The other good news was that the WiFi had held strong for a good fifteen minutes now – long enough for Jack to also clock that one of his tweets had been liked by someone from a reality-TV show that Jack had never watched but which he knew his sister Maisie liked. And the reality-TV person had loads of Twitter followers, which might have explained why his own mentions were going so mad. Before the connection dropped again, he saw that hundreds of new people were popping up and retweeting and favouriting and following him. He was up to almost 323 followers now! And Jack had also received a DM from someone at BBC London called Simran.

Simran said he was a senior producer and that his programme would love to send someone round to interview Jack on camera once he was out of the attic. Would that be OK? And could he keep them posted on how he was getting on?

Jack supposed so, although if they sent someone to interview him about the Twitter thread, then the others would definitely know what else he’d been tweeting about in the attic. Still, he figured they probably wouldn’t mind, seeing as he was about to rescue them. He felt another surge of pride. He did wonder whether any of his bosses at Green Genie would have seen the article, or the tweets. The messages didn’t seem very like him. Viral! He really hoped that, at the very least, Deepti and Flora had seen it.

Jack hadn’t replied to Simran yet. It would be pretty exciting to be on the BBC, although he wished he was wearing some socks so no one could see his feet. Still, he was sure they could avoid showing his hairy toes on the television.

It was time, he decided, steeling himself. He was going to tell the others all about the firemen. He’d tell them about the Twitter thread, gloss over the details, and then they’d be out before he had to answer too many awkward questions about exactly what had happened. It was a foolproof plan. Jack stood up a little straighter, pleased with himself, and proceeded towards the group. He couldn’t quite believe it would be him – not Alexa – who saved them from the attic.

‘There you are,’ Ellen said quietly, as he approached.

‘Yes. Here I am.’

Ellen gave him a bit of a weird look.

He sat down and cleared his throat at them in greeting. It seemed a little less hostile over here now. He hoped they’d made up in his absence.

Ben rubbed his eyes. ‘I’m so thirsty.’

‘Me too,’ said Alexa.

‘Me three,’ said Ellen. ‘I don’t know if I mentioned recently but my wee was very orange –’

‘You did,’ Ben said, grimly.

‘Well, I can’t believe none of you have had to go to the loo.’ She added, ‘Also, it is very hot in here.’