It had loaded! Jack gasped, in spite of himself, but passed it off as a deep breath. It appeared @SteffyWrites had shared the latest tweet too, adding that she ‘REALLY wanted to be a fly on the wall in that house’. Jack’s ears went pink. It was doing well: 1,356 likes and 323 retweets, which wasn’t bad for under an hour. A few people had quote-tweeted it with a crying laughing emoji, an ‘OMG’, an ‘OMFG’ or a ‘loooooooool’.

@fulhamFC_boi

We need more

@marilynmonroe

Imagine the stand-off tho

@beardyman

Send a pic

@Nedward888

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

‘Hey, look – our friend’s coming out of his house.’ Ellen nudged him, urgently.

He stuffed his phone back in his pocket. She was right. The neighbour was alone, this time, dressed in gym clothes and wheeling a bike. Jack was wondering if he’d look towards the attic, when the man waved up at them.

‘HI, GUYS!’ he shouted.

‘HI!’ Ellen shouted back.

Jack did a wave.

‘STILL HAVEN’T HEARD FROM THE LOCKSMITH, I’M AFRAID.’

‘Fuck,’ Ellen muttered. She shot Jack a dark look, then rearranged her face. ‘OH, NO WORRIES AT ALL,’ she shouted back to the neighbour. ‘WE CAN WAIT.’

Jack frowned at her.

‘GREAT. I’M GOING TO THE GYM BUT HE HAS MY HOME NUMBER SO MY WIFE WILL PICK IT UP.’

‘GREAT!’

He did another wave and then climbed on to his bike. They watched him cycle up the street.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ Ellen muttered. ‘Did he call the most useless locksmith in London? The kitchen is going to be ruined. We’re so screwed on the security deposit.’ Her eyes were glassy. ‘Imagine us explaining this to Elias.’

Jack shared her horror. All day, he had been concentrating very hard on not thinking about Elias. The Twitter thread was now more important than ever, he realized. Surreptitiously, he sneaked another look at his phone.

The first tweet had more than 7,000 likes now – 7,000!

@carmelwafer

whats happening now we need updates

But as he contemplated another response, he realized he’d lost the connection again. He felt a stab of frustration.

‘Right, they’ve had enough time,’ Ellen said, decisively. ‘I’m bored of hanging out of this window. I want to sit down.’

Jack said something non-committal. He wanted to stay by the window with his phone. Still, he could see that Ben and Alexa had their heads quite close together, which seemed like a good sign.

Ellen started to march towards them. ‘Coming?’ she demanded.

‘Um …’ Jack took a step forward, then stopped. Perhaps he could stay here and be sort of half in the conversation. They didn’t really need him, anyway.

As Ellen got closer, Ben and Alexa looked up.

‘Hey,’ Alexa said, warmly.

Ben looked wary.

‘Hi,’ Ellen said, stopping in front of them. She was scrunching her toes up.

‘Hi,’ Jack called, brightly, from the window. That would do it.

‘Any update?’ Alexa asked.