‘We loved your pitch, Minnie. We want you to cater for all our London offices if you think you could develop that capacity? And we’d like Lexon employees to help you deliver the pies to the community as part of our “giving back” initiative. We can pick over the finer details later, but I wanted to give you the good news before you pitched the idea to someone else.’

Minnie wanted to squeal down the line, ‘Thank you, oh thank you Lucy! You don’t know what this means to me!’ but she contained herself – pushing away Lucky, who was pawing at her leg and meowing for attention – and she thanked Lucy as professionally as possible. They arranged a follow-up meeting for Monday.

As she hung up the phone, Minnie heard a scratching noise and walked through to see Lucky scrabbling at the front door. Minnie had forgotten to keep the bathroom door ajar so that he could get to his cat litter.

‘Don’t scratch, Lucky! You’ll lose me my deposit again,’ she said, pushing the bathroom door open, and trying to pick up the cat. Lucky sprang forward and Minnie watched in horror as he started peeing all over her doormat. ‘Eugh, Lucky! What are you doing? Bad cat!’ Minnie scolded.

She picked up the mat to rinse it out in the kitchen sink. As she did so, she noticed an envelope on the floor. It must have come through the postbox and slipped beneath the mat. She picked it up – the letter was soaked in cat urine. On the front, the name ‘Minnie’ had been handwritten.

How long had this been here? She opened it quickly, grimacing at the smell. ‘Lucky, what the hell have you been eating?’

Minnie quickly scanned the writing down to the end – it was from Quinn. The ink was starting to run so she read the note as fast as she could.

Dear Minnie,

I tried to call you, but I think you’ve blocked my number. You’ve also blocked me on, well everywhere else, and I don’t blame you. So I’ve reverted to the old-fashioned form of communication. I have behaved … (Minnie couldn’t make out the next word, it was either ‘terribly’ or ‘teriyaki’ – ‘terribly’ probably made more sense.) I’d like to see you, to explain. I know you might not want to see me, but I’ll be at our pond on Sunday at …

And then the rest of the words had dissolved in the acidity of the cat pee and the letter began to disintegrate in her hand.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Minnie cried. She hardly ever swore. ‘Lucky, you’ve peed on the most important part of the letter!’ Then Minnie remembered she might never have found the letter if it hadn’t been for Lucky peeing on it, so she couldn’t be too cross.