Wilf joins Harold's pilgrimage at a moment when Harold's solitary walk has already become a public phenomenon, and his arrival marks the point at which the pilgrimage ceases to be a purely personal undertaking and becomes a movement others feel called to join. The event unfolds due north of Barnsley, on the A61, where Harold has been walking for weeks, and it is preceded by a strange and unsettling episode in which Harold senses he is being followed. For half an hour he walks faster, his breath and heart pounding, a sweat breaking out all over him, stopping and looking back and seeing no one, but knowing he is not alone. Only once, when he turns, does he notice a low shrub quivering, although there is no wind. For the first time in weeks, he regrets having no mobile phone, and that night he takes refuge in an unlocked toolshed, lying very still in his sleeping bag, listening for the person he knows in his bones is waiting outside. The following morning, the follower reveals himself: a slight young man in reflective shades and a baseball cap who dodges between traffic on the A61, gasping for breath, and announces that he has come to join Harold. His name is first misheard as Lf, then Ilf, and finally Wilf. He looks undernourished and barely twenty, with cheekbones like pencils and trainers with fluorescent-green laces, and he carries a sports bag that is clearly new, like the trainers. 'I am going to be a pilgrim, Mr Fry. I'm going to save Queenie Hennessy too,' he says, lifting the bag and holding it suspended. 'I've got my sleeping bag and everything.'

The Follower and the Sign

The event begins not with Wilf's appearance but with the sensation of being pursued. Harold feels the presence of someone behind him in his spine, and although he quickens his pace, the person following him along the hard shoulder does the same. The ribbon of tarmac stretches towards the horizon between fields of yellow rape, so hot in the afternoon sun it shimmers, and cars appear to come out of nowhere and vanish as quickly, their occupants invisible. Harold scans the road ahead for people, but there is no one walking, no one on the hard shoulder. Yet he can sense in his skin, all the way up his neck and into his hair, that a person is certainly behind him and still following. He finds a gap in the traffic and darts into the road, crossing fast at an angle while casting an eye to his left, but nobody comes into view, and minutes later he knows the person following has also crossed the road. The pursuit continues for another half-hour, and the only evidence of the follower is a low shrub quivering when there is no wind. Harold's regret at having no mobile phone, for the first time in weeks, signals how the encounter disturbs the peace he has found on the road. When Wilf finally reveals himself, he explains his presence with a story of divine guidance: he saw Harold's picture in the paper, and then he asked for a sign, saying, 'Lord, if I should go to Mr Fry, show me.' The sign, he reports, was a dove. Harold, who has told the garage girl he is not a religious man, has no answer to this, and a passing van slows as the driver points a mobile phone out of the window and appears to take Harold's photograph, a reminder that the pilgrimage is now being watched and recorded.

Wilf's Arrival and Harold's Recognition of David

Wilf's arrival is immediate and unopposed; there is no time to object, because he has already fallen in beside Harold and is striding at his pace, chattering nervously. Harold tries to listen, but every time he looks at Wilf he finds further reminders of his son, David. The fingernails bitten to the quick, the way he slips out words as if they are not really meant for hearing, the shaking hands, the undernourished frame, the barely twenty years of age, all of it recalls the son Harold buried twenty years ago. The resemblance is so strong that Harold feels it is like talking to David, and the young man's presence forces Harold to confront the past he has spent twenty years seeking to avoid. Wilf's declaration that he too will save Queenie Hennessy echoes Harold's own promise, made in a phone box at the other end of England, that he will keep walking and she must keep living. The young man's faith, expressed through the dove and his certainty that he is called to be a pilgrim, stands in stark contrast to Harold's own uncertainty, and it introduces a new dynamic into the walk: Harold is no longer alone in his mission, but he is also no longer the sole author of its meaning.

The Dog and the Diversion

Wilf's arrival is quickly followed by the appearance of a second companion, a small dog the colour of autumn leaves with rough fur like a brush, which has apparently waited all night outside the toolshed. Harold insists the dog is nothing to do with him, but as he starts off again, with Wilf gambolling to keep up, he sees out of the corner of his eye that the dog has crossed the road and is trotting behind. Whenever Harold stops and looks back, the dog shinks into the hedgerow with its head dropped, as if it is not there, or is something else, perhaps a statue of a dog. Harold calls, 'Go away. Go home,' but the dog tilts its head as if Harold has just told it something interesting, trots up to him, and carefully places a stone beside his shoe. Wilf suggests the dog may not have a home, or may not like its home, and notes that it has no collar. The dog picks up its stone and places it beside Harold's other shoe, then sits on its back legs, looking up at him patiently, not blinking and not moving its head, while on the horizon grow the dark moors of the Peak District. Harold protests that he cannot look after a dog, that he has no food, and that he is walking to Berwick on busy roads, but the dog's persistence wins out. They try to fool it by throwing the stone into a field and hiding behind a hedge, but the dog fetches the stone and sits beside the hedgerow, wagging its tail. 'The trouble is, I reckon it likes you,' whispers Wilf. 'It wants to come too.' They crawl out from the hedge and continue, with the dog now sauntering openly at Harold's side. Because it is not safe to stick with the A61, Harold takes a diversion on the quieter B6132, although the going is slow, and Wilf has to keep stopping to pull off his trainers and shake them. They cover only a mile. The dog's arrival, like Wilf's, is uninvited and inexplicable, and it further transforms Harold's walk from a solitary pilgrimage into a procession of the faithful and the lost.

Recognition and the Widening Circle

The event also marks a shift in how Harold is perceived by the world. A woman deadheading roses in her front garden recognizes him and says, 'You're the pilgrim, aren't you? I have to say I think what you are doing is absolutely marvellous.' She opens her purse and offers him a twenty-pound note, and Wilf wipes his forehead with his cap and whistles. Harold refuses the money, saying he could not possibly take it, but he accepts a round of sandwiches, some matches and a candle for the night, and a bit of butter, glancing at Wilf's nervous face and adding, 'I think we may need them.' The recognition, the offered money, and the acceptance of small gifts all signal that Harold's walk has become a public story, one that people want to hear and to support. Wilf's earlier description of the walk as 'a pilgrimage for the twenty-first century' and 'the kind of story people want to hear' is now borne out in the woman's spontaneous generosity. The widening circle of followers, human and animal, and the growing recognition from strangers, all contribute to the sense that Harold's private act of faith has become a communal one, even as he himself remains uncertain of its meaning.

The Meaning of the Follower

Wilf's joining of the pilgrimage carries a deeper significance in the novel's exploration of faith and the ordinary. Harold has learned, through his weeks of walking, that the world is made up of people putting one foot in front of the other, and that a life might appear ordinary simply because the person living it has done so for a long time. He has also learned that it is the smallness of people that fills him with wonder and tenderness, and the loneliness of that too. Wilf, with his bitten fingernails, his nervous chatter, his new trainers and his story of the dove, embodies this smallness and this loneliness. He is not a heroic figure but a lost and fragile young man who has found in Harold's walk a purpose and a sign. His faith, however naive, is genuine, and it challenges Harold to consider what belief might mean. The event also echoes the novel's epigraph, drawn from the hymn 'To Be a Pilgrim', which declares that no discouragement shall make the pilgrim relent from his first avowed intent. Wilf's arrival, and the dog's, are tests of Harold's intent, and his acceptance of them, despite his protests, suggests that the pilgrimage is becoming something larger than his own promise to Queenie. The follower, the dog, and the recognizing stranger all become part of the map in Harold's mind, made up of all the people and places he has passed, and they carry him forward towards Berwick and towards the reckoning that awaits him there.