know that I don’t know (it feels important somehow, this basic fact about each other—of course we weren’t going to work out if we didn’t even know how to make each other a cup of tea).
So I just bring Alex a cup of white tea in a mug. He says thanks, and sips it, and I suspect he does not like tea at all, but I appreciate he’s also hiding how little we know about each other from the others.
Then I rummage in the cupboards until I find Mum’s emergency chocolate, and I snap the block into little squares. Zach grabs piece after piece. He doesn’t even like fruit and nut. He’s stress-eating.
‘What happened?’ I ask him.
‘Lucy and I went out to a friend’s house—’
‘Which friend?’
‘Braydon.’
‘I hate Braydon,’ I say. Braydon is one of those people who says just to play devil’s advocate when he really means just to be an arsehole.
‘I know.’
‘Why would you take her to Braydon’s when she’s feeling vulnerable?’ I ask. Vanessa raises her eyebrows, and Alex continues to make a show of drinking his tea.
‘In hindsight,