pparently the human brain doesn’t stop growing until your early twenties.

I am clearly very advanced.

Given my complete inability to:

My phone beeps.

Scowling, I click on the message.

It’s dark and cold. Went home half an hour ago. India

This day has officially thundered down the slope, crashed through a fence and shot into a snowbank.

Grumbling, I switch my phone off and start scuffing my trainers along the pavement.

Stupid parents. Stupid ruined sandwiches that nobody fully appreciates. Stupid castings and fizzy drinks and men named after fish and unstable door locks and unstable knees and doppelgangers and exams and friends leaving and—

Something in my peripheral brain goes ping.

Huh. That’s weird.

I take a few steps backwards and peer in through the brightly lit window of a small Italian restaurant. There are red-and-white checked tablecloths, almost burnt-out candles and lots of couples ordering spaghetti and pretending to be in Lady and the Tramp.

Making a slight blugh face, I peer a bit closer.

There’s a man sitting in the corner, surrounded by piles of paper. He’s wearing a faded grey suit and a grey tie. He’s peering blearily into a laptop, slumped as if he’s been popped with a pin.

He looks exhausted and like he just wants to go home.

So far, so usual for rush hour in London.

What’s a lot less commonplace is who is doing all of this. Because as the man shakes his head wearily at a waiter, my mouth pops open in shock.

I nearly walked straight past: that’s how unfamiliar this man looks.

But he’s not a stranger – I know him very well.

The sad grey man is Wilbur.