Page 7 of Glow

“It seems nice though,” Prin replied.

“Looks can be deceptive.”

Sadness crossed over Colin’s face for a moment before he resumed his usual cheery disposition.

“Come on. My place is up here.”

Prin didn’t feel it his place to push Colin any further. Instead, he followed him into the building. A stark white hallway greeted them.

Colin seemed so out of his place in his gaudy couture.

With shaky hands, Colin opened the door and ushered Prin inside. As soon as he walked in, he gasped.

“Wow.”

The apartment was a riot of colour in rich contrast to the sterile hall. On the walls, posters of long-closed theatre productions jostled for space with colourful oil paintings.

“Go on through,” Colin said.

Prin couldn’t wait to see what else this place had in store. The lounge didn’t disappoint.

Every surface was covered with trinkets. Prin wandered over to a bookshelf. It had nearly given up the ghost under the weight of biographies, stage books, photography collections and well-thumbed novels.

In front of this vast collection were photographs in clashing frames. Upon further inspection, they all held pictures of a younger Colin with various people. He looked so carefree.

Prin turned to see modern-day Colin opening the fridge in the small kitchen area that led off the lounge.

“Beer or wine?” Colin asked.

He was probably breaking a ton of rules about visiting students at home. However, Colin was no longer Prin’s student and they were hardly going to find themselves in a compromising position.

“Wine, please,” Prin said. “Any colour. Now where’s this laptop?”

Colin pointed to a dining table that sat in the window. It too held many books and what appeared to be piles of theatre programmes.

Prin fired the laptop up. He noticed Colin had no password protection.

Perhaps I’ll deal with that another day.

As soon as the welcome screen came on, Prin gasped. The sheer number of documents on there took his breath away.

“What are all these?”

Colin came over and placed a glass of wine gently down next to Prin.

“My missing theatre programmes,” Colin replied, proudly. “I’ve been collecting real ones for years. I had some gaping holes from when I worked on the cruise ships. Some kind person has put them all on the internet.”

There was a lot to unpack in that statement.

“Okay,” Prin said. “These are massive files. You can’t save that much data on your laptop. No wonder it’s slow. We’ll have to get some of these off it.”

Colin’s face dropped. “You mean throw them away? It took ages finding them all.”

“No. Don’t worry,” Prin replied. “I’ll set you up on the cloud. It will take no time.”

Colin beamed. “You’re a good lad. Thank you.”

“Before I do that, did you say you were on the cruise ships?”