‘Thanks. Wanna know what I see, out of interest?’
‘No.’
‘Well. I’m going to tell you. I see a strong-minded, unique, interesting, talented, mighty young woman with a huge heart, who’s a bit confused about who she is, and while she’s trying to find out, which takes time, she’s a bit anxious, and that fearful bit of her makes her unkind to herself. But y’know what? Even THAT is lovely, because it shows me you’re not at all conceited. Can’t bear conceited people.’
Minnie raised the ghost of a smile. Hope felt confident enough to continue.
‘And, by the way, as it happens, what I also see is BEAUTY. Solid beauty. Twenty-four carat. But then, I see a lot of me in you, so I would say that, wouldn’t I?’
Minnie laughed. ‘Shut up, Mum.’
Hope went on, ‘Seriously, li’l darlin’, what YOU are is an extraordinary ray, and that is a ray which doesn’t obey the ordinary laws of refraction. It’s different.’ She whispered: ‘And better! I learnt it in school, I’ve never forgotten it, and now I’m looking right at it. My own extraordinary ray. Yes, thank you, Lordy Lord!’
Minnie’s eyes were welling up, and Hope saw it. Perhaps her sentiments had landed in Minnie’s heart after all.
Hope finished it with, ‘So, we’re agreed, yeah? You ain’t gonna beat yourself up any more, right? In fact, why don’t you just leave that to me …?’
With that, she grabbed Minnie and pulled her down on to the bed and they wrestled and giggled and shouted ‘WAWA’ until they were drained.
When Minnie was FIFTEEN, she got a Saturday job working on a market stall selling clothes. Her uncle knew the woman who owned the stall, Bibi, and she agreed to give Minnie five pounds per hour, cash in hand. On top of selling the gear, Minnie offered to customize some of the denim jackets. Bibi was hesitant at first. She thought it would ruin the jackets, and that altering them was just silly, unnecessary additions, but when Minnie bought one of the jackets and customized it for herself, wore it on the stall and had tons of praise and interest in it, Bibi saw the value. She gave Minnie one to do at first and Minnie embroidered the pockets and lapels with tattoo designs of hearts and anchors. It sold for four times the price within an hour of being on a hanger. So Bibi gave Minnie a free rein and some float to buy the appliqué and beads and various other bits ’n’ bobs she needed to do her best work. They came to a deal where Minnie would get five pounds for every jacket sold.
Minnie started to make some decent money. She spent it on notebooks, pens, make-up, takeaways and, for a while, on cigarettes, which she was trying desperately hard to like, partly because she’d met a canny boy called Callum who worked full-time on the market with his dad on their fruit and veg stall, and he smoked. He tasted of tobacco when he stole kisses from her in the café on their breaks. She didn’t like it, so she decided to smoke too, to see if that negated the stale taste. It didn’t. She told Callum they’d be better as mates. Minnie knew what she liked.
When Minnie was SIXTEEN, she asked Hope to dye the top two-thirds of her hair bright blondey orange. Hope thought it was a great idea and they did it in the kitchen after looking at lots of ‘bleaching afro hair’ videos on YouTube. Hope wrote a jokey disclaimer for Minnie to sign, which stated, ‘My mum has no idea what she’s doing. I have agreed to let her bleach my hair. If it all falls out, it’s my fault.’ It didn’t fall out, it stank of bleach for a while, but it looked amazing. The first time Cat sauntered into the bedroom unaware, and saw the crazy hair, she arched her back, hissed at Minnie, and pelted back out.
Hope and Minnie were a team, and like all teams who love each other, when they fell out, it was brutal, personal and bruising. On one occasion, after a flaming set-to which started off about emptying the washing machine when it was finished, rather than leaving her clothes in there, sodden and forgotten for two days until they were so stinky the entire cycle had to start again, the row escalated quickly into a fiery mess which culminated in Minnie shouting, ‘God! You are so controlling. No wonder my bloody father, whoever he is, decided that running off to another continent would be preferable to being anywhere near you!’
This floored Hope, who sat down quietly to let it sink in. The sting of it hung in the silent air for a horrible few moments. Eventually Minnie plodded back into the room, eyes wide as she scanned her mother’s face, afraid to gauge the damage.
‘Sorry, Mum. Didn’t mean that. Seriously, I was just, like, fewmin’ … sorry,’ and she rushed to Hope and hugged her hard.
‘It’s OK, Min, it’s OK. You didn’t mean it.’
When Minnie was SEVENTEEN, everything in her life changed. On her way to school one morning she went into the café and met Twat and came out with four cinnamon swirls, a hot chocolate and his number on a fiver. She was nervous to call it in the beginning – what if she’d misjudged him and he genuinely was a twat? She looked at the number on and off for three days and then Princess dared her to call it, so she did.
‘Hi, um, Twat? It’s me, Curls …’
‘Hey, the Cinnamon Swirl Queen. I’m so glad you called. I didn’t think you would.’
‘Yeah. You’re lucky. I felt like scraping the barrel today, so you were the first person who came to mind.’
The relationship started with banter and terrible jokes, and the banter never stopped, the jokes got worse, and Minnie loved it. He said things like: ‘What’s the difference between mashed potatoes and
