This Time Next Year(11)

‘You too, Birthday Twin,’ said Quinn, leaning against the door frame, his cheek dimpled in amusement.

Minnie darted across the street and up the small side road away from the club. She fought the urge to look back, to see if he was still watching her. As she crossed out onto the main road, the previously bright sky suddenly clouded over and giant raindrops began to fall.





1 January 2020





Minnie got off the fifty-six bus halfway up the Essex Road, just outside Sainsbury’s. A few lost-looking souls were waiting outside for it to open. Plastic glasses littered the kerb by the pub opposite, and the rain had not yet washed away the fag ends and half-eaten takeaways that lay on the pavement by overflowing bins. It was still pouring with rain as she ran down the side street to her flat, her arms cradled over her head for protection. At her door she fumbled in her bag, looking for her keys – they weren’t there. She stood, soaking wet and shivering, then emptied the bag onto the doorstep, clinging to the hope they might be hiding among old receipts and loose make-up. Looking down at the sodden pile of handbag clutter, she closed her eyes and exhaled slowly; her keys were in her coat pocket, the coat she’d lost on the bus earlier that night. Of course they were. It was her birthday – nothing would go right today.

Minnie looked up at the window of her flat. She could see her cat’s little grey face pressed up against the window.

‘Oh Lucky – poor Lucky!’ she cried. ‘I need to feed you, darling.’

Minnie stuffed everything back into her bag and rang the buzzers for the other two flats in the building. Maybe someone would take pity on her. She could at least charge her phone, get dry and ring her landlord to let her in. Nobody answered.



*

‘You’re early,’ said Leila as she opened her front door to Minnie half an hour later. ‘I thought I was taking you out for lunch?’

Leila lived in Stoke Newington in northeast London, half an hour by bus from Minnie’s place. She lived with her boyfriend on the top floor of an ex-council building. Their block was an unremarkable concrete stack with graffiti all over the hallways, but inside the place felt light and homely. Leila stood in the doorway wearing a pink dressing gown covered in unicorns. ‘Do I make you unicorny?’ was written across the front in sparkling pink lettering. Leila’s rainbow-streaked hair was pulled to the top of her head in a messy topknot; the stripes of bold colour had grown out to reveal several inches of mousy-brown roots beneath. When describing Leila, Minnie often said she was a 1950s film star with crazy hair; she had a curvy figure and these deep, hooded eyes that somehow always seemed to look sultry. This morning’s dressing gown ensemble wasn’t necessarily highlighting her film-star qualities.

‘I lost my house keys and got trapped in a nightclub toilet all night,’ said Minnie, walking through the front door and waving Leila away as she tried to hug her. ‘Don’t, you’ll get soaked.’

‘Nightclub toilet?’ Leila dropped her face into her hands. ‘Poor jinxsy girl.’ She reached out to pat Minnie’s head and stroke her cheek as though she were a pet. ‘Happy Birthday, Min.’

‘Thanks,’ said Minnie, pinching the bridge of her nose then taking a loud inhalation of breath.

‘Look at you, you’re soaking – come in, come in. I’m impressed you braved a club, you must really like Greg.’

Minnie followed her friend down the narrow corridor through to the bathroom. Leila pulled a greyish-pink towel from the rail and handed it to her. It was stiff like cardboard, as though it had been washed at a million degrees five hundred times too many.

‘Have a hot shower then borrow some dry clothes,’ Leila suggested.

‘Happy Birthday, Minnie,’ came Ian’s voice from the other room.

Minnie poked her head around the living-room door. Ian was sitting on the low beige sofa in his boxer shorts playing the Xbox. He had his feet resting on the upturned orange crate that served as their coffee table. His short shaven hair was hidden under a red baseball cap and he had a new, angry-looking tattoo on his upper arm that read ‘Player One’.

‘Thanks, Ian. New tattoo?’

‘Christmas present from Leils,’ Ian said.

‘I didn’t wrap it,’ Leila called from the bathroom, ‘and I didn’t choose it, or approve it.’

‘Wanna play two player? You can break my losing streak,’ said Ian.

‘Maybe when my fingertips have regained some sensation,’ said Minnie.

Leila came back out of the bathroom and pressed a small white bottle into Minnie’s hands. It had coconuts and pink flowers on the label.

‘You can use my good shower gel,’ Leila said in a whisper. ‘I hide it from Ian or his balls smell of coconuts for weeks.’

Minnie stepped into the shower and let the warm water stream down her face. She scrubbed at her skin, trying to wash the day-old make-up and smell of the club from her pores. Her neck still felt stiff from sleeping on the toilet floor, and she rubbed it from side to side between her palms. Leila’s hand reached around the bathroom door.

‘Just leaving you some clothes for when you’re ready,’ she said.

Minnie looked over at the door where Leila had hung a red and white polka-dot dress. Leila was not a conservative dresser; most of her outfits were even more colourful than her kaleidoscopic hair. She was like the child who insisted on using every colour in the Crayola box.