The World According to Bob

Eventually, the two officers who’d first approached me, came back into the interview room.

‘I’m afraid I think we’ve wasted your time and our time,’ they said. ‘The person who made this accusation on the phone hasn’t been willing to come down to give a formal statement. So there’s no corroborating evidence against you and so there will be no charges.’

I was obviously relieved. I felt angry as well, but decided to bottle it up. There was no point in making a formal complaint or threatening legal action, especially as everyone had been so decent. It was best to just get the hell out of there and get back to work.

My main concern, once more was Bob. What had they done with him for all this time?

I had to go down to the reception area to sign out. Bob was there with Gillian, looking as content as when I’d left him. But the moment he saw me his tail started swishing and his ears perked up. He leapt into my arms.

‘Gosh, someone’s pleased to see you,’ Gillian said.

‘Has he been a good boy?’ I asked her.

‘He’s been a star. Haven’t you, Bob?’ she said.

I saw that she had set him up in a corner of her office. She told me that she’d been out to the shops and bought him some cat milk, a pouch of meaty food and an enormous packet of his favourite treats. No wonder he was so happy, I thought.

We chatted for a moment or two while they got my bag and tabard from wherever it had been put during my interview upstairs. Gillian told me in normal circumstances he’d have been placed with any stray dogs that were being held.

‘If you’d been kept in overnight we’d have had to think about putting him there,’ she said. ‘But luckily that won’t be necessary now.’

I’d soon been officially released. The two officers were apologetic again.

‘Just someone being spiteful I guess,’ I said to them, shaking their hands as I left.

By the time I had left the station it was getting towards sunset. All day I’d been paranoid that someone had stolen my pitch so I headed back to Angel just to check.  To my relief, there was no one there.

‘You all right, James?’ one of the flower sellers asked me.

‘Yeah, just someone’s idea of a joke. Reporting me for assault.’

‘Really? What’s wrong with people?’ he said, shaking his head in disgust.

It was a good question, one to which I had absolutely no answer unfortunately.

Around a week to ten days later, Bob and I were selling magazines during the rush hour, when an attractive, blonde lady came up to us. Bob seemed to recognise her and arched his head towards her when she knelt down beside him.

‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ she said to me as she made a fuss of him.

So many faces were flashing past us each night outside the tube, it was hard to register everyone. She could obviously see I was struggling.

‘Tolpuddle Street station? I was the one who looked after Bob the other week,’ she smiled.

‘Oh, yes, of course. Sorry,’ I said, genuinely mortified. ‘It’s Gillian, isn’t it?’

‘Looks like you are both doing well,’ she said.

Community police officers had stopped to talk to us over the years, but she didn’t seem to be ‘on duty’.

She wasn’t in uniform for a start.

‘On my way home from the end of my shift,’ she said, when I mentioned this.

‘We didn’t really have much of a chance to talk when you were at the station the other day, for obvious reasons,’ Gillian said. ‘So how did you two get together?’

She smiled and laughed out loud a couple of times as I recounted our early days together.

‘Soul mates by the sound of it,’ she said.

She could tell that I was busy and that the rush hour was about to begin, so was soon on her way.

‘I might pop in and see you again if that’s all right,’ she said.

‘Sure,’ I said.

She was true to her word and was soon stopping by to see us regularly, often bringing gifts for Bob. He seemed to have a genuine soft spot for her.

Gillian was generous to me as well. On one occasion she brought me a coffee, a sandwich and a cookie from one of the smart local sandwich bars. We chatted for a little while, both of us skirting around what had happened at the station a few weeks earlier. A part of me was curious to find out who had made this allegation against me, but I knew she couldn’t go into too much detail. It would have been too risky for her.

I explained to her what was happening to us with the book and how it seemed to have generated more animosity than anything else.

‘Ah don’t worry about that. People are always jealous of other’s success. It sounds great,’ she said. ‘Your friends and family must be so proud of you.’

‘Yeah, they are,’ I said, giving her a sheepish smile and lighting up a cigarette.

Of course, the truth was that I didn’t have too many friends. Aside from Belle, there was no one to whom I could turn — in the good times or the bad times. I had Bob and that was about it.

It was, in part, the life that I’d made for myself. I was a product of the environment in which I’d spent the past decade.