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me. Bob understood what was happening immediately and bolted out of the bushes. He wasn’t afraid of dogs, but he picked his battles wisely. Judging by the noise the German Shepherd was making, this wasn’t a dog with which we wanted to pick a fight.
    Bob’s bright ginger coat wasn’t exactly hard to spot amidst the greenery, though, and the dog soon began accelerating towards us, barking even more fiercely. For a moment I had a terrible feeling that Bob had left it too late so I grabbed the bike and got ready to ride it into the firing line if necessary. I knew if the German Shepherd intercepted him, Bob could be in serious trouble.
    As so often in the past, however, I’d underestimated him.
    He sprinted across the grass and arrived as I crouched down on one knee. In one seamless move, I flipped him on to my shoulder, jumped straight on to the bike, and – with Bob standing on my shoulders – hit the pedals and began cycling out of the park.
    The frustrated German Shepherd pursued us for a short time, at one point running alongside as we sped down the street. I could hear Bob hissing at him. I couldn’t see his face, but it wouldn’t have surprised me at all if he was taunting him.
    ‘What are you going to do about it now, tough guy?’ he was probably saying.
    As I hit the main road back towards our block of flats, I looked round to see our nemesis receding into the distance where he had been joined by his owner, a big, burly guy in a black jacket and jeans. He was struggling to get the dog back on its lead, but that was his problem, not mine.
    ‘That was a close one, Bob,’ I said. ‘Thank goodness for the Bobmobile.’
     

Chapter 4
    The Odd Couple
     
     
     
     
     
    It was rare I got visitors at the flat. I didn’t have many friends locally and kept to myself within the building. I would pass the time of day with neighbours but I could count the number of times any of them had popped round for a chat on the fingers of one hand. So I was always wary whenever someone knocked on the door or pressed the building’s intercom at the entrance downstairs. I automatically assumed the worst, expecting to find myself confronted by a bailiff or a debt collector chasing me for money that I didn’t have.
    That was my immediate reaction when the intercom buzzer went just after 9am one weekday morning as Bob and I got ready for work.
    ‘Who the heck is that?’ I said, instinctively twitching at the curtains even though I had no view of the entrance from up on the fifth floor.
    ‘James, it’s Titch. Can I come up with Princess?’ a familiar voice said over the speaker.
    ‘Ah. Titch. Sure, head on up, I’ll put the kettle on,’ I said, breathing a sigh of relief.
    Titch was, as his name suggested, a tiny little bloke. He was wiry and had short, thinning hair. Like me, he was a recovering addict who had started selling The Big Issue . He had been having a hard time and had crashed out at my place a couple of times in recent months. He’d got into trouble with work after becoming a co-ordinator in Islington. He had been ‘de-badged’ and given a six month suspension. He was still waiting for his ban to be lifted and had been really struggling to make ends meet.
    I felt like I’d been given a second chance in life since I’d met Bob so had given Titch another opportunity as well. I also quite liked him. Deep down, I knew, he had a good heart.
    Another reason that Titch and I got on was that we both worked on the street with our pet as our companion. In Titch’s case it was his faithful black Labrador-Staffordshire Bull Terrier-cross, Princess. She was a lovely, sweet-natured dog. When he’d stayed with me previously, he’d left Princess somewhere else. He knew that I had Bob and that having a dog in the house might cause problems for me. But, for some reason, that wasn’t the case today. I braced myself for what might happen when the pair of them arrived at the front door.
    Bob’s ears pricked up at the