This Time Next Year(80)

When all her energy was spent, she pulled herself out of the water and dried herself standing on the patch of grass just in front of the changing rooms. Flashes of memory from this exact spot surfaced – stealing Quinn’s towel, their breakfast together, his dimpled smile as they walked side by side through the park. She needed to stop thinking about him.

‘Are you leaving?’ came a voice behind her.

She turned and then blinked, as though she didn’t trust her eyes. Was he really there, or had she conjured him up just by thinking about him? He was standing holding a towel, fully dressed in jeans and a pale blue shirt rolled up to the elbows. His hair looked longer, dishevelled. His face was unshaven; she’d never seen him with stubble before. The stubble made her conclude he couldn’t be a mirage. If her subconscious was going to create a vision of him, it would create him in the way she knew him to look, not some new, unshaven version.

‘Hi,’ she said, feeling her mouth launch into an unconscious smile.

‘I hoped I’d run into you,’ he said. ‘Shame we’re not in sync to go for a post-swim bacon roll. You must get up at the crack of dawn.’

‘Oh, I’ve only done a few laps,’ she lied. ‘I could swim longer if you … ’

Minnie couldn’t swim another stroke, she was exhausted.

‘Great, shall we meet back here in thirty minutes?’ he said, pulling off his shirt in one smooth movement.

Minnie’s body protested as she sank back into the water behind him. She watched Quinn set off at a pace across the pond. Had he genuinely hoped to see her here? She hadn’t been in touch with him since last weekend. She’d wanted to send a text asking how his mother was, but then she didn’t want to be the instigator, didn’t want to look too keen.

As she swam half-heartedly across the pond in his wake, she wondered what it was about Quinn that she liked. She had now admitted to herself that she did like him, even if it was not reciprocated. Maybe the very fact that he didn’t want to be with her was part of the appeal. She’d always gone for men who kept her at arm’s length. Greg had been far more interested in his job than her. Her previous boyfriend Tarek had been selfish at best, verbally abusive at worst. Leila used to say that you got the relationship you thought you were worth. If you thought you were only worth part of someone’s attention, perhaps that was all you looked for.

And yet.

She had ended things with Greg because she wanted more; because she knew she was worth more. So why was she now swimming around like an idiot just to go for a coffee with a guy who wasn’t interested in her? Did she actually want to be friends with him? Was that the consolation prize?

Minnie’s skin was wrinkled and white by the time Quinn finished swimming. They dried off next to each other on the bank; retreated to the changing rooms to get dressed and then met up again outside the iron-gated entrance to the pond. They walked across the heath, down the hill towards Hampstead Heath train station. Quinn said he wanted to go back to the same breakfast van Minnie had taken him to before.

‘So how’s your mum doing after last week?’ Minnie asked, swinging her wet towel as she walked.

‘Talking to your mother a great deal,’ said Quinn.

Yesterday, Minnie’s mother had told her she was popping down to Primrose Hill with a homemade quiche. A quiche? Minnie couldn’t remember the last time her mother had baked a quiche from scratch.

‘I know, it’s strange,’ Minnie said, ruffling her wet hair so that it looked less flat against her head. ‘She’s never really had female friends, my mum. None that I’ve known of in any case. She’s always too busy working to socialise.’

‘Nor mine,’ said Quinn. ‘What do they talk about?’

‘What it’s like to give birth on the first of January in 1990?’ said Minnie with a laugh. ‘That’s literally all I can think of that they have in common.’

‘Maybe they’re both lost souls,’ said Quinn thoughtfully, ‘they see themselves reflected in the other.’

‘That sounded very poetic, Quinn Hamilton. No one would imagine you were a boring management consultant.’ Minnie sucked in her cheeks to stop herself from laughing.

He reached out his rolled-up wet towel and playfully patted her on the bottom with it. ‘Watch your tongue, Cooper.’

‘You call that a towel slap?’ Minnie laughed. ‘Pathetic.’

‘Well, unlike you, I don’t go around beating people with towels until they bleed, I’ve still got a mark where you branded me, you know.’ His voice took on a husky quality.

‘You do not,’ Minnie said, elbowing him in the ribs.

‘And now with the elbowing.’ Quinn clutched his side as though deeply wounded. ‘I’m going to be black and blue being friends with you.’

They got breakfast rolls from the van. Quinn suggested they walk back to the top of Parliament Hill to eat them in the sunshine. They sat in the grass looking out at the London skyline, a vast carpet of buildings rolling out in front of them, dotted with cranes and skyscrapers.

‘Feels incongruous having this giant heath here, doesn’t it?’ said Quinn.

‘I love it. It’s like the last spot of wilderness in London, where nature has yet to be pressed flat beneath the concrete.’

‘Now who’s sounding poetic?’ Quinn said, looking sideways at her.