I pointed and Joe Doherty turned and looked.
“Cold feet?” He smiled as a mounted policeman trotted past, waving and telling us to get a move on.
I opened my mouth to reply but the words never came out. An unearthly roar reared up behind us, the force of the blast raising the three of us off the ground. Joe and I stumbled forward and managed to steady ourselves but Tess flopped onto the pavement like a rag doll. In the seconds that followed the world was cloaked in silence, broken only by the sound of falling glass. Shop windows shattered everywhere and crystal rain came teeming down. A horse whinnied somewhere then the shrieking of sirens, car alarms and screams all followed.
I felt a ringing in my ears and I was shaking. Joe picked Tess up. A large shard had lodged itself in her forehead. She was shaking too, her breathing shallow and blood was streaming down her face. He carried her down the street and I ran alongside holding her hand. The police who were preparing for hooligans earlier were now everywhere, frantically leading us away from the blast. We later learned they’d been warned about a second bomb. I saw one officer was leaning over a pregnant woman looking like he was having a panic attack but trying to hide it. We stopped for breath after about a hundred yards or so. Joe and I turned round. A mushroom of white smoke covered the dazzling blue sky and bits of paper floated over the Manchester skyline like dying doves. We locked eyes and love raised its head from the ashes of destruction and hatred.
We continued along Deansgate and I witnessed small acts of kindness on every street corner: a homeless man cradling an old man’s bleeding head in the doorway of the Sawyers Arms, two young England fans carrying a buggy with a baby in it for a struggling mother, a group of taxi drivers in turbans turning their black cabs into makeshift ambulances. Dust clogged the air and carrier bags of shopping and Father’s Day gifts were abandoned everywhere. On the corner of John Dalton Street one of the taxi drivers spotted Tess and shouted out that he was going to the Infirmary. Dazed, the three of us got in. Two bloodied Russian fans sat opposite. One was moaning and holding his gashed leg under his knee with both hands.
“I was buying socks,” said Joe, staring straight ahead, “I forgot to bring a spare pair. I was supposed to meet Jan and Stefan. They’re over from the Dusseldorf office. We were going to watch the Scotland game together.” He shook his head. “I’ve no idea where they are.”
I realised he was in shock and put my hand on his. The young Russian let out another moan and Tess grabbed my arm. “What about Mikey?”
As the taxi pulled away, I saw a battalion of Marks and Spencer’s staff, dust-covered middle-aged women in navy, marching down the road followed by a line of shoppers. Further on, I gasped at the sight of bodies scattered in the road, all slim females, one with her white dress ripped off.
“Mannequins,” Joe said. “Blown out of shop windows.”
At the Infirmary we were treated by a pretty young nurse from Mayo. Aiofe Kelly had alabaster skin and tar-coloured curls and as she took down a box of dressings from the medical cabinet, I could see she was crying. I went over and put my arm around her.
“Sorry.” She wiped her eye with the back of her hand then nodded at the gap in the cubicle curtain where an older nurse was standing with a clipboard. “The charge nurse sent me over to your ma. ‘She’s one of yours,’ she says to me. ‘Your lot did this so you can treat her.’” Aiofe sniffed. “I’ve worked with that woman for ten years.”
We knew immediately it was the IRA. In my university years I’d read up on all the Irish history I’d never been taught at school. I read about De Valera, Collins and Markievicz, names I’d never heard in any of my history lessons. For a while after I was angry about all the British atrocities heaped on the Irish in the past. I sang rebel songs in lock-ins in Levenshulme, learned the names of all the hunger strikers and developed a crush on Martin McGuinness that I kept to myself. My relationship with Irish nationalism had its ups and downs over the years but that day, as I watched the walking wounded flood into the hospital waiting room and wiped blood from my Irish mother’s face, all I felt was rage.
Joe queued at the hospital phone box and called his parents and the Old Trafford hotel where his work colleagues were staying. They’d been on their way into town in a taxi when the driver was alerted about the bomb over the radio car and the taxi turned back. I asked him to ring the house to see if Mikey was there but there was no answer.
Joe accompanied us back to Brantingham Road in a taxi and the three of us watched the news unfold on TV. I stared in disbelief at the images of our city centre in tatters. Over two hundred injured but no fatalities due to the efficiency of the police evacuation. Tess chain-smoked in her armchair and every five minutes she asked where Mikey was. I had no idea. He was sixteen and probably hanging out with his friends or some girl. He’d said nothing that morning about going into town. She got more and more agitated and paced up and down in front of the gas fire, spots of blood seeping through her bandaged head.
She wrung her hands. “How can I ever open my mouth in the shops in Chorlton again?” she said. “I feel ashamed to be Irish.”
I put my
