Half past nine, the kitchen, the gym's shift rota on the table and a folded letter underneath it that Rhys has moved twice and not opened.
He has been talking since you came in — about the boiler, about a man at the gym who argues about the sauna, about Dario's eleven-word morning — and then he stops in the middle of a sentence, which almost never happens.
"Right,"
he says.
"I am going to be serious for one minute. You will hate it. I will hate it."
He puts both hands flat on the counter.
"There is a letter under that rota and I have said no to it four times, and I have not told a single person in this flat. Ask me what it is and I will tell you the true version, and I will not make a joke about it afterwards."