Through three years of studying, Abby never lost her polka-dot umbrella. During life-drawing classes and art-history lectures it stood propped up and dripping onto the floor, but she always
remembered to pick it up afterwards, now dry, and squeeze it into her bag alongside her sketch pad and pencils. And in spite of countless late nights at house parties or on club dance floors,
through her alcohol-induced haze Abby never failed to fish her brolly from the pile of coats strewn on the bedroom carpet, or to dig out her damp and torn ticket and collect it from the
cloakroom.
In all that time no one really upset her equilibrium – that delicate balance between practicality and polka dots – but one night, in her last year at college, Abby met Jake. Torn
between a desire not to provoke criticism from her über-trendy, body-pierced housemate, Carla, and a wish to express her own more frivolous side, Abby arrived at the Britons with her
immaculately ironed long fair hair offset by a backless dress covered in daisies. After depositing the umbrella at her favourite table to reserve it, she returned to the bar to order one of the
five bottles of beer she would drink that night.
Stealthy as a cat, Jake crept up and ran his finger slowly down her spine, accompanied by a languorous ‘How are you?’, as if he had known her intimately for several years. With some
experience by now of seducing and seduction, Abby knew immediately that whatever it took to woo a woman, Jake had it.
‘I’m OK.’ She drank in black hair, bad teeth, a swagger. Attitude.
‘I’ve seen you around. You live with that Carla girl, don’t you?’
And you live with your girlfriend, I’m sure, thought Abby. But she just said, ‘Yeah.’
Then with a raised eyebrow, Jake added, ‘We’re going to a party in a bit. Want to come?’
Abby swayed. There it was. Join us, the wildest crowd in town. Abandon yourself to my black charm.
When she left the pub, Carla had to run after her with the umbrella.
‘Be careful,’ her friend warned.
But I’ve just split up with a boyfriend we decided was too boring for me, Abby protested to herself. You said it was about time I was a bit more daring, and Jake’s gorgeous.
At the party Jake told her his girlfriend was away for the weekend. ‘So do you want to sleep with me tonight?’
Such audacity! ‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Well, don’t think for too long.’ And he wandered off, to talk to other girls.
After another bottle of brown ale, Abby told Jake she had decided.
‘And how do you know I haven’t changed my mind?’
She was momentarily knocked. Here she was, agreeing to be seduced, and he was flaking out on her!
But then he grinned. ‘Ha! Only kidding. Your place or mine?’
So they wound their way back to Abby’s, pausing for kisses and swigs of whisky from Jake’s hip flask en route.
That night Abby lost her heart. And back at the party, her neatly folded umbrella lay forgotten beneath a pile of overcoats strewn on the bedroom floor.
* * *
‘Ow!’ Liam woke with a jolt.
Where the hell am I? he wondered. He was covered in what seemed to be someone’s coat, surrounded by empty bottles and half-filled cans of beer . . .
Of course, he’d crashed out at the party. God, his head hurt, and his right arm was squashed beneath a mysterious weight. With his left hand he tentatively lifted the coat.
Beside him was a familiar face, smeared with make-up. It was his friend Roz. His stomach lurched.
Gently, so as not to wake her, he slid out his arm and sat up. This also revealed the source of his back pain: a small fold-up umbrella.
He stretched, trying to ease out the tension in his muscles, then went to the window and pushed aside the Indian bedspread that doubled as a makeshift curtain.
Typical, he thought, seeing the street below shiny with rain.
Liam had had a peripatetic childhood, but he’d never lived anywhere as wet as Manchester. Turning back to the bedroom, he couldn’t decide which was less inviting – the
fifteen-minute walk through Rusholme in the rain back home, or a room full of snoring students.
The latter will mean a conversation with Roz when she wakes, he thought with a shudder. What’s the betting she asks where we’re headed, or something equally awkward, when I
can’t even remember what we actually did, let alone whether it was fun or not and might be worth repeating.
Finding himself caught in emotionally vexing situations was nothing new. Liam was always starting relationships with so-called friends and bodging them. Sometimes he was keen, but then they
weren’t – possibly that was
why
he was keen, Roz had once suggested. More often, though, they were keen, and he wasn’t.
Liam glanced back at Roz and felt his cheeks flush with guilt. This is the worst mess I’ve got myself in yet, he thought. Roz isn’t just a casual acquaintance, she’s a really
good mate. They’d met during Freshers’ week and hung out together ever since – nearly three years now.
He looked around the room in an attempt to gain some clarity. There were three girls sprawled on a double bed opposite, a couple wrapped up together on an ancient armchair and several blokes
lined up on the floor like sausages on a barbecue. Then he remembered: the umbrella.
Salvation!
Granted, those polka dots were dubiously girly, but given a rapidly worsening headache and the situation with Roz, he could live with the humiliation of being seen with it. And although Liam
rarely committed to anything and so never adopted a firm political stance, as he tiptoed out of the room he justified taking it with the good old-fashioned rallying cry:
All property is
theft
. So it doesn’t really belong to anyone anyway, he reasoned.
On the way home, he stopped to buy a paper. Next to the newsagent’s was a cafe – the smell of sizzling bacon was alluring; it reminded him of home. Might help my headache, he
decided, and opened the door to the ‘ching’ of a bell, turning to shake the umbrella outside before leaving it to drip under his chair. Alternating gulps from a steaming mug of
over-brewed tea with forkfuls of baked beans and bacon, Liam absorbed the news with a gusto at odds with his political inertia. It wasn’t until he’d finished his drink and pushed away
his plate that he paused to take in his surroundings. Opposite sat a toothless old man noisily slurping coffee. In the corner were two indie types. The girl’s rumpled dress gave the
impression she’d just tumbled out of bed into the first available clothes, whilst the black-clad bloke opposite appeared quite the cat who’d got the cream. I bet they shagged, thought
Liam, with a twinge that could be either remorse or envy, he wasn’t quite sure.
‘Why’s Mummy still in bed?’ A high-pitched voice interrupted his thoughts. Liam turned to see a small child with a tired-looking man at the table next to him.
‘Because it’s Mother’s Day,’ said the man.
‘But we should be with Mummy on Mother’s Day,’ said the child.
‘Mummy gets to do what Mummy wants on Mother’s Day,’ the dad sighed. ‘And today Mummy wanted to lie in—’
‘Oh shit,’ muttered Liam, hurriedly getting to his feet. He fumbled for change to pay for his meal and grabbed the paper. Heading out of the cafe, he nearly collided with Roz.
‘Oh, hi Liam. Good party, huh? God, you were arseholed!’
Liam avoided her gaze. ‘Yeah, great.’
‘Sorry if I got a bit maudlin on you about Jake,’ she said. ‘It’s just so annoying that he waltzed off with that Abby girl after he’d been flirting all night with
me.’
‘Ah.’
‘Anyway, you were really sweet. Thanks.’ She pecked him on the cheek before pushing open the door. ‘I’m starved, gonna get some grub. Catch you later.’
Phew, thought Liam. Obviously we did nothing at all. I must simply have been the nice guy who seems to emerge occasionally when I get pissed.
The skies had cleared and his headache was gone, but as he wiped Roz’s damp kiss from his cheek and strolled up the road, Liam found himself frowning. If he didn’t know himself
better, he could have sworn he was a touch disappointed.
But now was not the moment to fathom it out, or he’d forget again. He reached into his jeans pocket for his mobile.
As always, she took ages to answer.
‘Mum?’ As if he didn’t know her voice after twenty-one years.
‘Liam! How great to hear from you. Sorry, I was in the garden.’
* * *
At three o’clock that afternoon Tim flipped the sign on the cafe door to
Closed.
He’d been on his feet for eighteen hours without a break – no wonder
his ex always complained he was a workaholic. Still, I’m unlikely to get much more trade today, he thought.
He gathered up the newspapers and magazines littering the tables and wiped the Formica countertop for the umpteenth time. As he bent down to return the industrial-sized tub of margarine to its
home at the bottom of the fridge, he saw an umbrella under one of the chairs.
‘Finders keepers,’ he muttered, and without a qualm adopted it as his own.
The next day was Monday, Tim’s only full day off. The cafe was closed, but Tim liked to use his downtime well, so in the morning he scheduled in swimming and the gym, in the afternoon his
therapist. Tim enjoyed exercise – it forced him as close to relaxing as he could ever get – but he found therapy hard. Despite often arranging something afterwards, invariably he seemed
to end up too tired and cancelling.
Still, far as I know, there aren’t any other cafe owners in Rusholme who are seeing a therapist, he smiled to himself, flicking off his car alarm. The notion pleased him; it fitted with
his image of himself as one of life’s originals. In fact, Tim only knew one other person in the whole of Manchester who went to a therapist, and that was his ex-wife. This, he was recently
prepared to acknowledge, was no coincidence. They’d been very bad for each other – just how bad he was only learning now.
As he turned the ignition of his Volvo, drops of rain hit the windscreen and Tim congratulated himself again. At least I had the presence of mind to grab that umbrella and throw it on the back
seat, he thought. His therapist lived in a street where every home owner seemed to have at least two cars, which meant he would invariably be forced to park some distance away.
Crunch into first gear and he was off, grinding his teeth and muttering at other motorists under his breath. Twice between Rusholme and Didsbury he was forced to hoot his horn; once he was
compelled to wind down the window and bellow, ‘Idiot!’ at a cyclist who swerved to avoid a puddle.
He wasn’t late for his appointment, but by the time he got to Delia’s he was in a terrible temper. Delia buzzed him in and he thundered up the stairs into the small waiting room. He
threw the umbrella onto the sofa and picked up a copy of
TIME
.
He was immersed in an article on climate change when Delia invited him to join her. He took a seat opposite the silver-haired therapist and said without preamble, ‘I don’t know why I
bother.’
Delia leant forward. Clearly she must be intrigued.
‘I work my bollocks off in that cafe. But Christ alive, I hate students! If they’re not bloody drunk, they’re hungover – and I dunno which is worse – loud and lairy
or pushing past me to throw up in the loo . . . I’ll bet you’re thinking I’m lucky to still be in business, but I’m not really, not when over half my bloomin’ money
goes to Sal . . . God, sometimes I’d
love
to take the cash and run. Then again, what’s the point of creating wealth at all, when the planet’s going to self-destruct soon
anyway, eh?’
He stopped. A small furrow between Delia’s eyebrows suggested she was finding something he was saying troublesome.
‘All that cooking,’ Tim explained. ‘That’s what does it! I slave away at a hot stove – and what do we get? Bloody global warming, that’s what. Something that
can destroy the world and people in it who I’m so busy trying to shore up – that’s what!’ Then he burst into tears.
Silently, Delia passed him a tissue. Tim blew his nose.
‘You seem to have a great deal of anger,’ she said after a while. ‘Who are you really angry with?’
‘I don’t know.’ Tim sniffed.
‘Could it be that you are angry with yourself?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Well . . . ’ Delia took a deep breath, and Tim sensed she was poised to make one of those difficult observations that he found so exhausting and braced himself. ‘Have you ever
wondered why you hate students so much when you used to be one here in Manchester yourself?’
‘I suppose, um, yes, I mean, no . . . But you’re right. I do feel a bit bad today.’
‘Oh?’
‘I feel sort of, well . . . guilty.’
‘Guilty about what?’
Tim flushed. ‘Sal.’
‘Ah.’
‘Perhaps . . . ’He paused and glanced down at the umbrella now at his feet, as if it might safeguard him against more than just rain. ‘I dunno, I wasn’t always that good
to her. All that work, you know. Never being home. Leaving her to cope with Becky. Not noticing when she’d made an effort to get dressed up . . . ’His voice trailed off.
‘Do you mean maybe she had a point about you being a workaholic?’
‘No!’ Tim kicked the brolly. ‘Well, so what if I am? Or was . . . It was them I was slaving for. And she never said thank you or told me she appreciated the lengths I was going
to so as to make them happy. I never got to see Becky at all!’ His voice faltered. ‘Still don’t, much . . . ’
After his session was finished, Tim got back into his car.
Strange, he thought. I feel curiously refreshed. Maybe it’s because the sun has come out? He checked himself. Yes. For the first time since starting to see Delia eight months previously,
he felt like doing something other than going back to his flat and crashing out on the sofa. So he took a detour to Withington. Returning to his marital home was always traumatic, but at least
today he hadn’t had to spend hours psyching himself up for it.
‘Hi, Becky.’ He grinned as his daughter opened the letterbox a crack to see who it was. ‘Is Mummy home?’ Becky climbed on tiptoe and opened the door just as Sal came down
the stairs.