This Time Next Year

by Sophie Cousens

  * * *

  —

  By the time they came to the end of the delivery rounds, it was five o’clock. Quinn pulled over in a bus stop as there was nowhere to park. Minnie handed him the last pie box from the backseat.

  “And this one is for you. It’s hardly a fair trade for a whole day’s driving, but if we factor in you stealing my name and taking a lifetime of good luck meant for me, I’d say we are near on even.”

  She should jump out, let him go before a bus came, but Minnie didn’t move. She just sat there looking at him, her mouth stretching into an unconscious smile. His smile mirrored hers, then he rubbed a palm across his mouth.

  “Listen . . .” said Quinn. The word hung in the air. “If you have time, maybe . . .” He looked down at his hand, flexed his fingers, and then screwed them into a fist.

  “Yes.” She nodded encouragingly.

  “Well, I . . . I know someone else who would love this pie.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “My, um, my mother.”

  Quinn explained that he’d mentioned the story of her name to his mother and she wanted to meet Minnie. Minnie had a sinking feeling that she’d been set up. Had this whole offer of a ride been planned to make her feel obligated to go and meet the woman her mother reviled? Quinn had saved the day and she was sitting in the woman’s car. She could hardly say no.

  January 2, 2020

  Tara Hamilton lived in Primrose Hill in north London. As Quinn drove down the Camden Road, Minnie looked out the window at all the street signs that were so familiar to her. She had grown up close to here. Seeing these streets through the window of a Bentley, she felt like Alice through the looking glass, peering at an alternate version of reality. After being born at the hospital in Hampstead, Minnie had lived with her parents and her brother in a two-bedroom ex–council flat in Chalk Farm, which was just over the railway bridge from Primrose Hill. They’d stayed there until Minnie was fifteen, when her parents had moved farther north to get a house. Every memory from her childhood was tied up in this square mile of the city.

  As Quinn turned onto Regent’s Park Road, the city changed. The busy, dirty streets of Camden made way for the green gentility of Primrose Hill. Beautiful town houses with well-kept front gardens and perfectly painted shutters overlooked the park. Runners in designer Lycra with swishing ponytails bounced past. There were well-heeled people walking well-heeled dogs and distinguished-looking gentlemen in long camel coats, walking purposefully along the pavement with newspapers tucked beneath their arms.

  “This is only about a mile from where I grew up, but it feels a world away,” said Minnie, watching the people and the houses that they passed. “I haven’t been back here for years. Isn’t it funny how a place can revive such vivid memories from your childhood? There was a youth club we used to go to up in Kentish Town—if you didn’t get off the night bus at the right place, you ended up on the bridge right there.” Minnie pointed down the street.

  If you lived in a city for long enough, Minnie thought, the streets and the places where life happens fold inward like paper, making space for new memories. Yet visiting old haunts and a long-forgotten road was like stretching the concertina out again—the memories leap out, fresh as the day you folded them away.

  “Bambers,” Minnie muttered to herself.

  Quinn laughed. “I remember Bambers.”

  “I think Bambers has the honor of being the first place I threw up in after being introduced to hooch,” said Minnie, grimacing.

  Quinn turned to look at her; a strange flash of something crossed his face. He squinted his eyes, a twitch of confusion. His reaction made Minnie feel as though she must have said something wrong. She turned to look out the window. No doubt girls in Quinn’s world didn’t talk about times they got drunk and threw up.

  When she was ten or eleven, Minnie and her best friend Lacey sometimes used to walk down to Primrose Hill Park after school. They’d make up stories about who lived in these colorful houses and what they’d done to make their money.

  “Inventing cheese graters,” Lacey would say, pointing to a yellow mansion with frosted windows.

  “Bouncy castles,” Minnie would say with a laugh, pointing to the cream-colored house on the corner. Every time they walked to the park, the stories would become more elaborate. Lacey concocted a whole backstory for the Cheese Grater Family—apparently there had been a family rift about the optimal size of the grating holes.

  As Quinn pulled up beside the largest detached house on the street, Minnie’s mouth fell open in disbelief; this was one of the houses she and Lacey used to make up stories about. A light blue, five-story mansion that resembled a giant doll’s house, the kind of house a child might draw if they were drawing the perfect London home. There were neatly pruned box trees either side of the front door, and the blue frontage looked freshly painted. Black railings lined the property, with a hedge growing just behind them, shielding the ground floor from street view. It was an oasis of pristine calm in the center of a bustling city.

  The house sat in a line of other detached houses, all painted in different colors. Minnie and Lacey used to call them the “ice-cream houses.” She wanted to tell Quinn he lived in the blueberry ice-cream house, but then she thought he might think she was some kind of weird house-stalker so she didn’t.

  “This is where your mum lives?”

  Quinn nodded.

  “I grew up here. Now I have a flat up the road, but Mum’s still here, rattling around.”

  He got out of the driver’s seat and came around the car to open her door. Minnie picked up the last pie and followed Quinn up the steps to the enormous front door. The light was starting to fade and she didn’t have a coat. She shivered slightly. Quinn reached out to put his arm around her, rubbing the top of her arm. It was an instinctive, familiar gesture, as though he’d forgotten for a moment he was standing on the doorstep with a relative stranger, rather than his girlfriend. Minnie’s skin tingled where he’d touched her. He dropped his arm as quickly as he’d offered it, thrusting hands into his pockets, searching for his keys in the half-light.

  “Mum,” he called out as they went inside, “I’ve brought a friend to see you.”

  In the living room, they found Quinn’s mother sitting in an armchair, reading. She must have been in her early sixties, but she looked like a woman in her late forties. She had neatly combed blond hair pinned up in a bun and her skin was dewy and unblemished. She wore a loose lilac housecoat tied at the waist, her feet girlishly curled beneath her in the chair. To Minnie, she looked like a film star.

  “Quinn,” she said, closing her book and placing it carefully on the side table, “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  She blinked a few times when she saw Minnie, as though checking to see if there was really another person there. Then she got to her feet, smoothing down her hair and her housecoat with the palms of her hands.

  “Look at the state of me. I’m not dressed for houseguests.”

  Her forehead wrinkled into a soft frown, but she smiled at Minnie as she reached up to kiss her son on the cheek. Her voice was calm and gentle. Minnie felt a pang of envy for a mother like this, a mother who greeted you with a kiss and talked in hushed, honeyed tones.

  “This is Minnie,” said Quinn. “I told you about her; the girl who would have been Quinn.” Quinn took both his mother’s hands in his and gently moved them up and down, as though physically channeling information to her. “Minnie, this is my mother, Tara.”

  Tara turned to look at her, taking one of her hands back from her son and reaching out to touch Minnie as though wanting to test her physicality. Tara’s eyes grew wide as she took Minnie in, and Minnie squirmed under her gaze, embarrassed by such focused attention.

  “Hi,” she said, with a brisk wave of her hand. “I brought you a pie.”

  She thrust the pie box toward Tara.

&nbs
p; “Minnie? Minnie . . .” Tara was still staring at her.

  She didn’t look as though she was going to take the pie box, so Minnie put it down on a side table.

  “I don’t know if you like pies; Quinn said you would.”

  “Minnie, goodness, aren’t you pretty? I always longed for curly hair,” said Tara. Minnie self-consciously pulled one of her curls straight. “I’m so pleased you’ve come. When Quinn told me he’d met you, what you’d said about your birth . . . I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. I’ve thought of your mother so often. I tried to find her after we left hospital, she helped me so much.”

  “I know,” said Minnie, “she told me. She also said you stole her name idea.” Minnie laughed awkwardly and gave a little shrug. She didn’t want Tara to think she was angry about it. Who could be angry with a woman like this? It would be like being angry at a kitten.

  “No, no”—Tara’s face fell—“that’s not what happened. Quinn, didn’t you tell her how it was?”

  Tara looked distressed all of a sudden. She felt behind her for the arm of the sofa, sinking down into it. Quinn sat down beside her and held one of her hands between the palms of his.

  “Don’t get upset, Mum,” he said softly. “I did explain, but I thought you could tell her yourself.”

  Quinn went to make a pot of Earl Grey tea and Minnie took a seat on the sofa next to Tara. She looked so frail and small against the giant white cushions, as though she might sink into the sofa’s folds and never be able to get out again. Minnie sat quietly, letting Tara talk.

  The times Minnie had imagined meeting this woman, this villain from her childhood, the person who’d upset her own mother so much, she’d imagined all the things she would say. Now she was here, and she didn’t want to say anything, she just wanted to listen.

  Tara explained how much Connie’s help had meant to her, how alone she’d felt during labor, how close to breaking point she had been.

  “Connie told me the story of the name Quinn, and it was as if this light went on in the darkness. My body was being pulled in two and this name, Connie’s face—it was the only part of reality I could hold on to.” Tara looked up at the ceiling, temporarily lost in thought. “When the baby was born, I couldn’t think of any other name that would do. I wanted to have a Quinn too—a tribute to your mother and the help she gave me. I didn’t even think about the stupid newspaper competition; it didn’t cross my mind she wouldn’t call you Quinn too.”

  Now Tara was looking at her, waiting for some response.

  “You were all over the papers. Quinn’s not a common name. My dad thought they’d look silly if they chose the same name as the baby in the news.”

  “I tried to find Connie afterward; I couldn’t remember her surname. I even looked at the birth announcements for another Quinn. The hospital wouldn’t give me her details. I thought maybe she’d get in touch with me.”

  Quinn came back into the room and put a tray of tea things down on the large ottoman-style coffee table.

  “Don’t get too worked up,” he said, pressing a hand gently onto his mother’s shoulder. She reached up to squeeze it, and Minnie felt another pang for this closeness between them. She didn’t have that kind of relationship with her mother.

  “And now I hear all these years later that she despises me, that I’d stolen your name and you’ve been seething with resentment all these years. I can’t bear it.” Tara let out a sniff and pressed the back of her hand to her nose, her eyes welling with tears.

  “Well, I wouldn’t say seething exactly.” Minnie felt her cheeks go pink. She started biting the nail on her left thumb, then yanked it away from her mouth and sat on her hands.

  “I would love to see Connie again, to tell her how sorry I am. When I think what she must have thought of me . . .”

  “It’s only a name, I shouldn’t worry about it,” Minnie said, reaching out to pat Tara’s hand.

  Over Tara’s shoulder she saw Quinn mouthing “only a name?” at her. Minnie narrowed her eyes at him; he was relishing this.

  “And then to be called Minnie Cooper instead.” Tara shook her head, her lips puckering in distaste. “You poor thing.”

  “It’s not that bad,” Minnie said, retracting her hand.

  “No, it could have been worse, Ford Fiesta or Vauxhall Corsa,” said Quinn. Minnie felt a strong urge to throw the teapot at him.

  She took Tara’s number and said she would get her mother to call her. She warned her that her mother could be a little prickly, but she was sure she would listen. Tara clutched her thin hands around Minnie’s and shook them gently. Then she excused herself to go to the bathroom.

  “Thank you,” Quinn said quietly from across the room.

  “What for?” Minnie asked.

  “For being kind to her.”

  When Tara returned, she insisted Minnie stay for dinner. She said she never had visitors and wanted to hear all about Minnie’s life. Minnie felt as though she was having some kind of Sliding Doors moment. She was Gwyneth Paltrow with the short blond hair, living in an alternate reality where her mother’s nemesis invited her to dinner at the blueberry ice-cream house. Perhaps another version of Minnie was currently finishing the deliveries with Alan in the van. Minnie made a mental note to suggest Sliding Doors for her next movie night with Leila.

  As they moved through to the kitchen, Quinn told his mother all about No Hard Fillings, about the people he’d met that day, and how great Minnie’s pies were.

  “You haven’t tried one yet,” said Minnie.

  It made her feel a little giddy hearing him talk about her business in such glowing terms.

  “Finally, I get to sample one,” Quinn said, turning on the oven. “I only had to give up my day, chauffeur you around London, get mauled by a cat, fix a dodgy antenna, and try to put right a decades-old wrong.”

  Minnie smiled, wrinkling her nose at him. Quinn smiled back at her, their eyes connecting for a moment, and Minnie felt the room close in around her. Tara looked back and forth between them as though observing something for the first time. Minnie’s phone started to ring and it took her a moment to realize it was hers.

  “I, um, I’d better get this,” she said, seeing from the screen it was Leila.

  She stepped back into the living room, leaving Quinn and his mother talking in the kitchen.

  “How did it go?” said Leila. “Did you get everything done?”

  Leila’s tone was more perfunctory than Minnie expected; she thought Leila would be calling to get the lowdown on her day out with her love twin.

  “Yes, pies all delivered, customers happy. I’m just at Quinn’s mother’s house, Leils; she wanted to tell me all about—” said Minnie, but Leila cut her off.

  “Listen, we’ve had a bit of a shocker this end. I just got off the phone with the bank and they won’t extend our loan.”

  “I thought we had until next month to pay?” Minnie said.

  “So did I.” Leila sighed. “I thought if we could just get the subsidy funding through from the council and then push our deliveries this month, we’d be able to scrape by, but we won’t find out about the funding until February and we just don’t have enough orders this month to make what we owe. Everyone’s broke after Christmas. I can’t see a way around it, Minnie.”

  Minnie sat down on the plush white sofa and hung her head in her hands. She and Leila had put four years of their lives into this. They’d sweated, they’d worked seventy-hour weeks, they’d put in all their savings, and now what? They’d just close up shop, let their staff go, hand the kitchen’s lease over to the next naïve young fool who wanted to watch their dream slowly wither?

  “There’s nothing we can do to hold them off?” Minnie asked, squeezing her eyes shut. Was she really going to lose her flat and her business in the same week?

  “Minnie, I just can’t see a way throu
gh this,” Leila said quietly. “Every month feels like the Pamplona bull run, just madly dashing to stay alive and not get gored by some raging bank bull. I’ve tried not to stress you out with the funding side of things, but I just can’t hold up the dam anymore.”

  Minnie could hear the stress in her friend’s voice. Leila took on most of the company’s financial responsibilities. Minnie hated that it was her dream to run a baking business that had brought her best friend this low. “Listen, let’s just meet at the office on Monday and go through how we’re going to manage this. I can’t do anything more this week, I’ve got Ian’s sister’s wedding coming up.”

  “Should I call the others?” asked Minnie. They only employed Bev, Alan, and Fleur part-time, so no one would be in until Monday now.

  “No, I’d rather tell them the bad news together, once we know what’s happening. We’ve got pre-paid orders we need to deliver, so we need them to come in.”

  Once Minnie had put the phone down, she looked around at the enormous living room she was sitting in; the luxuriously thick cream rug, the plush linen cushions in perfectly coordinated duck egg fabrics, the enormous ottoman coffee table with a shelf beneath full of exquisite, hardback coffee-table books. She heard Tara laughing in the kitchen.

  “Everything OK?” Quinn said from the doorway to the living room.

  “I need to go home, I’m afraid,” Minnie said, taking a slow breath in through her nose.

  “Really? I’ve just put the pie in.” Quinn’s face fell.

  “I have to go,” she said, “I can get the tube.”

  Minnie suddenly needed to be far away from Quinn. What was she even doing here? She knew it wasn’t his fault, that it was ridiculous to compare her life with his, but something about the fact that they’d started life on the same day, in the same place, just made her current situation feel all the more pathetic.

  “I’ll drive you,” he said.