The room was just off the kitchen, through a door with half a dozen coats bunched across its two pegs. Chloe stepped into the black, leaving Ben to dither in the yellow. She switched on a tall uplighter in the corner, its bulb no brighter than a lit match. The carpet was old and worn. A narrow step of beige tiles affronted the fireplace where an empty crisp packet awaited cremation. There was a coffee table and a couch in the centre of the room. The couch was covered in fleecy throws and blankets in a variety of sombre colours, indiscernible in the dim light. The cushions had slumped and spread over the years.

Chloe sank into its corner and threw up her legs.

‘I love this couch,’ she said, stretching her arms toward the ceiling. ‘It’s comfier than any bed I’ve ever slept in. Just don’t go peering under any of these blankets. It’s probably pure filth.’

Behind the open curtains sagging in folds on the floor, a window faced out towards the cul-de-sac. Its pavement was lined with tall amber streetlights. Distant dots peppered the surrounding estate like candles in dead air. Ben paid them a tired glance before collapsing into the couch’s other corner. The car seat had been discomforting and the kitchen chair Spartan like its kind, but the couch almost made it all better. Like a drowning man at sea, he submerged into its softness, letting the throws rise around him like waves.

‘How are you still awake?’ Chloe asked.

‘Am I?’ he replied, his voice a croaky whisper. ‘I don’t know what I am anymore.’

Chloe heaved herself off the couch. The bones in her feet cracked as she walked across the hard carpet, towards the open curtains. Ben folded both arms over the couch’s backrest.

‘Lovely,’ Chloe whispered, standing before the bird shit that had streaked the window, ‘just lovely.’

‘That’s good luck, you know?’

‘For a lad who doesn’t believe in superstitions,’ she replied, ‘you certainly do keep going on about them.’

Chloe dragged the left curtain into place, its rings swishing across a pole whose screws were coming away from the wall.

‘Would you look at that,’ she said. ‘Any day now, the whole thing is going to collapse. The landlady would want to replace them,’ she added, leaning in to sniff the curtain. ‘Ugh, and these too.’