So I try it again. When it gets stuck a second time I notice something else, and don't need the twins to point it out: whilst this is the right house and the right key, it isn't the right lock. It's the same colour and the same make as the one we used to have, but it's slightly smaller than the old one. I can see an indented ring around the edge of the new one where the old one used to be. The rational dude suggests that there was a break-in over the holiday and the landlord had to change the locks. The irrational dude has meanwhile buggered off.

Having been driving this morning for the last two hours straight I'm still thinking in terms of three point turns and indicator lights and this is just too strange to contemplate right now. I unzip my coat and take out my phone, Alex handily being the first name on my list. I press the call button and wait for him to answer. It takes a while.

"Ben?" he says. He sounds high.

"Uh, hi, Alex. Look, have you heard anything from the landlord?"

"No. Should I have?"

"Well, it looks like they've changed the locks."

"Oh, yeah, he has."

"Huh?"

"You're back early..."

"Back early?"

"Yeah."

"Alex... where are you?"

"I'm at the house."

"You're at the house?"

"Yes," he says slowly.

"Then open the door. I'm outside."

I cancel the call, not wanting to waste anymore credits on talking to someone who, as it turns out, can't be more than thirty feet away. As I wait for Alex to come and open the door, the irrational dude returns with a burger and tells me that Alex had the locks changed to keep me out of the house. His more rational counterpart is sticking with the burglary theory.

After a minute, though, Alex still hasn't opened the door and I can't hear him coming to open it either. I push the bell a couple of times and press my ear against the door. I can definitely hear him at the top of the stairs, and as I press the doorbell a third time I hear him come down. After another minute, however, I'm still standing on the doorstep and it's started to rain again.

"Come on, Alex," I call through the letterbox.

The next sound I hear should be the sound of Alex turning the latch on the front door. The next sound I actually hear, however, is Alex turning the handle on the back door. I look down the side passage, just in case I'm mistaken and what I actually heard was one of the neighbours. I'm not. It wasn't.

I head along the side of the house, stepping quickly through the rainwater streaming down from the cracked guttering. My rational little friend can't help but agree with his more irrational twin in wondering why the landlord could find the time and money to change the locks but still hasn't done anything about the gutters.

I come round the back of the house, into our tiny pebble-dashed excuse for a garden expecting Alex to be at the back door, naked except for a towel or something. Instead I find the door still shut and, when I turn the handle, locked again. What's more, there's a cardboard box on the back step that once held seventy-two cartons of thick 'n' creamy fromage frais but now contains crockery. The cardboard is only lightly speckled with rain so I'm guessing Alex only opened the door to put it out.

I bang my palm on the door a couple of times and call out to him again, but it's a fragile door and I don't dare hit it too hard unless I shatter the frosted glass. I pick up the cardboard box, quickly realising that all the crockery in it is my own. Those are my plates, my bowls, that is my wooden spoon, and this is my teflon-coated non-stick saucepan and frying pan twin-set. He's even tied my cutlery together with a rubber band and put them in the box too.

As I'm rooting around, I finally hear the front door opening and run back through the passage to give Alex a mouthful. Except, of course, by the time I get there, the door's already shut again and he's left another box on the front step. I press and hold my finger against the doorbell for a good few seconds, but I know before I do it that I'm probably wasting my time.

This box, I find, contains my posters. For a while I can't actually believe he's gone into my room, taken all the posters off my wall and carefully folded them up. But they're all there. He's even peeled the white tack off the corners and rolled it into a ball, which is sitting in the box on top of the posters.

I put the first box down and take out my phone, standing beneath the overhang of the roof to keep out of the rain as much as possible. I find Alex's number and press the call button again. He takes even longer to answer this time.

"Alex, what the fuck are you doing?"

"I can't really explain it, Ben," he says.

"Is that because you're stoned, or because you just don't want to?"

"A bit of both, I suppose."

"Look, it's pissing down out here, are you gonna let me in or what?"

"No," he says. "Sorry."

"What? Why not?"

"I was gonna call. You're back early."

"So? This isn't just your house, you know."

"Well, actually, Ben, it is."

"Oh, what? Like you're evicting me now?"

"I only decided in the last couple of days."

"Oh my god, you're being serious, aren't you?"

"Yeah. Sorry, mate."

"Alex, you know you can't do this."

"The landlord knows. You're not paying rent anymore."

"Alex, look, this is crazy. Just let me in."

"Maybe I just need some space, you know?"

"I think you and me need to talk about some stuff."

"No. If I let you in, I'll never get rid of you."

"Get rid of me?! I live with you, Alex. We're flatmates!"

"Look, it's not personal. Maybe I don't want to live with anyone anymore."

"Oh, right, and how long can you afford that for?"

"Lee's gone," he says bitterly. "Andy's not coming back. How long could you afford it if it was just the two of us anyway?"

"Look, where am I supposed to go, huh?"

"I dunno. Look, my battery's almost dead. Is that all your stuff?"

The irrational dude finishes his burger whilst sitting on my clavicle and swinging his legs. He chides me for taking so much home with me over Christmas. If only I'd left more than a few essentials I could get my foot back through the door. The rational dude on my right is more worried about me leaving Alex alone, however.

"Look, Alex," I say quietly. "When you do need to talk..."

"Yeah, yeah. Oh, there we go. Battery's dead. Bye."

He cuts me off. I stand with the phone to my ear for a few seconds, hoping he might want to talk right now and call me back on the landline. He doesn't. I pick up a box in each hand and return to the car. The back seat's packed with stuff I took home and never looked at once all Christmas. I throw the boxes in on top of them.

I sit in the driver's seat for a while, watching the rain falling heavier and heavier on the windscreen. The twins have a minor scuffle, then switch shoulders. It's starting to get dark now and I have nowhere to sleep, so I shake the rainwater off my phone and find Andy's number. It's the first one after Alex's.

NOTES:
Benjamin was a character who also lived in the same house as Alex, Andy and dead dude, Lee. He was the flattest character of the lot and I didn't know where to go with him, until I sat down, started writing, and these rational/irrational twins just popped up on the screen. I didn't want to portray him as schizophrenic, which it may have come across as, more chronically, disassociatively indecisive. He was a McGuffin character really - he didn't have anything to do, but things tended to revolve around him.

The dialogue in this scene took ages to get down as I wished and even now I can see definite areas for improvement. The problem with convoluted plots is the first thing that always suffers is the dialogue. It's about representing unusual behaviour and conveying even more unusual exposition.

The house in this chapter was definitely based around our house in Norwich, complete with leaking gutters and a side passage. We don't have a doorbell, though.