I’m not entirely sure I believe him, but I can tell he’s not going to be drawn any further. We stand in silence for a few seconds, while the crowd disperses around us. I feel the way I always feel in his presence: unreal. Like I’ve fallen through the cracks of reality and landed in some hidden pocket that no one else can see.

‘Why can’t you just tell me what’s going on?’ I ask finally.

‘Because you’ll find out soon enough,’ he says.

‘It really doesn’t feel like it.’

Across the street, I see Harv re-emerging from the pub. I rub my eyes with the sleeve of my jacket. I feel more knackered than I have done all day.

The old man puts a wrinkled hand on my shoulder. ‘Trust me,’ he says kindly. ‘You’re nearly there.’

The sofa bed feels like it’s made of broken coat hangers.

We’ve coaxed its rickety skeleton out from the depths of Harv’s couch, and now the two of us are lying side by side on top of the duvet, eating Haribo Tangfastics and watching Love Actually on TV.

‘The signs bit is coming up now,’ Harv says, through a mouthful of heavily sugared gelatin.

‘The signs bit?’

‘Yeah, you know – when that Walking Dead guy goes round Keira Knightley’s house with his creepy signs.’ He takes another handful of sweets. ‘I’ve always wondered – what would he have done if his mate had opened the door instead of Keira? He’s literally standing there with a boom box and a shitload of signs about his wasted heart. Obviously his mate would ask to see them, and then he’s screwed, you know?’

I turn to look at him. ‘How many times have you seen this film?’

His cheeks flush. ‘Like, once … or, I don’t know. Maybe twice. It’s always on telly.’

He meets my eyes and we both start laughing.

After our deluge of emotional frankness in the pub, Harv seems to have adopted the firm position that breeziness and banter are now the way forward. Since we left the watch-seller in that square a few hours ago, he hasn’t mentioned Daphne or Alice once. He obviously feels that the best method for keeping my mind off the horror show of my life is simply to act like nothing has happened: my marriage is not really on the brink of collapse, and this is just a normal Christmas Day like any other, ending as it always does with the two of us lying on a sofa bed watching a Richard Curtis film.

To be quite honest, I appreciate it. Not just because I’m too frazzled to talk any more about deep, serious, depressing stuff, but also because his tactic is more spot-on than he realises. Nothing has happened.

This is not reality.