This Time Next Year(26)

Minnie nodded a head towards Quinn and then made a ‘these pies are quite heavy, can we just get to the kitchen please’ face. Mrs Mentis took the hint and moved aside.

‘Just down to your left, Quint,’ she said, pointing the way with a wavering arm. Minnie and Quinn walked past her and Mrs Mentis hobbled after them. She was plagued by bunion trouble; Minnie had heard about it at great length over the last few years. She had named her bunions Billy and Boo and talked about them as though they were her grandchildren.

‘How are the feet, Mrs Mentis?’ Minnie asked.

‘Oh Billy’s not so bad, Minnie, but Boo’s playing up no end she is – doesn’t like this weather.’

The kitchen was small and beige. It smelt of cleaning fluid and marmalade. There were a few old coffee cups and an abandoned game of checkers on the beige Formica table.

‘Everyone loves pie day,’ said Mrs Mentis, opening one of the lids to see inside. ‘I hope steak and Guinness is on the menu?’

‘Always,’ said Minnie. ‘Do you have someone to help you warm them up? They’re fresh this morning but could do with thirty minutes in the oven.’

‘Yes, everyone likes to volunteer on pie day,’ said Mrs Mentis, licking her lips. Then she turned her attention back to Quinn, who was stacking boxes straight into the fridge. ‘Oh isn’t he helpful? Is this the boyfriend Alan mentioned?’

Mrs Mentis waggled a finger at Quinn.

‘Afraid not, I’m just the driver,’ Quinn explained.

‘You haven’t taken Alan’s job I hope?’ Mrs Mentis frowned. ‘The ladies upstairs would be most aggrieved. They like having a cuppa with Alan, they do – bit of a dish, they say. Not that Quint here isn’t, but not such a one for the over-sixties perhaps.’

‘Don’t write me off too quickly, Mrs Mentis, you haven’t seen me play bridge.’

Mrs Mentis let out a slow, throaty chuckle. ‘I can see why he’s your type, dear – nice to have a bit of girth to hold onto, isn’t it?’

Minnie’s eyes widened; Mrs Mentis was prone to getting words slightly wrong. Minnie doubted she meant to use the word ‘girth’.

‘No, he’s not my type, Mrs Mentis, Quinn’s just a friend helping me out today.’

Quinn silently mouthed ‘not your type?’ at Minnie, then made a mock wounded face, his dark eyebrows knitting together in overblown consternation. Minnie couldn’t help smiling.

‘You aren’t this funny journalist then?’ asked Mrs Mentis, counting the pies off on her fingers. Minnie was beginning to see why Alan took so long doing the deliveries.

‘That’s Greg, he’s ever so funny,’ said Quinn, leaning conspiratorially towards Mrs Mentis. ‘Not quite as gifted as me in the girth department though.’

Minnie let out an involuntary high-pitched noise. She clutched a hand over her mouth, turning the sound into a strangled sort of sneeze.

‘Bless you dear,’ said Mrs Mentis, turning her attention back to Quinn. ‘I used to be lithe and bonny-faced like Minnie here, you know. Had the pick of them in my day, I did.’

‘I can certainly believe that, Mrs Mentis,’ said Quinn.

‘Now Quint, while we have you here, you wouldn’t mind having a peek at the air vent in the social room, would you? It rattles no end on a windy night, and we’re hard pressed to reach. Someone of your size won’t have any problems giving it a little sort out.’

The next dozen deliveries were equally time-consuming. Quinn found himself fixing a dodgy aerial at Mrs McKenzie’s flat, volunteering to hold Mrs Terry’s wool with his ‘nice big spool hands’, then wrangling a broken flea collar back onto one of Mr Marchbanks’s cats.

Quinn was obliging and charming with all her customers and Minnie felt herself softening towards him – he was impossible not to like. Yet beneath the surface there remained some ingrained mistrust, some Pavlovian conditioning that bristled at the name Quinn Hamilton and everything he stood for. When she saw him being kind and funny with her customers, her resolve to dislike him would melt. Then they’d get back to his Bentley and she’d remember – it’s easy to be charming when you’ve led a charmed life.

‘You have a way with the old folks,’ Minnie said, looking across the bonnet at him as they stood outside Mr Marchbanks’s house.

‘I definitely don’t have a way with cats,’ Quinn said, holding up his scratched forearm to show her. Minnie opened the passenger door laughing.

‘Poor diddums, did little puss-puss scratch you with his tiny claws?’

‘I didn’t see you volunteering.’

Quinn’s cheek puckered into a dimple.

‘The look on your face when he told you that you had the wrong cat,’ Minnie said, letting out a little snort.

‘That man didn’t know which cat was which,’ said Quinn, shaking his head. ‘I could have collared next door’s dog for all he knew.’

‘Just because he’s blind doesn’t mean he can’t tell his cats apart, Quinn. He says they all have very distinct smells,’ Minnie said primly.

‘His flat certainly has a very distinct smell.’

‘Don’t be mean, he’s had a hard life that man.’

Quinn paused, the jokey expression falling from his face. ‘I know. It’s amazing what you do for these people, Minnie.’