This Time Next Year(9)

‘Here it comes,’ said the midwife, ‘oh, a precious baby girl.’

Everyone else in the room was silent, listening for the new arrival to make a noise, to take its first breath. A cry, an angry wail, there it was, and then through the thin hospital walls the sound of another baby wailing in unison.

‘Is she OK?’ Connie said, urgently searching the midwives’ faces for reassurance.

‘She’s perfect,’ said one, wrapping the baby in a towel and laying her carefully on Connie’s chest.

‘We was first,’ said Bill firmly, ‘It definitely sounded like ours was first. You made it past midnight love, you absolute trooper, Connie Cooper.’

But Connie wasn’t listening; she was too busy staring at the wonderful little creature cooing in her arms.





New Year’s Day 1990





The next morning, Connie was singing quietly to the baby when Bill returned to the hospital with William.

‘Look who’s here?’ he said, putting William down on the ground. The boy immediately toddled over to the bed saying, ‘Mama’, arms outstretched to Connie.

‘Do you want to meet your sister, William?’ Connie said, patting the bed beside her. William clambered up, so she had a child in each arm. ‘This is baby Quinn.’

She held William’s hand so he could gently pat his new sister.

‘You can’t call her Quinn now,’ said Bill.

‘Why not?’ said Connie, her eyes darting up to look at him.

‘’Cause that’s what that other lady called hers, the one that won the money.’

‘What?’ Connie said, her voice a whisper. She carefully placed the baby back in the crib next to her bed. ‘What you on about, Bill?’

‘It’s all over the radio. That baby what won all the money just for being born a minute before ours, he’s called Quinn. I still say we were first. I reckon those midwives cooked up between them the times they logged, based on who was going to look prettier in the paper,’ he said gruffly, rubbing two large palms over his bald scalp.

‘Quinn? She called her baby Quinn?’ Connie couldn’t believe it.

‘Yeah, so we can’t call ours that too, we’d look daft. Their Quinn’s all over the news, he’s famous, plus everyone thinks it’s a lad’s name now.’ Connie sat quietly, stunned. ‘I’ve always liked Minnie for a girl,’ Bill went on. ‘What do you think, Will? Baby Minnie. She might not be rich, but she sure is beautiful.’ He leant in to kiss his wife on the forehead, stroking the baby’s cheek with his calloused plasterer’s hands.

Connie was too tired to think. She needed to sleep. She needed to feed the baby. And she needed to work out how she was going to take care of a toddler and a newborn at the same time. She could argue with Bill about the name later.

But by the time they got home and Connie had got some sleep, baby Quinn Hamilton, the first nineties baby, was all over the national news. ‘The Luckiest Baby in the Land,’ read one headline. ‘A win for Quinn!’ said the reporter on the breakfast show. The name felt spoilt now for Connie, the newspapers taunting her with the money she might have won. Besides, Bill had already started calling the baby Minnie. Connie sat on the sofa feeding her child, watching Tara being interviewed by the television presenter.

‘Someone told me Quinn was a name for luck and he’s definitely been lucky so far,’ Tara smiled. Her blonde hair looked blow-dried for the occasion, her face dewy and radiant. She didn’t look like someone who’d recently given birth. Connie looked down at her daughter.

‘I can’t believe she stole your name,’ Connie said softly. She felt a hot wall of tears building behind her eyes. Her milk was coming in and it was making her emotional; if she let the tears come they might never stop. She closed her eyes to quell the rising tide and whispered to the baby, ‘Just a minute too late, hey.’





New Year’s Day 2020





‘So hang on,’ Quinn said, holding up a finger to interrupt. ‘You’re called Minnie Cooper?’

Minnie and Quinn were sitting on the floor, the sun now streaming through the window. She leant back on her hands and stretched her neck from side to side.

‘Would you believe neither of my parents even made that connection for a good couple of weeks? I got a lot of “vroom vrooms” the whole way through school.’

‘Well, I’m sorry that you were named after a car,’ Quinn grinned, ‘but I don’t think that’s how my mother would tell the story.’

‘I’m sure she wouldn’t,’ Minnie said. ‘She’s not going to admit stealing someone else’s name.’

Quinn swivelled his body around to face her.

‘Can you believe we were born in the same hospital on the same day, minutes apart?’ said Quinn, his face animated. ‘What are the chances of that? And then meeting like this, on our birthday of all days. Don’t you think that’s weird?’

Minnie looked back at him, returning his gaze. She’d thought about this man a lot over the course of her life. She knew it was strange to resent someone she’d never met, someone she knew nothing about, but she did. The way her mother told the story, this was the boy who’d stolen her name and with it her good fortune. When bad things happened to Minnie, her mother would say, ‘You were born unlucky, girl.’ It was the refrain of Minnie’s childhood. Memories of missteps sprung to mind.