This Time Next Year(67)

Minnie thought Jean must be doing something right if she at the age of eighty-six was still swimming most days. Jean had a calm demeanour that belied a life well lived. ‘Don’t cry about something you wouldn’t cry about in five years’ time,’ she once told Minnie. ‘And swim – swim when you can.’ Those were her two pieces of life advice.

This morning Jean’s familiar white ruffled head was nowhere to be seen. Launching herself into the water, Minnie felt needles stab into every part of her skin. She struggled to control her breathing as her body fought against the cold. She blocked out the pain and started to swim rapid breaststroke. She counted her breaths; it took twenty for the pain to subside, then her body mellowed, the needles softening to warm tingles, and every part of her felt infused with energy, her brain burning off its early morning fog.

Swimming had become part of Minnie’s new routine. Now she was working for the catering company she had mornings to herself and felt healthier than she had in years. She had time to cook herself good food, do exercise, and she’d even started reading again. She worked six nights a week, and was trying to live frugally. She was saving up a rental deposit to move out of her parents’ house, and in another month or two she’d have enough. Life was simpler, easier, less stressful. Of course she missed the No Hard Fillings kitchen, she missed working with her friends, she missed Leila, but she was trying to be more optimistic, to see the positives.

Since their argument three months ago, she and Leila had patched up a practical peace. They’d had to communicate to wind down the business, but it was a sticking plaster on something that ran much deeper and they both felt it. The administrative hassle of dismantling the company had been easier than either of them imagined. By selling off the kitchen equipment and the delivery van, they’d had just enough to pay remaining salaries and settle the majority of their debt. Everything was made easier by the fact that a chicken-themed fast-food chain wanted to take the lease off their hands and agreed to buy their equipment at a fair price. In a matter of weeks, the deals had been done; it was like watching a giant, painstakingly crafted sandcastle being swept away by one giant wave.

The catering company Minnie now worked for was a production line of salmon en cro?te and goat’s cheese tarts with a balsamic glaze. She worked in a rotation of venues, creating meals for weddings, parties, lunches and functions. She didn’t have much to do with the people who ate her food, or even the people who served it. She cooked, cleaned up, got paid and went home. She liked the impersonal nature of it. She didn’t have to think about the business model, about other people’s livelihoods depending on her. She didn’t have to think at all.

She’d stayed in touch with Alan and Bev. Letting them down had been the worst part of the whole thing.

‘We’ll be fine, don’t be thinking about us,’ Bev said, once she’d told them the news.

‘Ah, we’ll find another ship to rig in no time,’ said Alan.

As it turned out they had; the chicken shop had taken them both on, wanting staff who knew the premises. Alan was on deliveries, Bev worked the deep-fat fryer.

Fleur had disappeared, Minnie wasn’t sure where to. Perhaps she was living offline at home in her parents’ Wi-Fi-free zone, or maybe she’d finally set up that horoscope-themed dating app she’d always talked about. Minnie was surprised how much she found herself missing Fleur, of all people.

Giving up the business had been a seismic shift. Like tectonic plates grinding against each other, this small earthquake had released the pressure, preventing more cataclysmic consequences. It had been the right thing to do, she was sure of it. Yet she missed her colleagues, she missed her customers; she missed hearing about Mr Marchbanks’s cats and Mrs Mentis’s bunions. Most of all she missed Leila, and she missed her with a yearning she could only describe as heartache.

They still communicated, sent texts, occasionally exchanged news over the phone. But something had changed between them since their argument. Leila worked days, Minnie worked evenings. They’d met up for Saturday morning coffee a few times, but a polite distance had settled between them. Minnie felt she was catching up with an old acquaintance, exchanging information. She found herself commenting on the coffee, which was never a good sign. Patching together pieces of their friendship in a semblance of repair had not healed the underlying wound.

So Minnie worked and she swam and she saved and she swam, and she kept her head down and she held her breath. Swimming and breathing, living and working, waiting for the next seismic shift to move the ground beneath her feet and right everything again. Or perhaps to suck her under and drown her.

Minnie took four long strokes beneath the dark, cold water, then another, then another. As she ran out of air she felt the fight in her lungs push her to the surface. Survival took over and she broke the surface with a gasp of relief. As she climbed out of the pond onto the jetty, she saw that her towel was not on the bank where she’d left it. She shivered, looking for who might have taken it – a cruel trick at this time of year. A few yards away stood a man, rubbing his face with her blue swimming towel.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, striding over to him, ‘I think that’s my towel.’

The man pulled the towel down from his face. Quinn.

Minnie’s eyes fell unconsciously on to his sculpted torso and she quickly forced her gaze back to his face.

‘Minnie? Hi,’ he grinned. ‘What are you doing here?’