It was in the pocket beside Ellen. Trying not to jolt her, he snaked his right arm behind his back in order to reach into his left pocket and remove it. Success – he palmed it into the right pocket. Ellen gave no indication that she was paying any attention to him. Testing this theory, he removed it from his pocket.

She didn’t flinch.

It was Twitter! Tilting the screen away from Ellen, and with one eye on the right-hand corner – the WiFi was there! – he tapped the icon. He felt dizzy. He had 100+ notifications – so many that the app had given up counting. The tweet about Ellen had been liked more than 1,500 times – 1,500! A comedian with 12,000 followers had DM’d him a thumbs-up.

Palms a little clammy – this was so exciting! – he scanned through his mentions to see who was replying. There were now so many people interacting it was a bit hard to see the individual replies.

@witnessthefitnesss

name and shame!!!

@old_vic67

how disgusting!!! hope she clears up after herself young women today … from vic

@SteffyWrites

We need to help these kids. For the good of hygiene

@Juice4U

Get 10% off ALL slimming juices with my CODE SLIM 10

He didn’t really get that last one. But he noticed that a singer in a band he liked, who had more than 70,000 followers, had retweeted him, which might explain why so many people had seen it and liked it. He was screenshotting a few of the best responses when Ellen spoke.

‘What time is it?’ she asked quietly.

He almost jumped. ‘Oh … um …’ He recovered. ‘Eleven twenty-three.’

Ellen moaned. ‘I can’t even bear to imagine what the kitchen looks like right now.’

Jack chewed his lip. He couldn’t really imagine it, but it made him feel unsettled.

He returned to his phone, but the WiFi had already dropped. Still, that had been brilliant! He couldn’t believe that real famous people had seen the thread! Not to mention it was funny! Everyone was saying so, with their own tweets and their likes and their retweets. The journalist woman, Steffy, she loved it. It still felt strange that they all knew about it – and Alexa and Ellen and Ben didn’t, but now didn’t seem like the time to explain to the others.

He tapped the Twitter icon again. His phone was trying valiantly to connect when Ellen shifted her weight forward to lean further out of the skylight, and Jack’s heart leapt into his mouth. He didn’t think she was paying attention to him, but to test the theory, he sniffed loudly. Ellen continued to stare across the vista of rooftops and satellite dishes and chimney stacks into the middle distance beyond. Ben was still sitting with his back to the window, broad shoulders sloping.