Tristan appears with a clean towel, and I hold a ball of wadded-up bloody paper towels towards him. He steps backwards and gags, and Kendra shrieks.

‘Brooke, Mum’s calling. I’m going to put her on speaker,’ Lauren says. ‘And give me the tweezers, I need to get some glass out.’

‘Why is she calling us so late?’ I know why though. She knows Lauren is here and she’s checking in. Mum has a sixth sense about this stuff.

‘Hi Mum!’ Lauren calls. ‘You’re on speaker. Don’t worry, my hand is fine.’

‘Why wouldn’t your hand be fine?’

‘Oh, I thought Brooke must have texted you.’

‘I did not text her,’ I say.

‘Brooke, what’s happened to her hand?’ She sounds disappointed in me, like I’m the friend’s parent who let her daughter get out of control. This annoys me more than anything else about the situation.

‘Nothing, a little cut,’ I say, pulling the tweezers out of Lauren’s hand. She cannot operate on herself while drunk.

‘Hi Michelle,’ Tristan calls out. I glare at him, and shake my head.

‘Who’s that?’ Mum says.

‘No one,’ I say.

‘It’s Tristan,’ Tristan says.

‘Brooke is hanging out with Tristan again, Mum,’ Lauren says, her voice emphasising the words ‘hanging out’ so it sounds like Tristan and I are embroiled in some kind of casual-sex scenario.

‘We’re just friends. Tristan is here with his girlfriend,’ I say, still trying to wipe blood from Lauren’s hand.

‘Hi, I’m Kendra, nice to meet you,’ Kendra calls.

‘Hello, dear,’ Mum says. ‘Is this the Kendra that Tristan left you for, Brooke?’

‘Yes Mum, yep, she’s the one,’ I say, as upbeat as possible.

I look around, desperate to steer the conversation in a new direction.

‘We need to stop the bleeding and then irrigate the wound,’ Henry says, looking up from his phone.

‘Oh my god,’ Mum says. ‘What’s happening? How bad is your hand, Lauren?’

‘Mum, it’s fine,’ I say.

‘Who was that talking about irrigating Lauren’s hand?’ Mum says.

‘It was me. Hi, hello, this is Henry?’ Henry says, looking nervous and waving at the phone for some reason.

‘Mum, I’m hanging up,’ I say.

‘Call me back when you have things under control,’ she says.

‘Everything is under control!’ I yell as I hang up. ‘Okay, let me think,’ I say, looking at Lauren’s hand. I actually have no idea how to tell if a cut is deep enough to need stitches.

The music is still going, and everyone is talking over each other, and Penny and Harper are laughing helplessly about something, and Harper is trying to explain to me what’s so funny while still reassuring me that she’s taking the medical crisis seriously, and Jesse has dropped the first-aid kit on the floor and is trying to pick it all up before he thinks I’ll notice.