‘We saw it in the Alison Holst book,’ Peggy said. She went and got it from the kitchen.

The cover was hideous. Some sort of stoneware or aluminium bowl held a terrifying collection of raw things – star anise sat on top of cashews, which nestled against kale sprouting out of an ear of wheat. There were raw mushrooms, and slices of pale cheese, raw pasta, spring onions – someone had taken a lot of time arranging the food. It made them all sick. The mix of sweet (grapes, carrots) with raw and just-picked-from-the-ground. But by far the most awful thing was the single, whole, raw Brussels sprout next to quarter of a boiled egg. ‘All the fart-smelling things,’ Dell had said the night they’d been given the book. It was a long Wednesday night. None of them could sleep and they’d sat in the lounge not saying anything, but the book had been on the coffee table because they’d just been given it and then Greta said, ‘Fuck. That cover’ – and they dived in. Fuck. The cover. Dell made gagging noises that started off sounding like a joke but then they all felt the wheat catch in their throats and smelt the cheese and farts, and started saying ‘Stop. Stop’ and ‘Why would you put that on the front of a cookbook?’

Now Peggy put the book on the bench and Greta looked up the index.

‘Oh,’ Greta said.

‘What?’ the other two said.

‘Something’s up with the crust.’

‘Do quiches have crusts?’ Dell said.

‘It’s called “self-crusting”,’ Greta said.

‘Oh,’ Dell said.

‘All the better,’ Peggy said.

‘Surely,’ Dell said.

‘Here it is.’ Greta found the page. ‘Self-crusting Potato and Vegetable Quiche.’

They fell silent and read.

‘What’s a flan tin?’

‘I bet there’s one at work,’ Greta said. There were always tins and things. People brought cooking stuff in all the time.

‘We could ask?’ The person with the keys must know which tin would work for a self-crusting quiche.

‘How will we keep it hot?’

‘I think we can cook it and then take it to the picnic cold.’

‘Or wrap it in tin foil.’

‘Tin foil.’

‘We should try and make one before Saturday to make sure it works.’

Someone looked at their watch. There was a supermarket up the end of the long road they lived on. They’d started getting their bread and hummus and carrots there because Diane explained it was cheaper than the dairy. It was the sort of place you went for cigarettes, but all of them had given up smoking at treatment, because if you’re going to have several horrible detoxes you might as well have them all at once. The supermarket was small, but they thought it might have the things in the recipe. They could easily walk there in fifteen minutes.