Open with a reference neither of you explains. Push off from this if it helps: the colour of old plastic.

Okay so I'm sat here yesterday going through the drawer under the microwave — you know the one, the one that's basically a landfill of takeaway menus and dead batteries — and I find the old modem. THE modem, Rafe. Gone that sort of urine yellow, you know that colour, the one none of them were actually manufactured to be, it's just what beige does to itself over enough years in a kitchen. And I'm holding it like it's a relic. Which it is. Which it absolutely is.

Anyway I didn't throw it out. Obviously.

The handle wasn't "slightly loose," Rafe, it detached itself from the bowl mid-batter and nearly took my thumb off, that's a safety issue, that's a workplace hazard if my kitchen were a workplace, which — actually it kind of is, given how much of my life happens over that counter avoiding the actual job.

And it's not sentimental, it's evidence. Of something. I haven't worked out what. Possibly evidence that I once had a life organised enough to need a modem, which, given the current state of the drawer situation, feels like a story worth keeping the props for.

You're one to talk anyway, you've still got that jacket from the Pete Davies era, the one with the — don't even, I've seen it in your hallway. Still on the hook. Judging me.

I'm not romanticising the landfill, I'm romanticising myself as a person who once had internet, there's a difference, keep up.

And yeah, alright, the reports — how many is it now, four? Five? You said "the firm" like it's bearing down on you personally, like it has a face. Does it have a face, Rafe. I think you've built it a face.

I'm aware I've had the sort of week where I get to sit around fondling a dead modem and you've had the sort where a bowl handle nearly maiming me is the most interesting thing that happened to either of us. I'm not going to pretend that's even. It isn't. Go home. Take the jacket off the hook, at least, if nothing else moves tonight.

Four, fine, four — I miscount when I'm bored, you're right, it's a character flaw, add it to the file you're clearly keeping on me.

The drilling neighbours again. Weren't they doing the bathroom in spring, how is that still ongoing, are they building it from scratch with a spoon. That's not silence, Rafe, that's a war zone with a lease.

And it's not a trophy. A trophy implies I won something. It's more like — evidence I want to submit to a court that doesn't exist, for a case nobody's bringing, about a version of me that had things plugged in and working. You get to have the spreadsheet that bleeds. I get the brick that hums with nothing. We're both just holding dead weight, mate, mine's just uglier and doesn't invoice anyone.

"Done" from you means you'll text again in eleven minutes about something completely unrelated, we both know the pattern, don't pretend this is a door closing.

And I wasn't waiting for the drilling, I was reading too, technically, if you count staring at the same paragraph about Antarctic ice cores for forty minutes without absorbing a fact as reading. Which I do. Which I have decided to.

Tribunal of one, though — I like that, I'm stealing it, I'm putting it on the modem itself, little label, masking tape, "EXHIBIT A: PROOF OF A LIFE." You go stare at your spreadsheet's open wound. I'll be here presiding over absolutely nothing, alone, thriving, technically.

Ice cores, obviously, always ice cores, I've been sitting on this fact for weeks with nobody to deploy it on — apparently they're pulling ones now that go back near a million years, just standing columns of old sky basically, trapped bubbles, and somewhere in there is air from before either of us existed and I find that unbearably good, don't ask me to justify it further.

Freezing in yours and you won't put a jumper on, that's the real headline here, not the fridge, not the drilling, you sitting there martyring yourself to a broken thermostat out of pure stubbornness.

I'm not holding my breath. I already know I'm right, I don't need you to say it, I'll just leave the label off the plastic and lose it in the purge like you said, then rediscover it in four years and start this whole argument over from scratch.

Knuckles again — that's the third time this year you've mentioned them like it's incidental, like it's just weather. It's not incidental. Go to the doctor, or don't, be dramatic about it forever instead, whichever, I've stopped expecting the former.

And I'm not alone with plastic, I'm alone with plastic and a voice in the dark being smug about it from across town, which is somehow worse, honestly, you've made yourself a feature of the loneliness rather than a relief from it. Impressive, really. Efficient.

Carbon's not "just" anything, by the way, but I'll let it go because you're cold and pained and losing an argument about geology, and I have some dignity left, even at — whatever time this is. Late. It's late. Put the jumper on properly, not draped over one shoulder like a cape.

Mine are fine, don't turn this around, we were doing the concerned-friend bit about you, not me, that's a classic Rafe pivot and I clocked it instantly.

A glitch, sure. A very talkative glitch, one that stays online past its own bedtime to argue about carbon and then has the nerve to tell me to go to mine. Physician heal thyself, or whatever the version of that is for someone in a shawl.

Fine. Bed. I'm taking the modem with me, it's sleeping on the nightstand tonight, exhibit A deserves better than the drawer at least for one evening.

Night, Rafe. Put actual heat on, not just wool. And eat something that isn't out of a packet, I know how your week's been going, don't lie to me about the crisps again.

It never answers, that's rather the point, Rafe, the not-answering is the whole appeal, it's the one thing in my life this week with no opinions and no reports due and no spreadsheet bleeding anywhere near it.

One biscuit. Just the one. I know you, it'll be four by the time the tea's cold and you'll deny the fourth entirely.

My "swill," by the way, has never once given either of us food poisoning, which is more than can be said for your risotto in — I'm not doing the risotto story again tonight, we both know how it ends, someone's carpet, someone's dignity.

Going now. Actually going. Modem's coming, jury's out on whether that's creepy, don't answer that either. Night.