This Time Next Year(16)

‘What is in here?’ asked the shorter man, thrusting it towards 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, handing 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 3 a.m. Leila nudged Minnie with her foot.

‘Hey Min, you awake?’

‘Yes,’ Minnie sighed.

‘I didn’t ask you last night – where do you want to be this time next year?’

It was Leila’s New Year ritual. She liked to ask herself, and anyone she was with, where they wanted to be this time next year.

‘Not camping in an airport covered in flea bites?’ said Minnie.

‘I’m serious. Where you would 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 any more.’

‘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 let out a sigh.

‘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!’

‘Queen of Pies sounds like someone really fat,’ Minnie said, 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 or some shit. 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!’