He was desperate to know how many replies he’d received to his tweet; it felt like being instructed not to blink. It was all he could think about. Especially since he’d just had a new idea. He’d tapped it out on his Notes app while Ellen was in the corner again.

Housemate is having to go to the toilet in a box #newcross #stuckintheattic

Crouching over his phone, Jack read and reread it. He liked it. It was definitely funnier than the first messages. He wondered if Ellen would mind him sharing it, but no one would know it was her, he reasoned. And she hadn’t seemed to mind too much when Alexa had made fun of her. Plus, perhaps more people would want to help them if they found out that their only toilet was a box. It did make their situation sound rather desperate. Of course, now they had the neighbour who had called the locksmith – but Jack thought they should probably have a backup plan. Maybe the locksmith would forget and wouldn’t come, after all. Plus, he had felt that exhilarating rush when he’d realized that all these strangers he’d never met, and probably would never meet, were reading his tweets. He wanted to feel it again.

He was thinking about this – about all the people in the world who’d seen his tweet – when the WiFi reappeared. He jumped to his feet and banged the back of his head on the base of the skylight.

‘Ow,’ he moaned.

‘Oh, Jack,’ he heard Alexa say as Ben made to get up.

As he was rubbing the back of his head, his phone buzzed again. ‘Oh no, no, I’m fine, don’t come over,’ he said, quickly.

Ben stopped in his tracks, uncertainly. Jack tried his best to look totally fine, despite the throb in his skull. It did the trick: Ben backed away and sat back down again.

‘I’ll be back over in a second,’ Jack added, more casually this time. ‘Just want to make the most of the sunshine.’ He could feel them all staring at him, so he turned round again.