This Time Next Year

by Sophie Cousens

  “I hope you girls have more luck with the place than we did,” Mrs. Mohan had said somberly as she helped clear out the drawers and cupboards. “Better you have it than another KFC or Piri-Piri Chicken.”

  Four years later there was still a picture of the Mohan family pinned to the steel fridge door. The girls had found it after the move and they didn’t have the heart to take down the last vestige of the family’s hard work.

  On her way to work, Minnie bought fresh coffees for the whole team. She could ill afford it, but she thought everyone might need a morale boost. She’d woken at two a.m. feeling groggy and confused, then celebrated the end of her birthday by making an enormous Spanish omelet out of a suspect array of ingredients she’d found in her fridge. The early hours of the morning had been spent listening to music and cleaning, while Lucky eyed her suspiciously from his warm perch on top of the fridge.

  Now it was the second of January—her favorite day of the year; the day farthest from her birthday. So, despite everything that had happened yesterday, she couldn’t help walking into work with a bounce in her step. Greg had tried to call her already this morning. She hadn’t answered; she’d been on the bus and couldn’t bring herself to let an argument ruin her buoyant mood. Greg could be pretty uncommunicative when it suited him. If he was mid-flow with an article, she might not hear from him for days. Perhaps it would be good for him to get a taste of her being less available.

  “I got coffees,” she called, as she swung through the door and the old-fashioned bell above chimed.

  “Oh, you beauty,” said Alan, taking one out of her hands.

  “Alan, thank you for hosting us on New Year’s Eve; we both had a lovely time.”

  “Endlessly welcome,” Alan said with a bow.

  Alan was their delivery driver. He was a tall, wiry man in his fifties, with a mouth that constantly twitched. He had pale, sallow skin and wide feline eyes with large heavy lids. He made Minnie think of an eighteenth-century poet battling a tortured soul. Alan used to captain boats for a living, but an accident with an anchor had turned him into a self-proclaimed landlubber. No one knew what the accident had entailed, or what exactly he had injured—he didn’t like to talk about it.

  “Did you get any non-dairy?” asked Fleur, turning her head sharply.

  “No, sorry, only cow cappuccinos.” Minnie grimaced.

  Fleur sighed but reached out a hand for one nonetheless. Fleur manned the phone. She was twenty-two and prone to food fads. Today was day two of Veganuary. Fleur had an elegant long neck and white-blond hair. Like a beautiful, haughty swan, you got the feeling she might hiss at you if you got too close.

  Fleur had come to work for them two years ago. It had just been Leila and Minnie back then, and when the business first got busy they needed help taking orders. Fleur had come to the interview with a proposal. She’d explained she was learning to code but couldn’t do it at home because her mother believed the internet gave people asthma—she wouldn’t allow a Wi-Fi router in the house. She said she would work four days a week, but they’d only need to pay her for three, as long as she could do her coding course during the downtime.

  They gave her the job as it had sounded like a good deal. In retrospect, Minnie wondered whether any of the stuff about Fleur’s mother or the coding course had been true. Fleur never mentioned her parents, never appeared to go home, and still seemed to be doing this six-month coding course two years later. Leila had a theory that Fleur was actually London’s most glamorous tramp, who simply wanted somewhere warm to sit and scroll through social media.

  “Is Leila here yet?” Minnie asked.

  “No,” said Fleur, taking the lid off her cappuccino and peering into it as though hoping to find it might be soy milk after all. “Oh, and there’s been a dis-arse-ter.”

  “What?” Minnie spun around to look at her. “What disaster?”

  “Beverley burned the pies.” Fleur gave a slow, swan-like shrug.

  “She didn’t!”

  Minnie rushed past the reception desk into the kitchen beyond. Beverley was standing red-faced in her white chef’s coat, leaning over a countertop full of pies. They were lined up in a color spectrum ranging from lightly charcoaled through to deeply incinerated. Minnie’s jaw fell as she plonked the cardboard tray of coffees down on the countertop and took in the scene of devastation before her.

  “What happened?” she asked softly.

  “I think these ones are salvageable,” said Beverley, pointing at the left-hand side of the counter. Beverley was fifty-nine but looked older, with her ruddy skin and soft, jowly face.

  “How . . . how did you burn so many?” Minnie asked, shaking her head in disbelief. At least thirty of the forty pies in front of her were too burned to sell.

  “I came in early to get a jump on things,” said Beverley, eyes wide with remorse. Her wiry black hair was escaping in tufts from beneath her hairnet, lending her a mad-professor vibe. “Me and the oven have not been getting along.”

  “Are these the pies Leila spent the whole of New Year’s Eve making?” Minnie asked, pulling the iron bar stool up to the large steel countertop. She picked at one of the burned crusts and the black pastry crumbled beneath her touch. “What happened to the timer we bought you? The pies always take exactly forty-two minutes.”

  “Me and the timer have not been getting along.” Beverley sighed, brushing some of the errant hair away from her eyes.

  Minnie sat with her head in her hands. This was not how the second of January was supposed to go.

  “I’m sorry, Minnie,” said Beverley, her face forlorn. “I don’t know what’s going on with me lately. One minute I’m here working, and the next my mind’s gone somewhere else and twenty minutes have flashed by as though they were seconds.”

  “She’s having an existential crisis,” said Alan, hopping from foot to foot in agitation. “What’s it all about? Why am I here? Is pastry the meaning of life? Oh whoops, the kitchen’s on fire.”

  Beverley whacked Alan with a tea towel.

  “Someone called for you, Minnie,” Fleur said, craning her long neck around the corner from the reception desk. “Something about a drop-off?”

  “Was it a change to today’s orders?” Minnie asked.

  “I don’t remember the exact details.”

  “Fleur, we’ve talked about this, you have to write down messages—otherwise there really is no point in you being here.”

  Fleur rolled her eyes and went back to scrolling through her phone and sipping her inadequate bovine cappuccino.

  “I’ll start again,” said Beverley with a sniff. “You can take the ingredients out of my pay. I’m so sorry, Minnie.”

  Minnie checked her watch. They had to get forty-five pies baked, packaged, and delivered all across London before the end of the afternoon. It would be tight.

  “No, don’t be silly, Bev. Come on, no point crying about it now,” Minnie said, patting a distraught Beverley on the back. “Let’s get to it.”

  Minnie rolled up her sleeves, put on her apron and hairnet, and set to work. She loved to bake; it was when she felt most calm. People talked about “being in flow” and, for her, baking a pie was the perfect kind of flow. It took just enough concentration to focus her mind but gave her brain a break from the usual clamor of concerns and anxieties vying for her attention. Clearly Beverley was not finding her flow through baking at the moment. Minnie wondered if she should encourage Beverley to see someone about this absentmindedness. It had started a few weeks ago and they’d all noticed. It wasn’t so much that Beverley was forgetful, more that her mind zoned out for a while and her attention wasn’t in the room.

  Leila arrived just as Minnie and Beverley were pulling ingredients together into a giant ball of pastry on the central steel countertop.

  “What’s happening? Why are you baking?” Leila said, turning her head sharply among
Alan, Beverley, and Minnie.

  “Beverley burned the pies,” said Alan, hopping up and down on one foot.

  “For fuck’s sake, Beverley!” Leila said, slamming her palm down onto the countertop. Alan jumped in alarm. Beverley let out a quivering sob and closed her eyes.

  “Hey, hey, it’s OK, she’s having a bad day,” said Minnie, rubbing Beverley on the back with a floury hand. “We’re making more, it’s fine,” Minnie said, giving Leila a wide-eyed stare.

  “It’s not fine.” Leila sighed. “I spent all New Year’s Eve prepping those pies. And you”—Leila jabbed a finger at Minnie—“what happened to you yesterday? I was ringing on your doorbell for ages, Little Miss Migraine bullshit.”

  “I don’t like Leila when she’s angry,” said Alan, hunching his shoulders and settling his features into a childlike scowl.

  “Rainbow Bright’s got attitude today,” said Fleur, appearing at the kitchen door.

  “What happened yesterday?” asked Alan.

  “Happy birthday by the way, Minnie,” said Beverley, sniffing back tears. “Did you get to do anything nice?”

  “She did not do anything nice,” said Leila, leaning both hands on the countertop. “She hid in her flat pretending to have a migraine, standing up her best friend.”

  “I wasn’t pretending,” Minnie said, pounding her other fist into the dough with a satisfying “thunk.”

  “Ooh, I love it when my work mums fight!” Fleur sang from the doorway, pumping both hands in the air like a cheerleader.

  “It’s not very mature, is it, Minnie?” said Leila, ignoring Fleur. “This fear of the first of January is getting ridiculous.”

  “It is not ridiculous,” Minnie said, picking up the pile of dough and smashing it down onto the countertop. No one spoke. The “thwack” of the pastry against stainless steel reverberated around the room.

  “Intermission! I’ll put some music on,” said Fleur, turning back to the reception area in a swish of white hair.

  Leila pulled on an apron and gazed mournfully at the line of burned pies, which Beverley had moved to the sideboards at the far end of the kitchen.

  “I suppose we can’t even salvage the fillings?” She sighed. “Come on then, Bev, help me put these out of their misery.”

  Ten minutes later, with the spoiled pies making their way into the bin and the smell of burned pastry still lingering in the air, everyone was in a more relaxed mood. They had a good production line going, with Alan and Minnie shaping pastry into new tins while Beverley and Leila decapitated the burned ones and disposed of their charred remains. Fleur had curated an uplifting playlist and they were all, bar Alan, singing along to “Lady Marmalade” as they worked. If Fleur was good at something, it was finding the right soundtrack to improve the collective mood.

  “So has Name Stealer been in touch yet?” Leila asked as she and Minnie crossed paths at the sink. Leila was thawing, but Minnie knew she wasn’t yet forgiven for standing her up.

  “Who’s Name Stealer?” asked Bev.

  “On New Year’s Eve, Minnie met this guy who was born in the same hospital as her at exactly the same time,” Leila explained. “Isn’t that freaky?”

  “Well, one minute earlier than me, if we’re being precise,” said Minnie.

  “Minnie’s mum wanted to call her Quinn, but this dude’s mum stole her idea, so Minnie ended up Minnie instead,” Leila continued.

  “Quinn Cooper.” Fleur sounded the words out loud. “Great name, Minnie Cooper is terrible. No offense.”

  Minnie had run out of ingredients to pound so she started rolling with a vengeance instead. Fleur turned the music down and placed a final pin into her hair. While the others had been working, Fleur had been crafting herself an elaborate hairstyle with neat fish plaits wrapping around each side of her head. She looked like a character from Game of Thrones.

  “It’s very romantic,” said Leila, “Minnie and her name nemesis, reunited after thirty years—love twins separated at birth, destined to find each other again despite the odds.”

  She clutched a hand to her chest for dramatic effect. Everyone laughed, except Minnie.

  “What the hell’s a love twin? That’s not a thing,” Minnie said, shaking her head. Behind her frown she was pleased; Leila teasing her meant she was forgiven.

  “That could so be a thing, like two Geminis getting together,” said Fleur. “Did you give him your number?”

  Dating was one of Fleur’s favorite topics of conversation. She was a connoisseur of every dating app out there. She said she was learning to code so she could set up her own horoscope-themed dating app.

  “I said he could find me online if he wanted to,” Minnie said with an air of cultivated ambivalence. “I’m sure he won’t, why would he, he’s got a girlfriend . . .” Then after a pause she added, “And I’ve got a boyfriend. What are you doing with my phone?” Minnie looked over to see Leila scrolling through her phone.

  “You changed your Facebook profile picture,” said Leila, giving Minnie a sly grin. “Why would you do that? You never even go on Facebook.”

  “Well, new year, new photo. I’m allowed to change my photo if I want to.” Minnie blushed and turned her back to the room, hiding her face in the fridge as she pretended to look for something.

  “This isn’t a new photo, this is four years old. She’s changed it to one of her in India looking tanned and sexy,” said Leila, showing the phone to Fleur.

  “Give that to me,” said Minnie, turning around and striding across the kitchen with her hand outstretched.

  “You do look good in that photo,” said Fleur, nodding approvingly. “If you want me to set you up an online dating profile, you should use that one. You look young, thin, and a little bit stupid—guys like that.”

  “Thanks, Fleur, but I am very happy with Greg,” Minnie said huffily. She took the phone, purposely didn’t check it for messages, and placed it firmly into her apron pocket. Then she went back to busying herself lining tins. The others all stood watching her. “Come on, guys, stop dicking around, we’ve got serious time pressure here, if no one noticed. There are forty-five orders to be made, baked, and delivered today, and if we don’t get them out, we don’t get paid, and if we don’t get paid, none of us will have jobs tomorrow, OK, so can we just . . .”

  Everyone was quiet. Beverley dropped a tin and it clanged to the floor, rattling around and around on the hard cream tiles. Minnie’s phone pinged loudly in her pocket. She caught Leila’s eye and then turned her back on the room as she checked it. She had a notification on Messenger from Quinn Hamilton. She clicked it open.

  “Minnie, I’m hoping this is you—the first of January girl. Can you call me? There’s something I’d like to discuss. Quinn.” Then he’d linked his number in the message.

  Minnie felt her cheeks flush with heat; he’d tracked her down. She felt relieved, as though the growing bubble of anticipation over whether or not he would be in touch had finally been burst.

  “Who’s that message from?” Leila asked, her eyes locking onto Minnie like heat-seeking missiles, trained to identify the suspicious glow of embarrassment.

  “No one,” Minnie said, thrusting her phone back into her apron pocket. “Come on, let’s get this batch in.”

  Minnie clapped her hands together, creating a cloud of flour in the air and closing down Leila’s interrogation on the subject. Leila put the first tray of pies in the oven, Beverley sweated over the timer, and Alan went to pull the van around front in preparation for loading up the day’s deliveries. Fleur looked at her phone and took selfies of her new hairstyle with various filters.

  “Hey, Minnie, I forgot to say, I need next Tuesday off,” said Fleur, still snapping away on her phone. “My cousin’s mates with Tarantino and he’s in London researching ghost stories on the Underground for some new movie idea. It’s what I did my dissertation on, so I s
aid I’d help him out, show him some of the spookiest sites. Mega-bore, I know.” Fleur rolled her eyes skyward.

  “Fine,” Minnie muttered. She didn’t have time to delve into one of Fleur’s fantasies today. Fleur had a habit of telling the most ridiculous tales about why she needed a day off. It was never simply, “I’ve got a dentist appointment.”

  A few minutes later, Alan bounced back into the kitchen wringing his hands.

  “We have another problem,” he said, mouth opening and closing like a goldfish.

  “What now?” shouted Leila.

  “Van’s been clamped,” Alan said, his feet skipping from side to side.

  “You are kidding me?” Minnie said wearily. “Where did you park it?”

  “On the double yellow,” he said with a frown, “but double yellows don’t count on a bank holiday, it’s a parking amnesty.”

  “A—they do count. And B—it’s not a bank holiday today,” said Minnie, closing her eyes in despair.

  “Oh,” said Alan, his mouth stretching into a long, slow grimace.

  How could all this be happening on the second of January? Maybe the jinx knew she’d tried to cheat it by sleeping through her birthday? Maybe the bad luck had been paid forward? Minnie thought for a minute. There was only one person she knew who had a car they could borrow at such short notice. She walked out onto the street for some privacy and made the call.

  “Greg?” she said as he picked up.

  “Finally.” His voice was quiet on the phone. “How’s the migraine that’s so bad you can’t answer the phone?”

  “Much better, thank you.” Minnie paused. “How was the party I missed because I was trapped in a bathroom and no one came to find me?”