Harper yells something but it’s too muffled to hear. Is she telling me to get out of the shower, to stop wasting hot water, to hurry up? Have I done something wrong, broken a rule? I don’t even know the house rules yet. Surely not. I’ve only been in the bathroom for five minutes. I feel resentful of her possible bossiness, even though I have spent most of my life banging on bathroom doors and yelling at Lauren to hurry up. But that’s different. That’s sister stuff. That’s justified, because Lauren will spend forty minutes in a shower if you let her, using up every single drop of hot water while she treats her hair with fancy products and exfoliates every inch of her body with a skin scrub she paid way too much money for.

Harper being the default leader of the house is disconcerting for me. Lauren might be my older sister, but I was always the one in charge of things at home. I was my school’s arts captain, co-director of our year-ten play (alongside the drama teacher, so I had equal authority with an adult, an unprecedented situation. I even bought a black beret to wear, which, in hindsight, I will concede was the wrong choice), founder of our school’s Jane Austen book club, secretary of the social-justice committee, leader of our Model UN team. I am very comfortable in leadership roles.

But fine. Harper is in charge here. I’ll settle for being vicecaptain of the house, maybe. I won’t say it to anyone out loud, but I’ll definitely be thinking it in my head.

I crack the door and peer out of the bathroom. I left my dressing-gown in my room by mistake, because I’ve never had to think about covering up as I go from bathroom to bedroom before, and now I have to dash through the house in a too-small towel.

I hurry down the hall, almost running as I get to the kitchen, but I skid to a halt when I see a man and a woman standing there holding boxes, as well as a pre-teen boy sitting on the floor in everyone’s way, playing a Nintendo Switch, and a younger girl wailing, ‘I’m thirsty, Mum!’ and a red-headed toddler holding a Barbie doll that is missing its head.

Harper widens her eyes at me, and I realise she had been knocking to warn me that there were people in the house.

‘This is Brooke,’ Harper says.

They smile and nod and say hello, busying themselves with bags and boxes and crying children, politely averting their eyes from my almost-nakedness. I assume they are new housemate Jeremy’s family. Both of the adults look very familiar: I’ve seen them before, but I can’t place them.