The sandwiches generally ended up squashed at the bottom of their bag. They’d discovered hummus. That you could buy hummus at the dairy and make it last a week. They put the sandwich in a plastic bag they’d taken from the staffroom, but everything in their bag still smelled of garlic. They’d take the sandwiches to the car park at the back of the shop. They couldn’t be bothered walking to the park anymore. If there was sun they’d sit in the sun. Not talking to each other. Angry. Sad. Wondering what the fuck they were bothering for. Looking at their sandwiches – the soft carrots, the wet bread – and somehow remembering food before sobriety as delicious, or perhaps remembering how they hadn’t needed food before they stopped drinking – like they were superhuman. They were staying sober despite themselves, they decided. They had no idea what was keeping them from following their friends. From the outside, when they looked at themselves, at each other, it looked like fear, but there was something more annoying than the fear. They had no idea what it was. Laziness? Were they tired?

‘After lunch,’ Greta would say. Peggy nodded. After lunch, they’d throw it all in. From somewhere high and with force, they would throw it all in and have a drink and try to forget about all of this. Then the sun came out and some old lady would walk past and say, ‘Nice day.’ And they said, ‘Yeah. This sun!’ And they could do it for another few minutes. And then they had an okay bite of the sandwich and maybe they had just been hungry and maybe something better was waiting for them. Then lunch was over and they went back inside and got busy and labelled fifteen T-shirts and had a chat with someone and helped someone else to the dressing rooms and said, ‘That looks nice,’ and the person would smile a bit and something felt a bit more awake in them and, before they knew it, it was five and there was a meeting starting at five-thirty and there they were, another day. Another day at work without walking out.