‘You’re going to be all right, Lou. You are. One foot in front of the other, that’s the way to get there. Even through the porridge.’

When I said the words I knew instantly they weren’t mine, but over the course of the last few weeks I’d grown quite used to hearing my father’s voice in my ear. He’d helped me find the kindness and insight to lend a hand to all those strangers and he was here now, helping me with the right thing to say to my sister.

A couple of weeks after Mum died, I’d come home from school and Dad was out in the back garden stacking firewood. Through the kitchen window I could see his hands were shaking, and I wondered when my old man had become such an old man. I stood there and watched him move a huge pile of wood, piece by piece, from its regular spot over to the other side of the garden. And when he’d finished, he took off his gloves, shook them out, then pulled them back on and started moving the wood back, piece by painful piece. When I couldn’t stand to watch any longer, I went out to help. He never even acknowledged I was there, but when we’d finished and the wood was all back in its original place, he put his arm around me and murmured, ‘One foot in front of the other. That’s the only way to get there, son.’ More than two decades later, I can still feel the gentle weight of his hand on my shoulder.

I helped Lou back on to the bed, and then sat down on the floor and leaned against the wall and thought about those two piles of wood.

‘I think that’s all I’ve been doing all these years, myself. Not because I’m wise or zen, but because I didn’t know what else to do except put one foot in front of the other. And sometimes you wonder what the point of it all is, and when you’re going to get to the good stuff – and if there even is any good stuff – and some days it feels like you might just be moving wood from one pile to another for the rest of your life. And hey, maybe you will. But you don’t give up, Lou. You don’t ever do that.’

She couldn’t possibly have known what I meant about the wood, but then again, she always was smarter than me. I hadn’t forgotten that.

‘Listen, nobody knows what’s around the corner, Lou. Look at us, imagine if—’ I hesitated, and I felt the presence of my father again so strongly I nearly turned my head. In my mind I saw him smile that tender smile and step back. Over to you, son.

‘What I mean is, what if the best day of your life is the next one? Or the one after that? Or the hundredth one?’ I thought of a man Pete had dubbed Left Behind in Leytonstone, to whom I’d said a similar thing a couple of days ago. ‘You’ve got to stay hopeful. You’ve got to. Keep on trying to find the answers to the questions about life, the universe and everything, even if the only thing you can come up with is forty-two. Because that’s the shit that’ll keep you going until the good stuff comes. And it does come. It does, I promise. Because we’re the good stuff, Lou. Us.’