Anyway, Annie was going out with Johnny. But at least Jack got to spend a lot of time with her. He liked how easy it was to talk to her. He found he wasn’t very good at sending messages on Hinge to the other girls. He usually felt stupid and couldn’t think of anything to say beyond, ‘Hi!’ Or sometimes, ‘How was your day?’ He hadn’t gone on any dates yet, and he hadn’t opened the app in weeks.

Still, Ben and Alexa had found each other. And it looked like it was going well. Ben had just placed a kiss on the back of Alexa’s arm. Maybe Jack should start using Hinge again. The last message he’d had was from a girl called Hanna, who liked gin. This, from what Jack could understand, seemed to be an important part of her personality. She worked in food PR, though Jack wasn’t really sure what that meant. They’d exchanged a few messages but it had fallen silent since then. Perhaps he’d send another one.

He took out his phone now, then remembered it was on airplane mode and he wouldn’t have any signal here anyway. Still, it reminded him that he wanted to check if the Twitter thread had any more likes, so he swiped it off airplane mode and stood up.

The others regarded him, lazily.

‘Just want to get some fresh air.’

‘What, again?’ Ellen asked, but he ignored her.

9. Ellen

Ellen watched Jack retreat to the window again, shoulders sloping, and reflected that, although they all coexisted in the same skinny terraced house day after day, she, Alexa and Jack did not often spend long periods of time in each other’s company. This was probably the first morning they’d whiled away together since the day Jack had moved in. She and Alexa had taken him for brunch to say welcome, and they’d talked a lot and he’d dribbled baked beans down his T-shirt. On weekday evenings, they’d often collide in the kitchen in the evening for about twenty minutes but everyone would be cooking separately, jostling elbows and bending over each other’s pots on the hobs in order to stir their own supper. Then there’d be some chatter, but that was mainly her and Alexa talking, while Jack bent low over his soup bowl and slurped. He ate a lot of tinned soup, they’d noted, always served in the same deep white bowl (Ellen was certain that it was, strictly, a salad dish). Jack would balance a slice of white bread on the side, spread with a layer of margarine (never butter), and blow slowly on spoonful after spoonful of soup, slurping each one down noisily.