You never know, maybe if I’d resisted the urge to give Ray the old two-finger salute he might not have whipped up his camera for an opportunity too good to miss. But I didn’t and he did. And maybe if the editor of London’s newest free paper hadn’t just come off the back of a couple of slow news days he might not have thought a perfectly composed, pin-sharp photo of a hungover middle-aged scruffbag giving Belsize Park an early-morning up yours was something that would entertain his readers. But he did. And it did. So, as it goes, the number one highlight of my birthday was something I could never in my wildest imagination have anticipated.

And it changed everything.

2

Wolfie

I’ve got nothing against dentistry as a profession. Love their work, in theory. But I do have an issue with the personal-space thing. The way they loom over you like the Grim Reaper and cop a front row view down the back of your throat. Who the hell knows what they get to see? Feels like a massive mind-your-own to me. And my business is my business.

But some guy banging around in my face with a mirror and a probe almost feels like light relief when I think about this morning. This week. My mother. I close my eyes and suck in a massive lungful of air through my open mouth. It tastes like mint and burns on the way down, settling in my chest. Hold it. For a split second I try to think better of it, because sometimes it works. But today is not the day and my business is my business. I hold that air in and start to count. One, two, three.

I’m already into double figures before he notices. Hands on my shoulders, shaking me gently at first, then a bit rougher. ‘Hey. What are you doing? Open your eyes.’

Eighteen. Nineteen. I can feel it stirring. Gathering. Twenty-one.

‘Miss? Can you open your eyes, please?’ The shoulder shaking gets downright bloody rude. Where’s your bedside manner, old mate? Do dentists sign up to the Hippocratic Oath? I don’t know, but either way there should definitely be some kind of protocol in place. Like, don’t manhandle the customers without their permission. Thirty-six, thirty-seven. Do keep the small talk to pleasantries about teeth; at a stretch, gums. Forty. Don’t eat garlic on a workday.

There it is, the distant flutter, faint and low. Forty-six, forty-seven, it’s on the move.

‘Hey! Can you hear me? I asked you . . .’

Fifty-something. I miss a beat but don’t go back. Oh, I hear you, buddy, but I’m busy. Not yet. No way. De ninguna manera, José.

Fifty-four, fifty-five. Tiny wings thumping like a drum beat.

‘Young lady. Miss! What are you . . .? Come on now, open your eyes. Look, I know you’re . . . just stop it, all right!’

Steady as she goes, bro. Fifty-nine and counting. The only way out is through.