‘He’s fucking deranged,’ Ellen interrupted, forcefully. ‘If he finds out the kitchen is filling with water, he’ll probably drown one of us in there. Add to that the fact we’ve broken the handle off his precious door, and we’re as dead as that mouse …’

Ben stared at her.

‘Dealing with Elias is a conversation I don’t want to have,’ Alexa finished, sounding tired.

There was a tense pause.

‘OK,’ Ben said, finally. ‘Landlord is a psycho. Noted.’ He was clearly making a strenuous effort to be upbeat. ‘Take it you haven’t left a spare set of keys with a neighbour, or something?’

‘We don’t really know any of the neighbours,’ Ellen said, sulkily.

‘I know Mrs Chan,’ Jack said, brightly.

‘My dad has our only spares,’ Alexa remembered, ignoring Jack. ‘He’s out near Wimbledon. Although’ – she looked at Ellen – ‘do you have his new number saved? I only know the office one.’ A pause. ‘He got a new phone recently,’ she added, slightly defensively.

Ellen swiped through her contacts. ‘Don’t even have his old one,’ she said, flatly.

Alexa placed her fingers on her left temple. Her jaw was clenched. ‘OK, could we call your mum and dad? They’re not that far from here, are they?’

‘What – to ask them to drive an hour up to London on a rescue mission to break our door down? They don’t have any keys.’

Not to mention, they wouldn’t do it. Partly, this was because her parents had done the big shop every Saturday morning for twenty-plus years, and would right now be in the car park of a Tesco Megastore, doing their tenth circuit at 6mph waiting for a nana to relinquish her parking space. Nothing would be permitted to interrupt this ritual. Ellen’s mother had even been there on the morning her own mother died. Ellen had accompanied her that day and watched as her hands shook – just a little – when she tried to slot the pound coin into the trolley.

Besides the big shop, there was also the fact that her parents thought that moving to the vivid wilds of south-east London was a radical phase – and the sooner Ellen retreated to the muted security of the suburbs, where they lived, the better. Her father’s more morbid jokes included emailing her links to articles from newspapers with headlines like LOCAL SAMARITAN MUGGED AT KNIFEPOINT BY TEENAGE GANG LORD or FOUR DEAD IN GRISLY PARK MURDER. Somehow, the fact that she’d managed to get stuck in the attic of the three-bed house she lived in would end up being the fault of London. She really didn’t want to give them the ammunition.

‘Plus,’ Ellen observed, glumly, ‘they’re miles away.’

Her brother, Tom, would have done it – begrudgingly – except he now lived in Barcelona. She felt, at a stroke, isolated and terrified.