This Time Next Year(77)

‘Well?’ Minnie hissed again, hands firmly planted on her scaly mermaid hips.

‘We’ve just been talking. It’s not your business, Minnie, that’s why I didn’t say.’

‘Not my business? I was the one who gave you her number, I was the one who said you should hear her side of the story!’

Her mother shrugged again. She picked up a framed photo of Tara with a young Quinn on her lap – they were watching a sunrise together, somewhere tropical. She looked back at Minnie, who was watching her wide-eyed, waiting for an answer.

‘I’ve got to do some things in my own way, Minnie. We’ve been talking here and there; she’s had a difficult time of it, she has.’

Minnie couldn’t understand why her mother wouldn’t have told her. Then she paused, tempering her irritation. She was glad they had been in touch. Perhaps some closure on the ‘name-stealing incident’ would smooth at least one of her mother’s jagged edges, redress her cynicism about human nature.

‘Well, what did you say that made her … ’ Minnie paused, not sure what to label Tara’s episode as. ‘ … React like that?’

‘I didn’t say anything,’ her mother said. Then, after a pause, ‘She was telling me how upset she was I didn’t call you Quinn, how bad she feels.’ She shook her head. ‘She got so worked up just thinking about back then. I said it’s only a name, isn’t it – it doesn’t matter. But then she started hyperventilating.’

Minnie laughed in disbelief – ‘only a name’. She looked at her mother as if she’d started speaking some strange Martian dialect.

‘Why you laughing?’ her mother frowned. ‘You don’t know what sets these things off. Poor woman’s traumatised – postnatal anxiety, a terrible miscarriage, husband left her high and dry. No wonder she’s a walking bag of nerves.’

Her mother picked up another frame from the collection of photos on the side table. This one showed a couple in their twenties, standing on the doorstep of the Primrose Hill house holding a baby in their arms. Quinn’s father was making a show of holding up the key for the photographer. It must have been taken when they’d first moved in.

‘You see a big house like this, Minnie, and you think people got it all. Sometimes it’s like too much icing on a cake – it’s covering over a crumby base that’s cracked down the middle.’

Minnie put her face into her palms and inhaled deeply. She couldn’t believe the words coming out of her mother’s mouth; this kind of empathy didn’t sound like her at all. How many times had they spoken? Minnie doubted Tara would have confided all this in a few phone calls. Clearly this dialogue with her mother had been going on a while.

‘Don’t you have a panic attack and all,’ said her mother with a sniff, pushing out her bottom lip defiantly.

There were footsteps on the stairs. They both turned to see Quinn come back through to the living room. He looked tired, deflated. He brushed a hand through his hair and leant a shoulder against the door frame.

‘Thank you for being here today,’ he said to Minnie’s mother. ‘She doesn’t have many people she’ll speak to, she doesn’t let anyone in. I hope today won’t – ’ he paused, looking for the right word – ‘put you off being in touch.’

Minnie’s mother blushed and then jutted out her chin. Minnie had never seen her blush in her life.

‘Takes a lot more than that to put me off.’

They all stood in silence for a moment until her mother said, ‘Right, best be off. Can’t stand around all day gassing. I’ll call to see how she is in the morning.’ She looked back and forth between Quinn and Minnie, gave Quinn a curt nod and then marched back towards the front door. ‘You make your own way home, Minnie, you’ll only slow me down with that ridiculous get-up you’re wearing.’ She gave Minnie a firm stare, as though trying to convey something with her eyes, though Minnie had no idea what it might be.

Once she had left, Minnie turned around to see Quinn standing next to her in the hall. He looked exhausted and forlorn.

‘Well, I’d better be off too,’ Minnie said, looking around for her purse and phone.

Quinn let out a deep, audible sigh. He put a hand across his chest and grasped his other shoulder.

‘Can I do anything?’ Minnie asked, nodding in the direction of the stairs.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll just stay here until she wakes up. When she takes her medication, she comes around all groggy, forgets things. She’ll need me here.’

His gaze turned to the floor. Looking at him now, Minnie couldn’t be cross. Whatever awkwardness had passed between them, he was still a decent person dealing with a difficult situation.

‘Do you want some company?’ she asked quietly, her heart in her chest. Such an innocuous question, but she didn’t know if she could take the humiliation of being rejected again.

His head shot up. ‘Yes.’ Then a smile played on his lips. ‘But can we talk about the mermaid outfit now? And is that wig in the living room part of it because, if so, I think I need to see the whole get-up.’

Minnie gave him a playful shove as she hopped past him, but she pushed him a little too hard, lost her balance and fell into him. He caught her, clasping both hands around her shoulders. She breathed him in; he smelt like every good Christmas she’d ever had. The owls went into overdrive, pulling crackers and chirping owlish Christmas songs.