This Time Next Year(50)

‘Did we just consciously uncouple?’

She smiled. ‘I think so,’ she replied.

‘Am I living with male ginger Oprah?’

Minnie laughed out loud. Though she knew it was the right decision, she might miss his jokes. Greg was a jigsaw piece she’d been trying to make fit and the effort of forcing it felt like wearing a corset, pressuring her to conform to its shape. Now she had no Greg and soon she might have no Leila.

‘Player one,’ she whispered to herself as she unlocked her front door.





New Year’s Eve 2003





There was going to be a party at the youth club on Castlehaven Road up in Camden; some of Quinn’s mates from school were going. It would probably be lame, but it was the first New Year’s Eve party not hosted by someone’s parents.

Matt Dingle said he was bringing vodka, Deepak Patel said some of the grammar school girls who played netball were going; his mate Shiv went out with one of them and he said they were definitely, a hundred per cent going to be there. Quinn wanted to go, not necessarily to meet girls but just to get out of the house, to hear noise and hang out with his friends.

His mother was watching TV in the living room. She was curled up under one of the soft pink blankets that used to live in the spare room. Her hair was lank and she was wearing one of Dad’s old T-shirts. She’d been watching the news and then some programme about fishing had come on. She hadn’t bothered to change the channel.

‘I’m going out now, Mum,’ Quinn said, coming around the side of the sofa and sitting down next to her. ‘OK?’

‘Where are you going?’ she said, slowly lifting her gaze to his face.

‘To the youth club in Kentish Town; Bambers. There’s a party, remember?’ he said softly. He’d put on a clean white shirt. He’d washed and ironed it himself. ‘Do you want me to ask Mrs Penny to look in on you while I’m out?’

Mrs Penny was a nice northern lady in her fifties who lived on one of the high-rise estates near the park. Once a week she cleaned the house, laundered the bedclothes and did a weekly food shop for them.

‘You look so grown-up, Quinn, so handsome,’ she said, stroking his face. ‘You’ll need to start shaving soon.’

‘I’m fourteen tomorrow, Mum, I already shave,’ he said, letting her leave her hand on his face.

On the sofa next to her, he noticed she’d got the russet-coloured wedding album out again. This was never a good sign.

‘Mum, you’re not making yourself upset again are you?’ he said softly, nodding towards the album.

She covered the album with a sofa cushion.

‘Just thinking about happier times,’ she said flatly, her eyes pensive and still.

Quinn walked around her, picked up the album and went to put it back on the highest bookshelf he could reach. ‘Never give your heart away, Quinn, because you don’t get it back, you know,’ she said, staring up at the ceiling.

She often said things like this to him. Quinn had already decided that if this was what it did to people, he didn’t want anything to do with love.

‘OK, Mum, I’m going now.’

‘You’ll keep your phone on?’ she asked, a note of anxiety creeping into her voice. ‘And you’ll take the spare, just in case?’

‘Yes and yes,’ said Quinn, tapping both sides of his jeans. He hated how they bulked out his pockets.

‘And you won’t put your drink down; you know how easily people spike drinks these days?’

He needed to leave before she talked herself out of letting him go.

On the street, Quinn felt the stifling atmosphere of the house dissipate into the cool night air. He felt free for a moment, though he knew he was not. Sometimes it felt as though he was under house arrest. His phones were like those electronic tags – he could go outside the prison walls but he was still permanently connected.

School was release. It was always harder over the holidays when there were fewer reasons to go out. His friends had packed holidays full of skiing and ‘getting out of London’. For those left in town, most of the mothers planned endless entertainment. Pete Thompson’s mum had organised Laser Quest for eight of them last Thursday and it wasn’t even anyone’s birthday. At least this year he’d been allowed to start travelling on public transport alone – that was a game changer.

Quinn liked the street where he lived. He liked the multicoloured houses and the symmetrical trees along the road. He liked the bakery on the corner and the bookshop that smelt of toasted cinnamon. He liked the old lady with the funny felt hat who sat on the wall with her cats and said, ‘All right young lad?’ whenever he passed.

When his parents split up there had been talk of selling the blue house and his mum moving out of London to somewhere quieter. Maybe she would have been better off in a small village, somewhere where people were nosy and wanted to know your business. In London, if you wanted to keep yourself to yourself there was no one to stop you.

Quinn crossed the railway bridge and London changed in an instant, like crossing through curtains from front stage to back. The scene transformed from boutique shops, flower stalls and cafés that sold four types of milk, to a road full of buses, noise, graffiti, and street vendors thrusting newspapers at you. Most of his friends lived on this side of the tracks. Often Quinn felt more at home here – people didn’t look at you so closely here, it was easier to get lost in the crowd. Up in the sky a single firework exploded. Quinn looked up to see tendrils of light cutting a slash through the grey sky, a loner firework breaking free.