Ellen hesitated while she worked out whether she could be bothered to get offended about Alexa’s tone. She decided she could not. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Wish me luck.’

‘Good luck,’ Alexa said, evenly.

Ben raised his eyebrows.

Ellen grimaced at her friend, then started to pick her way through the muddle and clutter yet again, aiming for the corner where she’d relieved herself last time. She accepted, miserably, that she would almost certainly have to make this pilgrimage a third time, if the neighbour was right about the locksmith taking hours. Navigating a sticky situation between an inscrutable cardboard box and a blue IKEA bag containing three sets of menacing garden secateurs, she reflected that certain of the objects around her were starting to feel like acquaintances. The lawnmower, for example, looked like it was grinning.

The act itself was just as dispiriting on the second go, though at least she didn’t get any wee on her joggers this time. When she returned, Alexa and Ben tried to act like they hadn’t been snogging, while Jack remained at the window. Alexa looked up as she approached.

Ellen jerked her thumb towards Jack. ‘Scared him off, did you?’

Alexa looked scandalized, and then a little shamefaced. ‘Are you alright, Jack?’ she called out, ignoring Ellen. ‘Why don’t you come sit with us for a bit?’

‘Oh, er, I will.’ He sounded very distracted. ‘Just give me a minute.’

Ellen and Alexa exchanged a mystified look.

‘OK,’ Alexa said, after a pause. ‘We’ll be here.’

Ellen gave her a sarky look. ‘Where else would we be?’

10. Jack

He’d felt his phone buzz again while he’d been hovering near the window as the girls spoke to the man across the road, but now that Jack tapped the Twitter notification, it wouldn’t load properly.

Trying not to let the frustration get to him, he hung a little way out of the skylight again, phone in his outstretched arm, and watched the screen carefully. Nothing. He waggled it towards the ground. Nothing. He wondered if there was a way he could balance it in the window frame so that he didn’t have to hold it. But when he tried this, it fell on to the floor beneath the skylight. He bent down to retrieve it.

‘What are you doing over there, Jack?’ Ellen called out.

‘Just dropped my phone,’ he mumbled.

He crouched down and prodded at the screen. Still nothing. Determined not to give up, he crawled forward slightly, into the space between the skylight and the wall, one of the only sections of the whole attic – besides where Ben, Alexa and Ellen were sitting – that wasn’t full of Elias’s old things. He wondered if that would take him closer to the signal.

Still nothing.