This Time Next Year(28)

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 of 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 colourful 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 laugh, pointing to the cream-coloured house on the corner. Every time they walked to the park, the stories would become more elaborate. Lacey concocted a whole back-story 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-storey mansion that resembled a giant dolls’ 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 centre of a bustling city.

The house sat in a line of other detached houses, all painted in different colours. 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 blonde 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 house guests.’

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 channelling information to her. ‘Minnie, this is my mother Tara.’

Tara turned to look at her, reaching out a hand 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 towards Tara.

‘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?’