‘Danny. Daaannyyyyy! What’s your best favourite movie?’

So far, thanks to his teacher Miss O’Brien’s recent lesson on good, better, best, we’d discussed our preferences of colours, numbers, animals and songs, and now I was racking my brain for an appropriate Hollywood blockbuster George would accept as a credible answer. And by credible, I mean one that met with his approval.

‘My best favourite movie. Mmm. Lion King maybe?’

‘Lion King? But that’s old, Danny. I mean your best favourite new one. You know, like Space Jam or Luca or Boss Baby.’

‘Um . . .’ I took a punt. ‘Space Jam?’

‘Me too! That’s my best one, same as Luca. And Boss Baby.’

If only everyone was as easy to please as George. Tell him what he wants to hear and the kid’s putty in your hands. In my opinion, more people should take that approach to life. Maybe I should. Come on then, life; tell me what I want to hear then go right ahead and bend me to your will. Dom’s right. I could do with the help.

‘Dad, Dad, what’s your best favourite movie that you’ve ever seen?’

‘You mean my most favourite movie of all time?’ (And by the way, that right there defines the difference between Dom and me.) He glanced in the mirror, indicated, then slipped the Audi smoothly into a gap in the traffic with a casual acknowledgement to the driver behind him. The guy gave him a friendly nod, no sign of aggro whatsoever. Even strangers know he’s a good egg.

‘Well, that’d definitely be Bedknobs and Broomsticks, George.’

‘Bed sticks and who what? Ha!’ George slapped his thigh and then kicked the back of my seat with his size threes. ‘Dad! Nobody’s ever heard of that one, what are you on about?’

‘Bedknobs and Broomsticks, George.’ Dom always drove with his hands loose on the steering wheel at the perfect ten to two, but I saw them tighten ever so slightly. ‘It was your mother’s favourite when she was a little girl, mate. When I met her, she made me watch it over and over again until I knew all the characters off by heart. And it was so good I ended up loving it as much as she did.’

George fell quiet at the mention of Kath, and for a few moments we were each deep in our own little silent man cave of thoughts. Dom and I could draw from a million different memories of Kath, but I wondered how much George remembered, if anything, about his mum. I hoped it did her justice. My eyes got misty at the thought of little Georgie concentrating so hard on remembering his mother that it even stopped him talking about his favourite movies.

‘What’s a characTURD, Dad?’ Maybe not.

George started pummelling the back of my seat in mirth, but I was robbed of the potential joy of Dom having to answer that one because, far sooner than I’d expected, we’d arrived. Dom ducked his head to look up at a low-rise block of flats at almost the same time as I spotted Wolfie, standing on the edge of the pavement. When I’d heard Dom on the phone to her earlier, getting the address, I had a brief guilty moment because I knew that should have been my job, by rights. But Dom knew me better than that. As it was, every time the GPS had given a direction, in my head I’d willed it to make a mistake. Siri, take a wrong turn, please. But here we were.