This Time Next Year(27)
‘Oh yeah, pastry for pensioners – it’s Nobel Prize-winning stuff.’
Minnie opened the car door and climbed in. Quinn got in next to her, his face still serious as he stared ahead out of the windscreen.
‘You’re clearly a lifeline to these people. It’s so much more than just food delivery, it’s … ’ Quinn trailed off, turning back to the windscreen. ‘People need that connection in their day, someone dropping in just to see if they’re OK.’
Minnie watched a small muscle in his jaw start to pulse. He turned back to Minnie and forced a smile. ‘Not that I need to tell you, it’s your brilliant business.’
‘Not that brilliant,’ Minnie sighed. ‘Not financially anyway.’
‘Well you need to start charging for cat collaring,’ said Quinn, holding up his forearm again and pointing to the scratch marks.
‘Aw, you need me to kiss it better?’
It was the kind of sarcasm she might have used with Ian or her brother, but Quinn responded with this piercing look. It felt as though someone had pressed pause between them and then Minnie realised she was holding her breath. He looked away and someone pressed play.
‘Maybe we’ll save the kissing for next time.’
Minnie knew he was joking, but him saying it sent a flurrying sensation through the depths of her belly. It felt like a nest of baby owls living dormant in her stomach had all woken up at once and started flapping their wings, ravenous to be fed. She clenched her teeth together, annoyed with herself for being so predictable, getting all Fleur-ish when someone like Quinn said anything vaguely flirtatious.
‘Ha-ha,’ she said, shaking her head slowly from side to side, trying to quell the feeling in her stomach. ‘Right, enough of the chit-chat, chauffeur, we’ve got a lot more old folks to feed,’ said Minnie, clapping her hands together.
*
By the time they came to the end of the delivery round, 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 back seat.
‘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 quits.’
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 and his eyes fell to his lap.
‘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.
2 January 2020
Tara Hamilton lived in Primrose Hill in north London. As Quinn drove down the Camden Road, Minnie looked out of 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 further 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 inwards 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 honour of being the first place I threw up in after being introduced to Hooch,’ said Minnie grimacing.