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Minnie watched a small muscle in his jaw start to pulse. He turned back to Minnie and forced a smile. ‘Not that I need to tell you, it’s your brilliant business.’
‘Not that brilliant,’ Minnie sighed. ‘Not financially anyway.’
‘Well you need to start charging for cat collaring,’ said Quinn, holding up his forearm again and pointing to the scratch marks.
‘Aw, you need me to kiss it better?’
It was the kind of sarcasm she might have used with Ian or her brother, but Quinn responded with this piercing look. It felt as though someone had pressed pause between them and then Minnie realised she was holding her breath. He looked away and someone pressed play.
‘Maybe we’ll save the kissing for next time.’
Minnie knew he was joking, but him saying it sent a flurrying sensation through the depths of her belly. It felt like a nest of baby owls living dormant in her stomach had all woken up at once and started flapping their wings, ravenous to be fed. She clenched her teeth together, annoyed withherself for being so predictable, getting all Fleur-ish when someone like Quinn said anything vaguely flirtatious.
‘Ha-ha,’ she said, shaking her head slowly from side to side, trying to quell the feeling in her stomach. ‘Right, enough of the chit-chat, chauffeur, we’ve got a lot more old folks to feed,’ said Minnie, clapping her hands together.
*
By the time they came to the end of the delivery round, it was five o’clock. Quinn pulled over in a bus stop as there was nowhere to park. Minnie handed him the last pie box from the back seat.
‘And this one is for you. It’s hardly a fair trade for a whole day’s driving, but if we factor in you stealing my name and taking a lifetime of good luck meant for me, I’d say we are near on quits.’
She should jump out, let him go before a bus came, but Minnie didn’t move. She just sat there looking at him, her mouth stretching into an unconscious smile. His smile mirrored hers, then he rubbed a palm across his mouth and his eyes fell to his lap.
‘Listen … ’ said Quinn. The word hung in the air. ‘If you have time, maybe … ’ He looked down at his hand, flexed his fingers and then screwed them into a fist.
‘Yes,’ she nodded encouragingly.
‘Well, I … I know someone else who would love this pie.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘My um, my mother.’
Quinn explained that he’d mentioned the story of her name to his mother and she wanted to meet Minnie. Minnie had a sinking feeling that she’d been set up. Had this whole offer of a ride been planned to make her feel obligated to go and meet the woman her mother reviled? Quinn had saved the day and she was sitting in the woman’s car. She could hardly say no.
2 January 2020
Tara Hamilton lived in Primrose Hill in north London. As Quinn drove down the Camden Road, Minnie looked out of the window at all the street signs that were so familiar to her. She had grown up close to here. Seeing these streets through the window of a Bentley, she felt like Alice through the looking glass, peering at an alternate version of reality. After being born at the hospital in Hampstead, Minnie had lived with her parents and her brother in a two-bedroom ex-council flat in Chalk Farm, which was just over the railway bridge from Primrose Hill. They’d stayed there until Minnie was fifteen, when her parents had moved further north to get a house. Every memory from her childhood was tied up in this square mile of the city.
As Quinn turned onto Regent’s Park Road, the city changed. The busy, dirty streets of Camden made way for the green gentility of Primrose Hill. Beautiful town houses with well-kept front gardens and perfectly painted shutters overlooked the park. Runners in designer Lycra with swishing ponytails bounced past. There were well-heeled people walking well-heeled dogs and distinguished-looking gentlemen in long camel coats, walking purposefully along the pavement with newspapers tucked beneath their arms.
‘This is only about a mile from where I grew up, but it feels a world away,’ said Minnie, watching the people and thehouses that they passed. ‘I haven’t been back here for years. Isn’t it funny how a place can revive such vivid memories from your childhood? There was a youth club we used to go to up in Kentish Town – if you didn’t get off the night bus at the right place, you ended up on the bridge right there,’ Minnie pointed down the street.
If you lived in a city for long enough, Minnie thought, the streets and the places where life happens fold inwards like paper, making space for new memories. Yet visiting old haunts and a long forgotten road was like stretching the concertina out again – the memories leap out, fresh as the day you folded them away.
‘Bambers,’ Minnie muttered to herself.
Quinn laughed, ‘I remember Bambers.’
‘I think Bambers has the honour of being the first place I threw up in after being introduced to Hooch,’ said Minnie grimacing.
Quinn turned to look at her; a strange flash of something crossed his face. He squinted his eyes, a twitch of confusion. His reaction made Minnie feel as though she must have said something wrong. She turned to look out of the window. No doubt girls in Quinn’s world didn’t talk about times they got drunk and threw up.
When she was ten or eleven, Minnie and her best friend Lacey sometimes used to walk down to Primrose Hill Park after school. They’d make up stories about who lived in these colourful houses and what they’d done to make their money.
‘Inventing cheese graters,’ Lacey would say, pointing to a yellow mansion with frosted windows.
‘Bouncy castles,’ Minnie would laugh, pointing to the cream-coloured house on the corner. Every time they walked to the park, the stories would become more elaborate. Lacey concocted a whole back-story for the Cheese Grater Family – apparently there had been a family rift about the optimal size of the grating holes.
