Two fourteen PM. Joshua, McKenzie and Mew are on the sofas, discussing their favourite movies. Mew is sitting backwards on his sofa, with his feet hanging over the back, and his head down on the ground. Despite how uncomfortable this looks, he has been sitting like that for the past hour.

“I took my two little cousins to the cinema a few weeks ago.” Joshua comments suddenly, and the other pair can see a story coming on. He has that look in his eyes, they sparkle, as if he feels he is about to say something exciting. Mew and McKenzie know by now that this is as likely as Vincent saying anything nice.

“What did you see?”

“Nothing in the end, I got into an argument with the guy at the snacks counter.”

“… About what?”

“Well, my cousins wanted some sweets, so I figured I’d buy them some. They both picked some out and I took them to the counter, and it came to six pounds! I was so shocked by the price. I asked them both to put some back and while they were doing that, I took a bag myself and put one sweet inside, and went to the counter. It was twenty five pence! I took the sweet out and gave him the bag, and he weighed that, and it came to nineteen pence! I was paying nineteen pence for an empty bag.”

Mckenzie sniggers behind her hand, deciding not to join in this conversation, because she is sure if she doe she will say something insulting, and she doesn’t particularly want to get a vote for it.

“I see.” Mew replies, stretching his arms out across the white carpet boredly.

“He started talking about how he didn’t make up the prices and couldn’t do anything about it, so I asked to speak to the manager, and he told me that he wouldn’t know either, that the prices were decided in their head office. Can you believe they didn’t even have the number for them?”

“That’s terrible. What did you do then?” Mew replies, unable to hide the deadpan tone to his voice. Inside, he is screaming.

“I made my cousins put their sweets back and I left and went to trading standards.”

“And what did they say?”

“That they advertised how much their sweets were, and there was nothing they could do about it. But still, it’s the principle.”

“Of course it is.”

“Anyway, I’m never going –“

“THIS IS BIG BROTHER. WOULD MEW COME TO THE DIARY ROOM?”

‘Oh thank fuck,’ is what he is thinking, but he doesn’t say it out loud. It will do no good to have someone disliking him this early on. He jumps to his feet, and practically dances towards the diary room door, mouthing the words, ‘good luck’ to McKenzie, still trapped on the sofa, as he passes.