This Time Next Year(45)

15 January 2020





‘So let me get this straight, the guy spent a day driving you around London to help you out, introduced you to his mother, spent thousands of pounds bailing out our business – and you shouted at him and called him a spoilt brat?’ Leila asked.

‘Kind of,’ said Minnie, burying her face in one of Leila’s scatter cushions.

They were in Leila’s front room going through paperwork.

‘Minnie, with all this self-sabotaging behaviour, you’re ruining the fun of living vicariously through you. I really thought you might have slept with the love twin by now, or at least had a cheeky snog.’

‘Leila! I have a boyfriend? What do you take me for?’

‘Boyfriend schmoyfriend. Bathroom Abandoner doesn’t deserve you, and he clearly fancies you. No one buys a thousand pies from someone they don’t want to sleep with.’

Minnie slumped back against the sofa arm.

‘I don’t know what is wrong with me. He was just being so arrogant and annoying, trying to give me all this advice, telling me I should be grateful to get his opinion because “he earns five hundred pounds an hour”,’ Minnie said, imitating Quinn’s voice.

‘Maybe you should be grateful for his opinion,’ said Leila, closing the pink ring binder of accounts and rubbing her eyes with her palms. Her hair was scraped back in a messy bun, her eyes looked sunken and tired. ‘One month of good orders doesn’t put us in the clear, you know. It’s going to be an uphill slog to build any kind of financial buffer.’

Minnie stretched out on the sofa and looked up at the ceiling.

‘I could hear myself sounding all bitter and bitchy, I don’t know where it came from. Do you think I walk around with a chip on my shoulder?’

Leila scrunched up her nose and stuck her teeth over her front lip like a rabbit.

‘What?’ said Minnie, leaning up on her elbows. ‘What’s that face?’

‘I wouldn’t say a whole chip, not a thick-cut chip-shop chip anyway, maybe a skinny fry,’ said Leila. ‘A McDonald’s chip.’

Minnie picked up the sofa cushion and threw it at Leila. They both laughed.

‘Working hard?’ asked Ian, coming through to the living room holding a burrito in one hand. He was wearing a black T-shirt that said, ‘Don’t grow up – it’s a trap’, in a messy white font.

Leila looked at the clock on her phone.

‘Right,’ she said, jumping to her feet, ‘I’ve got to go. I’ve got a meeting with Monsieur bank manager.’

‘You sure you don’t want me to come?’ asked Minnie.

‘No, our bank manager is quite hot – I don’t want you smashing his lamps or starting some sort of sexy slagging match.’

Leila winked and jumped out of the room before Minnie could land another blow with a cushion.

‘Who’s hot?’ mumbled Ian through a mouthful of burrito. He sat down next to Minnie on the sofa. ‘Want to play two-player mode, Minnie?’

Minnie picked up the two controllers from the floor and passed one to him.

‘If we can play Star Wars Battlefront, but only one game then I have to go bake.’

Ian leant forward, put his leaking burrito on the coffee table and started riffling through the games drawer beneath the TV.

‘Something I wanted to talk to you about, Minnie,’ said Ian, loading the game into his Xbox.

‘If this is a coming-out speech, you’re telling the wrong person,’ she said, tilting her chin and looking down at him with wide, serious eyes. Ian leant back and gently punched her on the shin.

‘No, dickhead.’

The game clicked through to split screen and they both started selecting their weapons. ‘You always choose the wrong weapons; you need better rate of fire on your blasters,’ said Ian, shaking his head.

‘Not if you’ve got an accurate aim, you don’t.’

‘I know you’re going to die first,’ said Ian, scooting backwards onto the sofa next to her.

The game jumped into life. Ian and Minnie both leant forward, hands clasped on their controllers, blasting at storm troopers.

‘I’m going to ask Leila to marry me,’ said Ian, eyes still locked on the screen.

‘What?’ squealed Minnie, turning to face him.

There was a huge explosion on the screen as her avatar was hit by a grenade and blown into a thousand pieces.

‘Didn’t I say you’d die first?’ said Ian with a smirk.

‘This is not a game-play conversation!’ cried Minnie, reaching out to take Ian’s controller from him. ‘You’re going to ask her to marry you? When, how? Have you bought a ring? This is so exciting!’

Ian shifted uncomfortably next to her.

‘Yes. Don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know how to do it, that’s what I wanted to ask you. You know what Leila’s like, she won’t be happy with a bent knee in the bathroom.’

‘No, she definitely would not be happy if you proposed in the bathroom,’ said Minnie. She clasped her hands together, shuffling forward to rest her elbows on her knees.

‘She likes a bit of pizzazz. She’d want something original, I know that, but I’ve got no idea what kind of pizzazz, what kind of original,’ Ian scratched his head.