I had first met Davy seven years ago when he had been a client of mine, charged with drink driving and cocaine possession offences. After one of Davy’s later court appearances, I had bought him a coffee and had a long talk with him. I’d explained how close he’d come to prison and we’d talked about him going into rehab. At the time, I knew he was humouring me in talking about it, but I told him that if he needed my help getting a place in a programme in the future, I’d do what I could. It took another year and a half, but he came back to me for a referral letter and I made a few calls for him. Later, after he came out of treatment and retrained, I gave him legal advice and organised the lease on his gym space.

Davy applied the same devotion to sobriety and work as he had in the past to getting wasted. His gym was a success. Even during the recession he’d expanded and he seemed to have a knack for sales and pricing. I never asked how he’d acquired such expertise, though I had a fair idea. He’d given me a voucher for three personal training sessions as a gift and I had felt obliged to go, after numerous calls from him, with a plan to sustain a minor injury during session one and never to return. I’d reckoned that I was as fit as I needed to be. I walked most places, most of the time, and I was tallish; not skinny, admittedly, but not overweight by any normal standard.

It didn’t matter, apparently. Davy had delivered a terrifying lecture on weight-bearing exercise, muscle loss and osteoporosis. ‘Use it or lose it in your thirties,’ he’d said and signed me up for a series of classes and training sessions. He emphasised fitness and strength rather than weight loss but, almost despite myself, I had dropped a dress size in a year and was fitter than I’d ever been. Which entitled me to take a break, I’d thought, and, to my surprise, Davy had agreed. But he was back on my case again, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I would have go back to the gym. I would, definitely, but not just yet.