I say, instead of being like me, Will (because frankly that’s no way to live), listen to the advice of a genuinely good man. Apologise, acknowledge it, let it breathe, then let it go. Let your wife’s weakness become your greatest strength. Trust yourself to do better. Try harder. And keep trying, mate. Because look, you might try for years and still never win her back, I don’t know. But if you let it breathe for long enough, maybe you will.

All the best in guilt-ridden solidarity,

Sincerely, Danny Mulberry

30

Wolfie

Ray next door. Now there’s a thing.

Whenever I walked through Dom’s front gate the guy was there, hovering around with his camera or his aphid spray doing casual surveillance like I was about to rob the street blind. After that first heist I’d nabbed him with, he was back on his guard and had reverted to completely blanking my nods and ‘hey’s. Even when I went in with some hard eye contact a couple of times, old mate didn’t even blink.

Once when I got back to the house much later than usual it was starting to get dark, but there he was, camera lens aimed at something flapping away up on his guttering, pretending not to see me. I yelled out a sharp ‘Hi!’ to shock him into looking around at me, then did a quick tap dance on Danny’s graffiti and gave him a jazz hands finish. Nada.

Next day, he’s out the front as usual, but the only way I could have topped that would have been to levitate up to the roof and sit there with the birds, blowing raspberries at him. I’d had kind of a rough afternoon, so I put my head down and walked past. This round’s yours, Ray.

Then he nods.

‘Hello,’ he says.

Jesucristo I’m dead, I thought. Welcome to the neighbourhood. I played it cool and nodded back, no smile. But then I decided to push my luck because I ams what I ams, and I’m not even sure why I want to crack the crusty old dude, but I do.

‘Nice camera.’

‘Pfft. What does a kid like you know about cameras?’

We had a bit of a standoff and then I said, well, actually, quite a bit because we just did two terms of photography for art. Then he put the camera up to his eye and pointed it at me without taking a shot and went, ‘Art, schmart,’ and it was so not what I was expecting that I burst out laughing. Which was a bit of a surprise after the afternoon I already mentioned.

After that, every time I walked past he seemed to have something to pull out from behind the hedge to show me, like that’s where everyone keeps their interesting stuff. One time it was an old Kodak Brownie that had belonged to his father, then a pair of vintage binoculars in a leather case that looked even older, then a book on the history of Hampstead and Belsize Park. That last one didn’t seem so interesting at first, but when I had a flick through it I changed my tune, which I could tell he liked. Not big on the verbal, old Ray, but his face says it all.