‘Yeah, I think I made a pretty quick exit at that point.’ She remembered running away, ballet flats flapping, clutching Kate’s arm, the fleet of police cars in the driveway, Amber Outhwaite crying rivers of eyeliner. ‘My parents were horrified. They refused to leave my brother and me alone in the house again until we were in our twenties.’

‘God, that poor girl,’ Alexa whispered.

‘Once, I went to a party and someone ate a goldfish,’ Jack said, solemnly.

They all looked at him.

‘It was in a bowl in the living room,’ Jack explained. ‘And then this guy got really stoned and ate it.’

‘That’s disgusting,’ Ellen said, flatly. ‘Poor goldfish.’

Jack blanched and Ben gamely changed the subject.

‘So, who else do we know in common?’ he wrapped an arm around Alexa’s waist absent-mindedly and she smiled.

He looked mischievous. ‘Who did you go out with?’

Ellen laughed. ‘Oh God, no one really. I spent a lot of time having intense chats with boys on MSN Messenger and worrying I was actually chatting with Sarah Bletchley in disguise. And trying to snog people down the Regal, obviously.’

‘Trust me – Sarah Bletchley wasn’t eloquent enough to trick anyone into thinking she was their boyfriend on MSN,’ Ben snorted. ‘I used to speak to her on there a bit – before she betrayed me with Harry Grahams – and she really didn’t have a lot to say. Atrocious spelling too.’

Ellen was about to launch into her Sarah Bletchley anecdote about the hockey pitch and the suing threat, and how Sarah used to torture this substitute Geography teacher – she’d once made her cry by saying her trousers made her look like a virgin (the ultimate Sarah Bletchley insult) – when Alexa suddenly froze.

‘Wait, is that someone calling your name?’ she asked.

They all held their breath for a second.

Ellen could hear what Alexa had heard: her own name, coming faintly from the street. ‘It must be the neighbour,’ she said, scrambling to a standing position. As she did so, she noticed that the damp patch on her jogging bottoms had finally dried. She walked the few paces to the skylight and stuck her head out of the window to see the man from across the street, who was standing on the pavement outside their house.

‘HI!’ she shouted back. ‘YOU CALLED?’

‘AH, YES – THERE YOU ARE.’ He was holding the toddler again, and shifted him from one hip to the other. ‘JUST WANTED TO SAY I’M BACK.’

‘GREAT!’ Ellen yelled, with a little more enthusiasm than the situation required.

‘SO I’LL LET YOU KNOW WHEN I HEAR ANYTHING FROM THE LOCKSMITH.’

So it was not news of their imminent rescue.

‘GREAT!!’ she repeated, disguising her disappointment. ‘THANKS SO MUCH!!’