Tim looked at Ellen. ‘Hey, we could get you on too! You could give your side of all this?’ He cocked an eyebrow.

‘No way,’ Ellen snapped. This day had got worse in ways she had never imagined. ‘I’m going to my room. Or whatever’s left of it.’

She started wading her way back across the kitchen, and squelched down the hall, one of the legs of her tracksuit slipping down her thigh with each wet step.

Ellen pushed the door and stood on the threshold of her bedroom. The curtains were still drawn roughly. She flicked on the light switch beside the door and noticed that the water had reached her room, though only barely. It had seeped through from the damp hallway and formed an uneven oval patch that stretched from her bedroom door towards the middle of the room. Luckily, it hadn’t caught anything important in its path: a beach towel, a copy of a freesheet newspaper dated from September the previous year, a pair of knickers. Her bedroom felt unfamiliar, like she had returned to it after a long time abroad. It certainly had the air of someone who had left in a hurry.

She squelched over the damp patch towards her bed and lay like a starfish for a few minutes before realizing that the creeping chill from her feet was not death’s cold embrace but, in fact, her wet socks. Perhaps death would be more welcome than the Elias tirade that must, surely, be coming. Ellen yanked herself up, wincing as she pulled off one sock and then the other. She balled them and flung the pair towards the damp threshold of the room, then collapsed backwards again. She felt exhausted, her bones aching. It was the hangover, but also the weight of all the different ways she’d fucked up that day. She stared, without seeing, at a patch of peeling plaster in the centre of the ceiling, near the naked bulb hanging from its flex, closing her eyes periodically to bring them back into focus.

Her bedroom door was ajar, and from the front doorstep she could hear Tim twittering and Jack’s indistinct responses. As she stared at the door, willing it to close, she heard footsteps on the stairs to the first floor: Ben and Alexa. She sat up – her stomach muscles protesting – and cocked her head to one side, trying to listen to them over the inane din of Tim and Jack.

‘… text you,’ Ben possibly said, although it could have been something else (‘Bless you’? ‘Atishoo’?).