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time… even more time. That was all he’d ever done – bought time, to buy even more. There’d come a point when the clock would strike twelve and his time would surely be up. His energy and creativity in finding new ways to hold back this march of inevitability and invent new delaying tactics would’ve been much better spent facing his issues and finding happiness. Yet he was simply still too terrified to do so.
    “So, what you wearing to the Hulk’s pompous rubber-fetish shindig?” Ash said, breaking the silence. He turned in his seat and looked theatrically at Amy, pointedly ignoring Tom.
    Ash had learned over the years that the best strategy for day-to-day survival was to move on from conflict as soon as practical. As such, his capacity to bounce back was as admirable as it was galling.
    “Well…” Amy began, delighted that the tension had been punctured and an aura of calm had returned to the room. “I was thinking of a rubber catsuit. What do you think? D’ya reckon it’ll get everyone going?”
    Tom looked up for the first time as he was admitted back into the circle.
    “Hmm,” Ash muttered, surveying Amy. “Not with those hips, no. It’ll look like you’ve left two coat hangers in there.”
    And with that, life had returned to normal.

SIX
     
     
     
     
     
    Amy was in the shower at her house share when her phone started ringing. Every time the call went through to voicemail, the caller rang straight back.
    When the phone entered its fourth consecutive cycle, Amy’s new housemate, a Chinese exchange student called Ah-Lam, worried that the repetition might indicate an emergency, began politely knocking on the shower door.
    Tearing the shower curtain aside and enrobing herself in the wet nylon blanket, Amy’s shampoo-laden head popped free to shout, “WHAT?” at whoever was making the noise. Hearing someone talk, but not making out any discernible words, she turned the shower off, brusquely declaring, “Hold on!” as she did.
    She stepped from the shower and, grabbing a towel loosely around her torso, opened the door to see Ah-Lam looking moderately startled. Amy stood there, a puddle of water gathering at her feet, lather slowly trickling down her head and shoulders, her eyes not entirely devoid of rage. “Ah-Lam,” she said with a degree of hesitation. Her new housemate hadn’t seen her quite like this before and probably wasn’t relishing the terse treatment she was receiving. “What’s wrong?”
    Ah-Lam looked embarrassed. “Your phone,” she said, pointing towards Amy’s bedroom. “It keeps ringing and ringing. I thought it might be important.”
    At that moment, Amy tuned in to her bedroom, only to hear her phone ringing again and again. “Thank you, Ah-Lam,” she offered with as much retrospective grace as she could muster. “That’s very thoughtful of you.”
    She knew exactly who it was. It was her mother – a woman who refused to call the house phone, “As you never know who you’ll end up speaking to.”
    Amy’s mother assumed that anyone who lived in a protracted house share beyond university was on an inevitable path to singledom or lesbianism. She also believed, quite earnestly, that any unanswered call must indicate that her daughter’s undiscovered body lay half-naked, surrounded by blood. Historically, she’d even received a reprimand from the local police for calling them when Amy hadn’t answered her phone within the set amount of rings. In response, she never stopped calling, safe in the knowledge that if her daughter was, indeed, alive, she’d answer or someone would alert her to the increasingly frantic calls – as had happened with a slightly distressed Chinese exchange student.
    Amy was perfectly happy to ignore the phone but, given the imploring eyes of her new housemate, she became conscious that she should answer it. She stomped off to her room, leaving soapy footprints up the hallway.
    “Mother, what do you want?” said Amy as soon as she