‘So?’ Pete asked, without looking up from the sink. ‘Good date, then?’

‘Well, in a manner of speaking, yes.’

They all waited, expectantly.

‘Date was great,’ Ben continued. He walked to the table and joined Max and Matteo, who offered him a Nik Nak, which he gratefully accepted. ‘Yeah, date was great, and so was the bit afterwards.’ He caught Max’s eye; he was grinning. ‘In fact, it was all great until I accidentally got us all locked in the attic for, like, five hours.’

Matteo started laughing, disbelievingly.

‘Wait – what?’ Pete put the pan down. ‘You pervert.’

‘Not like that,’ Ben said, exasperated. Pete found suggestiveness in everything. He filled them all in on the day’s dramatic events.

As Ben had hoped, they all fell about laughing.

‘The fire brigade?’ Pete asked. ‘Like you’re a cat up a tree.’

‘Yeah, a truck, busted the front door down, smashed the attic door with an axe … the full service. Kind of exciting, if it wasn’t also pretty embarrassing.’

Max laughed.

‘They definitely had better things to do. Imagine a house burned down because they were up there rescuing you!’

‘Thanks, Pete.’ Ben slapped his friend on the shoulder.

‘At least you’re out, eh?’ Matteo picked up the Nik Naks again and burrowed in for the remaining few.

‘Yeah.’ Ben decided he wouldn’t – couldn’t – tell them about ‘rainham_romeo1991’.

‘You going to see her again, then?’ Max asked. He slung his arm around Matteo’s shoulders. ‘The date, I mean.’

‘Alexa,’ Ben supplied.

‘Yeah, Alexa. Are you going to see her again?’

‘I want to.’ Ben shrugged.

‘Nice,’ Matteo said, approvingly.

There was a companionable silence. Pete had returned to scrubbing the saucepan, banging the rim off the inside of the sink.

Ben winced. ‘Right, I need a shower. What are you guys up to for the rest of the day?’

‘Me and Matteo are going to watch the football,’ Max said.

‘Might go for a walk,’ Pete suggested. ‘Up Telegraph Hill.’

‘I could be up for that,’ Ben said. ‘Can we take some beers?’

‘Definitely.’

‘Cool. See you in a bit, then.’

He went back upstairs and straight into the bathroom on the first floor. It had not been cleaned in some time. There were loo roll tubes littering the floor, blobs of toothpaste in the sink, and the corner of the shower was sprouting blooms of black mould. Nostalgically, Ben remembered the cleanliness of Alexa’s bathroom. He turned on the water, climbed into the shower, and – after trial and error – worked out which of the four shampoo bottles on the floor of the shower actually contained any liquid. Once his body was clean, he gave his teeth a good scrub with what he hoped was his own toothbrush, and climbed the stairs to his bedroom. He was still deep in thought.