The World According to Bob

didn’t want him to see the body lying there. He’d seen similar scenes on the streets of central London, but I just felt protective of him.
    A few minutes later I got a knock on the door. The police and some paramedics had arrived in the hallway and a young constable was standing in my doorway.
    ‘I gather you were the person who found him and called 999,’ he said.
    ‘Yeah,’ I said. I’d gathered myself together a little bit by now, but I was still feeling shaken.
    ‘You did the right thing. I don’t think there was much more you could have done for him,’ the PC said, reassuringly.
    I described how I’d found him on the staircase and seen him go down.
    ‘It seemed to affect him really quickly,’ I said.
    I told them that I was a recovering addict which, I think, allayed any suspicions they might have had about me somehow being involved with this guy. They knew what addicts were like, as indeed did I. At the end of the day all they care about is themselves. They are so selfish would literally sell their own grandmother or watch their girlfriend die. If an addict had discovered another addict who had overdosed in this way they would have done two things; empty the poor sod’s pockets of cash, relieve him of any jewellery and then run away – fast. They might call an ambulance but they wouldn’t have wanted to get involved.
    The policemen also seemed to know about the flats and its dodgy past. They were pretty understanding.
    ‘OK, Mr Bowen, that’s all I need for now, it’s unlikely we will need a further statement for the inquest, but we will keep your details on file in case we need to speak to you again,’ the PC told me.
    We chatted for another moment or two. He told me that they had found some ID on the guy and also some medication which had his name and address on it. It turned out he was on day release from a psychiatric ward.
    By the time I saw the officer back out into the hallway, the scene had been completely cleared. It was as if nothing had happened. It was as quiet as a grave in the flats. No one else seemed to be around at this time of the day.
    In the quiet I suddenly felt myself being overwhelmed by what I’d just seen. I couldn’t hold back my emotions any longer. Back inside the flat, I just burst into floods of tears. I called Belle on my mobile and asked her to come over that night. I needed to talk to someone.
    We sat up until well past midnight and drank a few too many beers. I couldn’t get the image of the guy collapsing out of my head.

    I was in a state of mild shock for days. On one level, I was shaken by the fact that this poor guy had died in that way. He’d spent his final moments on the floor of an anonymous block of flats, in the company of a complete stranger. That wasn’t the way life should work. He was someone’s son, maybe someone’s brother or even someone’s father. He should have been with them or his friends. Where were they? Why weren’t they looking after him? I also wondered why on earth he had been allowed out of his psychiatric ward for the day if he was that vulnerable?
    But, if I was honest, the thing that hit me hardest was the realisation that this could so easily have been me. It might sound silly now, but I remember thinking that it felt a little bit like Scrooge being visited by the ghost of his not-so-distant past.
    For the best part of a decade, I had lived like that. I too had been a phantom figure, hiding away in stairwells and alleyways, lost in my heroin addiction. I had no real memory of the details, of course. Large chunks of my life back then were a complete blur. But it was safe to guess that there were probably dozens – maybe hundreds – of occasions when I could have died alone in some anonymous corner of London, far from the parents, relatives and friends from whom I’d cut myself off.
    Thinking about it in the wake of this man’s death, part of me couldn’t actually believe that I’d lived that way. Had I really been reduced to that? Had I really done those things to myself? A part of me couldn’t imagine how on earth I’d been able to insert a needle into my flesh, sometimes four times a day. It seemed unreal, except I knew it was reality. I still bore the scars, literally. I only had to look at my arms and legs to see them.
    They reminded me of how fragile my situation remained still. An addict is always living on a knife edge. I would always have an addictive personality and some mental health issues that I