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life for the tyranny of the Sage spreadsheet?
    We were friends enough by now for me occasionally to say yes to the constant invitations for meals or a drink, and over a bowl of noodles in mid January he dropped his guard long enough for me to glimpse a little of the bewilderment that lay behind.
    ‘ When we go public, ’ he told me, ‘ I ’ ll be worth nearly three million quid. I ’ ve done the sums. It ’ s kosher. No bullshit. Three million quid. ’
    ‘ So when does that happen? ’
    ‘ It won ’ t. Not if I ’ ve got anything to do with it. ’
    ‘ Why not? ’
    ‘ Because then we ’ d be together all the time. It would be like early retirement, only worse. Can you imagine? ’
    To be frank, I couldn ’ t, and I told him so. It was a symptom of the kind of company Sandra Merricks ran that everyone, including her husband, put her in the same category as Saddam Hussein or bowel cancer.
    ‘ Wait for the three million, ’ I suggested. ‘ Then leave her. ’
    ‘ It ’ s not that simple. ’
    ‘ Why not? ’
    He shook his head, refusing to elaborate, and for weeks afterwards, in those milliseconds when I wasn ’ t doing anything else at Doubleact, I ’ d try and work out exactly what it was that she had on him. Was it great sex? Some amazing kink of his that only she could unfold? Or was it something altogether more prosaic? Like the fact that he was too terrified of reprisals to even contemplate digging the tunnel? Either way, bottom line, I didn ’ t much care, and although the pressures at Doubleact were crippling there were parts of me - terrible confession - that were beginning to thrive on eighteen-hour days and a non-stop succession of crises that no one else seemed able to sort out.
    Thus it was, for week after week, that I ’ d get back to Napier Road the wrong side of midnight only to disappear again for nine o ’ clock next morning. And thus it was that I began to depend on the dozens of little kindness that my neighbour upstairs extended to me.
    By now, I knew his name. According to the post that landed on our shared mat every morning, he was a Mr G. Phillips. G. could have meant anything, of course, but the second time we met he introduced himself as Gilbert, extending a hand and offering the lightest touch of flesh on flesh. It was on this occasion that he suggested he might field my milk for me, an offer I was only too happy to accept. The milkman delivered daily, mid-morning, by which time I ’ d been bent over a Doubleact keyboard for several long hours, but Gilbert retrieved my two pints from the doorstep, keeping it in his fridge upstairs, then leaving it outside my door an hour or so before I returned.
    After the milk, he took it upon himself to do the odd bit of shopping - cat food especially - leaving me a list in the hall to which I ’ d add any little items I might be needing. We ’ d settle up afterwards, often days afterwards, and I took to inviting him in for coffee while I tried to find the right change. He was very easy to have around - polite, interested, gently amusing - and what I especially liked about him at this stage was the way he preserved the distance between us. Having a neighbour on top of you all the time can be a real pain but it seemed to me that Gilbert had a rare talent for discretion. Almost to the inch, he sensed the exact limits of the friendship we both wanted to establish. He never crowded me. He never intruded. Yet he was always there with those tiny delicate touches on the domestic tiller that can make so much difference. A new brand of Colombian coffee he ’ d spotted in the delicatessen. A flier for an antiques fair he thought might tickle my fancy. A warning not to bother shopping in Highbury when Arsenal were playing at home. Little things, but so, so important.
    The more we meshed our domestic routines in this way, the more intrigued I became about his background. It was the obvious things, really, like work, and money, and family, and