My recollection of the rest of the evening is hazy. I remember drinking every glass of wine put in front of me, singing Mikey’s favourite “Cigarettes and Alcohol” with everyone around the table, crying a lot and telling strangers I loved them.
After the raffle, Joe and Karen had to take me outside and pour me into a waiting cab. It was still early. Joe said he’d come back home with me but I insisted he stay. I could tell he wanted to. It was a warm evening and a large crowd had gathered by the smoking shed. Above their heads nicotine and vape-clouds drifted over the Chorlton chimneypots into a mauve-and-pink sky. I slumped back on the gashed leather seat and wiped a circle of condensation from the window. My face wet with tears, I looked through my porthole, searching for Mikey’s face in the crowd.
Chapter 2
I uncurled my legs and sat upright on the armchair.
“She said what?”
“She said you tripped over her table and knocked the raffle prizes flying.”
“Christ.” I shook my head. “I don’t even remember. What else did she say?”
Karen chewed the inside of her lip.
“Come on. Spit it out, woman!”
“She said it wasn’t really fitting behaviour for a university lecturer.”
My jaw dropped. “She did not.”
“Afraid so.”
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” I leant forward and put my head in my hands, closing my eyes briefly then opening them and raising my head. “You know her daughter is in my class?”
Karen nodded, her lips suppressing a smile.
I gave her the finger. “Get lost, Obassi!”
We both started to laugh then I shook my head. “I really can’t remember any of it. So when did all this happen, exactly?”
“In the toilets not long after you’d left.”
“God. And who was she talking to?”
“No idea. The hand-dryer came on and I couldn’t hear anything else. I waited inside the cubicle until I was sure they’d gone.”
It was Saturday, the morning after the fundraiser. Karen and I were in her “white room”, the inner sanctum at the back of her Old Trafford terrace house where she practised yoga and mindfulness. A beige leather sofa in front of French windows overlooked a long narrow garden. Apart from a matching armchair, a pearl rug on white painted floorboards and a rolled-up yoga mat propped against the wall, there was very little else in the room. Chet Baker was playing on a lonely iPod on the grey marble mantelpiece and the lingering smell of fresh white paint was starting to make me queasy.
I preferred the rest of the house, a happy chaos of books, colourful retro and eclectic second-hand furniture. The walls were busy with posters of gigs, art exhibitions and anti-racism marches, many of which Karen and I had been on together. Recently a shrine had appeared in the kitchen dedicated to my lovely goddaughter Alexia. She was a language student at Sheffield. Old trophies, photographs and random objects like shoes, schoolbooks and cinema tickets lined the windowsill.
“She’s not dead, you know,” I said when I first saw it. “She’s only gone to Sheffield Uni.”
Karen raised an eyebrow and gave me a look that said, ‘You don’t have kids, so how would you know?’ At which I yawned inside. To be fair, Karen wasn’t half as patronising about my childless status as some of my other friends were. The pitying looks, the comments about my clock ticking and what a wonderful mum I’d make. Some of them were driving me bonkers. What business was it of theirs whether I had kids or not?
At thirty-nine, I still hadn’t decided. But I had good reason. Dad died when I was ten. Tess’s mental health deteriorated considerably afterwards. I had some help from a neighbour but I had to rear Mikey singlehandedly a lot of the time. He was four when Dad died and, believe me, being a child carer for a rumbustious four-year-old was no easy task. I bathed my brother, changed him, fed him and played with him. If he got sick, I stayed off school to mind him. I knew how hard it was to raise a child so having one of my own was never going to be a decision I’d make lightly. I loved my uncluttered life, the freedom I had to travel now that I didn’t have Tess to care for and I’d worked hard to secure a permanent post at the university. I wasn’t sure I wanted to give up all that for a baby.
The floor suddenly shuddered beneath my feet. I clutched the chair-arm as the room began to vibrate. Karen rolled her eyes, Chet Baker got drowned out and I put my fingers in my ears as the eleven thirty-two to Piccadilly screeched past at the end of the garden.
Karen and I had both wanted to buy houses in Chorlton but by the time we were ready we’d been priced out of the working-class suburb where we were raised. In the nineties, fancy wine bars, cosmopolitan restaurants and a vegan food cooperative moved in and it transformed into Manchester’s bohemian suburb. House prices rocketed and locals like Karen and me were elbowed out. We both ended up buying a mile away in the arctic hinterland of Old Trafford, streets from the roar of the stadium. Karen bought her terrace house at a knockdown price when the railway track at the bottom of the garden was rarely used but now she endured a minor earthquake every half hour. Tragic circumstances and a windfall allowed Joe and me to return to Chorlton, but Karen remained out in the cold. She’d been trying to sell for years.
Now, not long back from a run, she was lying across the sofa in cream joggers and a black vest top. Her golden curls had come loose from her ponytail and were spread across the cream leather. Honey-coloured April sunshine poured over her from the French windows, an endorphin halo hovered above her head and she glowed.
