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Close up this time, she leaned in towards the camera, smiled and mouthed go out.

Then she was gone.

6

Only Entropy Comes Easy

I waited for a few more seconds, but Imogen didn’t appear again on Dorm Cam Two.

Her words stayed with me though.

Go out. Good advice.

Wandering through to the kitchen, I balanced my mug on top of all the other dirty crockery in the sink, then poked about inside the washing machine for something vaguely clean to wear.

I looked around, taking in the pile of plates in the sink, the remains of cooking, curry pots, jammy bread crusts, fish and chip papers, baked beans tins, empty Pot Noodles. The phone cables might have their rough spots, I thought, but this, my friend, is a total systemic collapse.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of chaos is for repairmen to do nothing.

Imogen had always been the organised, tidy, well-prepared one. Without her around, things tended to go south pretty quickly. Written on the fridge door in multicoloured, magnetic plastic letters is an old message from her: