This Time Next Year Page 2

  “Well, someone spilled beer on my shoes, and I missed most of my friend’s party because I was stuck at your eccentric friend’s house. Maybe I’m jinxed too?” Greg finished the sentence with an overly animated smile, a smile that said, “I’m joking so you can’t get offended.” His eyes dropped down to Minnie’s chest.

  “Is my top really that obscene?” she asked with a wince.

  “Well, you know I love that view, Min, but maybe the rest of the room would rather look at something else,” Greg suggested tactfully.

  “Right, I’ll go to the bathroom and try to salvage my shirt.”

  On the way to the bathroom, Minnie checked her phone. She had a text from Leila.

  Just checking on you. What’s the damage? Do I need to rescue you from a hostage situation/pothole/worse?

  Minnie smiled and tapped out a reply. Not too bad so far. Lost only coat and got vommed on.

  Leila was Minnie’s best friend and business partner. They’d set up No Hard Fillings together four years ago and invested all their time, money, and energy into it ever since. If it hadn’t been for Leila, Minnie doubted she could have kept it going for as long as they had. They’d faced so many hurdles along the way, it would have been easy just to give up and go back to working for someone else, somewhere you knew you’d be getting a paycheck at the end of each month rather than scrabbling to balance the books and give yourself any kind of salary.

  So surprise—I’ve spent New Year’s Eve preparing pies so we don’t have to work tomorrow. I’m taking you somewhere for your birthday. You need to wear a dress, read Leila’s text.

  Minnie smiled. She sent back a dress and sick-face emoji.

  Leila sent back a screen full of pie emojis and then a screen full of sick faces. Minnie laughed out loud and then replied, You are the best. Thank you, Pieface. For you, and only you, I will wear a dress xxx.

  Minnie looked up from her phone just in time to walk straight into a waiter carrying a tray of canapés. A flurry of goat’s-cheese tartlets rained down on her.

  “Oh god, I’m so sorry,” she said, falling to her hands and knees to help the waiter retrieve the debris.

  “It’s not my night,” said the waiter miserably.

  He couldn’t have been more than seventeen. Minnie saw that his glasses had been spattered with soft cheese. She gently took them from his nose and wiped them on her top before returning them.

  “I know the feeling,” she said.

  Once she’d helped the waiter clean up as best she could, Minnie walked around the back of the bar and found the toilets along a dimly lit corridor. She peered around the door of the ladies’ loos. Half a dozen women were chatting at the mirrors, touching up their makeup. She didn’t want to wash her vomity shirt in front of them. Walking farther down the corridor she found a unisex disabled toilet with its own sink and hand dryer—perfect. She pulled the black silk shirt out of her bag and started rinsing off the worst of it. Luckily, it was mainly sticky rather than anything too globular, but the smell made Minnie pinch in her nostrils. She couldn’t imagine Lucy Donohue ever finding herself in this situation.

  She looked up at herself in the mirror, instinctively pushing her curls back behind her ears. Her hair disobediently sprang back the moment she let go. She’d just had it cut and the hairdresser had gone an inch shorter than she’d asked for. Now she couldn’t tie it up or keep it out of her eyes. She drew the back of a finger beneath each eye to remove some smudged eyeliner, then reapplied the plum lipstick Leila had given her as an early birthday present. She would never have chosen something so bold for herself, but it complemented her skin tone, and she wondered that sometimes Leila knew what suited her better than she knew herself.

  Minnie dried her shirt under the hand dryer as best she could, and then put it back on. She stood for a moment, staring at her reflection wearing the damp, creased, misshapen shirt. It was the nicest item of clothing Minnie owned, a fitted black silk blouse with white scallop cuffs. It was an expensive brand she had found in a thrift shop. She’d been so pleased when she’d found it. Now it was as though even the shirt knew her to be an imposter and was wrinkling itself up in protest.

  “Come on,” she said firmly, motivating herself to go back out to the party.

  Minnie exhaled slowly. She needed to stop being a killjoy. Greg wanted to be here and she wanted to be with Greg. Maybe her bad luck was over with, for this New Year anyway.

  Minnie went to open the door, but as she pushed the handle down it came away in her hand. She tried the door again—it wouldn’t open. She tried reattaching the handle, but it wouldn’t go on.

  She banged on the door with both hands. “Hello! Can someone help? I can’t open the door!” At that moment the music outside notched up a level. It sounded like a live band had started playing and there were whoops and shrieks from the party. No one was going to hear her now. She would just have to wait until Greg came to find her.

  Minnie sank down to the floor and looked up at the ceiling. The whole room was decorated with dark blue wallpaper, imprinted with tiny silver constellations. Well, she had got her wish; she was now alone, staring up at the stars. She pulled out her phone to text Greg—the screen was dead.

  “Of course it is,” Minnie said, shaking her head with a little laugh. If she could say something for this New Year’s jinx, it certainly had a sense of humor.

  New Year’s Day 2020

  The silence was the first thing Minnie noticed when she woke up.

  She blinked slowly, disoriented. Her throat was painfully dry. She remembered banging on the bathroom door for hours, but then she must have fallen asleep. She had no concept of what time it was. It was quiet outside, the music no longer playing. She got to her feet, rubbing at the crick in her neck.

  “Hello, hello! Can someone let me out?” she called.

  What if everyone had gone home and the place was shut for the night? She’d read stories about this kind of thing, people being stuck in toilets for days before they were rescued, people who drank cistern water to survive and wove blankets out of toilet paper to keep warm. How long would she have to be trapped before she resorted to eating the soap? She banged on the door again, this time with more urgency.

  “Help! Help me!”

  “Hello?” came a man’s voice.

  “Yes, hello! Oh, thank god. The door handle is broken, I can’t get out,” she called through the door.

  “How long have you been in there?” said the voice, rattling the handle from the other side.

  “Long enough,” Minnie said.

  “OK, hold on, I’ll go find someone,” said the voice. She heard footsteps walking away. She couldn’t believe Greg hadn’t come to find her. Had he gone home without her? Three or four minutes later the voice returned.

  “OK, I’m back. I have Luis here. He’s got a thousand keys in his hand.”

  “I don’t know how this happened,” came another voice, an older man. Minnie heard keys being rattled in the lock.

  “Here, let me try,” said the first voice. More clinking of keys and then the door swung open. “Look at that, first key and I nailed it. What are the chances?”

  Minnie squinted into the light of the corridor. The voice belonged to a tall, broad-shouldered man with sandy-colored hair and distinctive eyebrows a shade darker than the hair on his head. He grinned at Minnie, a warm, guileless smile. He was dressed in formal black trousers and a crisp white shirt. A black bow tie hung undone around his open collar, revealing a glimpse of tanned skin. Next to him stood a short, rotund bald man with a blank expression.

  “What time is it?” Minnie asked, looking between the two men.

  “Seven forty-five,” said the man in black tie.

  “In the morning?” Minnie asked, aghast.

  “I’ll go now,” said the shorter man—Luis, presumably—taking back the huge pile of keys and plodding of
f down the corridor muttering to himself.

  “A man of very few words,” said the man in black tie.

  Minnie followed him along the corridor back to the main room. The place was empty. Tendrils of party popper paper hung from the light fittings, and an army of half-empty champagne flutes lined the bar.

  “Am I the only one left? I can’t believe I slept that long.”

  “Sorry, I don’t think we’ve met,” he said, holding out his hand for Minnie to shake.

  “Oh right, I’m Minnie.” The man smiled at her, but looked as though he was waiting for more. “Greg’s girlfriend. He works with Lucy. She invited us.”

  “Oh sure, everyone’s welcome. I think I heard Luce mention a Greg. Funny Greg, right?”

  “Funny Greg.” Minnie raised an eyebrow, amused Greg would be called that. The man reached his arms above his head and the stretch turned into an enormous yawn. “Sorry, it’s catching up with me. What a great night, though.”

  “Not for me,” Minnie said wryly.

  “No, not for you.” The man gave an exaggerated grimace at having said the wrong thing and Minnie couldn’t help smiling.

  “So, I’m assuming it was your party then, Lucy’s boyfriend, right? Thank you for having me, I guess,” Minnie said, clasping her hands behind her back.

  “You’re more than welcome. In theory it was my party, Lucy invited everyone.”

  As he was speaking, the man’s phone began to ring in his pocket. He frowned briefly as he pulled it out to look at the screen. “Will you excuse me for one minute? I’m sorry, I have to get this, Minnie.”

  “Sure, no problem.” Minnie shrugged.

  He turned his back and walked a few paces away from her.

  “Hi,” he said. “Are you OK? No, I’m still out . . . I’ll come around later . . . I checked all the locks last night before I left . . . No . . . OK.” Minnie could see the profile of his face. He had closed his eyes while he was talking. “Fine, I’ll come and check, just give me a few hours, please.”

  Minnie watched him end the call. He noticed her watching him and gave her a tense smile.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked.

  “Yes, sorry about that.” He shook his head. He walked across the rest of the room toward the huge glass windows.

  “So, how come you’re the only one still here?” Minnie asked.

  He turned to look at her for a moment, assessing her. Then he said, “It probably sounds cheesy, but I always try to see the first sunrise of the year. I thought if I left with the others, I’d be in a cab somewhere and I’d miss it.” He held out his arms toward the windows. “Is there anywhere you’d rather watch the first sunrise of the year from?”

  “Plenty of places,” said Minnie. “The desert, a beautiful mountaintop, on a TV screen from the comfort of my bed. Ideally pre-recorded so I didn’t have to get up so early.”

  The man tilted his head to one side, his eyes creasing with amusement, the stressed look gone.

  “Well, you’re awake now, no pre-record required. Come on, come over here.”

  Minnie walked over to the window and pressed a hand against the glass. The light was beginning to creep over the horizon. A high layer of clouds glowed a deep rusty pink, creating an aura of warmth over an otherwise cold, gray city. Skyscrapers stood silhouetted against the sky, their sharp straight lines in stark contrast to the softness of the clouds above.

  “Pretty impressive,” Minnie said. “I can’t think when I was last awake for a sunrise.”

  “This is my favorite day of the year,” he said. “A chance to start everything anew, don’t you think?”

  “Funny, it’s my least favorite day of the year,” said Minnie. “I hate it, actually.”

  “You can’t hate it, it’s my birthday. I won’t let you hate it,” he said, his tired grayish-blue eyes temporarily revived, dancing with energy.

  Minnie turned to look at him.

  “It’s my birthday too,” she said.

  “It is not.”

  “I’m not joking. I promise you it is.”

  He squinted at her, his chin retracting toward his neck, a look of skepticism. He turned back to the window just as the whole sky began to glow red.

  “Will you look at that?” he said. “Glorious.”

  Minnie glanced sideways at him as he looked out at the morning sky. She couldn’t pinpoint one feature that stood out, but there was a sort of synergy about his face; everything came together and just worked. He seemed so comfortable in his own skin, something Minnie had rarely experienced. He looked over and saw her staring at him and she quickly turned her attention back to the other view.

  “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone with the same birthday as me,” he said.

  “It’s a very elite club. I’ll make you a membership card.” Minnie paused, nervous for some reason. “Look, I’m sorry, I know I should know your name since I’m at your party, but I came with Greg and he didn’t say. I guess I’ll need to know it if I’m going to make you a membership card.”

  “Right, of course. I’m Quinn,” he replied.

  “Quinn?” Minnie’s mouth fell open. “Quinn Hamilton?”

  “Yes, Quinn Hamilton.”

  “Quinn Hamilton, born at Hampstead Hospital in 1990?”

  “Yes,” said Quinn, his brow furrowing in confusion.

  “You,” Minnie said, clenching her teeth. “You stole my name.”

  New Year’s Eve 1989

  Connie Cooper lay in the hospital bed looking over at the woman in the bed next to her. Specifically she was looking at the woman’s legs, which were long, glossy, and as smooth as a Barbie doll’s. How was that even possible at this stage? Connie looked down at her own short, stumpy legs, covered in half an inch of black hair. She probably should have shaved her legs before coming in—well, at least the bits she could still reach.

  Connie watched as the other woman dabbed her forehead with a lacy cream handkerchief. Connie’s hair and hospital gown were soaked with sweat; using a handkerchief would be like trying to dry off the decks of the Titanic with a paper towel. The other woman’s shiny blond hair was tied back with a delicate yellow ribbon—a ribbon! Who even owned ribbon? Connie’s own dark wiry nest was pulled back with one of the elastic bands Bill used to keep his tools together. There was one feature that Connie did have in common with the woman in the bed next to her—they both had enormous round bellies protruding beneath their hospital gowns.

  “It’s like the overflow car park or something in here; the whole of north London must be giving birth tonight,” said Connie. The other woman didn’t respond. She looked pained and exhausted. “Are you crossing your legs till midnight then?”

  “No,” said the woman wearily. “I want this baby out, I’ve been in labor for two days, but the contractions keep stopping and starting.”

  “I thought you might be holding out for the prize money,” said Connie. “I’m Connie, by the way.”

  “Tara,” said the blond woman, but it came out “Ta . . . raaa . . .” as another contraction took hold. She started puffing out short little bleats of breath.

  Connie was about to say something else but then had to pause to focus on a contraction of her own. She stood up and walked across the ward in her hospital gown, bending over one of the empty beds opposite until the pain had receded. Then she turned back to Tara and said, “You’re doing it all wrong. Your breathing’s too shallow, you sound like a little sheep.”

  “A sheep?” said Tara. She looked mortified.

  “Yeah, you want to breathe from your gut, sound like a cow, or better yet a hippo. Try and make a hippo noise.”

  “I’m not going to make a hippo noise.” Tara gave a sharp headshake. “Ridiculous.”

  Connie shrugged. She started lunging back and forth on her front leg, while holding on to the end of t
he hospital bed.

  “You really never heard about the prize money for this nineties baby then? You must be the only one.”

  “Oh right, that.” Tara nodded. “I think someone mentioned it at one of my prenatal appointments. I didn’t know there was a prize involved.”

  “It could be one of us,” Connie grunted. Then she gave a low, guttural moan. “You’ll have to get on your feet, though; babies don’t come if you lie on your back.”

  “I’m just so tired. I can’t walk any more,” Tara said quietly.

  “There’s no getting round it,” said Connie. “You gotta get up, get walking, let gravity do her job.”

  Tara reluctantly sat up and swung her legs off the side of the bed. Every movement looked to be a monumental effort.

  “Oh, not again, I don’t . . . I can’t . . .” Tara sank to the floor, her body consumed by an invisible, agonizing force.

  “Try and stand,” Connie said, taking her hand. “Trust me, it’s better.” Connie held Tara up, encouraging her to push down on her forearms for support. Tara rocked back and forth, huffing and whimpering through it with her eyes closed. “OK, we can work on your breathing, but you’re standing at least.”

  The double doors of the ward swung open and a midwife wearing light blue coveralls marched in.

  “How are we doing, ladies? I’m sorry we had to put you in together, but I’ve never seen so many babies want to come in one night before. Lucky I didn’t have New Year’s Eve plans, hey?” The midwife chuckled.

  “They’re all after the prize money,” said Connie. “This one claims she didn’t even know about it.”

  Tara’s pain had passed; her eyes were glazed over and she was staring off toward the window. Connie watched her; she knew that feeling—she’d been in labor for four days last time.

  “Oh, you didn’t hear?” said the midwife. “The London News went and offered a check to the first nineties baby born in the city. We’re all desperate for someone from Hampstead Hospital to be the first. Though the paper must have more money than they know what to do with, if you ask me.”