The Sunday visitors finished, not a good prospect among them, and Rona and Miranda treated themselves to a stiff drink to recover. When she awoke on Monday mornin, and realised that that evening there were another three visitors scheduled, Rona felt like she could justify a liquid breakfast. It seemed a magnificent effort of will to refrain.

If Gavin the previous evening had seemed opaque in his extreme silence, their first visitor on Monday, Zac, was all to transparent: within minutes of his arrival in the house Miranda and Rona had learned that he was in a long-term relationship (seven years, no less), that his parents were starting to ask him pointedly when he was going to get married, and that his girlfriend would be spending most of her nights at the house, "So I hope the room's big enough for two!" Miranda and Rona also learned that Zac snored, that he liked McDonald's (but couldn't abide Hungry Jack's), and that he wasn't as good as he should be at cleaning up after himself. All this information was conveyed like logs floating in a constant stream of words that flowed from Zac's mouth, and that seemed to be nine parts useless fragments of nothingness to one part useful information. Rona wondered what he'd be like if he ever let his guard down, and then she wondered if he ever put his guard up. They told him they'd call him to let him know: it was as good a lie as any.

The next of the three visitors was a woman, named Harriet. Miranda liked her, but Rona wasn't so sure. Something about her just got Rona's back up. When Miranda was quizzing her about it after Harriet had left, trying to get to the root of the problem, Rona wasn't able to give her a good reason: it was just gut; but if Rona had learned anything from sharehousing, it was that gut counted for a lot. If you didn't like someone after five minutes, you were unlikely to like them after five months.

The third visitor was a slightly different case. Another man: his name was Ellary - named for Edmund Hillary, he explained with what sounded like a practiced routine - and almost as soon as she opened the door Miranda was swooning over him. Rona could see it in the way she placed her hand on his shoulder to explain every point she made, or placed it in the small of his back to guide him from one room to the next, and made sure to show him not only what would be his bedroom if he moved in, but her bedroom as well - and also, in the way she turned to Rona behind his back and mouthed Oh my GOD!, gesturing meaningfully towards him with her eyes.

Surprisingly, it was Miranda who insisted after he'd left that he couldn't move in. Rona didn't feel strongly about it one way or the other, but Miranda said:

"You can't get involved with a housemate. It just doesn't work. It only causes trouble." But she reserved the right to call him at some stage, and hoped that he wouldn't be too disappointed at not being offered the room, or too confused by the fact that the same woman who had turned him down in one respect was making advances in another.

In the meantime, they had to wait for the next round of visitors. Rona's breath, it was safe to say, was not bated.