Ellen had lived at 49 Rokeby Close for three years now, which, she occasionally noted sadly, meant she’d known Elias longer than her longest relationship had lasted.

The three of them did not know what Elias had done to afford this roomy, if rather shabby, house on a nice road in New Cross, south-east London, not to mention his three other properties in the surrounding area. He had something of the used-car salesman about him – it was the brown slip-on shoes and the shiny grey suits, Alexa had once said authoritatively. Google conjured nothing. Sometimes, Elias would bring his lacquered wife, Cynthia, with him on impromptu house inspections and she would stand, wordlessly, drumming her blue shellacked nails along the kitchen counter. Or sit at the MDF table with the wobbly leg, seemingly not listening as he complained that the grass hadn’t been mown this spring (the grass was a real fixation; Ellen would never have pegged him for a gardener). On one visit, Cynthia put her iPhone on the table. When the screen lit up Ellen noticed that the background was a picture of a man in Speedos emerging from the sea, Bond-style. The man was not Elias. Cynthia never said a word to any of them, but she had once forwarded them all an email from a community group calling for a boycott of a local primary school which had been teaching its pupils about LGBTQ+ relationships. Ellen had shared the email on Instagram (#tfw your landlord is a homophobe??). Alexa had sent a curt response requesting that Cynthia refrain from sending them ‘emails of this nature’ in future, Jack and Ellen sitting beside her and nodding wordlessly while she composed the message. Cynthia had replied a few days later, cc’ing them all, stating that while they lived ‘under her roof’, she would send them whatever emails she wished.

Ellen had woken at 8 a.m. on that April Saturday with the heart-thudding start of a white-wine hangover. For a brief but terrifying moment, her pulse still racing, she barely recognized her own bedroom, until she realized that this was because she had settled – whenever that was – the wrong way around in her bed. Her feet were resting on her pillow and she was, she swiftly ascertained, still wearing her work clothes: a Breton T-shirt under a denim dungaree dress, tights and her left ankle boot. The right one stood smartly in the middle of her bedroom floor, as if waiting to be recommissioned.

Ellen swivelled round so that her head was on the pillow, noting grimly that when she did so her brain felt like it was bouncing off the inside of her skull. Panting slightly, she manoeuvred the left boot off with her right foot, to expose a big toe that waggled from the end of her holey tights. She exhaled deeply as she heard the boot land on the floor, and lay still again.