My phone had been going all night. By the time I got it off the side it had stopped even trying to buzz, bzzt, and just sat there warm in my hand, the screen a wall of names.
Raj, who I'd argued football with across a till for six years, had sent a voice note that was just screaming. No words in it anywhere. Forty seconds of a man losing his mind in a stockroom in Moss Side.
The Railway Arms group chat had sixty-odd messages in it. The first team I ever picked. Because I never had team-mates, I never played past the park.
The closest thing I ever got was eleven blokes on a Sunday who trusted a shelf stacker with their weekends, and every one of them had stayed up till two in the morning for me.
My old man, who does not text, had texted.
Frankie Morrison, seventy-three and still refusing to learn what a voice note is, had sent one line. "Watched it in the Legion. Roof nearly came off. Proud of you, lad."
