When Minnie met him, however, he was inside the steamy café with his work buddies. First of all, she noticed that he seemed to have his head on upside down, and then she noticed that all of them were having a huge fry-up, except him. He was having porridge with fruit scattered on top. He had definitely clocked her as she came in: she was unmissable with her mop of orange curls and her glossy kissy mouth. He took as many quick peeks at her as he dared without either Minnie or his own mates noticing. So he thought. He was mistaken on that one. Minnie was forensic when it came to boys. She was used to unwanted attention. It was impossible to be as individual and distinctive a person as she was without drawing focus. She didn’t desire the attention, but equally she wasn’t prepared to forgo her style simply to avoid silly comments.
On the day she saw him in the café, she was in her drab uniform, yes, but as always, Minnie found ways to customize it, all the while staying JUST inside the school rules.
The rules stipulated a uniform skirt; they didn’t say you couldn’t embroider it with giant red roses all around the hem.
The rules stipulated a grey blazer; they didn’t say you couldn’t have a bunch of real flowers, whatever you can find that morning, sticking out of your pocket.
The rules said to wear hair ‘up’; they didn’t say up where or how; they didn’t say that you couldn’t braid it with red ribbon and twist it until the orange curls became an exploded profusion of a Mohican like an overstuffed pot of marigolds.
Minnie went to school as if she were the love child of Coco the Clown and Frida Kahlo.
There was no missing her.
And he didn’t.
But, like her, he was, in actuality, the littlest bit shy, so he would never have made the first move, for all the bravado his tattooed arms and shaved head seemed to indicate.
Luckily, she had her earphones in, listening to Lady Gaga telling her she was ‘Born This Way’, and she didn’t hear his friend behind her, telling her she’d dropped a five-pound note on the floor from her pocket as she was getting her purse out of her silver rucksack to pay for her cinnamon swirl Danish and hot chocolate, so Lee had to touch her arm in her field of vision to get her attention. She jumped abruptly when she felt his touch, as if electricity were volting through her. She wasn’t wrong. There was certainly something …
She removed her earphones, and for the first time she heard him speak, this sorta bashful, cheeky-Charlie, baldy beardy-weirdy she’d already had a sneaky side-eye at.
He smiled. ‘Hey. Sorry. You dropped a Lady Godiva.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Fiver. This …’ He handed it back to her.
‘Oh, sorry. Yeah. Thanks. Duh.’
‘You won’t need it …’ he said, pocketing the note as she reached to get it.
‘Hey! Yes, I will …’
‘Nope, I’m getting your breakfast today, Curls. What is it to be? Side of pig? With chips? Or endangered fruit from exotic countries?’
She instantly liked his vibe, especially since he could hardly bring himself to look her in the eye when he spoke to her. He was a curious mix. Not the run-of-the-mill loudmouth she ordinarily dealt with in here. He was different, in a really good way.
She left the café with four cinnamon swirls in her bag and a large hot chocolate to boot. He pushed her fiver back into her hand as she was leaving. She grinned and thanked him. Only later, when she unscrunched it, did she see that he’d written his number on it, with ‘TWAT’ next to it lest she forget who he was. She wasn’t going to forget him. Ever.
That was over a year before. She was just seventeen then. He was nineteen.
Now she was eighteen and Curls was having Twat’s baby.
Lee whispered, ‘I know what would help to get this bean moving … They DO say … y’know … C’mon, foxy lady, you’re looking mighty fine today and you know you want to …’ He was snuggling into her neck.
She giggled. ‘You must be joking! Get off. The docs told me I had to stay still and quiet as poss. Besides, you ain’t coming to paradise ever again, boy. Look what happens!’
‘Your loss. Coulda made it twins, last minute.’
‘Shut it.’
Lee wandered off to resume his PlayStation game, reassured that Minnie was OK. Well, as OK as a very uncomfortable, very pregnant girl with an underlying heart condition could be.
Minnie watched his bare pink bum as he strode off. She loved the sight of his long strong legs, his manly form.
She reached down into her silver rucksack and, puffing from the effort, took out her notebook. She liked paper and she liked different coloured fine-tipped felt pens. She drew, she wrote poetry, she copied down quotes and she wrote letters. Sometimes she wrote letters to fictional people, but mostly she wrote to real people. She had never yet actually posted one of her letters, but just writing them gave Minnie an outlet for her humour, her flights of fancy, her joys and her rages. She had shelves of these notebooks, always the same make, ‘CD Notebook, 7mm ruled, MADE IN JAPAN’, lined up in neat ranks in her bedroom, here in the Bristol flat she’d always shared with her mum. The notebooks were intensely private. She might have occasionally shown her mum the odd picture she’d drawn, or a funny quote, but otherwise it was all for her eyes
