Other times, I close my eyes and listen to the sound of footsteps in the concrete sky, and let the movies in my head roll by on their own. Disjointed, shaky snippets of a wicked little kid called George who thinks his mother lives in a flying bed. Of a diamond geezer who sleeps in a garden shed and was lost my entire life. Of my grandmother loop-the-looping her car on the M25 and never coming home, and of my mother sliding feet first under a Tesco van almost like she knew where she was going.

In between the movies, sometimes I think about a shoebox at the back of my mother’s wardrobe, that’s filled with shells and ribbons and a red leather cricket ball with Danny Mulberry in gold foil embossing. I think about secrets that are more important than the truth, and the only two things my mother ever told me about my Uncle Danny.

And I think about a flea that turned into a freight train.

That place down on the canal changed everything for me and I don’t even know why, really. All I know is that, whether it was just dumb luck or something else, right when I needed it, I ended up in a place where big things happened. Unexpected things. To some bright spark who blew up a bridge and made it rain fish in the West End, to a man called William Bonheur who gambled his house and lost his wife. And to me.

‘There’s no magic, little wolf,’ he said to me that day before he walked away. ‘Life is just about the layers. And learning to float between them.’

Big things.

I haven’t seen Billy Ben-Hur again, and his shopping trolley shanty is slowly sinking into the mud. Maybe he’s pissing my twenty pounds up against some other wall these days. Or maybe he’s living in a maisonette in Kensal Rise writing his memoir on a brand-new Apple Mac, like George reckons he might be.

Maybe I even made him up. But I hope not.

I’m not saying Lou’s better. But she’s better than she was and that’s good enough for me.

51

Danny

Constable Maria Hanley came around to see me, and all my dreams came true.

To clarify, Constable Hanley came around to serve me a written notice of intent from Camden Council to press charges if I didn’t finish cleaning the graffiti off the pavement. She did say she thought I’d made my point, though, and she’d be watching my career with interest. I told her we could probably chalk it up as a draw then, but I think we both know I won. Only one of us knows how much.

Incidentally, when I was on my hands and knees that same day scrubbing away at the pavement with a wire brush, I had a surprise visit from Ray with a big old tin of oven cleaner and a very handy tip, which I most graciously accepted. He also had a delicious-smelling foil-wrapped package for Gentleman, which he insisted on hand feeding him. I get chemicals, the dog gets bacon. Which was about right really, because when my dear old boy looked over at me with a greasy chin and a smug smile on his furry dial, it made me realise how much I still had to learn from him.