Eventually, the first one spoke again. ‘So, first of all, which one of you is Jack from Twitter?’ He beamed at them.

They all swung round to stare at Jack. He was a little pink.

Jack did a half-wave. ‘Hullo,’ he said, quietly.

‘Nice to meet you, sir.’ The first fireman waved at Jack. ‘Quite the morning you’ve had then, eh?’ He turned to the others. ‘We’ve been following the whole story, along with the rest of the world.’ He gestured to his colleagues, then added, with a bright smile, ‘Sorry we took a little while – hit some traffic on the A1.’

‘Wait, what?’ Alexa said, more loudly. ‘Jack, what about Twitter?’

‘Jack’s Twitter thread made it sound like you were in quite a lot of trouble,’ said the third fireman, speaking slowly, as though waiting for them to catch up with the joke. He was the stockiest, and possibly the most handsome, of the three. ‘Stuck up here, with a leak – and a bit of a domestic brewing. So we got here as soon as we could.’

‘Jack, what the fuck is going on?’ Ellen asked, slowly turning to look at him.

Alexa frowned. ‘Your phone doesn’t even work up here …’

Jack cleared his throat, and then cleared it again. He was definitely stalling. He said in a small voice, ‘Well, the thing is …’ He paused. ‘I suppose it sort of did work, in the end.’

Alexa let this sink in.

Jack was quick to continue. ‘But it was only WiFi, and it was very patchy. It came and went a lot, and I could only really get it near the window …’ He trailed off, lamely.

She stared at him. His cheeks were blazing and he seemed to have shrunk a few inches.

‘But why didn’t you tell us?’ she asked, disbelievingly. ‘Even if the signal was rubbish, we could have used it to get out of here hours ago.’

This observation hung in the air, before a sticky silence settled, in which they all stared at Jack, who seemed to be registering the enormity of this reality.

Alexa noticed the firemen exchanging worried glances.

‘Well, um, yes, but w-we’re getting out of here now,’ Jack stuttered, finally. ‘Thanks to me.’

Alexa continued to stare at him in astonishment, trying to get her thoughts in order. ‘OK, but what did it even say –’

But at that point, Ellen interrupted. ‘Wait, fuck – sorry, first – downstairs, there was loads of water. Is it OK?’ She glanced at the now open door, fearfully, as if expecting the water to be lapping at the door of the attic. ‘The tap – or the sink, or something – all over the kitchen, there was water everywhere this morning, that’s why we ended up here. We were trying to turn the mains off, but then the door – the handle broke – and now –’ These half-details cascaded from Ellen’s mouth in a rush.