At times it’s hard for me to remember what it was like before Lou and Wolfie were around, but at others it’s hard to forget. Like when they mention a person I don’t know, or an event I wasn’t there for, and I start thinking about all the other million little (and big) things I’ll never even know I missed. The things that happened in the years between our then and our now. The things that changed the first girl who rocked my world from the crazy, laughing kid who climbed trees, scraped knuckles and followed me round like a good smell, to the nearly broken woman who landed back in my life by accident and rocked it all over again.

I think the real Lou might be someone in between them.

Dom reckons Lou and Wolfie arrived just in the nick of time, because he’d been considering an intervention down at the Lamb and Flag to get me back on track. He’s joking, but also not and it scares me when I think about the place I could have been heading. I know I still don’t deserve Dom, but I’m happy to keep on trying.

Last week he came home with a framed poster of the Arctic Monkeys concert in 2009, where we met. He said someone had been chucking it out, but George totally grassed him up – his exact words were that he’d thought his head would explode having to keep the secret. So he didn’t, and I found out Dom had actually tracked the poster down through the band’s old manager and had been waiting weeks for it to be specially framed.

It doesn’t take a genius to understand how good Dom’s been for me, how much I owe him. But since Lou and Wolfie arrived, that small, unnameable spark of whatever’s been missing since Kath died has made its way back into his eyes. So I think maybe us Mulberrys might be good for him too.

That poster’s not the only new decor item I’ve introduced to the shed. One day, Ray poked his head over the top of the hedge when I was putting in some tomatoes and asked if I wanted an old coffee table he was about to put in the next hard rubbish. And that if I did, I’d better get my arse over there. No hello or goodbye, but it was a decent offer.

A couple of days later, I woke up to find a small carved timber side table in front of the side gate, with a note that said, It matches the coffee table. You may as well have it. It made the perfect replacement for my milk crate bedside table and is ideal for not losing your biscuit through. I reckon between that and the oven cleaner, there’s a chance I might finally have worn Ray down, although he’s yet to offer me a bacon sarnie and Wolfie is still the only one he actually talks to.