I knew Johan before I met him. We started talking in late May 2005 and within a few days it was several e-mails a day. We found we could talk about all sorts of things. I bored him with stories about what I was doing in Cambridge. He told me all about working for a video company in Canary Wharf, answering the phone to stroppy customers and taking more time than he should have to take the orders to be posted. You wouldn't have thought it would last, but it did. He liked having someone to talk to. We swapped numbers, but the first time he called me was the 2nd of July. I was walking round Tesco. He wanted to know if he could visit me in Cambridge. ‘Of course you can’ I told him. ‘I’d like to’ he said, ‘but I’ve got a load of washing to do.’ ‘Bring it too.’ I said. ‘I’ve got a washing machine.’ So I met him late of the Saturday afternoon. He got off the train grinning, carrying a huge bag. Outside the station he stopped. ‘I need a cigarette’ he said. We sat on one of the benches outside the station while he lit a cigarette and rummaged in the bag he’d brought with him. He produced a plastic container. ‘Do you like Salmon Quiche’ he said. It turned out that he’d been working at some kind of formal reception, something to do with video or television, and had liberated several pieces of Salmon Quiche. We had it for dinner that night with a salad, while he talked non-stop about everything and anything. He seemed quite taken with Cambridge, how quiet it was, and how green it was. We met each other again three days later. I promised him a Salmon Quiche and thanks to Delia Smith, I went with one. I bought the flan case specially. I remember sitting on the tube to Turnpike Lane hoping the Quiche didn’t smell too strong. His room was on the second floor of a nondescript house in a street of nondescript houses. It was large enough; there was a double bed, a dirty green carpet and green curtains that were too short for the windows. The room was spotless though. He had his little CD radio and a pair of the largest and strangest red shoes that I’d ever seen. He talked about working for the video company and not surprisingly for Johan, how well he got on with the old lady who lived next door. She was in her nineties and Johan helped her with the gardening. We went for a drink in a local bar. He wanted to dance. He was the only one on the dance floor, dancing in his ridiculous red boots. He kept stopping and coming over to talk to me. He told me about wanting to be a DJ, how he’d done the training and was really good at it. On the way home he told me about his school and the exams he’d done. I told him he ought to apply for University, he had the grades. He told me how he hated his job at the video store and his application to stay in the country. Three months the Home Office had told him, he’d been waiting for three years. He knew people who’d paid to get their home office applications processed and passed. The next morning he decided we should go a different way back, since he had to go work and I had to get back to Cambridge in time for work. We caught a bus to Seven Sisters, through some of the most depressing streets I could imagine. Of course I was lucky to leave when I did. The day was the 7th of July and the bombs exploded while I was on the train back to Cambridge. I only discovered the fact when I reached my office. Johan had reached work. He couldn’t get back that night because the tube and the buses had all been stopped. He was so scared that he slept under a desk in the video firm’s offices. He managed to get home the following day. ‘I hate London sometimes,’ he said. ‘Will you come and see me next week?’ I did in the end. Trains into London were running but the Underground was still closed. In the end I caught a taxi although the driver didn’t seem to know where he was going, and the journey took almost an hour. When I reached the house there was no reply; neither did he answer the phone. I walked up and down the road for 20 minutes. Finally I got a response to knocking on the door. ‘No-one of that name here’ I was told. I went for a drink in the bar we’d visited and then spent ages trying to work out which bus would take me back the way I wanted to go. They were all full. As I got on one and paid the fair my phone rang. ‘Where are you’ he said. I jumped of the bus and told him how long I’d been waiting. ‘I fell asleep’ he said. I was later to find out that when Johan fell asleep, he could sleep through an earthquake. We went for a meal in the pub down the road. I bought him steak and chips. He loved a nice steak. I visited him again the following weekend and this time we got on the newly running tube and spent the day in Central London. He told me off for being out in the sun the previous day and getting sunburnt. As we walked he practically told me his life story. After knowing Johan for a few weeks, I felt as though I’d known him for years. Again we stopped for a steak and chips at the Angus Steak house in Leicester Square; he had it with garlic mayonnaise. He would spent months afterwards trying to recreate that mayonnaise. He had a thing about Garlic too. The more the better. He wanted me to go to South Africa with him to visit his family; he hadn’t seen them for years. I spoke to him as often as possible during the following week. By now he’d given up the job at the video company and was trying to get other cash in hand jobs. He was running out of money though. Towards the end of that week he caught a train, came up to Cambridge where I met him and gave him the money to pay his rent, before he went back. From then on he seemed very depressed and was reluctant to talk, or answer the phone. I spoke to him three days later, a week after our last meeting. He was hoping to get a job with a removal company with his friend Hannes, he’d already done some work for them. He’d been handing out leaflets and flyers. He enjoyed that because it got him into the clubs for free. He wasn’t eating a lot, he said. He couldn’t afford it. I called him every day after that to check. The job never happened. He got more and more depressed. On Sunday 7th August I was working, and called him in my lunch break. In a whisper, almost, he told me he hadn’t been able to pay the rent, had no money and hadn’t eaten for three days. I had to sit down and cry. It didn't take long to reach a decision. I called him again half an hour later. I told him to pack everything because I wasn’t going to let him suffer in London any more. He could stay with me for free. Over the course of the next week we made all the arrangements. He had to tell his landlord he was leaving, and get things ready. My existing flatmate seemed quite unconcerned that Johan was coming to stay. The following Monday August 15th, I took the train to London with two huge sports bags. Johan was waiting when I reached the house. We finished packing, though the huge red boots had to go in a bin bag on their own, they wouldn’t fit anywhere else. His friend Hannes told me to look after him. ‘Don’t worry.’ I said. ‘He’ll be okay with me.’