“Well,” I said, stalling, and gave Daniel a little grin. “It’s always the quiet ones.”
He didn’t move. I thought I saw a flick of something in his eyes, but I couldn’t tell what. My brain seemed to have seized up: I had no idea how Lexie would have got herself out of this one. I had a horrible feeling that she wouldn’t have.
There was a crash inside the house, the French doors banged open and someone erupted onto the patio. Rafe was yelling. “-Always have to make such a huge fucking deal out of everything-”
“My God, that’s rich, coming from you. You were the one who wanted to-”
It was Justin, and he was so furious his voice was shaking. I widened my eyes at Daniel, jumped up and peeped out through the ivy. Rafe was pacing up and down the patio and raking a hand through his hair; Justin was slumped against the wall, biting hard at a nail. They were still fighting, but their voices had dropped a notch and all I could hear was the fast, vicious rhythms. The angle of Justin’s head, chin tucked into his chest, looked like he might be crying.
“Shit,” I said, glancing back over my shoulder at Daniel. He was still on the bench. His face blurred into the patterns of leaf shadow; I couldn’t see his expression. “I think they broke something inside. And Rafe looks like he might hit Justin. Maybe we should…?”
He stood up, slowly. The black and white of him seemed to fill the alcove, tall and sharp and strange. “Yes,” he said. “We probably should.”
He moved me out of the way with a gentle, impersonal hand on my shoulder, and went out across the lawn. Abby had collapsed on her back in the grass in a whirl of white cotton, one arm flung out. She looked fast asleep.
Daniel knelt on one knee beside her and carefully hooked a lock of hair off her face; then he straightened up again, brushing bits of grass off his trousers, and went to the patio. Rafe yelled, “Jesus Christ!” spun round and stormed inside, slamming the door behind him. Justin was definitely crying now.
None of it made any sense. The whole incomprehensible scene seemed to be moving in slow, tilting circles, the house reeling helplessly, the garden heaving like water. I realized that I wasn’t sober after all, in fact I was spectacularly drunk. I sat down on the bench and put my head between my knees till things stayed still.
I must have gone to sleep, or passed out, I don’t know. I heard shouting, somewhere, but it didn’t seem to have anything to do with me and I let it go by.
A crick in my neck woke me. It took me a long time to work out where I was: curled on the stone seat, with my head tilted back against the wall at an undignified angle. My clothes were clammy and cold and I was shivering.
I unfurled myself, in stages, and stood up. Bad move: my head went into a sickening spin, I had to grab at the ivy to stay vertical. Outside the alcove the garden had turned gray, a still, ghostly, predawn gray, not a leaf moving. For a second I was afraid to step out into it; it looked like a place that shouldn’t be disturbed.
Abby was gone from the lawn. The grass was heavy with dew, soaking my feet and the hems of my jeans. Someone’s socks, possibly mine, were tangled on the patio, but I didn’t have the energy to pick them up. The French doors were swinging open and Rafe was asleep on the sofa, snoring, in a puddle of full ashtrays and empty glasses and scattered cushions and the smell of stale booze. The piano was speckled with shards of broken glass, curving and wicked on the glossy wood and the yellowing keys, and there was a deep fresh gouge on the wall above it: someone had thrown something, a glass or an ashtray, and meant it. I tiptoed upstairs and crawled into bed without bothering to take off my clothes. It was a long time before I could stop shivering and fall asleep.
Unsurprisingly, we all woke up late, with hangovers from hell and a collective foul mood. My head was killing me, even my hair hurt, and my mouth had that walk-of-shame feel, swollen and tender. I pulled a sweater over yesterday’s clothes, checked the mirror for stubble burn-nothing-and dragged myself downstairs.
Abby was in the kitchen, smacking ice cubes into a glass. “Sorry,” I said, in the doorway. “Did I miss breakfast?”
She threw the ice tray back into the freezer and slammed the door. “Nobody’s hungry. I’m having a Bloody Mary. Daniel made coffee; if you want anything else, you can get it yourself.” She brushed past me and went into the sitting room.
I figured if I tried to work out why she was pissed off at me, my head might explode. I poured myself a lot of coffee, buttered a slice of bread-toast felt way too complicated-and took them into the sitting room. Rafe was still unconscious on the sofa, with a cushion pulled over his head. Daniel was sitting on the windowsill, staring out at the garden, with a mug in one hand and a cigarette burning away forgotten in the other. He didn’t look around.
“Can he breathe?” I asked, pointing at Rafe with my chin.
