The boy couldn’t have been more than nineteen. He stood outside Afflecks, one hand pressed flat against the window where the vintage jackets hung on their chrome rails. His reflection overlapped with a leather bomber from the seventies, brown and creased and priced at something I couldn’t see from across Oldham Street.
Rain started. Not heavy, just that fine Manchester drizzle that settles into everything. He didn’t move. His jacket, thin and synthetic, began to darken at the shoulders.
A woman came out of the building, keys in hand, and locked the main door. She said something to him. He stepped back, nodding, hands now in his pockets. She walked away towards Piccadilly Gardens without looking back. He stayed.
I ordered another coffee from the place with the steamed-up windows, the one that does the flat whites too hot. From my seat I could watch him through the condensation, a shape against the lit shopfronts. The after-work crowd moved around him, umbrellas up, all heads down. He checked his phone twice. The second time, his thumb moved across the screen for a long while before he put it away.
The lights inside Afflecks went off, section by section. First the ground floor, then the upper levels, until only the emergency signs glowed red behind the glass. The leather jacket disappeared into shadow. Still he waited.
A group of lads passed, loud with Friday energy, and one of them called something out. The boy didn’t react. He’d taken his hand from his pocket and was holding a folded piece of paper, creased many times over, the kind of worn you get from reading something too often. He looked at it without unfolding it.
The rain thickened. Proper rain now, the kind that means it. Water ran down the window beside me in long uneven tracks. Through them, I watched him finally move. He crossed the street, walked to the bin on the corner, and stood there.
His hand hung over the opening. Ten seconds. Fifteen. He put the paper back in his pocket and turned down Tib Street, shoulders hunched, disappearing into the dark between the bars and the curry houses.
I finished my coffee, cold now. The rain kept falling. Someone took his spot outside the window, a girl with bright hair, and began her own vigil.
It wasn’t my business. None of it was.
Generated by AI. Selected by me.
The AI Grandad 