A slightly freckled and gently tanned hand steered the mouse towards the send and receive button and clicked. Jason blew a short, sharp, exasperated breath down his nose.
‘Damn,’ he said, annoyed as the expected familiar ping and little envelope in the right-hand corner of his computer screen failed to materialise.
‘Where are you darling?’ He forcibly stabbed his half-smoked cigarette into the already overcrowded little black marble ashtray and gazed around the small sparten room.

‘So this is home,’ he exclaimed resignedly to himself, leaned back in his worn black leather chair and gently sighed.
He swivelled round and stared intently at the two suitcases of clothes and three black bin bags of possessions that sat on the floor by the door. Turning back to his laptop, he leaned forward. His elbows resting on the faded green plastic garden table and with his head in his hands whispered,
‘Thirty-seven years and this is all I have to show for my life.’ Except it wasn’t. He suddenly remembered another box he’d left in the back of his van. The box that contained the kettle, toaster, assorted items of cutlery and small carrier of essentials he’d bought earlier that evening. He cursed again, got up and walked over to the door. 

Twisting open the deadlock he stepped out onto a dimly lit landing, the forty watt light bulb barely able to cascade its elderly yellow light down the three flights of stairs to the hallway. Jason grimaced at the heavily glossed apple green paintwork of the spindles and handrail. He carefully inched towards the first tread, mindful of the threadbare strip of carpet below his feet and began his descent. He momentarily stopped on the second-floor landing and glanced at the three identical apple green doors. 

‘Paint must have been cheap.’ He muttered. Continuing straight down to the bottom his foot struggled to find grip as it came to rest on a slithering mass of glossy flyers on the hall floor. It was difficult to see what floor covering lay beneath these masses of brightly coloured leaflets strewn across the floor. But it was easy to see that ‘Luigi’s Pizza Palace’ had easily the most emphatic marketing campaign. He reached to the badly varnished front door and began undoing the three bolts, and then pulling the two keys from his pocket, the two locks. Depressing and pulling back the gold coloured handle, the door easily swung open and Jason gasped as he took in a deep breath of cool night air. 

The street of 1930’s, three-storey terraces was silent and Jason’s van stood alone under a streetlamp, the orange glow blurred slightly by the shadowy mist that hung like a hammock under the blackness. Jason stood and listened intently to the silence and somewhere in the distance, a clock chimed four times.