Apart from a couple of pit stops at garages for us to pop to the loo or grab water, snacks and coffee, we’d been driving for close to three hours. We’d eaten the entire packet of mini-Twix, plus two sausage rolls and a Magnum each, and even though the traffic wasn’t exactly what you’d call free-flowing, we’d managed to cover quite a lot of ground. At the very least, I’d certainly had the grand tour of North-West London for my growing investment.

I’d kept my eye on the meter, and each time it got to around thirty pounds, I told Jaz to rack it up. I’d tap my card on the machine in the back of the cab, clear the debt and we’d start again. At first it had been to show her I was good for it and not some nutter that was going to leg it at the next traffic lights. But even though Jaz thought that was hilarious and said she totally backed herself against me on foot, somehow it made me feel better every time we wiped the slate clean. Like it was a fresh start, the next stage of the plan, and with every tap we might be closer to finding Wolfie. In a way it also felt quite fitting, kind of like a reversal of fortunes on a fruit machine. After the third time she told me I was getting annoying, but I saw her smile.

In the few hours I’d known Jaz, I felt like I’d found out more about her than I had most of my long-term girlfriends. Not only did I know the entire story of her family heritage and the ins and outs of the London Knowledge, I also knew that Gemma, her eight-year-old, had learning difficulties but was a champion trier; that Sasha, her eldest, wanted to be an Instagram influencer (over Jaz’s dead body); that Mila, the eleven-year-old, was planning on being the youngest person to go into space; and that Jojo, the littlest, had recently called her father a lying tosser. Fair play, really.

I’d also done my share of the talking and, ready or not, Jaz found out more about me than either of us expected. While we pootled down Upper Street, Islington, I told her about Lou and Wolfie (although not everything) and how my temporary stay in Dom’s garden shed last year had turned into something else. As we cruised the streets of St John’s Wood in our well-calculated spiral, I talked about Dom and George and their beautiful missing Kath. When we stopped at a crossing in Swiss Cottage to let three old ladies and a poodle straggle across the road, I told her how I met Gentleman, and how now he’d achieved every dog’s dream and swapped a brush with death in the pound for a life of luxury in Belsize Park.

Then, without even thinking too much about it, as we turned down an almost hidden side street near Highgate Cemetery, I told Jaz about the morning Ray got his money shot of me in the back of the police car. How nice young Pete Barker from the Double had written his bogus story and how everything had gone a bit crazy. But how me writing back to all those strangers to try and give them something to hold on to had actually given me something to hold on to myself.