Eric had four housemates - which was too many - and when he got back to his house they were all waiting for him. His nausea had passed but all the same when he pushed the door open and saw those four pairs of eyes turn towards him in the front-bedroom-turned-sitting-room of their large, dilapidated two-storey Fitzroy terrace house, he didn't feel good.

"What's this, a house meeting?" he joked.

"Yeah" Suri, the senior housemate, said. "Sit down, Eric."

Suri had been in the house longer than anyone else and most of the things that happened in the house happened because she suggested it, requested it, or demanded it. Eric had got along okay with her when he'd first moved into the house but he'd quickly decided that in another life she'd be a petty tyrant and he'd soured towards her. Now there was a hostility between them which was barely suppressed and for which they were both equally at fault, although both blamed the other wholly.

"How was Queensland?" one of Eric's other housemates, Rob, asked. Rob was a quiet young man with thick glasses and a scruffy beard. In his head he imagined himself as the peacekeeper of the house, but in reality the only peace he kept was his own.

"Queensland was good" Eric replied warily. "What's this about?"

"It's about Queensland" Suri said. "Partly. And about you. It's about you and Queensland."

Eric slumped into the only available chair in the room. He noticed that in the chair he was the only person by himself: the others were crowded onto the room's two sofas. "Are you a jury of my peers?" he joked, though he realised that the situation wasn't a joke and in fact the idea of confronting it any way other than straight suddenly made him exhausted.

"It's time you decided where you want to be" Suri said.

"So I guess 'here' isn't an option."

"Not when you're away all the time" Suri said. "Look at the washing-up when you go into the kitchen."

"Is it bad?"

"It's appalling."

"So why didn't any of you guys do it?" Eric asked, but to his dismay he already knew the answer.

"Because last night it was your turn" Suri said. "According to the roster."

"But I wasn't here."

"Which is the whole point."

"Right." Eric nodded. "So I guess you want me to move out, Suri?"