More from Zoë Folbigg
Chapter One
DAY ZERO
Now
Time and space can be wonderous and magical: children become friends in a boisterous and busy playground; people fall in love at first sight across a crowded room; Olympic gold gymnasts can do a double-double dismount on a beam only 10cm wide. But these simple forces all boil down to physics and chemistry: stars align, worlds collide, engines fail.
Minnie Byrne was getting her head around the fact that all the miraculous things she believed in could be put down to science, as she sat in a wing-backed window chair, A Brief History of Time on her lap, drinking iced coffee in a cafe-slash-book-slash-record shop she was trying to take ownership of. Minnie would not let a bad memory of a bad thing that happened there tarnish this coffee shop for her. It was a space she loved in a happier time, and it would be that way again.
Minnie’s therapist had recommended she try new things: read books she would never usually dream of picking up (even if she was reading them in old haunts). Be more playful. Widen her friendship group. Learn a new skill. All baby steps she could take to ‘get outside of herself’ and bring back the carefree joy she’d felt as a child – Minnie was one of the lucky ones who’d had a happy childhood – and her therapist said it could help her heal as an adult.
She leaned back into the chair, her lungs and brain expanding with each deep, calm breath, each line absorbed. She was doing a good job of getting out of herself by reading all about black holes, white dwarves, time warps and the Big Bang. Despite her current lacklustre energy levels, due to her own personal quantum mechanics, Minnie was a gung-ho and positive person who liked a challenge. Growing up in a large family with five children, she had always done what her parents asked, however dull or however daunting the task seemed, because Minnie was a doer. A people pleaser. A glass half full. Minnie had liked to colour coordinate her parents’ books before social media was even a thing on which to show off rainbow shelves. She liked to stack the dishwasher in what she felt was perfect formation (a challenge her father set her, so he didn’t have to). She could recite the first line of all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets in the correct order (a challenge she had set herself). At school, Minnie had relished homework and presented it as competently and as beautifully as she could, mainly because she wanted the teachers to like her. She wanted her therapist to like her too, which she knew was ridiculous.
Still, Minnie had picked up Stephen Hawking in the book section of Bondiga’s Books if she was careful with a book she could read it and put it back), and gone to find a seat in the window of the cafe area for some peace and contemplation.
She had just come to the remarkable realisation that there was a scientific explanation for everything, when a yellow object shot across the room in her peripheral vision. As Minnie gazed at the missile on its trajectory, she realised that her epiphany was about to collide with catastrophe for someone else. She almost laughed and put her hand to her mouth as the ball struck a man, right on top of his head, and bounced on his mass of golden brown sticky-up hair. Space. And time.
It was a jolly looking ball. Small, yellow, bouncy. Even from Minnie’s chair on the other side of the cafe, she could see that the ball had two black oval eyes and a curve of a smile, reminiscent of the acid house smiley face of the nineties. This ball had been manufactured to bring joy.
‘Do you fucking mind?’ said the man who had been struck, as he turned, exasperated, halfway through picking up his coffee. The ball bounced once on the table, almost in slow motion, with enough kinetic lift to land in the coffee he had just picked up. It sent a scalding splash of syrupy brown liquid all over his grey cotton shirt and lap.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ the man lambasted, as he jumped up, placing the cup back onto its saucer on the table. Jesse was having a bad day. He was having a bad day before the ball struck his head and landed in his drink, and now he felt such searing anger, his hands were trembling. He was lucky not to spill any more. ‘Do you fucking mind?’ he repeated, louder this time, as he turned to the perpetrator, a little boy, frozen in the middle of the coffee shop.
The chatter in the room fizzled out as customers turned to look at the man and the boy. Only the distant sound of Leonard Cohen continued from the record shop in the adjacent room: Minnie’s favourite coffee shop, book shop and record store were all owned by Alistair Bondiga and had been in his family for three generations, enjoying the gravitational pull of North London’s book/record/coffee loving community since 1963. The book department of Bondiga’s was always quiet and contemplative, but now the cafe was awkwardly silent too.
The little boy, whose eyes were both solemn and mischievous, looked back at the angry man, too scared to reply. The boy’s mother, who had been lost in her own Instagram universe, looked up from scrolling on her phone, brought back into the room by the rudeness of the man and the commotion.
‘Excuse me?’ she said, her finger paused over a post she was deciding whether to deign with a like. ‘What did you just say?’ The woman stood and approached the man with the slow and predatory steps of a big cat, putting her paw protectively over the boy’s chest as she pressed her legs into his back.
Kip, a man with green hair and an eighties shirt, who ran the coffee shop, came around from the counter with some paper towels and a cloth and wiped the table and Jesse’s belongings down while Jesse felt the heat of his coffee, which he’d asked to be extra hot – Jesse always asked for his brew to be extra hot – hit his stomach and thighs.
‘Do you need a hand?’ Kip’s colleague Steph asked, as she came from out the back with a sack of coffee beans. Kip shook his head and offered Jesse a paper towel for his shirt but Jesse was looking squarely at the mother.
‘I said watch it!’ he replied. ‘Your kid has been throwing that thing all around the place – knocking into people – and now I’m burnt and covered in coffee. My notebook is wet. And I’ve got a really fucking important meeting and… thank you…’ He trailed off sarcastically, as he put his palms in the air.
The woman looked aghast.
‘Did you tell my son to fuck off?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Yes you did.’
‘No I didn’t. I said, “Do you fucking mind?”’
The woman was gobsmacked, and briefly looked to the other customers for support, to see if she was imagining the man and his rudeness. Most of them were keenly listening, but trying not to show it. Kip finished wiping down the table and pushed his little round glasses up his nose.
‘Who the fuck do you think you are, swearing in front of my son?’ The woman jabbed her finger into the space between them.
If Jesse weren’t so stressed, he would have raised an eyebrow. Instead he looked at Kip briefly and took the paper towel with a small nod.
The little boy’s bottom lip trembled. His wide eyes were like saucers. Minnie, watching from her chair, carefully put one flap of the book’s cover into the page she was reading and placed it down. The boy had been annoying.
The relentless thud of the bouncy ball on the wooden floor had been making it even harder for her to focus on eleven-dimensional supergravity, and at one point she had had to reprimand him for almost going in her handbag to retrieve a wayward blueberry. His mother hadn’t noticed, but Minnie’s piercing green eyes had made the boy rethink.
‘You need to go,’ the mother, who had a grey bob and wore designer Converse, said as she looked Jesse up and down, her eyes landing on the portfolio propped up against the chair next to him. ‘Jesse Lightning. You need to go. This is not a safe space for my son… You obviously know nothing about children and?—’
That was the thing that stung Jesse more than the coffee. He was not a bad man.
‘What?’ Jesse scowled, still trying to pad his shirt down without making the stain worse. Kip handed him another paper towel and put some napkins on the table.
The boy’s mother turned to Kip. ‘You need to throw this man out and make sure he never comes back. Jesse Lightning. Make a note of his name and bar him?—’
‘Jesus Christ!’ Jesse exhaled at the ceiling.
Kip looked a bit helpless.
‘You’re abusing my son!’
Minnie jumped up out of her chair by the window.
‘Whoah! Hey, this is all getting a bit heavy.’
Jesse looked at Minnie, slightly shocked by her interjection and her face.
‘How about cutting a little slack, on both sides, huh?’ Minnie suggested. ‘Fair dos – this gentleman was just minding his own business and now has coffee all over him; your boy… who I’m sure is delightful, didn’t mean to cause any… but, you know, this guy didn’t mean any harm either. I’m sure he’s not the Child Catcher…’ Minnie stopped wittering under the woman’s withering glare.
The woman looked at Minnie territorially while she decided what to do, whether to escalate her complaint to management. ‘Come on Orson, we’re leaving,’ she huffed finally.
‘What about my ball?’
Orson looked at Minnie with a princely hauteur, as if she were his servant and he expected her to retrieve it for him before he would leave.
Minnie contemplated the man with the coffee stain on his shirt and wondered why he was still looking at her, perplexed, in the middle of his meltdown. For a brief, thrilling, microsecond, Minnie wondered if he might recognise her, before shaking her head.
That ship has sailed.
Jesse Lightning was in a slight trance, as if he were resisting the pull of a vortex he didn’t have the energy to spiral into.
‘Well?’ Minnie asked. ‘Are you going to let him have his ball back?’
Jesse stepped back to indicate ‘Go ahead’ and the boy put his grubby hand in Jesse’s now-tepid coffee and fumbled for his ball, wiping it on his trousers.
‘Fair dos,’ Minnie said to herself.
The woman grabbed her bag, phone and son and left, turning and pointing to Kip and Steph as she stopped in the doorway.
‘You’ll be lucky if I ever come back!’
Minnie widened her eyes in a sarcastic wow expression, watched the mother and Orson leave, and then had another idea, as she turned back to Jesse.
‘I have wipes!’ she said helpfully, as she dashed to her bag in the window seat. ‘Here, try these.’
Jesse was frazzled. Why was all this happening? Now? His face was hot. His shirt was stained. His crotch was wet. And he had a meeting with Maddie Feynman of the Fox & Feynman Literary Agency two streets north of this cafe of all places. He did not want more drama.
‘Thanks,’ he said, taking the wipes. He shook his head and mumbled, ‘Little fucker,’ under his breath.
‘You can’t say that,’ Minnie gasped.
‘I can.’ He rubbed at the coffee, but it only seemed to widen and worsen the patch. ‘But I shouldn’t, I suppose,’ he conceded.
‘Here, let me get you another…’
Jesse looked at Minnie, puzzled. Why was this woman being nice to him when he’d just shouted at a kid?
‘Nah I’m good thanks?—’
Minnie didn’t give him a chance.
‘Kip, another…?’ Minnie turned to Jesse as if demanding to know his order.
‘A… a black Americano please,’ Jesse said, unsure of himself, as Minnie went to the counter. ‘Extra hot,’ he mumbled, sheepishly, not sure this was a good idea. He’d already been scalded once.
Jesse sat back down and used the woman’s wipes to clean his crotch under the table.
‘And another Bondiga’s blended iced coffee for me please, Kip.’ Minnie waved her bank card.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Kip said with a smile that was halfway between pity and awe. He did recognise her. Kip’s working days were always better when Minnie dropped in. ‘It’s on the house.’
‘Oh, thanks!’ Minnie smiled, pleased. Simple things, she remembered. Take the joy and the wins in the simple things. Free drinks. Free time. Space.
Minnie placed the coffee carefully in front of Jesse and sat down at his table without asking if it was OK. He glanced up as he finished with the wipe.
‘Thanks, but you really didn’t need to.’
‘Oh I didn’t pay for it.’ She waved a hand. ‘But, you know, “you’re welcome”.’ Her laugh was slightly demonic.
Jesse studied the woman, getting a proper look this time. Her face was alarmingly beautiful. She had a short black bob with a cropped blunt fringe framing green eyes – a colour he couldn’t put his finger on, it was so unique – and high cheekbones on pale, almost translucent skin. She looked like her face was her currency to getting her own way, although Jesse knew that wasn’t true. No one always got what they wanted.
‘Mind if I join you?’
‘Looks like you already have.’ He shrugged. ‘I mean, sure… erm, it’s just…’ He looked at his watch.
Minnie carried on. ‘My therapist recommended I meet new people. Go back to basics, be friendly, take leaps of faith. Just talk.’
Oh fucking hell. Jesse mentally rearranged his features, so he didn’t look hostile. Too unapproachable. But he really didn’t want to be anyone’s therapy project and he really needed his meeting with Maddie Feynman to go well.
‘Of course,’ he said neutrally, gesturing to the chair the woman was already comfortably sitting on.
‘I’m not crazy or anything,’ she said, with a sparkle in her eye.
‘Of course,’ Jesse repeated flatly.
‘Bad break-up. I’m seeing a counsellor who just suggested I meet new people. And, well, you’re a new person!’ Minnie said cheerily.
‘Look, I’m…’
‘Oh I’m not trying to hit on you by the way.’
‘I wouldn’t be interested if you were.’
They looked at each other in stony silence for a second.
‘Charmed.’
‘I’m sorry, it’s just…’
‘You’re having a bad day.’
‘I’m having a bad day.’
They said it at the same time and paused for a beat until Minnie broke the silence.
‘Well, I’ve been having a run of forty-seven bad days and this week my therapist suggested I take action to end that run.’
Jesse liked the woman’s exactitude, but didn’t speak. He let her talk. He had a feeling she talked a lot.
‘Get in touch with my inner child.’
Oh God. Jesse winced internally, trying to keep his face light. Minnie continued, in a low male voice that Jesse assumed was an impersonation of her therapist, except she made him sound like a geezer.
‘“Ride a Chopper”, “go runnin’ in a field”, “read a book you’d never pick up”, “get out there and talk to people”, “get off social media”, “stop comparing”, “stop adulting and go back to basics”…’
Jesse made a face as if to say that adulting did suck.
Minnie went back to her own, cheery voice.
‘Just… talk and play, with the innocence and the joy that we had when we played as kids. No agenda, no beef.’
‘Your therapist talks a lot for a therapist.’
‘Well no, I talk at him and he gives me strategies.’
‘Well, those strategies sound pretty sensible.’ Jesse didn’t want to sound like he was humouring her, but was aware he might be. They paused as she slurped her iced coffee through a paper straw that was already wilting and he inhaled the comforting scent of his coffee before taking a sip.
‘Would you like to hang out and be friends?’ Minnie asked, as she placed her drink down next to a brown paper napkin Kip had left on the table.
Jesse shuffled in his seat and glanced down at the coffee on his stomach. He winced apologetically and looked back up.
‘I’m afraid I’ve got so much work… I have so much going on… I’m really…’
But her face was so earnest, her eyes so wide. Something about her made Jesse feel wretched. He put his hands up.
‘I’m sorry, I’m an arsehole. I’ve just got the finishing touches to put to a presentation that’s really important, for a meeting I have been trying to get for months, in just’ – he glanced at the watch on his freckled wrist – ‘in just half an hour, around the corner.’ He looked exasperated. ‘And I probably need to buy a new shirt first. I can’t really be a good friend to anyone, or chat.’
Minnie looked downcast.
‘Not since fucking Orson stitched me up anyway.’
Minnie forced a polite smile in defeat. She was becoming quite resilient when it came to rejection. She stood slowly and picked up her drink, leaving a dotted circle of condensation on the table, to return to her bag and book in the window chair.
‘Fair dos. I’m sorry, I’ll leave you to it. Good luck with your meeting.’ She nodded, her smile fading as she turned away.
‘Another time?’ Jesse tried, not actually meaning it, and Minnie paused, almost paralysed, a flash of sadness on her face before she revived herself and said, ‘OK!’
‘OK good,’ Jesse said politely, hoping there wouldn’t be another time. He had no headspace for this.
‘Let’s play when you’re not so busy,’ Minnie said cheerfully.
‘Play?’
‘Yeah play.’
‘Like a game? Like a boardgame?’ Jesse frowned.
‘No, let’s just… play. Meet and talk. Like two kids at a park!’ Minnie’s idea was gathering pace, her enthusiasm returning. ‘Do fun stuff. Hang out.’
Her sweetness was disarming and refreshing to Jesse, and perhaps she could have some answers for him, with all this therapy. Jesse’s friend Andrew had recommended he see someone, although at the time it hadn’t landed well.
‘Erm, OK. I am pretty bus?—’
‘But rules. We’d need playtime rules. Tony would like that.’
‘Who’s Tony?’
‘My therapist.’ She said it as if it was obvious and then continued, planning out loud. ‘Old school. No agenda. First names not surnames, fun and light. And we remember friendships used to exist before phones.’
‘But Orson’s mum just shouted out my name to the whole cafe, just to make sure I was barred.’
‘Forgotten it already!’ Minnie said happily.
Jesse doubted that – people rarely forgot his surname.
‘Hang on, I need to write these down. Can I borrow your pen?’ she said, nodding to the Sharpie next to Jesse’s coffee-stained notebook. He handed it to her and she put her cup back down on the table and leaned against it, writing on the napkin in a blousy black scrawl. She wrote ‘RULES’ in capital letters and underlined it twice.
‘Number one. First names only. No googling each other. There’s no need for us to know anything more than what we decide to chat about, like kids in a playpark.’
For fuck’s sake.
‘Two. No exchanging of numbers. In fact, let’s not rely on phones at all. People always make plans and then cancel them with a flimsy text. No tech. Just chat.’
Jesse didn’t mind not giving this woman his number.
‘Three. Do. Fun. Things.’ Minnie said each word as she wrote it, and put three exclamation marks at the end. ‘Like friends should do. Nothing taxing. I don’t need taxing.’
‘I don’t either,’ Jesse said, almost through gritted teeth.
‘Sound good?’
She stood up straight and offered him the piece of paper.
I really don’t need any more friends , Jesse thought. Except, as he thought it, he knew this wasn’t true. He’d lost himself lately. His best school friend Will was talking about moving to America for love. His colleague Max was going through her own relationship difficulties. Just a few weeks ago, Jesse had nearly turned on the closest friend he had.
But this woman had a face he couldn’t say no to.
He took the napkin.
‘Deal,’ he conceded, trying not to sound too unenthusiastic about it.
‘Great!’ Minnie smiled as she rose on the balls of her feet briefly. ‘How about we meet on… Saturday? I’m not working Saturday.’
‘I’m… erm… busy on Saturday.’
And then Jesse realised she had a face he couldn’t lie to either.
‘Actually I’m not that busy, I’m going to London Zoo, for research, but I was going on my own, so I could do some sketching.’ He gently tapped his portfolio on the chair between them, making sure he covered his name with his palm, and remembered the time.
‘Perfect! I’ll meet you there! Say, 11a.m.?’
Jesse felt like he didn’t have much choice.
‘Regent’s Park, outside the main entrance?’
‘Great,’ he agreed.
‘Oh, I’m Minnie by the way,’ she said, extending a hand as she stood over him. He took it and she shook it effusively. ‘Nice to meet you!’
‘Hi Minnie, I’m Jesse.’
Jesse went to his meeting, where he impressed Maddie Feynman with his portfolio and she pretended not to notice the coffee stain around his navel. Jesse had an eager face she felt sorry for, she wasn’t sure why, but his drawings and his ideas were beautiful. He didn’t give Minnie another thought until that evening, when he was eating dinner with Andrew and Elena, and Andrew made a glib reference to their drug-taking past, which reminded Jesse of the bouncy ball with the smiley face on it. Then Orson. Then the woman from the cafe. But he kept it all to himself.
Minnie didn’t give Jesse another thought until she was in the bath, writing in her journal, feeling proud of herself for having had a good day, learning about M-theory and superstrings, trying not to worry about work. And making a new friend. She made a mental note not to tell Tony that Jesse Lightning was handsome.