‘Yes, thank you.’ Jack dropped his straight into his jeans pocket.

‘I decided there was no point bringing up the security deposit.’ Ellen shrugged. ‘Leave that misery for another day.’

‘I’ll get my dad on it,’ Alexa sighed. ‘Most of those “ground rules” he was offering up were clearly illegal.’

‘He won’t really come round once a week, will he?’ Jack glanced down the road, as if expecting Elias to reappear.

Ellen moaned.

Alexa smiled. ‘He can’t. He doesn’t have a key.’

Ellen clamped a hand over her mouth, eyes wide.

Jack felt simultaneously terrified and dizzy with excitement, which wasn’t a bad feeling.

‘He doesn’t have a key,’ Ellen repeated, from behind her palms. ‘Because we changed the locks.’ She breathed out. ‘We’re geniuses.’

‘So, I say we all agree not to let him in the first few times.’ Alexa sounded pleased with herself. ‘He’ll soon get bored of weekly house inspections, anyway. And by that time, maybe I can get my dad to write another strongly worded email.’

‘I love Marcus,’ Ellen said, with feeling.

‘He has his uses. Right.’ Alexa jangled her keys. ‘Shall we go inside?’

Jack swung his backpack on to his back. He couldn’t wait to see his bedroom, which wasn’t a sofa at Maisie’s, and where he would not be woken by Trixie standing on his face.

Alexa was struggling a little with the stiff, unfamiliar key.

‘You have to wiggle it a bit,’ Ellen said, authoritatively.

Alexa stepped back. ‘You do it.’

Ellen unlocked the door with a flourish and stepped into the hall. Everything looked the same, as though there had never been a flood in the first place, though it smelled a little funny, like shoe polish and air freshener.

Jack wrinkled his nose.

‘Much better,’ Alexa said, with feeling.

Ellen stepped over the post on the mat, and headed straight to her room.

Picking up the post, Alexa announced, ‘Ben’s coming over in twenty minutes. I think we’re going to sit in the garden.’

‘I’d be up for that,’ Ellen called from her bedroom.

The door was open and Jack could see her lying on her bed, holding her phone with two hands above her head.

‘Jack?’ Alexa asked warmly, putting the post on the small table in the hall.

‘Sounds good.’ He tried not to seem too thrilled to have been included.

After he’d poured the contents of his bag on to his bedroom floor, Jack decided that was more than enough unpacking for the afternoon. He lay back on his bed for a while, relishing the presence of a real mattress, and feeling immensely comforted by the sounds of Rokeby Close: the odd creaking floorboard and ticking pipe, and Alexa and Ellen’s voices calling out to one another from the ground floor. He closed his eyes for a minute or so.