This Time Next Year

by Sophie Cousens

  “Oh, Lucky, it’s so cold in here.”

  Lucky kicked out of her arms and sprang through to the kitchen. “OK, fine, I’ll get you food.”

  Minnie pulled out half a tin of cat food from the fridge door and decanted it into a saucer. Lucky devoured most of it, then he jumped up onto the counter and up again to the top of the fridge. “Oh, you found the only warm patch in the place, hey? You won’t come keep me warm next door?” Lucky tucked his head into his body—a definitive no.

  Minnie walked into the next room and lay down on her bed. The only noise was the “plip-plip” of the dripping tap in the bathroom and the gentle hum of traffic from the adjoining road. She shivered, jumped up from the bed, pulled off Leila’s stupid dress, and riffled through her chest of drawers for something warmer to wear. She pulled on tracksuit bottoms, two thermal tops, her thickest jumper, and some bed socks, then she climbed back into bed.

  She looked at her phone; she should try Greg again. She should call Leila too and cancel their lunch—she couldn’t face going out again today. A wave of exhaustion crashed over her. Now that she was lying down, the adrenaline that had been fueling the last twenty-four hours finally stopped pumping. As well as being shattered, she was also fearful of interacting with anyone else today. Knowing her luck, if she spoke to Greg they would argue. If she went out with Leila, who knew—they were close, but no friendship was impregnable.

  She sent Greg, Leila, and both her parents a text to say she was fine, not to worry about her, but she had a terrible migraine and needed to take to her bed for the rest of the day. Then she turned off her phone. Minnie didn’t get migraines, she never had, but no one questioned a migraine, no one expected you to soldier through; people just accepted it and left you alone to recover. She didn’t get these migraines often, only a couple of times a year, but they did tend to come on with remarkable regularity around her birthday.

  Minnie reached into her bedside drawer for a small brown bottle. It was almost empty, only three little white pills left. They were powerful sleeping tablets she’d been prescribed during a bout of insomnia last year. She had been saving them. She generally slept better now, but it was reassuring to know they were there. Otherwise she would get anxious about the three a.m. wake-up, her mind churning and no access to an off switch. She popped one of the remaining pills in her mouth and swallowed it dry. It was only eleven a.m., but if there was ever a day she wanted to sleep through, it was her thirtieth birthday.

  New Year’s Eve 2015

  Minnie’s hammock was almost perfect. It was exactly the right angle, hung between two palm trees with the head end raised slightly higher than her feet. She could lie back and look out to sea while sipping her coconut through a straw. Her curly brown hair was damp and crunchy from her morning sea swim; her face lightly tanned and freckled from two weeks in the sun—she was surely the picture of contentment. And yet, there was something about the rough cotton fabric against her skin that irritated her and stopped her from truly enjoying this last moment in paradise.

  “I don’t want to fly this afternoon,” she said wistfully to Leila, who was lying in the hammock next to hers.

  “It’s the only flight that gets us back to Delhi in time to make our connection home. Plus it was cheap because, guess what, you’re not the only one who doesn’t like to travel on New Year’s Eve,” said Leila.

  Minnie let out a weary sigh. “Can’t we just stay here, live in hammocks and drink coconuts forever?”

  “I don’t think Islington Council would let me work remotely. I doubt the vulnerable members of the community I look after would appreciate chatting to their case worker over Skype, from a beach. It doesn’t send the right message.”

  Minnie laughed, twiddling a crunchy curl of hair between her finger and thumb.

  “You never know. I just have this real Sunday-night back-to-school feeling, don’t you? In seventy-two hours we’ll both be back at work, you with Admin Pain Elaine and me with Pervy Pete and his stinky feet.”

  “Seriously though,” said Leila, “how did these people get to be in charge? I see so many people desperate to work who just can’t get a break, but we live in a world where Pervy Pete and Admin Pain Elaine are the gatekeepers.”

  “Well, when you’re running the show I’ll expect to see it staffed by a wonderful array of waifs and strays—a chaotic, shambolic utopia.”

  Leila laughed. “That’s the manifesto I’ll be running with.”

  Minnie looked out to sea. Three local men in a blue fishing boat were bobbing up and down on the turquoise waves. One pulled the choke on the engine, and with an unhealthy-sounding roar it spluttered into life, emitting a cloud of black smoke as the boat chugged off toward the horizon.

  Coming to India for Christmas had been Leila’s idea. She’d convinced Minnie there was nothing like a holiday to help you get over a bad breakup. Minnie had only left the UK once before, to Alicante on a package tour, the one year her parents had felt they could afford a family holiday. India was another world compared to Spain, and certainly compared to the cold, gray winter of home. Stepping off the airplane was a sensory awakening, like seeing the world in Technicolor for the first time.

  There was something magical about being away with your best friend in a foreign land. She and Leila had discovered their new favorite food together (spicy samosas), laughed so hard they could hardly breathe as they careered around corners in speeding tuk-tuks, and lain on the beach side by side, tearing husks from coconuts and telling their dreams to the stars.

  Though it had been an unforgettable ten days, it was the first time either of them had been away from their families for Christmas, and they’d both found it strange not having turkey or a tree. They had brought a few tokens of festive familiarity with them. They’d packed miniature stockings for each other and opened them on the beach on Christmas morning with their bare feet buried in the sand. They wore cheap Christmas hats on their heads and ate melted Terry’s Chocolate Oranges for breakfast. Leila gave Minnie some beautiful emerald earrings and a chef’s hat with the words Minnie’s Pies embroidered on the front.

  “For when you have your own pie business,” she said, nudging Minnie with an elbow.

  A lump formed in Minnie’s throat. Running her own catering business was something she’d often daydreamed about. She’d only ever mentioned the idea to Leila once, when she was drunk—she was amazed Leila even remembered the conversation.

  Minnie scratched her leg irritably. Little red welts had erupted all over her skin.

  “I think I’m allergic to that suncream you lent me, Leils.”

  Leila’s head popped up over the side of Minnie’s hammock; her bright green hair had gone wild in the humidity and the fake tan on her face had come out a little too orange—she looked like an unhinged Oompa-Loompa. Minnie jolted in surprise, sloshing coconut water down her front.

  “Don’t creep up on me like that,” she cried, brushing water off her kaftan.

  “Your little friend is back,” said Leila, raising her eyes skyward while pointing an accusatory finger down at the dog standing next to her in the sand.

  “Fleabag Dog!” cried Minnie, leaping down from the hammock to greet him.

  The dog launched himself at Minnie and started licking her face. Fleabag Dog was a mangy-looking gray and white stray with a stumpy tail and a limp. He had been following the girls around all week. Minnie had become fond of his friendly little face and given him a few fish scraps on their first night in the beach hut. As a result of her kindness, he’d been following them around like a little dog-shaped shadow.

  “Don’t let him lick you,” said Leila, grimacing.

  “Poor thing,” said Minnie, giving him an affectionate rub on the head. “It’s like he knows we’re leaving and he’s come to say good-bye.”

  “You’re only going to make life harder for him when we leave. Where is he going to get food from
now?” said Leila.

  “He’ll be OK, look at him—who could resist that face?” Minnie nuzzled her face against the dog’s nose.

  “Minnie, I don’t think that rash is a suncream allergy, I think it’s flea bites,” Leila said, holding up both hands in disgust.

  “Do you think?”

  “Well, if you will insist on having a holiday romance with Fleabag Dog.”

  “That’s only a silly nickname—you don’t think he really has fleas, do you?” Minnie asked in alarm.

  “Yes. I think you both do. Bags not sitting next to you on the plane.”

  At the airport Minnie began to sweat as soon as they got out of the taxi. She repeatedly kept checking she had her passport, her wallet, and her luggage, convinced one or all of them would be stolen at any moment.

  “Relax, Miss Paranoia. You’re only going to draw attention to where your wallet is if you keep checking it like that,” said Leila.

  The air in the terminal building was cool compared to the humidity outside. In the sprawling modern concourse, there were queues everywhere: queues to check in luggage, queues to have your bags wrapped in cellophane, queues snaking around the building going—apparently—nowhere.

  “Ooh, there’s a Cafechino! Do you want a coffee or one of those yummy spicy samosas?” asked Leila, nodding her head toward a café near the entrance.

  “I’m not eating anything until I get home; I’m not tempting fate,” said Minnie, shaking her head and pinching her lips tight shut.

  At baggage security, Minnie was still sweating and scratching her arms furiously.

  Leila handed her a tissue. “Don’t look so guilty, Minnie, or they’ll take you for a full cavity search,” she hissed.

  As Minnie’s bag went through the security scanner, the man sitting behind the screen eyed Minnie suspiciously. He had a neat brown mustache and dark hair combed into an arrow-straight side parting. His blue uniform was crisp and starched; his eyes darted between Minnie and the screen in front of him. He motioned to a colleague, pointed at the screen and then at Minnie.

  “Miss, is this your bag?” said a tall, thinner man with old-fashioned spectacles and a more wrinkled uniform. He beckoned Minnie through to the other side of the conveyor belt.

  “Yes,” Minnie said with a resigned little nod.

  Of course someone had hidden drugs in her bag and now she was going to rot in an Indian prison for the next twenty years. It was all too predictable.

  “Please come, miss,” said the taller man, beckoning her.

  She followed him through to a small room, while the shorter man carried her black suitcase behind them. Minnie looked around for Leila, who shook her head and held up her hands in an overblown shrug.

  “Can I search the bag?” said the shorter man politely.

  “Sure,” said Minnie, “be my guest.”

  The taller man said something in Konkani. The shorter man neatly piled all of Minnie’s clothes on the bench and then pulled out an oblong box. It was Leila’s birthday present to Minnie, neatly wrapped for tomorrow. Leila had thrown it in Minnie’s bag at the last minute because her own was too stuffed full of pastel-colored fisherman’s trousers, crochet tops, and all the scented wooden ornaments she kept buying from the beach vendors.

  “What is in here?” asked the shorter man, thrusting it toward her. The taller man frowned and picked up a clipboard. He started flicking through some sheets of paper.

  “I don’t know. It’s a present for my birthday.”

  Minnie felt her stomach drop. Would Leila have bought her drugs? Surely not.

  The two men exchanged a look. The taller man said something in Konkani and tapped his clipboard.

  “May I open it?” said the shorter man.

  “Sure,” said Minnie, shaking her head. Maybe it was some kind of bath-bomb that set the sensors off because it looked like explosives?

  The shorter man carefully began to unwrap the parcel to reveal a long purple plastic box with rampant rabbit written along the side in excitable lettering. A large phallic pink wand was visible through the plastic window. Minnie blushed puce—bloody Leila, this was mortifying.

  “What is this?” asked the shorter man, his head cocked to one side.

  “Oh, er, it’s a joke, it’s a present from my friend.”

  Both men looked at her blankly. Minnie rolled her hands into fists to stop herself from scratching. The taller man pointed to a Post-it note stuck onto the box. The shorter man started to read, “Hey, babes, have an orgasmic birthday and a dickalicious New Year. Who needs men, hey?” He pronounced the word orgasmic, “org-gas-mick.”

  “What is dickal ishus?” asked the taller man.

  “Oh well, it’s hard to explain,” said Minnie, covering her face with clammy hot hands. She was beginning to wish it had been drugs in her bag. Oh god, why couldn’t it have been lovely, simple, less embarrassing drugs?

  “This is a morally corrupting object,” said the shorter man sternly. “You sell this in our country?”

  “Oh no, no, I’m not selling it. Why would I want to sell it?”

  “It is not OK to sell obscene objects in India,” said the taller man, shaking his head and tapping his clipboard.

  “Really?” Minnie said, genuinely surprised. “I didn’t know that, and as I said, it’s a present. I didn’t even know it was in there.”

  “You will have to wait here. Fill in this form,” said the shorter man.

  “Very long form,” said the taller man, nodding gravely, showing her a clipboard thick with paper.

  “But my flight, I’ll miss my flight!” Minnie cried.

  The two men chatted while Minnie furiously scratched her arms. Eventually they turned back to her and her hands froze, mid-scratch.

  “If you pay a fine instead of form, you might make your flight.”

  Minnie scrabbled for her wallet. She took out her last fifty rupees.

  “How much is the fine?”

  The men looked at her pitiful fistful of cash.

  “Expensive,” said the shorter man, “you have more?”

  Minnie shook her head mournfully. The shorter man handed her the clipboard and tapped the form with his finger.

  “Not your lucky day, miss.”

  * * *

  —

  The girls spent the night on the airport floor. Minnie was one part furious with Leila for giving her an illegal sex toy to carry, three parts grateful that she had waited for her and not taken the flight to Delhi alone. Leila laughed so hard when she found out the reason Minnie had been detained that she ever so slightly wet herself and needed to go and change into her last pair of clean trousers. Minnie explained it might take her a little longer to see the funny side.

  They struggled to get comfortable on the airport floor, propped against their backpacks beneath the strip lighting of an airport that never sleeps. At three a.m. Leila nudged Minnie with her foot.

  “Hey, Min, you awake?”

  “Yes,” Minnie groaned.

  “I didn’t ask you last night—where do you want to be this time next year?”

  Asking that question had been Leila’s New Year ritual for as long as Minnie could remember.

  “Not camping in an airport, covered in flea bites?” said Minnie.

  “I’m serious. Where would you be? What do you have to have achieved by your twenty-seventh birthday?”

  Minnie sighed, indulging her friend.

  “I guess I want to not be sad about Tarek dumping me anymore.”

  “Oh, Minnie, don’t waste your ‘this time next year’ on waste-of-space Tarek. What else?”

  “I guess I’d be doing a job I vaguely enjoy. I’d like to be able to buy Tesco’s Finest occasionally, not just the value range—you know me, the girl with enormous ambitions.”

  “Minnie, I’ve had the
best idea,” said Leila, shuffling across the floor on her bottom until she was sitting next to her. “You and I should go into business together.”

  “Doing what? Smuggling sex toys into India?”

  “No, we should set up a business making pies for the needy: You bring the pies and I’ll bring the needy.” Minnie looked over at her friend to see if she was serious. “Your pies are bloody amazing, you are Queen of Pies in my mind, you just need someone to team up with to give you the confidence to do it!”

  “Do I get to wear a pastry crown if I’m Queen of Pies?” Minnie said flippantly, but she felt her heart start to race.

  “You bake them and we use my contacts in community care to get them to people in need—like Meals on Wheels. I’m sure I could get us funding, there’s this new initiative to support small charities. Oh, oh”—Leila shook her fists up and down, getting carried away—“and we can employ all the people who just need someone to give them a break—my hopeful utopia!”

  “You want us to do Meals on Wheels?” Minnie said, looking at her friend as though she’d suggested they set up a business selling badger-themed underwear at car-boot sales.

  “Think about it; it’s not such a mad idea. I think you’ve lost your passion for cooking by catering to the rich and ungrateful for too long. Imagine making the food you love for people who would actually appreciate it? And how fun would it be to work together every day? We’ll just do one thing really well, and take them to people who can’t get to the shops, or to people living independently who can’t cook anymore. ‘Pies by Post’ or ‘Pie in the Sky,’ maybe ‘Hello, Good-Pie’?”

  Minnie paused, the wheels in her mind beginning to turn. “OK.”

  “OK?” asked Leila. She sounded surprised that Minnie had agreed.

  “Yes, let’s do it, but none of those names,” said Minnie. “I’ve already thought of the perfect name.”

  January 2, 2020

  The No Hard Fillings kitchen was on an unremarkable side street in Dalston in east London. It was in the part of town that gentrification had not yet reached, sandwiched between a funeral home and a derelict old record store. There was a sign out front that read tandoori palace, crossed out with green spray paint. The building used to house an Indian restaurant, and Minnie and Leila didn’t yet have the funds to properly change the signage. The girls felt it was somehow fortuitous, coming back from India with the plan and then finding an Indian restaurant offering them the chance to take over their lease.