She passed Clive in his bed in the kitchen on her way back into the house. He opened one eye, let out a half-snort, half-sigh and went back to sleep. The middle of the house was dominated by two extravagant sweeping staircases that curled from the middle of the ground floor hallway all the way up to the main bedroom on the third floor. They lead nowhere but back to each other on each floor, as though they couldn’t bear to be apart from each other. If you looked up, the house had a semblance of symmetry, but in reality each floor had random corridors that only brought you back to where you started, as though someone had lost interest in planning the layout properly.

The one focal point dominating it all was the huge stained glass window on the back wall of the house between the staircases. This morning it framed the dawn breaking in pinks and oranges, the light cutting the carpet into shards of colour. From the back garden, the window looked like a Picasso painting, with its garish colours and sharp-edged shapes. Her mother had commissioned it back in the 1960s and, although Hugh disliked it immensely, Helen loved it for its irregularity, vibrancy and determination to be noticed.

By the time she had climbed the many stairs to her bedroom on the third floor, she was a little out of puff. Hugh’s alarm ripped through the silence. She knew from habit that it would be the third time it had gone off. Helen always woke on the first alarm, but Hugh never did. It used to annoy her. Now she just accepted it and got up to swim. She heard him snort, fart, roll over and hit snooze one more time. He was becoming more like Clive every day.

Dressing quickly, she was back downstairs by 7 a.m., her first cup of coffee in hand, making breakfast for the masses. She could hear the house awakening, the floorboards moaning above her as bodies roused, pipes complaining loudly as showers were turned on, radio alarms blaring into life. Clive was up and eating loudly from his bowl in the corner, his name tag clattering against the metal as he bolted down his breakfast. The sun was reluctant, still just peeking out, like the teenagers in the house.

As always, Lydia was first to appear, her tie knotted neatly and long blonde hair plaited into a perfect French braid. She barely looked at Helen as she mumbled her thanks for the plate of scrambled eggs on toast that Helen held out to her.