Leila stood up and started prancing around the room, caught up in her vision for this future proposal. ‘He’ll ride into a field on a unicorn, dressed as a knight in shining armour, and there will be doves and mer-people and baby rabbits that sing like they do in Enchanted. There’ll be a massive picnic of all my favourite food, specifically Nutella pancakes, and there will be a giant blue princess dress for me to wear and I will put it on and reclaim the princess narrative and I will look visionary and he will say, “Leila, I love you, and if you want the fairy tale, I will give it to you.” And I will eat those Nutella pancakes in my fuck-off princess dress and I will say, “Fuck yeah!”’

Minnie laughed. ‘You know, it’s funny, that’s exactly how my dad proposed to my mum.’

3 February 2020

‘Mer-people?’ said Alan.

‘Rabbits that sing?’ said Bev.

‘You know neither of those things exist, right?’ said Fleur slowly, looking at Minnie as though she had grown an extra nostril.

‘Look, I know it sounds weird, but she told me this vision she had for the perfect engagement when we were seventeen. It’s symbolic, trust me she will love it.’

Minnie, Fleur, Bev and Alan were sitting around the No Hard Fillings kitchen table. Minnie had called a secret meeting to commission their help planning Leila’s perfect engagement. She also thought it might provide a positive distraction from the potential ‘shutting down the business’ conversation that might be coming next.

‘The mission needs a secret code name,’ said Alan. ‘How about Operation I Do, or Operation Unicorn, something we could mention in passing that Leila won’t suspect?’

‘I think Leila would be suspicious if we start mentioning weird operation names,’ said Fleur, as she picked raisins out of a pain aux raisins that Bev had baked for them that morning. ‘My great-great uncle was like a spy in Russia and apparently he so nearly assassinated Stalin, but then he had this really bad wheat allergy so it didn’t happen. I think his code name was like Baguette or something, which was supposed to be ironic, because bread was the only thing he couldn’t handle.’

‘What if we called it Operation Uncle? I could say, “My uncle needs an operation”, or something. It might sound more normal bringing that up in conversation?’ suggested Alan, spinning around and around on his bar stool.

‘Or I could just set up a WhatsApp group between the four of us and then we wouldn’t need to discuss it out loud at all,’ said Minnie.

She was beginning to regret asking this lot to help her – so far no one had offered any practical suggestions as to how they were going to pull off her plan.