Our house is a big Victorian semi in the south of the city. Manchester is a large sprawling conurbation, laying on the plain between the Pennine foothills to the north and the rich Cheshire farmlands to the south. Its history as a centre of trade, industry and commerce brought successive waves of immigrants to live and work here. Manchester was now home to a myriad of cultures. There are large, long established communities from the Caribbean, from India, from Bangladesh and Pakistan, from China and Ireland.
The city is cross-hatched by the old canals and railways that transported the goods back in the days of the industrial revolution. The Manchester ship canal provided a thoroughfare to bring cargo all the way from the coast to the docks. In Manchester they would meet each day to set the price of cotton for the world. Whoever first lived in our house probably made his money in that trade.
I made myself a cheese and pickle sandwich and a mug of tea. Sat to eat at the big kitchen table. The house was quiet: kids at school, Ray at college, Sheila, our lodger, at the library working on her project for university.
Ray was in love. I should have been pleased for him but I was anxious. If it became serious he and his son Tom might move out. They might decide to buy a place instead of renting. Ray and I had set up home together for mutual convenience. Two single parents, a child apiece, a big house we could rent indefinitely. He’d answered my advert, and we’d given it a trial. It worked. It worked really well. My daughter Maddie had a surrogate brother in Tom and Ray and I benefited from sharing out the relentless routine of childcare and chores. We’d become a family of sorts. If Ray and Tom went I’d have to try and replace them – and they felt irreplaceable. It would be such a wrench. Or maybe Laura would move in? Could that work? Would she want to move into a set-up like ours? It was hard to share a house, hard enough for families and for couples but for people who hadn’t got those roles allocated there was so much to negotiate. Ray and I had done hours of that along the way. And we’d had our very own lodger from hell, too, as well as some people who just didn’t want to share a home with others in the long run.
I recalled the pokey bedsit I’d been in with Maddie before we’d got the house, no bath, no garden. It felt like a trap, a punishment, never a sanctuary. What if Ray did move out and I couldn’t find anyone suitable to share? We’d have to move too – I couldn’t cover the rent. I didn’t want to leave Withington, I liked it. It was handy for the library and the baths, there were enough shops to suit us, and a park, even a cinema. The hospitals in the area and the universities down the road provided employment and brought students into the mix of people who lived in the neighbourhood. I’d hate to move.
