Hold it. Whoa, Nelly. Jesus, Mary and all the saints in their pants, was this the moment my past came back to haunt me? That Hollywood movie moment when a kid turns up on the doorstep and tells the hero that, despite very strict rules about responsible sex and all that stuff, he’s become an instant father, ready or not. I took a deep constitutional breath and told myself it was all going to be OK, because I was a decent bloke and I was eddy for renything.

I was aware Dom was talking but I’d stopped listening, because I was concentrating very hard on the girl and I wasn’t really capable of multitasking at that point. It made sense. Those strangely familiar mannerisms, that weird electricity I felt when I shook her hand. Bob Dylan. Holy shit, could I be right? Was this kid actually mine?

‘Holy shit.’

‘DANNY! Shut up and listen.’

I put my hand out to brace myself against the table so I could shut up and listen and, unexpectedly, I locked on to the steady brown eyes behind those heavy-framed glasses. Just for a couple of seconds, as the oncoming déjà vu express rounded the corner and pulled into the station, I felt as clear-headed as a choir boy.

‘The thing is, Danny, Wolfie’s—’

If I could have got word to him, it might well have gone down as the proudest moment of Dr Spooner’s life as, with the greatest of ease, all of a sudden I was there. Bang in the moment. The moment my mouth caught up to my brain and I clocked where I’d seen those brown eyes before.

‘Holy shit. Lou.’

5

Danny

I didn’t really think it was my long-lost sister standing there in front of me in her possibly fake NHS glasses and her Bob Dylan T-shirt. Not for more than a breath, anyhow. But just slightly short of the time it took for Dom to say the actual words, I knew who that kid belonged to. And it wasn’t me.

Nobody said anything for a good few seconds after the name clanged (stiff, unused and much, much louder than I’d expected) out of my mouth. But being the only proper adult in the room, Dom was the first to recover.

‘What?’ His head swivelled from me to Wolfie, then back again. ‘No, mate, it’s Wolfie. I told you. But actually . . . Well, that’s the thing I was trying to say. She’s your sister’s . . . she’s Lou’s daughter. So, I suppose you were right in a way, but . . . I mean, how did you know?’

Now that I knew what I was looking at, I couldn’t stop looking, because it truly felt like I’d tripped into a pleat and accidentally got folded back in time. The girl’s likeness to my sister was uncanny and it was almost laughable, the ease with which a decade and a half of hard work to forget that face (those eyes, that heart) had gone down the tubes.