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and actually placed pretty perfectly for his needs. It was very close to the centre of Manchester towards the back of the Oldham Street area above a shop. Or, as his one of his less-eloquent friends put it, “Where all those artsy pricks live”. Its location meant he could walk to work and manage to get to all the bars on his doorstep without too many problems. Even if he did just need a taxi home every now and then, it didn’t cost too much.
    Garry ran his hands through his thick, black straggly, shoulder-length hair. There had been a time where he thought longish hair would give him a rock star look all the girls would go for. All these years down the line and that thinking had definitely gone out the window but he still couldn’t be bothered to get it cut.
    He looked at the scene in front of him and thought that, even though his choice of home wasn’t that appealing, he probably wasn’t helping himself. Clothes were strewn over most of the free floor space, while the sink that was supposed to act as somewhere to prepare food, clean dishes and wash his hands, was overflowing with a mix of pots, pans, cups, plates and a folded up pizza box.
    ‘Right,’ he said out loud to the empty room, ‘Let’s get this mutha sorted.’
    It wasn’t the type of thing he would have said if anyone else were present.
    Garry was fairly slim and unimposing with his hair his most striking feature. His white, pasty frame was covered only by a pair of blue boxer shorts he had worn the whole of the previous day then slept in overnight. He put on some music to play through his phone, the rock tracks blending into one and sounding tinny through the device’s underwhelming speaker. Garry could hear them well enough and, safe in the knowledge he was on his own, he sang along to the words he knew, made up the ones he didn’t, played a bit of air-guitar and danced around in a way he never would on a night out.
    Slowly but surely the scuffed wooden floor began to become visible. Clothes were shoved into the oversized chest of drawers or dropped in a giant supermarket carrier bag he had kept so he could do his own laundry.
    As he was finishing, the playlist of songs he had set up on his phone came to an end and the room went quiet. Not knowing what to do with the rest of the day, Garry folded his bed back into the sofa and flicked the TV on. The indoor aerial was, as usual, not giving him much of a signal into the cheap digital box he had hooked up. He fumbled around with it but the television just kept spewing out a hum of dissatisfaction. Annoyed, he turned it off and picked his phone up, skimming through his contacts until he got to a certain name.
    James Llewellyn was one of the quieter people he knew and, although Garry fancied a drink and a chat, he didn’t really want to spend the rest of the day in the pub. He dialled the number and, after a brief conversation, the pair arranged to meet at his local in half-an-hour.
    It dawned on him that spending his Saturday afternoons in the pub was hardly embracing life but he didn’t think he had much else better to do.
     
    Garry had already drunk a third of his pint when James slid into the booth opposite him, plonking a full glass of beer on the table between them. The pub was only two minutes’ walk from Garry’s flat and usually full of locals. Because it was away from the main street, the tourists didn’t really see it, although most would have opted for a much-posher bar anyway. It was a mile or so away from the student district and, whenever he went for a drink, Garry was convinced he was the youngest person there.
    ‘You all right mate?’ James asked.
    ‘Not too bad, just work and that.’ His tone clearly gave his mood away.
    James had picked his drink up but put it back down to avoid spilling it as he laughed. ‘Blimey, it can’t be that bad? Want to talk about it?’
    ‘Maybe. It’s a bit girly isn’t it?’
    James looked at him and laughed again. ‘What talking? You really