Then I glanced over at big, handsome, hopeful Pete, with his strong square jaw and his massive grin, hands on hips waiting for my answer, and I suddenly realised why he’d looked so familiar the first day I met him. All he needed was the spacesuit.

‘OK, Pete, tell your boss I’m in. Every Monday. Life, the universe and all that shit.’

To infinity and beyond. Don’t mind if I do.

After Pete had gone, I came out of the shed and Lou was on the patio, sitting sideways in her armchair. Both her legs were swung over one of the arms and her head was tilted back to the sky to catch the weak September sun. She was still in her work uniform, but she’d rolled her trousers up over her knees, and I could see the leg that had been in the cast was paler and a little thinner than it should be. On her other leg a long, neat scar ran the length of her calf, and a little further over was a small silvery disc of skin, about the size of a five-pence piece. The edges of the disc were clean and flat, and the skin stretched tight between them looked like a smooth, content little five-pence face. And I thought to myself, I did that.

Then, unexpectedly, as random thoughts tend to come, I heard the gentle sound of my father’s voice and the Walt Whitman poem he’d found for the occasion of my life.

I am larger, better than I thought;

I did not know I held so much goodness.

DANCE ON THE EGGSHELLS

Dear Wolfie,

I thought about giving this to you in person so I could watch your face while you read it, slowly and intently – because I just know that’s how it’d be. My heart would melt, and my head would swell (and quite possibly explode, and wouldn’t George be thrilled) as I saw how much the answer to the question in that letter you never sent means to you. And I’d carry that moment with me for the rest of my life.

But that would really be for me, wouldn’t it? And I think I might be a better man than that. So I’ll leave this somewhere, folded over twice, for you to find by accident one day when you’re looking for something else. To open in private, where your face will be free to do whatever it wants. And I’ll just hope it’s good enough.

Because I’m no guru. I know it, you know it, and George and Dom definitely know it. I’m just some guy on a second chance with a second wind who got luckier than he ever deserved. My thoughts and words and answers to life’s dilemmas are no wiser or more philosophical than anyone else’s, but all I know is that something inside me changed when I started writing back to those strangers looking for help. I mean, I just blundered in there like a bull in an off-licence, at first. Bit of a laugh, I thought. An easy three hundred quid for beer money. But after a while, it seemed like the more I said, the more I had to say. And the more of those letters I read, the more I wanted to say it. But the real surprise is knowing what to say to you, Wolfie.