"Why?" asked Daniel. "So I don't smudge the wallpaper, or so I don't stink up the curtains?"

"He's got a point," said Abby.

"What a bunch of wusses," said Lexie. "I think this place is terrifantastic. I feel like one of the Famous Five."

"Five Find a Prehistoric Ruin," Daniel said.

"Five Find the Mold Planet," said Rafe. "Simply spiffing."

"We should have ginger cake and potted meat," Lexie said.

"Together?" asked Rafe.

"And sardines," said Lexie. "What is potted meat?"

"Spam," Abby told her.

"Ew."

Justin went over to the sink, held the lighter close and turned on the taps. One of them sputtered, popped and eventually let out a thin stream of water.

"Mmm," said Abby. "Typhoid tea, anyone?"

"I want to be George," said Lexie. "She was cool."

"I don't care as long as I'm not Anne," Abby said. "She always got stuck doing the washing up, just because she was a girl."

"What's wrong with that?" asked Rafe.

"You can be Timmy the dog," Lexie told him.

The rhythms of their conversation were faster than I had expected, smart and sharp as a jitterbug, and I could see why the rest of the English department thought this lot were up themselves. They had to be impossible to talk to; those tight, polished syncopations didn't leave room for anyone else. Somehow, though, Lexie had managed to slot herself in there, tailored herself or rearranged them inch by inch till she made a place for herself and became part of them, seamless. Whatever this girl's game was, she had been good at it.

A small clear voice at the back of my head said: Just like I'm good at mine.

Miraculously, the screen lit up, more or less, as a forty-watt bulb came on overhead: Abby had found the light switch, in an unlikely corner by a grease-draped cooker. "Well done, Abby," said Lexie, panning.

"I'm not sure," said Abby. "It looks even worse now that I can see it."

She was right. The walls had obviously been papered at some stage, but a greenish mold had staged a coup, creeping in from every corner and almost meeting in the middle. Spectacular Halloween-decoration cobwebs trailed from the ceiling, swaying gently in the draft. The linoleum was grayish and curling, with sinister dark streaks; on the table was a glass vase holding a bunch of very dead flowers, stalks broken and sagging at odd angles. Everything was about three inches thick with dust. Abby looked deeply skeptical; Rafe looked amused, in a horrified kind of way; Daniel looked mildly intrigued; Justin looked like he might throw up.

"You want me to live there?" I said to Frank.

"It doesn't look like that now," he told me, reproachfully. "They've really done a lot with it."

"Have they bulldozed it and started over?"

"It's lovely. You'll love it. Shh."

"Here," Lexie said; the camera jerked and swung wildly, caught cobwebby curtains in a horrible seventies orange swirl. "You mind that. I want to explore."