Risk was not going well. It was Jack’s turn, and he was being slow. Partly because he was in a muddle about what to do with his artillery, but mainly because he could tell none of the others were concentrating. He sort of wanted someone to suggest they stop playing now. It couldn’t be him, because he’d wanted to play in the first place. He had hoped it would distract them until they could try yelling out of the window again, though maybe Monopoly would have made everyone feel more cheerful. Jack never won Monopoly, but he always enjoyed looking at the addresses – more so now that he lived in London. He’d been to all the places in the Manchester Monopoly, but he’d only been to a few of the London locations. He’d never even heard of Marylebone, except for in the board game.

‘Do you think the water will just … switch itself off eventually?’ Ellen said, out of nowhere. ‘Maybe there’s a mechanism, or something.’ She sounded tired, her voice a little far away.

Jack noticed she had a mark on her baggy grey T-shirt. It looked a bit like jam: dark and sticky and bitty.

‘Maybe,’ said Alexa, dully, turning to look at Ellen, whose gaze was halfway to catatonic now. ‘I have no idea.’

‘How much water was there?’ Jack asked. He wondered, suddenly stricken, if it was his fault. Surely not. He’d come home from the pub with Johnny fairly early and gone straight up to his room.

‘A lot,’ said Ellen.

Jack made a sympathetic noise. ‘I’m hungry,’ he added, for a second time that morning, examining the dirt under his nails. The game board was very dusty.

‘Me too,’ Ellen agreed, glumly.

‘Was it under the sink?’ Ben asked. Jack noticed that he was clutching his left biceps in his right hand. ‘The tap, I mean. If so, I reckon you were in the right place. That’s where ours is. The plumber had to switch off the water once when our sink backed up.’

‘Yeah, under the sink.’ Alexa sounded rather flat.

‘Wait, so why did you all end up in here?’ Ben asked, still rubbing his biceps. Jack thought Ben sounded like Maisie’s husband, Rich, who would ask questions in a way that implied the people he was asking were very silly.

There was a pause.

Alexa breathed in loudly. ‘Well, Ellen thought at one point that the mains switch might be up here,’ she said, quietly.

Ben screwed up his face. ‘Right.’ Now he really sounded like Rich.

‘I’d tried turning off the water under the sink, but I couldn’t turn the tap, so I came up here to get help,’ Alexa added.