‘They’re your family, mate. Nothing matters more, trust me. None of it.’

In the silence that followed I felt both the absence and the presence of Kath, and not for the first time I marvelled at how selfish I could be. Dom was always so zen and level-headed, it was easy to forget how much the guy had lost. I decided I was definitely going to go in and finish Dr Spooner’s book there and then. I was absolutely going to put those tools away where they belonged tomorrow. I was categorically going to do better.

I leaned forward to plant a kiss on his lovely shiny, soap-smelling balding head and I got there, first go. He shoots, he scores. Result.

‘Thanks, Dom. And by the way – you can’t stop me – I love you, mate. You absolute diamond bloody geezer.’

Fifteen minutes later, having predictably given up on Dr Spooner in under sixty seconds but wide awake and suffering the first stages of a hangover, I’d started reliving the latter part of the evening. In my own defence, it would have been quite a lot for anyone to take in. Not to mention I wasn’t even 100 per cent sure some things had really happened.

Had Gentleman hit the mother lode and chugged down half a Sara Lee’s Finest chocolate cake off the kitchen bench while our backs weren’t even turned? Had Wolfie really told us her father had developed an app that creates a calorie-controlled weekend menu based on your activity for the preceding week? And had I actually nodded off at the table long enough for George to decorate my face with a chocolate icing moustache and a scar so I matched the photo in the paper?

Those and many other questions kept a good night’s sleep at bay, but there was one very clear memory that threatened to do a lot more than just disrupt my kip. The one where I was standing at the front door watching Dom put a fifteen-year-old (as it turned out) girl into an Uber, after promising her that when her Uncle Danny sobered up, he’d have a serious talk to him about reconnecting with her mother.

And I wasn’t too drunk to notice that, by the look on her face as she shook my hand and walked out of the same door I’d so cavalierly bounded through such a short time before, that had been the real victory she’d been there for.

8

Wolfie

I give up trying to get back to sleep at 4 a.m. and sneak into Lou’s room. The streetlights make long shadows and I can see she’s still in the same position as when I got home from Belsize Park, curled on her side with her back to the window, one arm covering her eyes.

I don’t intend to wake her up to lie, but when I crawl in beside her and try to melt myself silently into her shape, she opens her eyes and I panic.