‘Seriously. Thanks for everything, Jaz. You’ve been great.’ I felt a brief flashback to the old Danny with his regular stool at the Lamb, who would definitely have mentioned right about now that Jaz was indeed, as Wolfie had pointed out, an absolute babe. ‘I can see why your grandfather is proper proud of you.’ Nice one, Mulberry.

Just for a second, her air of confidence slipped and I saw her cheeks flush slightly. She ducked her head and gave a curt little nod.

‘That’s OK. Thanks, mate. I’ll, um . . . write you out a receipt.’

‘Oh no, don’t worry about that, I—’ I stopped in my tracks as Jaz rolled her eyes.

‘I said, I’ll write you a receipt.’

She leaned into the cab to grab the pen and paper out of her console, then wrote something and handed it to me. I glanced down at the roughly sketched map of suburbs she’d drawn all those hours ago, and scribbled across Belsize Park was a phone number and a pound sign with the word ‘priceless’ beside it. So, then it was my turn to blush.

I looked over to the house, where Gentleman and Lou had joined Dom in the doorway and George was buzzing around like an overexcited wind-up toy, hopping from one leg to the other and tugging on sleeves all over the place.

‘You was right, Lou! I mean, you WERE right! Danny DID find Wolfie. He found her all by himself! Isn’t he cool?’ And there’s the thing about our George; strong opinions on character but not afraid to be swayed by new evidence. ‘Isn’t he a right bloody diamond geezer, Lou? Don’t you just bloody love him?’

Jaz began to reverse the cab slowly out of the driveway, and as she passed she inclined her head and smiled at me. I’d say I was pretty close to dead sober by then so, hand on heart, my next decision was fully formed and crystal clear.

‘Jaz, wait. Hang on.’ The brakes squeaked gently.

‘What’s up?’

‘Listen can you wait here for a sec? I’ll be straight back.’ I started to jog off, then stopped and turned back over my shoulder and winked. ‘I think we know I’m good for it.’ Apparently old Danny wasn’t quite out of the game.

I sprinted down the side of the house to my shed and within a couple of minutes, as promised, I was back. Jaz was waiting, engine running, looking at me quizzically with her head tilted slightly – like one of Ray’s birds, I thought. I glanced around, half expecting to see him and his camera lurking. But the hedge was still.

I handed her a thick, creased envelope that may have smelled vaguely of old trainers.

‘Do me a favour, Jaz. Don’t open that yet. Keep it safe, then give it to your grandad and tell him he’s dead right. There’s no place like home.’

And I’m not going to come right out and admit I dropped a tip of nine hundred and fifty-odd pounds of free fruit machine money to impress a girl, and maybe take things slowly and see how we went; just know I’m trying to do better with different results.