The man gave a half-wave of farewell. She watched him cross the road – always careful – and then walk up the path to his own house. A woman opened the door as he approached and crouched down, arms outstretched. He deposited the toddler on the ground. Ellen watched as the boy ran towards his mother. The family closed the door.

Ellen returned to the fold. They all looked at her with commiseration.

‘He was just letting us know that he’s back from his walk. And that he’ll let us know when he hears from the locksmith.’

‘We heard,’ Alexa said, glumly. ‘I’d hoped he was going to tell us rescue was imminent.’

‘Yeah.’ Ellen shrugged and crossed her legs.

Ben kissed Alexa lightly again, which seemed to cheer her up slightly.

‘I can’t believe the plan actually worked,’ Ellen offered, after a moment of silence. ‘I owe you all an apology.’ She picked at a loose thread on her tracksuit bottoms. She couldn’t wait to have a shower.

‘Let’s not speak too soon,’ Alexa cautioned.

‘Home stretch, guys,’ Ben said, confidently. He drew a circle on Alexa’s thigh with his finger. ‘OK, so. Where were we?’

12. Alexa

Alexa wasn’t put out by Ben and Ellen’s unexpected connection, per se. But it was making her feel a little left out.

‘Did you ever go to Pulse?’ Ellen was asking Ben. ‘It had that bouncer with the serious anger-management issues.’

On cue, a conspiratorial chuckle.

Alexa looked at Jack for some solidarity, but he appeared to be swiping through the photos on his phone. She could hear the pipes hissing from somewhere inside the walls, and wondered again about the water cascading from the sink downstairs. Outside a horn blared in the distance. The wider world felt like an unknown quantity right now – as though almost anything could be happening.

‘Thommo?’ Ben was saying now. ‘Oh, yeah. He’s still there – the sociopathic bastard. In fact, we ended up there at some point last Christmas. It’s as shit as it always was, but they’ve erected this sort of cage in the middle of the dance floor and people can get inside it and dance. Dreadful.’ He shook his head in pantomime disgust.

Disappointingly, Ben had untangled himself from her – blaming cramp – and was now sitting stretched out along the floor, resting on one arm. Still, with the other hand, he was regularly squeezing her thigh.

‘I cannot believe you went back to Pulse that recently,’ Ellen laughed in disbelief. ‘I haven’t been since I was about eighteen.’

‘We actually found it a little bit too bleak in there, last time. It wasn’t worth it for the nostalgia. We finished in the Regal in the end, which is also cheap and nasty, but a little less volatile.’