This Time Next Year Read online

  “Fifty thousand pounds,” said Connie.

  What Connie couldn’t do with fifty thousand pounds. She could pay back Bill’s parents the money they’d loaned them. They could rent a bigger place. She could even buy the baby some clothes of its own—clothes that hadn’t already been worn by three older cousins and a brother. She couldn’t get her hopes up. There were thousands of other women all over London probably thinking the same thing.

  “It’s sponsored by some nappy brand. I think you get free nappies for life too,” said the midwife.

  “She’s definitely going to cross her legs till midnight now.” Connie laughed, but the laugh turned into panting as another wave of pain rolled down into her belly.

  “Right, hop up onto the bed, Mrs. Hamilton,” the midwife said to Tara. “I need to see how far along you are.” She drew a cubicle curtain around the bed and pulled on some rubber gloves. A few minutes later she stepped away from the bed and shook her head. “You’re not having the baby tonight at this rate, you’re still only six centimeters. You need to get moving, get walking up and down.”

  “That’s what I told her,” Connie shouted through the partition.

  “But how much longer?” Tara whimpered. “I’m so tired, I just need to sleep.”

  An alarm rang out in the corridor. The midwife quickly pulled off her gloves and washed her hands at the sink.

  “I’ll be back to check your measurements shortly, Mrs. Cooper.”

  The midwife swept out of the room as briskly as she had arrived, the double doors swinging noisily back and forth in her wake. From behind the plastic partition Connie heard slow, childlike sobbing. She pulled herself off the bed and drew the curtain back so she could see Tara again.

  “No, no. No time for tears. We got work to do,” said Connie.

  “I can’t do it anymore, I haven’t slept for two days.”

  “Where’s your man?”

  “I sent him home. He hasn’t slept either; I thought one of us should.” And then the pain came and she curled instinctively into a ball. Connie felt her own starting. She took hold of Tara’s wrist and gently drew Tara’s face up toward hers. Tara started mewing, pained little mews like a cat being strangled.

  “That’s a cat; what did I say? Did I say cat, did I say sheep, or did I say hippo? You got to go lower, come on, copy me.”

  Connie started mooing big, heaving moos from the depth of her diaphragm. Tara’s whole face blushed red, her eyes darting to the door. “Don’t be embarrassed. No one here but us, come on.” Tara gave a tentative “mur” sound. She scowled with concentration. “Lower, bigger, much bigger, MAAHOOOOOOOOOO . . .” Connie thundered. Tara stared at her in bemusement. She tried again, copying Connie. Connie nodded silent encouragement. At first Tara’s breathing was self-conscious, still clinging to some urge to be ladylike, but gradually she let herself go and started imitating Connie’s heaving moans.

  “It helps, don’t it? Now get down here like this.”

  Connie dropped down onto all fours and swayed her bulk backward and forward on the mat. Tara copied obediently. Connie’s contractions were getting more intense now. She felt like screaming, but she wanted to stay in control for Tara, to show her how to command the breath and ride it out. The women rocked backward and forward together silently.

  “Did you get a pre-labor manicure?” Connie asked, looking at Tara’s perfectly polished nails.

  “Yes,” Tara said, stretching out her palm. “Why?”

  “Did you get a bikini wax and all?” Connie asked with a grin.

  “That’s a bit of a personal question,” said Tara, frowning.

  Tara was still rocking slowly back and forth when an involuntary loud trumpet sound erupted from her rear end. Tara took a moment to register what had happened before clasping a hand over her mouth. Connie chuckled, a long, hearty chuckle.

  “There’s far worse going to come out down there, so you best get relaxed about a bit of wind, prissy missy.”

  Tara covered her face with her hands and then started to laugh herself. She had a musical, high-pitched laugh.

  “Oh my days, is that your laugh?” said Connie. “Even that sounds uptight.”

  The two women got hysterics laughing at each other; they couldn’t stop.

  “Yes, that’s my laugh, what’s wrong with it?” Tara snorted, her eyes streaming.

  “Oh, don’t make me laugh, don’t make me laugh, it hurts worse,” said Connie, clutching her stomach with one hand and fanning her face with the other.

  Over the next few hours, Connie taught Tara to relax, to let go. She taught her to move her body in the way it needed to move to get the baby out. She taught her to breathe and moo and growl and shriek and not care what it might look or sound like. The contractions started to get more regular, then more frequent. Things were finally happening.

  “So, you know what you’re having?” Connie asked, as they finished breathing through another contraction together.

  “A boy,” Tara said.

  “Got a name sorted?” Connie asked.

  “It’s too much, it’s getting too much, Connie . . . I can’t.” Tara started whimpering.

  “Don’t waste energy crying,” said Connie. “Come on, stay with me, do what I’m doing, we’ll get there. What are you going to call him then?”

  “My husband likes John, after him. I don’t know, maybe Roger?” said Tara, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of a hand. Connie wrinkled up her nose. Tara laughed. “Not Roger then.”

  “Sorry.” Connie laughed too.

  Another contraction, both women’s bodies were now strangely in sync. They held hands, squeezing hold of each other, breathing in unison.

  “Where are the midwives?” Tara wailed. “They need to call John.”

  “Trust me, I’ve only done this once before, but men just get in the way,” Connie said, panting through the last pangs. When she looked up, she saw Tara had crawled over to the bed and was banging her head against the foot rail. Connie waddled over and stroked her back.

  “Hey, this’ll be a bad memory tomorrow. Look at me, you want to hear the name I got planned for mine?” Connie pulled Tara away from the bedstead. “I had this name planned since I was little.” Tara turned to look at her. “Quinn. It’s a family name goes years back. My grandma was a Quinn; she used to say it held the luck of the Irish, said she never knew a Quinn who didn’t lead a charmed life.” Tara continued to rock back and forth. Connie couldn’t tell if she was listening. “I had a boy first, Bill insisted on William after him. I said, whatever we got next, boy or girl, it had to be Quinn.”

  The midwife returned to find both women kneeling on the floor, holding hands.

  “You’re going to have these babies at the same time by the look of it,” said the midwife, guiding Connie back to her bed. “Come on, let’s see where you’ve got to now, Mrs. Cooper.”

  Connie and Tara labored together for four hours.

  Tara’s husband, John, came back to the hospital, but Tara said he could wait outside until she was further along.

  “I just need Connie,” she told the midwife.

  Private rooms freed up, but Tara didn’t want to move. When Bill finally made it to the hospital, Connie said he too should wait in reception until he was called for.

  “So let me get this shipshape,” said the midwife, “you want both your husbands to wait in reception because you’re being each other’s birthing partners?”

  Connie and Tara both nodded.

  By half past eleven they were both ready to push.

  “Right, it’s time to get you into the delivery rooms,” ordered the midwives, finally insisting it was time for the women to separate. Connie and Tara were loaded onto beds and wheeled from the ward. They clasped hands one last time.

  “Good luck,” Connie said, her voice hoarse.

&
nbsp; “Thank you,” mouthed Tara.

  “Well, I’ve got bets on one of you two having this nineties baby,” said the midwife pushing Connie’s bed.

  “There’s no one else in this hospital even close,” said the midwife pushing Tara.

  As Connie was wheeled into the delivery room, she saw Bill sitting in a chair waiting for her. He stood up and folded the newspaper he had been reading.

  “You took your time, woman, I been waiting ages,” he said.

  “I’m not doing this around your convenience, Bill,” Connie snarled. “I’ll come when I’m good and ready.”

  Bill sat down again, smacking his lips shut.

  Connie pushed for half an hour. It took every ounce of energy she had left and she was past the point of talking. At one point Bill stood, checked his watch, grimaced, and said, “If you could just hold it in another couple of minutes, love, it’s only two minutes to go till midnight.”

  Connie let out an earsplitting guttural scream, like a pterodactyl defending her young from a predator. The two midwives both jumped and Bill promptly returned to his chair, where he sat with his shoulders hunched, fingers intertwined, and two thumbs rapidly circling around each other.

  “I can see the head,” said one of the midwives.

  The pressure became unbearable. Just as Connie thought she might burst at the seams, release.

  “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 her 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 leaned in to kiss his wife on the forehead, stroking the baby’s cheek with his plasterer’s callused 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 spoiled 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 blond 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 leaned 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 swiveled 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.

  On her seventh birthday Minnie fell down an uncovered manhole in the street and broke her foot.

  “The workman swears he only turned his back for a few seconds,” the paramedic said as he tried to pull Minnie out.

  “Born unlucky, this one,” said Connie, leaning into the manhole. “This would never happen to a Quinn Cooper!”

  The night before her thirteenth birthday, Minnie’s parents let her host a New Year’s Eve party for some friends. Minnie invited twelve people from her class, including the boy she liked—Callum Peterson. Ten of her guests went down with flu that week so the only people who turned up were Callum and Mary Stephens. Minnie spent the whole night watching Callum and Mary make out on her sofa. The kissathon only paused for oxygen when Minnie’s mum came in from the kitchen to offer them baked snacks. As Connie leaned over to remove a plate of uneaten vol-au-vents from the coffee table, she whispered to her daughter with a wink, “This would never happen to a—”

  “I know, I know,” Minnie shot back, “to a Quinn Cooper.”

  The story of Minnie’s stolen name had become a Cooper family legend. Her mother regaled people with the story of the injustice of it all whenever she had the opportunity.

  “Not that she
’s bitter,” Minnie’s dad would chip in with a smirk.

  “Oh, shut it. That prissy woman wouldn’t have had her baby for hours if it weren’t for me,” Connie would say.

  Bill and William made fun of Connie whenever the topic came up, but Minnie noticed that though her mother pretended to make light of it, her eyes had this pained expression. There was a gray folder full of clippings and childhood mementos, which her mother sometimes pulled out at birthdays or Christmas. It had all the old timetables from Minnie’s swim meets, Will’s mathlete certificates, and then there was the clipping from The London News the day she was born, with the headline about Quinn plastered across the front page. Whenever her mother reached that page, her face took on a look of solemn reverence.

  Minnie never imagined she would ever meet this man. Sometimes she even wondered if the fable was real. When she was a teenager, she’d looked for him online once. She’d found no Quinn Hamilton the same age as her on social media. And yet here he was, all six-foot-something of him, sitting next to her on the floor, his warm, handsome face smiling at her as though they were old friends.

  “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t know how lucky the name has been for me,” said Quinn.

  “You look as if you’re doing all right,” said Minnie. “That party last night probably cost more than I earn in a year.”

  “Money isn’t everything.” Quinn shrugged.

  Minnie made a face. “Money isn’t everything” was something only people with money said.

  “Listen, do you want to grab breakfast? I want to hear about my birthday twin. I’ll pay; it’s the least I can do after stealing your name.” He stood and held out a hand to help Minnie up from the floor.

  Minnie hesitated. She was tempted, but something about his cocky demeanor made her want to say no. Besides, it was New Year’s Day. In her experience it was never a good idea to say yes to anything on her birthday.