‘I’ve dabbled in Twitch from time to time,’ John replied with a shaky hand gesture. ‘But my knowledge is limited to Halo, StarCraft, a little bit of Fortnite. But I’m far from an expert.’

‘You know more than I do, I might have to hire you as a consultant,’ I admitted, more than a little bit surprised. I inched my stool to the right away from my neighbour who was fumbling around under the bar near my knees.

‘S’there a plug socket?’ he grunted at John.

‘Sorry, no,’ he replied. ‘All the plugs are over by the sofas. If it’s your phone you need, I can plug it in behind the bar?’

The man huffed in response before heaving a huge beige plastic case onto the bar top. My tiny bowl of snack mix jumped an inch off the counter in surprise. I glanced over at John and raised my glass to my lips, quietly watching. What on earth was inside?

‘Can I get some tap water?’ he asked.

‘Sure,’ John replied, reaching for a glass. ‘You want a menu?’

‘No.’

Aware that I was staring, I shifted my attention to our reflections in the mirrored wall behind John. It was a weird shape for a laptop bag and altogether too beige to be from this decade. Unless it was something from the last Yeezy collection and I was just terribly out of it. I knew Kanye loved his neutrals.

‘How come you’re worrying yourself about gaming?’

Somehow, John managed to tear his eyes away from the man and turn his attention back to me.

‘Um, I’m producing a podcast for a gamer,’ I said, too distracted to get into it. What was in the case? ‘Not that exciting.’

‘Have to admit, it took me a while to get into them but now I’m obsessed with podcasts,’ John said, resting his elbow on the bar and cupping his chin in his hand. ‘I can’t run without one now.’

I quirked an eyebrow.

‘You run?’

‘I run,’ he confirmed with a grin. ‘But yeah, love podcasts. I started with that one about that man who got done for killing his girlfriend, even though he said he didn’t? God, that was fascinating.’

I forced a smile and nodded. A hundred years from now, historians were going to look at all these murder podcasts and wonder what the hell were they thinking? Nothing like dumping a metric ton of hints on how to get away with murder into the public domain. You know who found that kind of stuff useful? Murderers.

‘But I can’t listen to all that gory stuff now, the world’s too depressing as it is.’

‘I’m sorry but can you please keep it down?’ said Mr White Man with Dreadlocks. ‘Some of us are trying to work.’