And here is the part I have had to be honest about, and it took me until about the second year after.

I never asked.

Not once.

Not one question about his life in two years.

I told myself at the time that it was respect.

That you do not interrogate a man about how he ended up on a pavement, that it would be intrusive, that if he wanted to tell me he would.

That is all true and it is not why.

The reason I never asked is that a five-minute conversation about pigeons can be had on the way to work, and an answer to what did you do before this cannot, and I had a nine o’clock.