He’d moved down to London from Manchester after university, having got the job at Green Genie. He was a customer service rep, or a ‘Human Bean’, to give himself his official title. Jack hadn’t really known which was the best bit of London to live in, but he worked in Bermondsey so he started his search near there. Except everywhere around there was so expensive that Jack thought he’d got the numbers wrong at first. He supposed that only people like his CEO, Bryan, who was thirty-six and ran to the office in trainers that looked like real feet, could afford to live anywhere near Bermondsey. Disheartened, Jack had broadened his search to ‘south-east London’ and Alexa and Ellen’s place had come up. He’d swiped through the pictures and the house had looked huge. He’d read the blurb and then sent a message saying that he, too, liked communal movie nights and getting a bit tipsy in the house, but was also tidy and respectful of others and wasn’t the sort of person to throw a mad party on a Wednesday night.

To his delight they’d messaged back and invited him round to view the place and meet them. He’d seen a rival tenant leave the house just as he arrived: a small girl in a beanie hat and a long black coat carrying a large musical instrument on her back (maybe it was a cello?). He’d put his headphones in his rucksack and taken a deep breath before ringing the doorbell. They’d had a nice twenty-minute chat – he’d told them about Green Genie, and his degree (geology), and his friend Johnny who lived down the road in Peckham, and Jack thought it had gone well – they’d both shown him to the door when he left. (Had they done that for the cello girl? He’d been a moment too late to see.) And the next day, Ellen had messaged him to say that if he was still looking for a place, then the room was all his. And so he’d moved in on the Saturday, with his big rucksack full of clothes, a Green Genie tote bag with a few books, and his mum’s hand-me-down saucepan and a kettle. It turned out the house already had a kettle.

He’d been there since September, and it was now April, and they hadn’t actually had a communal movie night, and the girls tended to have their own plans when it came to drinking. But, still, he liked them both and he liked their life together – even if the house didn’t quite feel like his just yet, and Ellen sometimes ate his cereal. And now they were stuck in an attic.