‘Not now,’ she said quickly, ‘I’ve one of the children off ill. But I’m at work tomorrow – eleven till three. I could meet you after that? Or Monday – I’m at home Mondays, but I’d rather it was tomorrow if you can.’
I hesitated, reluctant to use up the middle of a Saturday if I could avoid it. ‘Could we do it before you start work?’
‘Yeah, that should be all right.’ She described a cafe near the Corn Exchange where we could meet. She sounded subdued over the phone; maybe she was tired from looking after the child she’d mentioned, or worn down by the experience of being followed by a stranger.
‘How will I know who you are?’ she asked.
‘I’ll wear a red jacket.’
‘Not a pink carnation?’
I appreciated her attempt at humour (even if it wasn’t exactly original) but her tone was too wistful to really pull it off.
There’s no point in driving into town on a Saturday. Parking’s difficult to find and outrageously expensive into the bargain. I got the bus into Piccadilly Gardens. It was a few minutes’ walk down Market Street to the Corn Exchange.
Traffic was snarling up around the terminus and there seemed to be a lot of police vans around. As I reached the top of Market Street I ran into a crowd of people. I thought there’d been an accident, or maybe a robbery. The police helicopter flew overhead very low down. I turned to ask the man next to me if he knew what was going on.
Before he could answer, there was a great bang. Then nothing. A gust of air. I felt the surge in my stomach. A blast of wind and dust, strong enough to affect my balance. A cloud of smoke plumed into the sky. I thought I could hear screaming, lots of screaming. It was a chorus of alarms, shrilling and screeching.
They’d bombed the Arndale Centre.
Now if you’d asked me which building in Manchester I’d blow up, given the chance, the Arndale Centre would have come out tops (followed closely by the ghastly Piccadilly Plaza complex). Not just because of its ugly facade, like a giant toilet all beige tiles and no windows, but also because of how the place made me feel when I was in there. It was horrible on the outside and terrifying on the inside. I always got lost and could never get out as quickly as I intended. It’d suck you in, just one more bargain, oh, just pop in there, in here, over there. When I finally made it to an exit I’d stagger out into the fresh air, reeling with exhaustion, blinking at natural light, appalled at how far I still was from the bus home. And how little of my list I’d actually bought. Best policy was to steer well clear of the place. Oh, I’d pop into the shops on the outside edge, off Market Street, but I’d be careful to come back out the same way and not get drawn into the back- the never-ending land of artificial lights, fancy tiled floors and piped music.
