Wouldnt It Be Good - Nik Kershaw -

"Wouldn’t it be good to be in your shoes?" he whispered one rainy Tuesday, his forehead pressed against the cold glass.

One evening, through a fluke of a broken service elevator and a misplaced key, Julian found himself standing in the hallway of the penthouse floor. The door to Alistair’s unit was ajar. Driven by a desperate, feverish curiosity, Julian slipped inside.

The neon-drenched streets of 1984 London didn’t feel like the future to Julian; they felt like a cage built of static and synthesizer hum. Wouldnt It Be Good - Nik Kershaw

In Julian’s mind, if he could just step into that penthouse, his problems—the mounting debt, the crushing loneliness, the feeling of being invisible—would evaporate. He imagined that the man in the penthouse, a sharp-jawed aristocrat named Alistair, never felt the biting chill of a drafty room or the hollow ache of an empty stomach.

He found Alistair in the living room, slumped on a designer sofa that cost more than Julian’s yearly salary. There were no guests. No laughter. Just a stack of legal documents and a half-empty bottle of gin. Alistair was staring at a photograph of a woman, his eyes rimmed with red, his hands shaking so violently he could barely hold his glass. "Wouldn’t it be good to be in your shoes

"You look like you sleep," Alistair said, his voice a gravelly wreck. "I haven't slept in three weeks. They’re taking the company. They’re taking the house. And she’s already gone."

Julian backed out of the room, leaving the door ajar. He walked down the twelve flights of stairs, his heart hammering against his ribs. When he reached the street, the rain felt different—not like a burden, but like a cold splash of reality. Driven by a desperate, feverish curiosity, Julian slipped

He looked back up at the penthouse. It still glowed. It still looked perfect. But as he turned toward his own dim attic, he adjusted his scarf and started to walk. The shoes were still worn, and the pockets were still empty, but for the first time, he didn't mind the weight of his own feet.