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‘I tried to find Connie afterwards, I couldn’t remember her surname. I even looked at the birth announcements for another Quinn. The hospital wouldn’t give me her details. I thought maybe she’d get in touch with me.’
Quinn came back into the room and put a tray of tea things down on the large ottoman-style coffee table.
‘Don’t get too worked up,’ he said, pressing a hand gently onto his mother’s shoulder. She reached up to squeeze it and Minnie felt another pang for this closeness between them. She didn’t have that kind of relationship with her mother.
‘And now I hear all these years later that she despises me, that I’d stolen your name and you’ve been seething with resentment all these years. I can’t bear it,’ Tara let out a sniff and pressed the back of her hand to her nose, her eyes welling with tears.
‘Well, I wouldn’t say seething exactly.’ Minnie felt her cheeks go pink. She started biting the nail on her left thumb, then yanked it away from her mouth and sat on her hands.
‘I would love to see Connie again, to tell her how sorry I am. When I think what she must have thought of me.’
‘It’s only a name, I shouldn’t worry about it,’ Minnie said, reaching out to pat Tara’s hand.
Over Tara’s shoulder she saw Quinn mouthing ‘only a name?’ at her. Minnie narrowed her eyes at him; he was relishing this.
‘And then to be called Minnie Cooper instead,’ Tara shook her head, her lip puckering in distaste. ‘You poor thing.’
‘It’s not that bad,’ Minnie said, retracting her hand.
‘No, it could have been worse, Ford Fiesta or Vauxhall Corsa,’ said Quinn. Minnie felt a strong urge to throw the teapot at him.
She took Tara’s number and said she would get her mother to call her. She warned her that her mother could be a little prickly, but she was sure she would listen. Tara clutched her thin hands around Minnie’s and shook them gently. Then she excused herself to go to the bathroom.
‘Thank you,’ Quinn said quietly from across the room.
‘What for?’ Minnie asked.
‘For being kind to her.’
When Tara returned, she insisted Minnie stay for dinner. She said she never had visitors and wanted to hear all about Minnie’s life. Minnie felt as though she was having some kind ofSliding Doorsmoment. She was Gwyneth Paltrow with the short blonde hair, living in an alternate reality where her mother’s nemesis invited her to dinner at the blueberry ice-cream house. Perhaps another version of Minnie was currently finishing the deliveries with Alan in the van. Minnie made a mental note to suggestSliding Doorsfor her next movie night with Leila.
As they moved through to the kitchen, Quinn told his mother all about No Hard Fillings, about the people he’d met that day and how great Minnie’s pies were.
‘You haven’t tried one yet,’ said Minnie.
It made her feel a little giddy hearing him talk about her business in such glowing terms.
‘Finally, I get to sample one,’ Quinn said, turning on the oven. ‘I only had to give up my day, chauffeur you around London, get mauled by a cat, fix a dodgy aerial and try to put right a decades-old wrong.’
Minnie smiled, wrinkling her nose at him. Quinn smiled back at her, their eyes connecting for a moment, and Minnie felt the room close in around her. Tara looked back and forth between them as though observing something for the first time. Minnie’s phone started to ring and it took her a moment to realise it was hers.
‘I, um, I’d better get this,’ she said, seeing from the screen it was Leila.
She stepped back into the living room, leaving Quinn and his mother talking in the kitchen.
‘How did it go?’ said Leila. ‘Did you get everything done?’
Leila’s tone was more perfunctory than Minnie expected; she thought Leila would be calling to get the low-down on her day out with her love twin.
‘Yes, pies all delivered, customers happy. I’m just at Quinn’s mother’s house, Leils, she wanted to tell me all about—’ said Minnie, but Leila cut her off.
‘Listen, we’ve had a bit of a shocker this end. I just got off the phone with the bank and they won’t extend our loan.’
‘I thought we had until next month to pay?’ Minnie said.
‘So did I,’ sighed Leila. ‘I thought if we could just get the subsidy funding through from the council and then push our deliveries this month, we’d be able to scrape by, but we won’t find out about the funding until February and we just don’t have enough orders this month to make what we owe.Everyone’s broke after Christmas. I can’t see a way around it, Minnie.’
Minnie sat down on the plush white sofa and hung her head in her hands. She and Leila had put four years of their life into this. They’d sweated, they’d worked seventy-hour weeks, they’d put in all their savings, and now what? They’d just close up shop, let their staff go, hand the kitchen’s lease over to the next naïve young fool who wanted to watch their dream slowly wither?
