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10)Help Bev resolve existential crisis.
11)Build bed/Sort out room.
Then she moved number eleven to the top of the list. It was best to start the day with achievable tasks. She picked up a box which had ‘Minnie’s stuff’ scrawled on the side. Inside was an old karaoke tape player with a broken pink microphone, a half-built Lego Millennium Falcon and an old owl money-box she’d painted herself. She shook it hopefully but it didn’t rattle. At the bottom of the box was a pink photo album decorated in blue glitter glue. In round cursive twirls she had written, ‘Summer Camp 2005’. Minnie flicked reverently through the pages. The book was full of pictures of her with Leila the summer they’d first met. Every year, she’d begged her parents to let her go to that summer camp and every year they’d said they couldn’t afford it. They usually just asked Will to watch her in the holidays, but then Will got a summer job, so Dad relented and she was allowed to go.
On that first day at camp she’d seen Leila walking towards her wearing a pink leotard and green hot pants. She was the coolest person Minnie had ever seen in real life. Minnie had cowered as she’d approached, convinced someone like Leila would only be coming over to say something cruel to her– but she’d just smiled and asked Minnie if she wanted to join them for a water-balloon fight. For Minnie, it had been platonic love at first sight.
It took Minnie most of the day to sort out her bedroom; there was so much nostalgia imbued in each object from her childhood. Eventually, she was satisfied that the room felt habitable. She’d rebuilt the bed, stacked all her dad’s boxes neatly against a wall and categorised all her things into: ‘Old To Keep’, ‘Old To Bin’, and ‘Things For Now’. She didn’t want to unpack the ‘Things For Now’ boxes; it would be conceding that her stay at home was more than temporary.
As a final gesture to brighten the space, she propped the only piece of art she owned against a pile of boxes at the foot of her bed. It was a print of a painting calledAutomat. Leila had given it to her for her twenty-first birthday and Minnie had treasured it ever since. It depicted a woman in hat and coat sitting alone in an American diner, gazing thoughtfully into a cup of coffee. She looked alone, but not lonely, there was something self-contained and contemplative about the woman. You wanted to know what she was thinking, where she had come from, where she might be going. On the back, Leila had scribbled a note – ‘Be a good companion to yourself and you will never be lonely.’ It was one of Leila’s highest aspirations: self-sufficiency.
Minnie surveyed the room and nodded to herself. The simple task of sorting through the chaos had calmed her anxious mind, and puttingAutomatup made the room feel like home. She climbed onto her freshly built bed, sat cross-legged against the wall and opened her laptop. She typedLucy Donohue’s name into Google – she wanted to see whether people were still commenting on her article. There were a few tweets about it on Twitter, lots of people asking if they could be Lucy’s next dinner date. Minnie groaned – of all the things she had to do, why was she spending time googling Lucy Donohue? She needed to get some fresh air. Downstairs, the house was empty; both her parents worked on Saturdays. She scrolled through the new list on her phone and moved number nine and ten to the top – achievable goals.
Minnie got the Tube down to a shop near Old Street station. She remembered seeing it when they’d driven past on the delivery round. It was a printing shop and in the window hung a sign saying, ‘We personalise anything’. She handed the man behind the counter a USB stick and a plain matte-plastic bottle she had saved. It was an unusual request. She wanted to put a picture of Bev and a few words about her on a shampoo bottle. It was a silly gesture but maybe it would ease Bev’s existential fears about being outlasted by a shampoo bottle. The man said it could be ready in an hour if she didn’t mind waiting. Minnie had nothing to rush home for, so she decided to spend the time meandering the streets watching other, more interesting people going about their lives.
Minnie enjoyed speculating about strangers in the street; where they might be going, and who they were going to meet. She passed a tall woman in tiny shorts and silver tights with huge Afro hair and bright blue eye shadow. She wore a T-shirt that said ‘Queen’ in gold glitter. Minnie watched heads turn in the street as the woman sashayed past.
Minnie had never been someone to turn heads in the street; she just didn’t have that head-turning quality. She knew if people talked to her, took time to acclimatise to her features, then she might be deemed ordinarily pretty, but it wasn’t the kind of beauty that would stop a stranger in their tracks. When she was with Leila, people turned to look, though usually that had more to do with Leila’s outlandish hair and outfit than anything else. Minnie wondered if people who dressed unconventionally were after the kind of attention usually reserved for the strikingly beautiful people. Leila would say it was a case of not caring, of wanting her exterior to match the way she felt inside. Minnie had no idea what a reflection of her inner self would look like. Maybe that was her problem – she didn’t know who she was.
Minnie had always yearned to blend in, to not draw attention to herself. Attention meant criticism, attention meant being teased. She had read an article about how beautiful women, especially models, find growing older particularly hard. They are so used to turning heads in the street that as the gazes from strangers fall away, they lose their sense of identity. Maybe it was better to be invisible in the first place and never know what you were missing. Minnie’s thoughts turned to Tara. She must have been someone who turned heads when she was younger. Would aging have been harder for her than for Minnie’s mum, who had always been a little bit stocky and plain? Was it her receding beauty that caused Tara’s frailty, that air of vulnerability Minnie had sensed? Then she remembered the fear in Tara’s face at the smashed lamp, the panic in her eyes. She couldn’timagine that kind of pain had anything to do with the outside world – there had to be something more going on.
She walked aimlessly on, not looking where she was going. When she looked up from the pavement, she realised she was outside Tantive Consulting. Had she walked here accidentally, or had her subconscious led her here? It was five in the afternoon on a Saturday, but the lights on the fourth floor were on. Apologising to Quinn Hamilton was the next point on her list.
1 February 2020
Minnie pressed the buzzer. She didn’t expect anyone to be there at the weekend. It was probably the kind of office where lights were left on twenty-four seven, ruining the planet one light bulb at a time. Then again, Quinn was probably the kind of workaholic who couldn’t switch off at the weekends. She thought it with a mental sneer and then chastised herself for her hypocrisy – she was that person too.
A sound came over the intercom.
‘Hello?’ she said.
There was a noise and the door clicked open; she’d been buzzed in. Minnie stepped tentatively into the lift and pressed the button for the fourth floor, her heart pounding in her chest. She hadn’t meant to come here, she’d meant to call him and apologise over the phone. He was going to think it was weird, her showing up at his office unannounced.
The lift doors opened and Quinn was standing in front of her with a beaming smile, arms held wide in greeting. She’d forgotten how tall he was.
‘Hi!’ he said, then his neck retracted and his arms dropped to his sides. ‘Oh, it’s you.’
‘Sorry,’ Minnie blinked her eyes closed and shook her head. ‘I was just passing and the lights were on and I just … I wanted to apologise about the other day. I don’t want to intrude if you’re expecting someone else. I can go … ’
‘No, it’s fine.’ Minnie looked up from the floor and Quinn gave her a perplexed smile, ‘Come in.’
He led her over to the reception area, and waved an arm towards one of the low brown leather chairs. ‘Sit, sit.’
In the glass-walled meeting room beyond, Minnie could see an open laptop and a sprawl of papers fanning out across the table. Minnie sat on her hands to stop herself from biting her nails. She couldn’t get comfortable so decided to stand instead. This felt awkward, so she settled on splitting the difference and perching on the arm of the chair instead. Quinn watched this self-conscious dance of hers with amusement.
‘Look, I’m just going to say what I wanted to say, then I’ll leave you in peace to get on with your work. I was rude the other day. I don’t know why I was so angry with you when you’ve been nothing but nice to me and, well, I’m sorry. Maybe you are right, I do have a bit of a chip on my shoulder.’
‘You don’t need to apologise,’ he said, tidying the papers on the coffee table between them.
‘I really do.’
‘OK, maybe you do.’
‘I probably am doing a crap job with the business – I guess you hit a nerve.’
‘Well, I’ve had calls from clients asking how they can order from “the pie lady”. You’re clearly doing something right.’
She acknowledged the compliment with a nod. He sat watching her for a moment. His blue eyes looked soft,unfocused. ‘Anyway, it’s nice to see you … not shouting at me,’ he grinned.
