Billy and Rolonde

Manchester-based photographer and writer Len Grant - well-known for his regeneration work - has produced a new book about the socially excluded.

For over two years Grant joined a heroin addict, an asylum seeker, and a homeless alcoholic on their journeys of survival.

Barbara, a 70-year-old Zimbabwean asylum seeker becomes increasingly depressed as she's moved from one shared house to another, trying to stay afloat on the £35 a week in vouchers offered to `failed' asylum seekers.

Middle-aged Allan is about the same age as Grant but their lives could not be more different. Some weeks drunk, some weeks sober, only the support of a voluntary group keeps Allan from going under altogether. "I'm still drinking and I don't care," he confides. "I'm going to die and I don't care."

Billy is now in his 30s and has been a heroin addict all his adult life. But he's had enough. Taking Grant's interest in him as an incentive to come through a tough detox and rehabilitation programme, he allows the photographer into his life before and after drugs. Success rates are depressingly low and Billy has tried before to get clean...

In Billy and Rolonde, Grant starts out as a documentary photographer of the socially excluded but finds it impossible to remain an objective observer.

I'm early and it takes a while for the door to be opened. Maybe Billy is checking me out on the security camera he's set up in his bathroom window. When the door opens he's apologetic, he's overslept. His flatmate stays under the covers in the bedroom they share as Billy pulls on his trainers and finds his jacket. It's `pay day' and some of the pay is going on a fix.
Heading towards the main road Billy is in talkative mood, happy to answer my questions about his addiction.
`I spend between £20 and £40 a week on heroin - two or three hits - out of about £60 or £70 a week I get from the dole. I'm probably what they call a Giro-junkie because I don't thieve to feed my addiction any more,' he says as we walk to the post office on the other side of the small estate. `But there have been plenty of times when I'd shoplift or break into an empty building and steal some scrap.'
There's a queue of six or seven waiting outside the post office. Billy acknowledges the two men and one woman in front of us: fellow users eager to draw their weekly benefit.
I've put a microphone on Billy, the recorder stuffed in his inside jacket pocket, so I know what he says once he's inside.
`I'll take it all out please,' he says to the cashier as he reaches the front of the queue. `And can I have a £5 Vodafone top-up please? Thank you very much. Have a nice day.'
His friends come out first and ask me what I'm doing. Over the last few weeks I've been asking myself the same question.
`He's a good shoplifter,' says one young man who is surely still a teenager.
`What makes a good shoplifter?' I ask before the naivety of my question dawns.
`He doesn't get caught.'
After the post office we walk together to the Multisaver convenience store so Billy can put some credit on his electricity card. `We were down to 18p last night,' he tells me. Striding the junkie stride back towards the main road, Billy is stopped by someone asking directions. He is friendly and polite, able to point the lost motorist in the right direction. Would she ever consider he's a heroin addict about to buy his pay-day score?
`There are about ten dealers on my estate,' he says after he's popped into the chemist for fresh needles, `which is quite a lot for a small estate. If I went to town there'd be another 30 down there. Heroin is more freely available now than cannabis.
`I'll have to take this off now,' he says of the microphone as he steps into a phone box to call his dealer. `You go ahead. I'll see you back at the flat in five minutes.' Without Billy I suddenly feel vulnerable walking through the estate back to his block.
On another occasion I'd see the place differently. I'd see it as normal. I'd find the strong sunlight picking out the yellow daffodils in the flower boxes vaguely uplifting. I'd notice that the tidy landings of the deck access flats look almost inviting. I'd think the bright blue name signs and the newly painted metal railings were indications that the housing trust managing these properties was making an effort.
I wonder if those two teenage girls, meandering late to school, their chattering heads locked together, really know what goes on here. Most probably they do.
But today it feels different. There's an undercurrent of criminality and of potential violence. This morning, for me, that undercurrent has surfaced: I've been walking along with a man who is about to buy a bag of heroin from a dealer somewhere a few landings away, go back to his flat and inject himself. And I'm about to photograph him doing it.