‘You’re right, I’m sorry,’ said Minnie, feeling chastised. She didn’t need Greg to point it out. She could always hear herself sounding bitchy when she felt insecure and ultimately it only made her feel worse. She bit her lip and fiddled with the pendant on her necklace. Greg pouted, a muscle twitching in his jaw.
‘Well, you appear to have made it to midnight without turning into a pumpkin, or whatever it is you were worried about.’
‘The jinx doesn’t end at midnight, it’s the whole of New Year’s Eve night and New Year’s Day. And I’m not worried about “turning into a pumpkin” – it’s the little stuff like getting puked on or losing my coat on the bus on the way here. I’m just unlucky around New Year.’
‘Well, someone spilt 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 the vest top really 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 nodded.
‘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 so easy just to give up and go back to working for someone else, somewhere you knew you’d be getting a pay cheque 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,’ said 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 and walked 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 down onto 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 make-up. She didn’t want to wash her vomity shirt in front of them. Walking further 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 of stomach bile mixed with vodka and Coke 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 charity 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 humour.
New Year’s Day 2020
Minnie woke up feeling disorientated, her throat painfully dry. She remembered banging on the 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 roll 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.