Lizzie smiles and tries not to cry.

She drops Lenny off with a kiss, which he squirms away from at first, but then grins. She has an hour to kill before she needs to be back for the trip. There is a crumpled five-pound note in her wallet, so after doing a word search by the duck pond (months of the year, far too easy, but she still struggled with June), she heads to the tiny bakery on the high street and orders hot chocolate and a Scotch egg.

‘Sorry, none left,’ says the girl behind the till, and she nods to an old man in the corner, with thin white hair and a red face. He is scowling into breadcrumb-covered hands and muttering to himself. ‘Croissant do you?’

Lizzie eats the pastry slowly, like she used to when she was a child, layer by layer. Afterwards she takes the plate to the counter. ‘That was delicious. Thank you.’

The cashier, a curvy girl with rhubarb-and-custard colouring, looks up and grins. ‘Pleased you liked it. Fresh out of the oven this morning.’

‘Do you make them?’ Lizzie says.

‘Yes. Well, I don’t. I just work here.’ The cashier leans over and whispers, ‘She does all the baking. Two batches of Scotch eggs a day and we still run out.’ She thumbs to a stern-looking woman in the back room, who is frowning at a row of minced-beef patties as if they are misbehaving children.

The woman claps flour off her hands loudly, then looks up at Lizzie and barks, ‘No, you cannae have the recipe, been in my family for years. Will stay that way,’ in a thick Scottish accent.

‘Scotch eggs aren’t from Scotland. One story is that they came from Yorkshire,’ Lizzie says, before she can stop herself, ‘and they used to be covered with fish paste, not sausage meat. The name comes from the restaurant that served them.’

‘Jesus, have you got a death wish or something?’ the cashier whispers. ‘She’s famous round here for her traditional Scotch eggs. The recipe has never been written down, in case it’s stolen. She says it’s more coveted than the secret ingredient in Irn-Bru.’

‘No, I—’ Lizzie goes to say more but the cashier snorts, ‘Fish paste,’ quietly. From nowhere, a gurgle of laughter bubbles up Lizzie’s throat and they share a high-pitched giggle, which makes both the baker and the old man in the corner glare at them.

‘Croissants aren’t French either,’ Lizzie says. ‘They’re Austrian. Can I have a couple of those gingerbread men?’

‘Fucking women, rabbit fucking rabbit. Nothing better to do,’ the man says, killing the moment, like a popped balloon.

George

(Angry man)