This seemed to wind them all for a second.

Jack realized he’d half-closed one of his eyes. When he opened them both properly, Ellen was speaking again.

‘Sorry’ – she made an uncomfortable face – ‘ignore me. Look, what I mean is maybe we could just, not … not talk about it any more.’ She said this last part in a rush. ‘Any of it. The MSN or the girlfriend or any of it. I know it’s my fault for starting it, but I don’t want to do the “he said, she said” any more.’ She sat up a little straighter and locked Ben in her sights.

Alexa was hunched, her arms folded across her chest.

Jack took a small step backwards, towards the window.

‘Right,’ Ben said, eventually, with feeling. ‘I agree. To drop the whole thing, I mean.’ He made a circle with his finger on Alexa’s thigh. ‘Thank you – really.’

‘Not at all,’ Ellen replied, primly. ‘I’m glad we’ve cleared things up.’ She did not sound glad, or as if she believed much had been cleared up.

‘Yes,’ Alexa tried. ‘I’m glad too.’ She also sounded unconvinced.

‘Great!’ Jack called from the window.

Ellen scowled at him. Perhaps that had been a little too loud.

For a minute, the three of them sat wordlessly. Alexa looked like she wanted to say something, but in the end it was Ellen who did, and Jack held his breath.

‘Just promise me you won’t go cold on her again, Ben, and we’ll be OK.’ Ellen sounded a little shrill, but raised an eyebrow cockily. ‘Otherwise, I really will have good reason to hold a grudge.’

A cloud passed across Ben’s face. He removed his arm from around Alexa’s shoulders in order to get a better look at her. ‘Huh?’

Alexa’s eyes were wide. She looked horrified. ‘I mean like when you ditched her by the side of a road. After the theatre.’ Ellen laughed, but stopped abruptly when she caught Alexa’s expression.

‘I didn’t “ditch her by the side of a road”.’ Ben repeated, slowly.

‘Um.’ Ellen bit her lip. ‘Right. No. Of course you didn’t.’ Ben was leaning away from Alexa, who had flushed a deep red. Jack curled his toes and willed Ellen to stop.

She continued. ‘I just mean that after you had that date, you stopped texting her, and so we both thought that maybe you were dicking her around –’

Alexa finally managed to interject. ‘Ellen’s just confused, I think –’ she started, hurriedly.

‘Remember?’ She stared at Ellen hard. ‘Ben didn’t dump me, we went out last night?’

‘Completely,’ Ellen said, solemnly. It sounded like she’d stopped, until she hadn’t. ‘I just meant he’d stopped texting you for a bit, so you were surprised when he texted you last night. Like it wasn’t a planned thing, it was all very last-minute, right?’

‘Ellen?’ Alexa sounded incredulous.